Chapter Text
On a cold night, the only sources of light came from the streetlamps and the moon. A boy with black hair and unsettling brown eyes walked toward a little convenience store.
“This is bad. Really bad.”
He felt the hard ground against his chest and realized he had fallen face-first onto the pavement.
His strength had completely drained away, and every bit of sensation in his fingers had vanished.
Where he usually bought a few things to get through the night playing video games, since he was a hikikomori. He grabbed a bag of chips and a canned soda.
The heat pouring out from inside him was so agonizing it made him want to rip his own throat open.
“Hot, hot, hot, hot, hot, hot, hot!”
The moment he opened his mouth to scream, what came out wasn’t sound at all, but a river of blood.
He vomited significant amounts of his own lifeblood while coughing. Foamy blood began to gather at the corners of his mouth during his gurgling. Through his darkening vision, the floor ended up painted red.
“Aah! Is all this blood mine?!”
He took short, shuffling steps toward the clerk at the register so he could pay for his purchases.
“Here are my things,” said the dark-haired boy, placing the chips and soda on the counter.
There was enough to soak his entire body. Blood makes up about eight percent of the human body, and it’s said that losing more than a third of it can be fatal, but—for him, it felt like he had already lost almost everything.
He stopped vomiting blood, but the “heat” that made him feel as if he were being incinerated continued. With great difficulty, he moved his hand to his own abdomen, and after an indescribable sensation, he finally understood… his stomach had been sliced open.
The girl finished ringing up the young man’s purchases and asked:
“Alright, sir, that comes to 414.14 yen. How would you like to pay?”
“Cash,” he answered, digging into the pockets of his sweatpants, searching for the money.
It was no wonder he felt so hot. It seemed his brain was confusing “pain” with “heat.” Once he realized that, his consciousness began to fade.
Even the heat that had made him writhe in agony disappeared. Even the unpleasant feeling of bleeding and the sensation in his hand as he felt his own organs slipped away. Everything was draining out along with his awareness.
All that remained was his body, which would no longer be able to follow his soul.
That body used the last fragments of his consciousness to move just a little. He lifted his head. His only concern was the safety of a girl.
“… -baru?”
He handed over some bills and coins to the woman. She simply nodded that the amount was correct and told him to come again.
He felt as if he had heard a voice like the chime of a bell. The fact that he could still hear that voice was already like salvation for the young man. Then…
“Urgh…!”
A short cry rang out, followed by someone else collapsing onto the blood-soaked mat. He felt her fingers twitch slightly, as if she too were trying to hold his hand.
In that moment, an overwhelming wave of guilt crashed into his heart. If his life weren’t already slipping away, he might have died from the guilt alone, crushing his heart.
The young man left the store, gazing up at the sky. That night the sky was clear, not a single cloud, allowing the stars to shine perfectly. And that made him happy, because he had an enormous fascination with those celestial bodies.
After all, the young man’s name had been given in honor of a star cluster. More specifically, the group known as the “Seven Sisters,” the Pleiades.
“Wait…” he said, clinging desperately to his fading consciousness, forcing it back with everything he had to buy a little more time. “I promise that…”
“… I’ll save you.”
In that exact moment, Natsuki Subaru lost his life…
Suddenly, Subaru began to feel a little drowsy. After all, it was already past ten at night. He started rubbing his eyes, trying to shake off the sleepiness, but when he opened them again…
“Whoa, that took forever!”
He was no longer standing in front of the convenience store. Subaru was in a room lined with several bookshelves, seated in a chair facing a man.
That man was Tristan, though he was without his mask, revealing his crimson red eyes.
“Welcome, Mr. Subaru. I am—”
“HELP!!! SOMEBODY HELP ME, I’VE BEEN KIDNAPPED!!!” Subaru screamed, pounding on the door, desperately trying to break it down and escape.
The albino simply watched the entire scene with a look that said, *Are you serious?* He picked up one of the books from the shelf and smacked the young man with the sanpaku eyes on the head, leaving a lump.
The moment the book touched Subaru, its cover changed color, from brown to pink.
“My God, he’s even more dramatic than P!” he exclaimed.
When he opened the book, there was Subaru’s profile, containing every detail about the young man—from his hair color to the size of his dick—and, consequently, which universe he came from. This Subaru was from universe: N113518141.
“Ah, so he’s that Subaru.”
When Tristan looked up from the book, he saw Subaru curled up on the floor, trembling with fear.
“L-look, mister, I-I-I swear I don’t have any money… and I don’t know how to give blowjobs either,” he stammered.
“I don’t want your dirty ass! And is that any way to speak to a cosmic entity?!” Tristan shouted, irritated.
“Dude, what kind of cosmic entity kidnaps a hikikomori teenager?” the young man shot back.
“Okay, that’s fair.”
While Subaru and Tristan argued, the door to the room was unlocked by a woman with black hair that reached her waist. Her skin was white as snow; her eyes were blood-red. The woman wore a white tomesode kimono decorated with snowflakes and a red obi.
