Unwittingly stumbling back at the shock, Subaru's eyes open wide as he sees the blonde girl glaring at him.
Her azure eyes brimming with incredible fury, a witch with crimson colouring her beautiful face—it's Minerva.
Bringing her sharp gaze off the paralysed Subaru, Minerva redirects to look at Echidna, standing opposite Subaru and entirely composed.
Minerva: "Repeating myself, but I'm putting a stop to this. I'm not acknowledging this contract."
Echidna: "...Hrm. This'd best be called a development outside what I anticipated."
Too intimate for enmity, too bloodthirsty for anger. That emotional gaze concentrates wholeheartedly onto Echidna as Minerva crosses her arms inside the crater she made, hoisting up her abundant chest, biting her
lip.
Echidna: "A witch's contract—you should be capable of understanding what significance these hold. That you've regardless interrupted us means... not possibly, you also want to tie a contract with him? Then here I
suppose we'd be having a case of jealousy."
Minerva: "Can't you at least tell that my anger is not for such a peaceful reason? I'm furious. I'm incensed. I'm vehement with boiling rage."
The redness to Minerva's face intensifies as she replies to Echidna. Her peaking emotions turn into a teardrop at the corner of her eye, giving an innocent, childlike kind of obstinacy to her features.
Her young face is terribly mismatched to her voluptuous body—and her very presence is something Subaru inevitably must accept, although with a great jumble of surprise.
Subaru: "Why're you here?"
Minerva: "What. Are you saying I'm not allowed to be?"
Subaru: "Well no. I'm not, but... I mean, Echidna's right there."
Says Subaru as he points at Echidna, Minerva puffing out her cheeks in displeasure. She tilts her head as if not understanding the problem here at all, but Echidna seems to catch on, giving a light clap of her hands as she nods.
Echidna: "Ah, I see what you're having a problem with. —You must be mystified as to how another witch has manifested, even though I'm present and standing right here."
Subaru: "Th-that's it. I mean, every time I've met a witch up to now it's been one-on-one... like it was guaranteed they were appearing swapping out in your place. Didn't you..."
Minerva: "She never said we can't be out together, I bet. That kind of mean pointless trick is just how this nasty witch does things."
Minerva angrily squares her shoulders as she easily destroys Subaru's objections. Subaru mutters a 'no way' to himself as he looks at Echidna. But Echidna gives no particular signs of refuting it.
Echidna: "I'd like you to not misunderstand, though. That I didn't call any other witches here is because it's a big responsibility and a big risk for me. Depending on the circumstances, it's possible another witch will steal predominance over this place, and even if they don't it takes some considerable effort to recreate powerful beings such as them."
Subaru: "And so then... but, no, you..."
Echidna: "I have never told a single lie. That alone, I will assert."
Echidna's sharp statement slices through Subaru's stuttering words.
She's right. Looking back through his memories, Echidna has never made any statement about this present phenomenon which could be deemable as a lie.
Subaru had just assumed that had been it. So speaking in extremes, Echidna technically had not deceived Subaru at all, but.
Echidna: "I didn't really want you to know that the other witches could manifest all over the place, and have them take you from me."
Subaru: "Wh, aeh?"
Echidna: "You are truly the first guest in a long time for me. I haven't had conversations that thrilled me as much as ours so commonly whether before or after my death. Are you going to curse me, say that my desire to hog you is miserable?"
Subaru: "—"
Echidna: "I know I'm repeating this again and again, but I think of you fondly. And so I wanted to avoid it that, by the others having more allure, or by being a more cooperati⁹ve witch, your interest would shift away from me and toward them. —I don't mind if you laugh."
It's a horrific, hideous desire to monopolize—is how Echidna is explaining the details behind her secrecy.
Listening to Echinda's somewhat-excuse, with her fixation aimed right at him, he wonders: what about me that warrants this fixation?
The WITCH OF ENVY is the same case. Why was Echidna, too, with Subaru so—
Minerva: "You are just getting wheedled in so easily."
Subaru: "—Dhah!?"
A soft fist bumps the back of Subaru's head just as he goes to consider it.
He puts his hand to his head and turns around, to find Minerva behind him. She takes the hand he's pressing down on his head with, and with a flowing motion twists his arm to wrest him down to the ground.
