Volume 4, 130: FACES IN THE SNOW

Chapter 130: FACES IN THE SNOW

Icy winds whip past. Frigid temperatures slice at his skin.

A horde of white hunger swamps everything in sight. The hand he is holding is warm.

Natsuki Subaru feels not a speck of hesitation or doubt about standing here.

Subaru: “Great that we had that cool entrance and all, but isn't this a little weird!?”

Yells Subaru about the unanticipated scene as the snow batters his cheeks.

Roaring wind rages through SANCTUARY, which is currently embroiled in thick snow. Subaru was ready for this to happen eventually, but the date is mismatched to what he remembers.

SANCTUARY would be buried in snow and lure the mob of white witchbeasts at morning—there was supposed to be over half a day of surplus time left.

Behind Subaru there stands a silver-haired girl, breathing white with her shoulders heaving. Emilia has been unable to fully restrain the mana overflowing from her body, and half-encased herself in ice. Her left side is covered in white, and though it must be painful, not a speck of anguish shows on her face.

Subaru mentally praises the bold Emilia, while simultaneously suspecting her as causing the snow.

Was she unable to control this frenzy of magic, bringing snow, and beckoning the Hare?

Subaru: “But then the order's off...”

The sequence between the uncontrolled magic and the Hare's arrival are backwards.

Emilia used her magic to oppose the Hare, which resulted in her suffering damage. If Subaru is following the correct course of things, then the real cause is—

Subaru: “—”

Behind Emilia, Echidna's tomb looms.

Subaru acknowledges the gazes peering at him out from the entrance, and nods. If the people inside are the residents of SANCTUARY, then they are not feeling the effects of the tomb's mechanisms. That means that the tomb's operations have terminated, otherwise said that Emilia has defeated the

TRIAL.

Emilia has overcome the TRIAL. Snow is falling earlier than anticipated. There's the state of SANCTUARY's citizens, and Emilia's resolute shouts and expression. And there's also,

Subaru: “Roswaal.”

Roswaal: “—”

Roswaal, dazedly staring at Subaru while sitting beside the tomb's entrance. Subaru doesn't have time right now to check if Ram, sleeping in his arms, is okay.

All he can do is trust that she is.

Beatrice: “Subaru.”

When the small hand gripping Subaru's own gives him a tug.

Hit with an unfamiliar form of address from a familiar voice, Subaru chokes.

Subaru: “oughbbhnuh”

Beatrice: “...Explain that bizarre reply, I suppose.”

Subaru: “It just feels so novel when you say my name, so. Can you do it again but sounding bashful?”

Beatrice: “What!? You are actually mad, in fact! This is no time for buffoonery, I suppose!”

Beatrice snaps at Subaru's silly request, her expression terrifying.

Subaru reluctantly drops the issue, expecting her to ignore it no matter how much he pesters her, when,

Beatrice: “S-Subaru... there, I did it, in fact.”

Subaru: “Beako you are adorable.”

Beatrice: “—! I'm never saying it again, I suppose! I'll remember this for after we're done, in fact!”

Yells Beatrice, her face red as she swings her held hand in a huff.

Subaru looks at her, charmed, while also directing his attention to the horde of approaching hares. He licks his dry lips.

Subaru: “So, Beatrice. We're fighting the Sizeable Hare, where's your mental prep sitting?”

Beatrice: “I am moments post-contract. The opponent is one of the great witchbeast triumvirate. We are unprepared and conditions are poor. My contractor is a novice. I haven't participated in battle in four hundred years.”

Subaru: “And?”

Beatrice: “I could ask for no handicap finer, I suppose.”

Beatrice smiles fearlessly as the beasts, their teeth chattering, swoop in to close the distance. Subaru steps forward to face their attack and glances to Emilia behind him.

Subaru: “Me and Beatrice are about to crush the Sizeable Hare. Emilia-tan, I'm sorry for this, but some're gonna slip past so I want you protecting everyone!”

Emilia: “I'm...”

Emilia cuts her sentence off there, hesitant for a moment.

But after closing her eyes and taking a quiet breath,

Emilia: “Right. Leave it to me. —And I'm leaving it to you.”

Subaru: “Yup, all mine.”

Put the right people in the right places, split the roles up between them, do what's best for you to do. Emilia gives a deep breath as she concentrates on controlling her magic and erects a defensive line. The snowfall continues to rage as Emilia forms a blockade of ice.

