"Saya, you hadn't rested even after finishing your previous film, had you? You immediately took on new work... Are you still so concerned about this matter with your mother?"
"Yes..."
After hearing Hana's words, Saya finally let down her guard after a long silence. Her composed smile instantly melted away without a trace, revealing a cold expression that could not conceal her exhaustion.
Ash raised an eyebrow at the instant change in her expression. As expected of a celebrity actress. Compared to the sense of incongruity her earlier smile had given him, this genuine and unattractive side of her seemed somewhat more charming.
"Saya, you've always wanted to surpass your mother's achievements, so you've kept working hard, trying to prove yourself." Hana glanced back at Ash. Seeing that he did not seem displeased, she continued persuading Saya earnestly. "But is it really okay to keep forcing yourself like this just to achieve so much?"
"No!" Saya, who was usually gentle and refined, suddenly exploded, startling Hana. "Whenever people talk about me, they always talk about my mother! That person isn't even here, yet they always have to talk about her!"
As her façade fell away, the darkness born from the exhaustion erupting from the depths of her heart wrapped around Saya entirely. Some energy that felt vaguely familiar to Ash drifted into his body, while the rest rose into the sky.
So this was the Rampage Energy unique to this world? Ash seemed to understand why Cure Yell had fought alone for eight years, yet could never defeat all her enemies.
Because every person in this world was a source of Rampage Energy, it could never run dry.
"They always talk like that right in front of me, but they aren't talking about me—they're talking about her! As if everything I've accomplished until now was something she naturally gave me through her genes! Hana, don't you think that's too cruel to me?"
Having cast aside all her burdens, Saya vented to Hana almost hysterically, pouring out everything in her long-darkened heart.
I'm an independent person in my own right, not a sequel to Yakushiji Reiro! I—I don't want to keep living in her shadow!
"I have my own goals. Hana, someone who cheers others on and is willing to be nothing but their supporting role could never understand!" As she went on, perhaps the exhaustion of her daily labor had taken away her gentleness as well. Her increasingly aggressive words even turned hostile toward Hana, her friend.
"S-Saya?" Hana froze at those words. Perhaps even she had not expected her companion to say something so cruel.
That... was so mean!
"Oh? How did this suddenly become about someone else?"
With a light tug, Ash pulled the aggrieved Hana backward onto the sofa beside him. Narrowing his eyes, he leaned forward and positioned himself directly in front of her as she instinctively tried to rise.
His black pupils instantly sharpened as he unconsciously moved close to Saya's hesitant blue eyes. After maintaining eye contact with those confused, retreating eyes for half a minute, Ash finally drew back and reached a conclusion on the spot.
"This won't do. Not like this."
Ash's sudden words made Saya frown at once. She immediately shifted all her attention to him, waiting to hear what grand opinion he had to offer.
"Let me ask you. Is your goal to become someone everyone praises as amazing, or is it to surpass your mother?"
"Th-Those aren't the same thing?" Saya was momentarily at a loss for words, completely unable to understand what he meant.
"Of course they aren't. The reason you keep emphasizing surpassing her is because, deep down, you think you're inferior to your mother, don't you?"
The instant Ash spoke those words without restraint, the atmosphere froze. Saya's lips trembled and parted, but she could not say anything.
This person said the same thing Time Fire said back then!
Time Fire is a hateful guy, but what about Ash-sensei, whom Hana trusts so much?
Am I... really not good enough?
Side Story Case File 49: Where Will the Haze in My Heart Lead Me?
Seeing Saya tremble, her expression gradually on the verge of breaking down, Ash shook his head. Her reaction was exactly as he had expected. A few casual words from him had already shaken the thoughts in her heart. How could someone like that possibly accomplish anything, no matter what she said?
"You're a smart person, aren't you?" Though he said that, there was not a hint of praise in Ash's tone.
In fact, it was precisely because smart people were smart that they tended to overcomplicate simple matters. Cleverness often led to cleverness defeating itself; making trouble and misery for themselves was the usual path of people like that.
So rather than dealing with smart people like that, Ash still preferred the standard hot-blooded idiot protagonist type. When they could not figure something out, they would never let difficulties bind them; they would immediately let their bodies act first. And that hot-blooded drive to act was exactly the key to breaking this deadlock.
Thinking this, Ash could not help turning to glance at Nono Hana beside him. He believed that if he said such things to her, she definitely would not become so easily lost. Her brain probably did not even have the program for confusion installed—it lacked the hardware requirements.
"?"
Nono Hana tilted her head in inexplicable irritation. Instinctively, she felt as though someone had dissed her somewhere.
"That's why I said you won't do."
"People who think they can't do something are the ones who keep emphasizing the same thing, as though saying it often enough will somehow make them capable of doing it."
"But reality doesn't work that way. If you yourself think you can't do it, then even if you truly do succeed and become the star among stars among stars that you want to be—"
"You'll still be destined to fall short of others. You still won't be good enough."