Subaru: "A, auh! Wai, this hurts this hurts this hurts... or not?"
Minerva: "When I directly touch something living, no matter what action I take it turns into something restorative. I could punch with all my strength and it'll close wounds, I could wrestle someone while trying to wrench their limbs off and it'll cure their chronic diseases, and if I keep someone held in a lock their shoulder aches will disappear!"
Subaru: "A-and so that's why the aching over my body's... not."
While his body savours the incredible merit of the Witch of Wrath, Subaru frantically twists his neck to look at Minerva as she locks him in a hold.
Regardless of the fact that she's twisted him around in a way which should invite pain and jarring to his bones, he feels no ache but in fact a pleasant warmth spreading through his body, and consequently an incredible awriness. A mysterious authority which turns all acts preformed on a human body into something positive, and the witch exercising it. Certainly Subaru's had no negative impression of Minerva up to now,
but...
Subaru: "What the hell're you trying to do here..."
Minerva: "I don't do this, and it looks like you're gonna get happily cajoled into contracting with Echidna. Your quick decisions and airhead attitude're really making me mad!"
Echidna: "Cajole, makes it sound bad. I'm sure I did explain the benefits of what a contract with me would be, and devise to put us on even grounds of mutual understanding..."
Minerva: "It's that attitude where you act like you totally followed through with your responsibility to explain here that's getting me. You did explain all about the benefits. You did... but, when it comes to the
inconvenient stuff the contract'd cause, you didn't say a thing!"
Leaving herself to her rage, Minerva swings her leg down. Where her heel lands is Subaru's behind, and he gets to experience the incomprehensible phenomenon of feeling a heel driving into his rear, as the force
transmitted through his bottom bores an indentation into the ground.
Feeling some sense that the strike to his ass has improved his bowel functioning, Subaru realises the significance of what Minerva is saying, and is stunned.
—His conversation with Echidna had not touched on the detriments of the contract at all. And now he understands the carelessness of his own self who had not even noticed the fact.
Subaru: "No, but... saying detriments... something, that kind of serious..."
Minerva: "Wouldn't come up, is what you think? You're sure taking contracts lightly. Even though the contractor is a witch—and the one who of the seven sin witches tied the most contracts, had contact with the
most people, who meddled the most in history, the WITCH OF GREED."
Echidna: "All those laurels are laurels of my life... though it's true that not every one of them was what you'd call honourable. It's true that forming a contract with me did not necessarily save absolutely all of them."
Minerva comes through with that fact Subaru was ignorant to. Echidna follows on from her, entirely stressing her absence of ill intentions toward Subaru.
Stuck between these two as they assert their stances, the turmoil in Subaru's head peaks.
He didn't know which one to trust.
Ever since Subaru got involved with the Trial in this tomb, his multiple meetings and times spent deliberating over his worries together with Echidna have led him to consider her a kind of comrade in arms.
And so when Echidna proposed to tie an organized collaboration in the form of this contract, Subaru had even felt a sense of security.
On the other hand, his time spent interacting and speaking with Minerva, compared to Echidna, is sparse. But whenever Subaru was in danger she would swoop in with her mighty arms to heal him, and without even
demanding a 'thank you' zoom past like a typhoon, a merciful character.
Minerva had no reason to be deceiving Subaru, and if the matter was actually great enough that she would purposefully manifest to interject, there is probably more time to be spent mulling the whole thing over.
Or no, actually, rather than deliberating like this, what he should do was ask this question:
Subaru: "Echidna. If we form the contract, you'll need compensation."
Echidna: "...Yup, you're right. Contracts do need those. Like how I am offering my knowledge in response to your demand, you need to present compensation in response to my demand."
Subaru: "Course. Yeah. —So, what're you demanding from me? If I contract you, what is it I need to offer you?"
For getting Echidna's help when stuck in a hopeless situation, what was it he needed to pay?
Echidna's cheeks loosen into a smile.
Echidna: "It's nothing worth being wary over. What I'm demanding from you isn't anything so complex. Actually, for how I'm not trying to take anything precious physical or non-physical as compensation, you could even call this evenhanded."
Subaru: "—Say, your, demand."
Echidna: "It's very simple. —What you feel, what you create, what you know, what you do, what you think, what you retrospect, what fruits called UNKNOWNS your presence incurs, I want to savour always."