Subaru steps out from Emilia's line of defence as he gazes at the white typhoon.

Red eyes and sharp fangs stretch on as far as his eyes can see. Coated in pure white fur, this is the witchbeast spurred by the most primitive and insatiable hunger in the world. The Sizeable Drove— otherwise said, the Sizeable Hare.

The chittering of their fangs makes the ache in Subaru's soul spread to his whole body.

He has died gruesomely, flesh devoured and innards ravaged, to those fangs. He has felt the agony of a hole gaping through his abdomen, spouting blood while teeth severed his windpipe. And he knows the overwhelming feeling of loss from death, his body chewed up and missing limbs, in Emilia's arms.

To complete this loop series, Natsuki Subaru must surmount this witchbeast.

Beatrice: “—Are you afraid, I suppose?”

Asks Beatrice to Subaru, holding his breath as he gazes at the beast.

Her face is impassive as she glances up at him. But her eyes, and her expression, inform Subaru far more eloquently than her words.

—Inform him exactly who it is that stands beside him.

Subaru: “Nope. Not at all.”

Beatrice: “Oh?”

Subaru: “Emilia's at my back and you're at my side. It's like I'm strongest man in the world.”

Beatrice: “Doubtlessly, in fact.”

Beatrice's cheeks relax into a smile.

So you do get it, says her expression. Subaru joins her in her wicked smile.

The Sizeable Hare enters a frenzy, rushing for the brazen duo.

Beatrice points her free right hand, the one that is not holding Subaru's, at the Hare.

Beatrice: “We'll begin with a warm-up, I suppose. —El Meenya.”

Space spirals alongside the canto as purple crystals materialize around Subaru and Beatrice, surrounding them.

These things, with the brilliance and bearing of icicles, are the magical stakes that Beatrice used in a previous loop to skewer Elsa. In a single instant, forty of them have formed.

It takes less than a moment for one to aim and silently shoot off—without its aim deviating in the least, to spear straight through the open mouth of a hare. The skewer proceeds to plummet through the air and plunge into the rearward horde of hares, where it explodes. Fragments of crystal shred through the hares around the site of impact, slivering them.

That is what one shot can do, and Beatrice fires forty at once.

The looming omnipresent destruction brings bloody flowers to blossom through the white world. The ruthless opening attack annihilates hundreds of hares. Aftermath of the destruction litters the clearing, where the surviving hares shriek in agony. The beast can multiply infinitely and there are still units of it left, but even so, it works Subaru up.

That is, Beatrice's unimaginably devastating destructive capabilities do.

Subaru: “W-woaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!”

Beatrice: “I-is it that incredible, I suppose? It isn't anything so impressive, in fact. This is the lowest of techniques from Betty, I suppose. A piece of cake, in fact.”

Subaru: “No, what, the... this, savage magic! What affinity!?”

Beatrice: “It's obviously going to be yin, I suppose. I'm not the best at other types of magic, in fact.”

Says Beatrice, not looking entirely satisfied about Subaru's praise.

The ravaged witchbeast immediately starts cannibalizing the gore from the corpses and multiplies itself again, but Beatrice pays this not the slightest of mind.

Beatrice: “Pay attention in fact, Subaru. Here's a lecture from one yin user to another, I suppose.”

Subaru: “What, is that all?”

Beatrice: “Huh?”

Subaru: “Was our relationship just about both being yin...”

Beatrice: “Th-that wasn't what I meant, in fact. You're a fellow yin user, my contractor, and also umm... Betty's Subaru, I suppose. Yes. And so here's my lesson to you, in fact.”

Beatrice, flustered, probably doesn't even know what she's saying. She coughs before raising her finger and lowering her voice.

Beatrice: “About the apex of yin—the apogee of Yin Magic.”

Subaru: “What do I need to do?”

Beatrice: “Hold my hand, and keep me from being alone, I suppose.”

Subaru: “I mean I do think that's important, but...”

Beatrice: “...It seems you don't quite understand spiritualism, which gives me some concerns for the future, in fact.”

She can be as exasperated as she wants, it won't change that he doesn't know what he doesn't know.

Beatrice shakes her head at Subaru as he frowns, and pulls him forward by the hand.

Beatrice: “Fundamentally, a spiritualist and a spirit fight on the battlefield as single entity with separate minds, I suppose.”