“Darling, is everything okay? I heard a noise.”
“YUKI!!!” the albino shouted with excitement upon seeing her.
In an instant, with incredible speed, he embraced the woman and kissed her. The two lost themselves in the comforting warmth and cold that the other provided.
Yuki-onna, or the Snow Yokai—Tristan’s wife. A woman who was incredibly calm and composed, yet at the same time extremely dangerous and sadistic.
After their lips parted, the couple remained in each other’s arms.
“We missed you,” she said, tightening the embrace.
“Tris, I was only gone for a day.”
“Still.”
“Hm-hm! I don’t want to be a cockblock or anything. But could someone please explain what the hell I’m doing here?” Subaru interrupted their couple moment.
“Ah, right, sorry about that!” He scratched the back of his neck, embarrassed. “Well, Mr. Subaru, I called you here because you’re going to be summoned to a new world.”
At first, Subaru felt excited. Being summoned to a fantasy world was the dream of every hikikomori. But at the same time, he felt sad, because going to that new world would mean leaving his parents behind.
“The ability you’ll have in that world is—”
“Returning to the past every time I die,” Subaru finished the albino’s sentence.
“… How did you know that?” Tristan asked, shocked. He had sworn the young man with the frightening gaze would start listing a bunch of overpowered abilities like absorbing every creature he defeated, having an indestructible shield, absurd luck, or being some supreme being with a ton of powers.
“I read the part in bold.”
For a moment Tristan was surprised, wondering how Subaru had broken the fourth wall. But then he remembered that was one of the distinctive traits of this particular Subaru compared to his other versions—he could break the fourth wall whenever he wanted.
“And in that world, you’ll meet your destined hottie,” he continued explaining to the young man.
“My destined hottie? One for me?”
“That’s right.”
“I can’t believe it… my destined hottie,” Subaru finally “understood” what Tristan was trying to say. “Ah, now I get it… hottie…”
When Tristan and Yuki looked at Subaru, the sclera of his right eye had turned black and his pupil was red. He wore a ravenous expression.
“Hottie… has to do with flavor,” the Japanese boy drooled as he spoke.
“Now you’re channeling Tokyo Ghoul, huh?!” the Snow Yokai shouted.
Tristan simply flicked him on the forehead to bring him back to normal.
“You got it wrong, kid! I’m talking about the person destined for you from the moment you were born. Your ideal romantic partner, got it now?” Tristan explained in more detail.
“Ideal romantic partner…?” Subaru repeated the white-haired man’s words, still not quite believing it.
“Exactly,” he confirmed. “When soulmates meet, you feel a shock run through your entire body. Passion ignites instantly—it’s uncontrollable. And as they say, ‘it’s love at first sight.’”
“They fall in love uncontrollably…?”
“Yes. However, you have to be careful, because only the women feel it instantly. The men fall in love with the other person gradually.”
“The women realize it right away, while the men fall in love little by little?”
“YOU’RE REPEATING EVERYTHING!!!” the albino screamed, extremely irritated. He would have jumped at Subaru’s throat if Yuki hadn’t held him back. “Can you stop repeating everything I say?! There’s so much to explain that it barely fits in the first chapter. And if the readers start going, ‘Huh? Why are they explaining something that was just explained a minute ago…?’ ‘The author must think we’re stupid.’” He complained, making puppets with his hands to represent people arguing. “That’s going to be a huge problem for us!”
“Darling, please calm down,” Yuki said, stroking his head to soothe her husband’s nerves. It worked, as always.
“Fine, sorry. Let’s speed this up!” said Natsuki.
Tristan let out a sigh to calm himself a little more. With a very serious face, he returned to explaining the mechanics of soulmates.
“Soulmates are destined to meet at a specific point in their lives.”
“The key turned fast, huh, honey!” the woman in white commented.
“But there are people who end their lives single, right?” the young man asked, also with a very serious expression.
“You too, Subaru-san?!” another comment from the Yokai.
“Yes. There are those without anyone destined for them, because having a romantic partner is a matter of luck.”
“I understand. So that means I’ll meet my soulmate in this new world and have a happy romance, right?” he asked, desperate for something good. His power was already crap; he wanted, at least, to live a romance like in shoujo anime.
“Yes. And besides that… In that world you will find a total of 50 SOULMATES!”
“WHAT?!?”
Subaru couldn’t help but blush. He was going to have fifty people in love with him. That was something he had only seen in bad harem anime.
“You’ll have plenty of options. Nice, right?” Tristan said, draping an arm around the neck of the young man with the frightening gaze.
“Holy shit, I’m going to have so many options…”
“If this is a lie, can I do like the Subaru from Moribund Anomaly, invade this place and smash everything?” Subaru spoke with a deadly serious expression, making it clear he wasn’t joking.
“Wow, the admin really went out of his way for that reference!”