"After all, you chose this entire path yourself."
The blue-haired woman's raised hand dropped weakly. The shadow cast by her lowered head completely concealed her expression, and Yakushiji Saaya fell entirely silent.
Having talked Saya into shutting down with just a few words, Ash ignored the awkward looks from the side. He leisurely reclined against the sofa behind him, hiding his achievements and fame, then lifted the remaining iced black tea and drained it in one gulp.
As for Nono Hana? Having watched the whole thing while never knowing how to interrupt, she could only pout in dissatisfaction to express her feelings. After all, unlike Cure Yell, who could do anything, the untransformed Nono Hana was merely an ordinary girl who could do nothing.
But why is this guy always so hostile toward my friends?!
"Really... I'm sorry for disturbing you." Picking up the handbag beside her, Saya quickly bowed to the two of them, then fled this little world that made her feel so depressed, her steps unsteady.
"W-Wait—Saya!" Instinctively wanting to stop her friend, Hana could only stretch out a hand behind her with a helpless expression, but she could not catch the figure that had already vanished through the doorway.
"Dr. Ash..."
"Oh? She left on her own. I didn't chase her away, you know?" Ash set the glass on the table without the slightest guilt. When he noticed the name "Nono Hana" written on the glass from the corner of his eye, the faint guilt in his heart made him pretend nothing had happened as he pushed it back. "I merely gave her a little wake-up call. She's the one who couldn't take it, so don't blame me."
Even Hana, who loved smiling so much, could no longer keep one on her face after Ash's shamelessness. Her stiff expression went through a series of comical changes before finally becoming a deadpan stare.
"Why are Dr. Ash's views always so extreme...?"
"Sometimes, blind kindness is useless. Understand?" The man tapped the forehead peeking out from between Hana's curls with a finger full of grand wisdom. "And didn't you see it last time? My method worked quite well, didn't it?"
But what Homare went through last time was too dangerous, wasn't it?!
"Even so... I still don't think methods that hurt people are okay... There must be a way for everyone to embrace the future!"
"Is that so? Then drown while hugging that future of yours." Without mercy, he curled and flicked his index finger, giving Hana a forehead flick. Seeing her clutch her head and cry out in pain as she collapsed onto the sofa, Ash stood up laughing and walked toward another part of the room.
"Heh, what's this?"
"Ah—wait, that's a photo of me when I was little!"
In the photograph inside Ash's frame, Hana was smaller than Ash remembered, dressed in a middle school uniform and squatting on the ground. Her slightly curled pink hair covered half of her sorrowful expression, leaving only tears of endless grievance streaming down.
It was a photograph Hana had once tucked away, never wanting anyone else to see it. She had kept it for so long that she had nearly forgotten it existed, until Ash somehow found it now.
At Ash's questioning look, Hana hesitated for a long time before finally telling him how, in middle school, she had stood up for a classmate who was being bullied, only to be ostracized and subjected to cold violence by every student in her class. She had spent her entire middle school life alone.
That experience had dealt Hana an unimaginable blow at the time and completely changed the course of her life.
But at the same time, that was when she obtained the power of a Pretty Cure. Perhaps the reason she had fought so desperately while alone was also because she wanted to forget that sorrowful loneliness.
At least, when I was protecting everyone, I was not alone.
Yet there was still something Hana did not understand. This was something she had never wanted others to know, so why could she tell Ash about it so easily now...?
"Oh, so it was school bullying." Ash's finger lightly brushed over the heartbreaking tears in the photograph, scraping away a layer of dust from the glass surface—dust that had been forgotten. "Just like me."
"Huh? Ash-sensei was bullied too..." Hearing him casually reveal that, Hana's heart skipped a beat.
"Yeah. Back then, I was a guy who didn't like talking or dealing with other people. I had that lonely genius sort of persona, so some mediocre fools wanted to brag about how strong they were. With their underdeveloped brains, they cornered me in the bathroom, wanting to teach a lesson to the guy who looked so arrogant."
Ash recounted the story in a calm tone, as though it were nothing significant. Just when Hana was becoming afraid to hear what happened next, Ash chuckled twice without the slightest psychological burden.
"And then, I shoved every one of them into the toilet until they begged for mercy. Only then did I let go of the flush button. Ha, Hana, you should have seen the terrified expressions of those people who wanted to bully others when they were bullied instead. It was so interesting."
Hana's heart trembled again. Though the bullying Ash described was far more terrifying than she had imagined, she still knew what the consequences of doing that would be.
"But if you did that, everyone would be afraid of you, Dr. Ash, and you would be all alone..."
Then didn't Ash-sensei and I have the same lonely life back then?
Wouldn't that be too sad?
"I wasn't alone." Looking at Hana's utterly aggrieved crying face in the photo, Ash thought of himself—of the self who had always been alone—and could not help smiling.