Subaru: “A single entity with separate minds...”

Subaru thinks about Emilia's fighting style.

The most striking battle that involved both Emilia and Puck was the one with Elsa in the loot house. Emilia had placed Puck on offence while she took charge of defence. She would also use simpler techniques to buy time so that Puck could unleash massive attacks.

That bald old man mentioned that that was the basis of how spiritualists fight.

Subaru: “So I just have to do that. Okay, time for Shamac!”

Beatrice: “Being subject to your defective Shamac would probably damage us as well so I would rather we not, in fact. And Subaru, your gate is...”

Beatrice trails off, looking reluctant to speak. Subaru feels apologetic that he forced her into giving this consideration. His gate is probably junk.

He abused it. He can feel that it's broken. Again, he is speaking fantasies.

Beatrice: “—It's coming, I suppose.”

Mutters Beatrice halfway through her speech. The instant after Subaru grunts in confusion, he realises that his feet are no longer touching the ground.

Beatrice kicks off the ground, and the jump carries the two of them straight into the air like a spring. That exact nanosecond, a horde of witchbeast's fangs closes in on the spot the two had just been. The Hare's fangs clatter against each other as the hares leap off the ground in pursuit of the two.

Subaru: “We're flying!?”

Beatrice: “We only jumped, in fact. I've diminished the effects of gravity with the yin spell MURAK, I suppose. If we desired, we could fly by riding the wind, in fact.”

Subaru: “You see we're falling though!?”

Beatrice: “We could keep riding the wind if we were simply fleeing... but we are annihilating them, I suppose.”

Like leaves tossing in the wind, Subaru and Beatrice are buffeted by blizzard. They regardless fail to gracelessly flip upside-down midair, probably by Beatrice's doing.

The two are on slow descent from their ten-meter high peak. The hares wait below them with their mouths gaping open, leaving Subaru to put his hopes in another rally of magical spears.

Beatrice: “Subaru, a continuation in fact. Spiritualists don't cast magic by using their internal mana, but by directly manipulating the ambient mana, I suppose. A contract with minor spirits is essential for this, so you are not currently meeting those requirements, in fact.”

Subaru: “Ah, uhrm, Beatrice-san? There's, there's kind of a whole bunch of them right under us!?”

Beatrice: “Just listen to me, I suppose. Your gate is trashed, and you cannot use minor spirits. So poor useless hopeless Subaru's only role is to stay at Betty's side and praise Betty's magnificence, I suppose. Why are you even here, in fact?”

Subaru: “That's what I wanna know!”

Beatrice: “Then I'll teach you, I suppose.”

The witchbeasts leaping up from below them will start reaching their feet in no time at all. If their fangs bite on, the hares will never let go. Even he has to find it overwhelmingly lame to take huge damage and start crying after how cool and composed he acted.

Subaru yells rather hysterically at Beatrice.

Subaru: “What do I do!?”

Beatrice: “Visualise, in fact. Imagine the same crystals that I made before, I suppose. They are crystallized mana, spears weaved from corporeal magic. They taper to sharp points, with ruinous shards packed inside them, piercing through defences and stabbing into flesh. —Visualise this attack.”

Subaru: “Visualised!”

Beatrice: “Now all you must do is incant, I suppose!”

The horde of hares waits below them, mouths agape.

Red eyes, bloodstained maw, sharp fangs, instincts that view Subaru as merely a wad of meat. Utterly repugnant, utterly loathsome, this is the greatest adversary in SANCTUARY.

Both: “—El Meenya!!”

Subaru and Beatrice's cantos mirror each other, and the conjured spears rain down at the ground from on high.

Explosions and destruction rock the earth of SANCTUARY, eviscerating the ugly witchbeast.

※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※

Emilia: “Amazing...”

Sighs Emilia in admiration as she freezes a hare that slipped past solid.

Her amethyst eyes stay fixated on Subaru and Beatrice, fighting the beast beyond the shroud of snow.

More specifically, Emilia's eyes stay fixated on Beatrice as she holds Subaru's hand. Emilia herself is a spiritualist, who is using the minor spirits' magic this very instant. She understands to a painful degree how incredible this magical confrontation is.

First, Beatrice is not receiving any magical reserves from Subaru.