Says Echidna, her cheeks red and expression that of a young maiden with a crush.
Fruits called UNKNOWNS—Subaru furrows his brows at the poetic phrasing.
Subaru: "Hell's that. You mean, pull out my emotions and memories and recollections, and hand them over? If so then..."
Echidna: "Didn't I say? It's nothing so risky. I just want to witness the sights you see, the melodies you hear, the story you weave, all from a special box seat. All I want is to perceive this. I want to be in a position to
know the UNKNOWNS you create. By that and just merely that alone, I can be fulfilled."
To dispel Subaru's concerns, Echidna plainly defines her demand.She just wants to watch Subaru walk his path. See the same thing he sees. To know what he feels, what he
knows, the results of his actions.Thirst for knowledge incarnate, the Witch titled GREED, wanted merely that.
Subaru: "You're, not lying right?"
Echidna: "Lying about contracts'd be absurd. While also for the sake of being myself, I pledge that I will never do anything to betray those words. I'd stake my life on it."
Concludes Echidna with her hand to her chest, the joke being 'Though, I'm already dead.'
Subaru senses no lies from her words or behaviour. Or perhaps he just wanted to believe that.
Subaru: "Minerva. This's what Echidna's telling me. And so what I'm doing is..."
???: "I-it's, all... true, but th... that doesn't, mean sh-she's... she's told you, everything."
Subaru attempts to demand Minerva release him from the hold, when somebody new on the scene addresses him. This voice was one he had heard just a few quarter-hours ago—and spoken in a diction Subaru felt
absolutely nothing positive for.
Subaru: "Camilla... the WITCH OF LUST!"
Camilla: "Do... d-don't, look at me with... with those scary, eyes. I, I'm not... not even, doing any... thing... you're, a-awful..."
Subaru: "The nasty eyes're inborn. I'm not making any specially harsh expression or anything."
Subaru held grappled to the ground, with Echidna standing opposite him. Minerva behind him means the three form a straight line, with a pink-haired girl sitting in the meadow a short distance away—Camilla.
She timidly hides her face away from Subaru's gaze, sporadically glancing over. The attitude's annoying as always, but by consciously averting his attention from her, Subaru manages to avoid CAPTIVATION TO THE POINT IT'S LIFE THREATENING.
Subaru: "But anyway, what were you talking bout? I'm not gonna complain this late about witches showing up, but if something's..."
Camilla: "E-Echidna-chan is... hiding, lots and lots... of, things. S-she isn't, lying but... she's hiding, lots... of things..."
Subaru: "Hiding things?"
Thinking over Camilla's words, Subaru imploringly looks to Echidna. Echidna closes an eye as she looks over at the suddenly-present Camilla.
Echidna: "Suddenly show up, and here you immediately come with the aspersions. Or more actually, how is it that he's stirred up your attentions? You're not like Minerva, you shouldn't have any reason to back him.
You're supposed to have disliked him."
Camilla: "A, r-rea... reason, like... Minerva-chan? No I, do... don't have any... proper, one. But, Echidna-chan, you... you, tricked... me, didn't you?"
Camilla looks down as she responds to Echidna's accurate statements, speaking in frail and stuttering voice.
However, contrary to her diction, the actual words she is saying carry no weakness or compromise at all.
Camilla putters her fidgety gaze around, setting her glance multiple times on Echidna.
Camilla: "I-I, don't... like him, but, I... I'm not on your... side when you, tricked.... m-me Echidna-chan, ei... either. People who, t-trick me, hate... me, d-do mean, things to me... I WILL NEVER FORGIVE."
—That last statement alone is spoken with incredible clarity.
So much that Subaru needs some time before he can recognize that it came from the mouth of this girl beside him. That was the extent that that single phrase diverted from Camilla's atmosphere up until now.
Camilla: "—"
Wordlessly, but assuredly without ever looking away, Camilla stares at Echidna.
In her eyes there churns a near indescribable whirlpool of emotions—something dark and grudgelike, entirely unforgiving of any bastard who would aim at her something resembling hostility.
Apex of narcissism—are the words that skim through Subaru's brain.
Echidna: "While it may've been a necessary measure, it seems acting in a way contrary to Camilla's desires was a mistake. Make an enemy of you, and there's no bigger nuisance out there."