"Because isn't there now a 'companion' with the same experience as me, right in front of me?"
"How could I possibly be lonely then?"
The devilish smile on Ash's face was perfectly etched into Hana's heart at that moment.
Side Story Case File 50: I Hope You're Here
"I wasn't alone. Isn't there now a 'companion' with the same experience as me right in front of me? How could I possibly be lonely then?"
They were not words he had deliberately prepared. Ash had truly spoken those meaningful words to Hana straight from his heart, evidently without noticing the flower on Nono Hana's face that had truly begun to "bloom brilliantly."
After speaking and laughing, Ash felt some burden that had long been hidden in the depths of his heart suddenly grow lighter.
Wait, did I accidentally say a lot of seriously embarrassing things because of the mood? Only when that thought surfaced in Ash's mind did he realize what exactly he had said.
At first, he had merely been curious and entertained. But when he saw that tearful photograph of young Nono Hana, combined with what she had said about spending her entire oppressive elementary school childhood being isolated and bullied, a feeling that rarely appeared in Ash—empathy—had been successfully stirred by her pitiful appearance.
The more Ash thought about what had happened to Nono Hana, the more annoyed he became... No, he was extremely annoyed!
This was clearly someone else's problem. Yet he, a self-proclaimed "lone wolf" who never empathized with ordinary people, had become angry for Nono Hana just by hearing her recount what happened.
What did she mean, after standing up for someone being bullied, the person she protected, the bullies, and even the entire class had joined together to ostracize her?
If it had been me, I would have shoved every bastard who dared betray me, every fool who failed to understand the strength behind my actions, and every bystander who merely watched into the toilet! I would not have let go of the flush button until they cried and begged me to surrender! XBZZ, have you never seen what a real villain is like?—Tch, why am I getting worked up again?
It was precisely because of that empathy, something he himself could neither explain nor understand, that Ash unknowingly told her about experiences similar to her own. He even poured out everything about his parents' divorce, as if he had found some outlet for it all.
Wasn't that strange? These were things I had never wanted to casually mention to anyone when I was young!
But with this woman... Our relationship was clearly only because I was repaying a favor, and because she was my patient, right? Though teasing her cute reactions was fun... When did our relationship become this good?
"Ah, this..." Ash, who had been about to explain himself, felt a wave of embarrassment rise from his feet to his head. He was so awkward that he could practically carve out a three-bedroom apartment with his toes. Unexpectedly shy, he did not even dare look at Hana's expression. "Anyway, I said some strange things. Just treat them like a joke and forget about them."
Well, I don't really care... probably.
"No, how could I?" Ash vaguely noticed that Nono Hana's low voice did not seem to carry her usual listless gloom. Instead, it sounded as though something terribly heavy was weighing upon it... What was it?
"A-Ash... Dr. Ash."
"Ah—hm?"
With a force that even caught Ash off guard, Hana took his hand and firmly interlaced her fingers with his, unwilling to let go. Warmth flowed through their touching bodies.
"Thank you! For Ash to say something like that to me, I'm really, really..." She leaned closer, gazing into those black eyes. The thing in her chest seemed to come alive at that moment, beating ever more fiercely as though it were about to leap from her heart.
"I'm so happy."
If, if back then... if someone like Ash had been beside me, helping me...
In a daze, she seemed to return to that elementary school classroom. When her aggrieved younger self had been crying loudly beneath everyone's cold stares, a little boy with a black silhouette behind him rushed forward, waving his fists.
"What did you all do?! Apologize to her!" The boy stood before the girl she had been, waving his fists and shouting at everyone.
If there had been someone like Ash back then... perhaps the part of me that became a Pretty Cure would not have developed a flaw.
"I..." Gazing into those eyes that contained something profound, the hand Ash had held stiffly behind Hana's back finally clenched tightly, pulling the pink-haired beauty before him into an embrace.
"If anyone bullies you again, tell me. I'll beat them up for you!"
At least, I could make that promise without even using Time Fire's power.
Maybe you really are special to me.
As Ash moved, Hana's curled pink bangs, which had covered her right eye, were tossed aside. Those cherry-pink eyes that had inadvertently captivated Ash were now captured by the love overflowing from her chest.
Hana had blushed and felt her heart race many times due to Ash's unconcerned antics and pranks, but never like today. The color gradually spreading across her face was not embarrassed anger, but the radiant light of spring.
"Mm!" The glimmering tears at the corners of her eyes were the color of all the grievances and bitterness she had stored in her heart until today, finally able to escape.
"Ash, we're not alone."
Hana wore the same smile as Ash.
"If you don't hold on tight, someone else will steal him away, you know."
Kotori's words seemed to echo in her ears even now, making her clench her fist as well.
Dr. Ash...
You say we're companions... Maybe we are. I have a strange feeling that, compared to you, who have always hidden something, even someone like me, walking forward with two identities now, may not be able to match your sorrow.
Before you continue