They are definitely connected by the pass from their contract: it's simply that Beatrice is abstaining from doing so. Subaru was thrown into combat immediately after forming this spirit contract. If Beatrice siphons the mana she needs from him, he won't last.

Beatrice understands this, and is taking care not to burden Subaru.

Second, it's not that Beatrice is taking magic from Subaru—she's giving it to him.

It's not the most accurate phrasing, but it's the truth. Subaru, as he holds hands with Beatrice, is receiving Beatrice's support, allowing him to use magic that should be inaccessible to him. He isn't using his gate, and is instead using Beatrice's presence itself like a gate.

Subaru is not using his own mana to cast this magic. So he is casting without suffering any strain— would be a complete misunderstanding.

He is getting the mana he needs to cast from Beatrice, but Subaru is the one regulating the magic. He visualises the spears' force, their aim, their quantity, materializes them and fires them, then instantly moves to the next attack.

He would be suffering even more bodily fatigue alongside this, were he an actual magician. He cannot hope to imagine the immense burden and concurrent workload. He can agree with his lack of talent for it.

The spears strike against the ground, shockwaves and detonations sending the hares flying as they screech in protest. Their fangs click and chitter and click and chitter and click and with the howling blizzard as accompaniment, it sounds like the cog-wheels of hell, or something to that effect.

The cogs on the grim conveyor to send Subaru's team to the guillotine press ever closer.

Subaru: “Meenya! Meenya! Ah, crap! Biting my tongue on this magic!”

While grumbling about the unpronounceable incantation, Subaru takes aim at the charging Hare. He fires the conjured crystals, and the leading hare's head—goes untouched as the spear strikes the ground before it, and the shockwave pushes it back into the mob.

The plan is in phase one.

Subaru is controlling the horde with his conjured spears, but he isn't killing them. They want to avoid disruption to the ceiling, and having the hares multiply at some indefinite juncture.

He is keeping the Sizeable Hare at its ceiling while pinning it in place. Although,

Subaru: “If you're attracted to mana's smell, then there's no way you're prying your attention from us.”

After all, there are two people here maintaining nigh-unwitnessed magnitudes of mana. And they're both beautiful girls. Subaru, right now, has flowers in both hands. Anyone would envy him.

Subaru: “Visualize, visualize, visualize... come on, you gotta be jealous! Wanna try coming closer!”

Hums Subaru, not neglecting to taunt the animal.

Part of it is to inflame the enemy, but it's more about Subaru encouraging himself. If he feigns that an extraordinary situation is an ordinary one, he can manage to keep himself going.

If he doesn't do this, he cannot assure himself steady knees. Both of his hands feel a warmth. With this touch on his palms, he absolutely cannot show the pathetic side of himself.

Subaru: “Visualize, visualize, visualise...!”

Mutters Subaru over and over as he strains his eyes.

The horde of hares has pushed forward; there is a limit to how far Subaru can restrain them. But preparations are not in place yet.

Not Emilia's, or Beatrice's, or Subaru's.

Emilia: “...Subaru.”

He feels someone squeeze his hand, and looks to find Emilia gazing at him, her eyes faintly open. Her preparations are in order, then? She is smiling, awaiting Subaru's signal.

Subaru: “—hk”

Pushed onward by Emilia's gaze, Subaru strains his bloodshot eyes further.

The curtain of blustering blizzard is thick, constantly concealing and revealing the places he is trying to see. But the sight of their wriggling, white forms does tell Subaru of the slight difference between the witchbeast and the snowbanks.

—Just a little more, a tiny, right there, there, there, there!

Subaru grits his teeth. Waits for the moment.

Confirming that the front, the sides, all of it, everything is correct, Subaru's eyes shoot open.

Subaru: “Now, Emilia! Follow the lines!!”

Shouting, Subaru squeezes down on Emilia's hand.

Emilia's amethyst gaze focuses firmly to the front as she looks at the lines Subaru drew.

While he kept the Hare in check with conjured spears, Subaru had been simultaneously drawing lines across the earth with mana. Using formless mana to gouge into the earth had been the utmost in difficulty.

But Subaru, as talentless as people called him, overcame that ordeal by a combination of focus and PRETENTIONS that far exceeded those of the ordinary person. The ones that disallowed him from looking uncool around others, those pretentions.

He drew four lines in total.

Four long lines, that form a box around the mass of hares.

Lines that would tell Emilia where to aim.

Emilia: “Excellent, Subaru! You did sooo wonderful!”

Cheers Emilia at his beautiful set-up, saying things she would usually never say.

Emilia raises her right hand, Subaru's hand still in her grip, and places her half-frozen left hand atop it. And, incants.

Emilia: “—Al Huma!!”

The multitude of magic surges as the world transforms in accordance to Emilia's canto.

Mana rushes to Emilia and Subaru's linked hands before shooting into the atmosphere, piercing through the earth, and converging with Subaru's lines of mana.

—The earth bellows as something incredible occurs.

Subaru: “Woah...”

Says Subaru, astonished, as he watches what happens.

Well of course. Anyone witnessing this would react the same way.

Emilia's magic traces over the lines that Subaru drew—and all of the snow within the box starts levitating.

All of the hares within the box remain atop the snow platform, but they have not noticed that these tremors happened because the ground beneath them is floating.

It may be a limited space, but the floating platform is still about twenty by twenty meters. This sight, of so many hares crowded together and shuddering on this platform, beautifully demonstrates the supernatural nature of 'magic'.

Subaru: “Emilia!”

Emilia: “Got it! I'm not letting them get away!”

But if they stop here, then the Hare is just going to jump off the platform.

There is one more thing they have to do to keep it from escaping.

Emilia raises their linked hands up high—and swings them right down.

The floating snowfield rumbles. Surely, the Hare never imagined what would happen.

A roar, and a frigid blast of stabbing wind.

It showers over Subaru and the others as they keep their eyes fixated on the platform, to see the results through.

—By the time the wind stops, the snowfield is vertically shut.

The left and right ends of Emilia's floating platform have folded to meet at the centre.

The ground has been shut in the same manner as a book, sealing the Hare inside the snow without any means of escape.

Subaru hurriedly looks over the closed platform's surroundings. They missed—none. Movement— nowhere.

All of the hares are in one place, trapped in an extraordinarily small area. With this,

Subaru: “The big one's all on you, Beatrice!”

Subaru calls to Beatrice, telling her that the secondary set-up is complete. Hearing this, and having quietly chanted the canto the entire time, Beatrice's eyes open.

Seeing the sight before her, Beatrice laughs quietly.

It's not surprise or anything like that. A smile abounding with trust arises on her face,

Beatrice: “Here is the pinnacle of yin. —Al Shamac.”

The instant she murmurs the canto, shadow drowns out the world.

※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※

—For a moment, it is manhandled by something like vertigo.

But it really does only last for a moment.

The vertigo stops, and a shock impacts its feet. Then the bondage pressing on its body disappears. It starts off by giving a big shake to get the snow off its fur.

It sniffs the air, looks around the area.

Its eyes, its nose, its ears, all get the better of it as they prioritize the hunt for prey. Its red eyes glance about as it searches for sweet-smelling game.

Nothing. There had been prey so delectable that it made its stomach wrench painfully, right in front of it, just a second ago. With tender flesh and sweet blood, prey that might sate this starvation even temporarily had definitely been right there.

Its nose smells nothing. Its eyes see nothing. Its ears hear nothing.

The prey is gone. It looks around. Nowhere in sight.

Hunger instantly overwrites its disappointment. To distract itself from its hunger and urge to chew, it decides to bite into the white mass beside to it.

It gnashes at it, shreds its flesh, slurps at its blood while clawing out its innards. It chews away to its heart's content, swallows it down, and then notices that identical meals are unfolding all around it.

There's less prey now.

It doesn't feel like it's in danger, but in accordance with its survival instincts, it bites off the head of another white mass that frantically consumes all around it. Bites into it, and swallows it down.

And this repeats. And repeats. Spurred on by endless hunger, it goes to the neighbouring prey, and the prey neighbouring that, and the prey neighbouring that, and the prey neighbouring that, and the prey neighbouring—.

Eventually, after devouring everything around, it is the only thing left.

It licks up the blood soaking the ground, leaving not a single scrap of gore or blood-soaked grass left. Once it tidily cleans up the remains of the meal, it truly is alone.

But even with meat in its stomach, starvation far exceeding its body mass assaults it.

It cries out, teeth chattering, near to madness. Unending starvation, insatiable hunger. The maddening lack of release, no matter how much it eats.

Mother must have felt this too.

For an instant, a mysterious thought passes through a mind dominated by hunger.

The indistinct thing had been a simple flash of emotion, nothing so cultivated as to reach language. And it, too, vanishes eternally in the face of maddening hunger.

The creature trembles, trembles violently. It shrieks as it feels its innards churn about, and it unconsciously creates another entity.

This sudden, new white mass tumbles back-first onto the ground, as if it's forgotten how to walk. Every single one of its organs registers this thing prey, and it bites into the tumbling mass without any hesitation.

It swallows it down without allowing it even to shriek. After eating, the hunger still torments it. And following all this agonized struggling, another creature other than itself is born into the world.

And it repeats, and it repeats, the same thing going on and on and on and on.

It's alone now. Nothing else exists in this world. There are buildings, and forests, and earth, and air and wind, but no prey. It's alone.

And it proceeds to eat.

Eventually, even IT is devoured by another stomach, and disappears.

The new lonely one repeats and repeats it all until it is that no longer. The world turns.

—Insatiable hunger is never to be sated.

※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※

The momentary presence of the incredible shadow makes Subaru swallow his breath.

Subaru: “—”

The black orb that Beatrice's canto created swallows the snowfield trapping the Hare that Emilia sealed, then proceeds to shrink smaller and smaller, before eventually shrinking smaller than a marble and silently vanishing.

Even Subaru, who does not know the theory behind this feat, understands what this means.

Al Shamac, the greatest of Shamac spells, is magic that affects space.

The magic swallowed the Hare and the snowfield, then blasted them all into another dimension. Neither regeneration nor multiplication mean anything any more.

Because it's literally another world's issue.

Subaru: “I know I did... ask you to send them into an isolated space like the Forbidden Archive, but...”

Beatrice: “Do I hear malcontent, I suppose?”

Subaru's voice trembles before the incredible feat, while Beatrice pouts beside him. She puts her hands to her hips, quite displeased with Subaru's attitude.

Emilia: “Seriously, wow...”

The whole thing makes Emilia's eyes open wide as well.

Emilia is more learned in magic than Subaru, so her surprise is happening on another vector. Her powers have probably settled in somewhat after half-freezing herself and using such immense magic. Once she figures out how to control it, she'll probably be fine.

Subaru looks around, confirming that there is nothing where the Hare used to be.

Then he glances behind him, and confirms that the tomb is secure too. Peeking out from the tomb is an expressionless mob of Leweses. Looks like the Lewes doubles have all managed to reach safety too.

Roswaal is leaning against the wall beside the tomb's entrance, with Ram in his arms.

Ram's hand is touching Roswaal's cheek, and Subaru can see that Roswaal is crying.

Subaru: “—”

Witnessing that, Subaru feels the weight in his chest disappear.

There are still so many things that they have to talk about. Otto, Garfiel, and the others are still back at the mansion. He does believe they're safe, but they need to meet up and talk. And on this side, too. He has so many things to ask Emilia.

But somehow, it feels like everything is all right.

There are so many things he hasn't verified yet. But seeing Roswaal crying, and Ram smiling softly as she watches him, makes Subaru feel that: hey, everything's all right.

Emilia: “Subaru, come on!”

Subaru takes his breather, until Emilia suddenly pokes his cheek.

Emilia smiles at Subaru when he looks back at her, and then gestures to the area behind him. Where there Beatrice stands with her arms folded, still looking sulky.

Beatrice: “I believe that this ace deserves a few words, in fact.”

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Beatrice puffs out her cheeks. Subaru replies with a nod.

And,

Beatrice: “Ah, eep!”

Subaru slips his hands under her arms and lifts her right up.

He ignores her adorable yelp, embracing her as he spins around on the spot,

Subaru: “You did it! Knew you could, I'm so in love with you, Beako!!”

Beatrice: “Wh—hold it! Sto—let me—let me go, I suppose! Betty isn't...”

Subaru: “Yes yes yes! You are adorable! Beako is wonderful! Beako is supreme! All hail Beako!”

Showing her in praise, Subaru spins round and around with Beatrice in his arms. Beatrice's face flashes beet red as Emilia watches them frolic, her gaze awfully gentle.

The spirit and contractor, spinning and spinning in an energetic expression of delight—

Both: “Ah!”

—lose their footing at the last moment, and happily plunge face-first into the snow together.