Separated by a thin wooden door, Ash and Nono Hana sat back-to-back.
With a cigarette between his lips, Ash lit it and took a deep drag, only to nearly cough his lungs out. No matter how many worlds he had passed through, he still could not understand how veteran smokers could use cigarettes to ease the frustration in their hearts.
Listening to his coughing with concern, Hana felt something slide against the hand she had placed by the crack beneath the door.
"Cough, cough, cough—want some? Chocolate. It's delicious, my treat."
Pressing his ear to the door and listening closely, Ash heard silence from the other side for a while before the increasingly rapid chewing of a little hamster finally began. He shook his head and tossed the half-smoked cigarette into a distant trash can.
"What, do you still hate me? Haha, you stabbed me, and I stabbed you. I thought that meant we were even?"
"..."
"Fine, fine, I apologize." Ash raised both hands in surrender. "It's obviously not the time for bad jokes. I won't make any."
"Pfft."
She had laughed. That was a good sign.
Ash's problem now was how to make her open the door herself. This door was like Hana's heart. As long as she opened it, even just a little, he had a way to pry it completely open.
But what mattered most was that she herself could open her heart, even if only a little.
"Dr. Ash..."
"Do you hate Nono Hana?"
Not Cure Yell, but Nono Hana?
Was she starting with a question this heavy?
"I don't."
"Then do you like me?"
Ash opened his mouth, then slowly closed it again.
Extra Case File 67: The Only Thing He Could Not Say Was Love.
"Then do you like me?"
Nono Hana asked again.
"..."
Ash could not give her an answer.
Ash could not answer that question.
I'm slow when it comes to feelings like this. It's because I'm not interested in thinking about them, but I'm not an idiot either.
What he had been unwilling to admit, and now had to admit, was that he had truly fallen for "Nono Hana," whom he had believed was merely an ordinary girl.
If you liked someone, loved someone, and she chose to entrust you with an equal share of her love and life, then that meant you had to shoulder an equal weight of "responsibility."
That was why he could recklessly make perverted-sounding "confessions" to Cure Yell.
But no matter what, he could not casually make a promise to Nono Hana.
That was precisely why he had rejected her confession back then.
Because...
System, can I stay in this world?
A virtual projection panel appeared before Ash. Its square, soulless font lacked even the most basic trace of human warmth.
[You know what you are doing.]
System, can I remain in this world until Nono Hana grows old and dies, then start over again?
[Do you know what you are doing?]
"I do."
I can feel it.
She is seeking peace.
She is longing for happiness.
But I cannot grant her wish.
If what she seeks lies on the far shore...
In the end, Ash did not give her his answer.
After the back-to-back silence continued for a long time, Ash finally heard Hana's voice again, dark and dispirited.
"Ash, I can't transform anymore..."
"That doesn't matter anymore."
"You should go..." As she spoke, her voice gradually thickened with the nasal sound of hard sobbing. "The Cure Yell you're looking for isn't anywhere anymore..."
"The person I'm looking for is you, the one talking to me." Ash let out a long sigh.
Idiot.
Honestly, even Ash himself found it hard to believe that he could speak in such a gentle, low voice.
Comforting people was something he was far too—bad at.
"Nono Hana can't meet your expectations... and she isn't qualified to bear your feelings..."
"Idiot!" Hearing how stubborn she still was, Ash finally snapped and cursed heavily. "What does it have to do with qualifications?! If that's the case, then who was the silly girl who always came running to me? Who was the eldest daughter of the couple who owned this house? Who was the sister who made Nono Kotori cry and worry?!"
"That, that was..."
"Hana, that's what you think, isn't it!" As Ash grew agitated, the gentleness faded from his voice, but something even rarer than gentleness emerged—his sincerity. "You think that losing control disgraced the existence of Pretty Cure, that you almost killed your friends and nearly caused an irreversible disaster, and that in the end, you did something wrong—you fell in love with someone you shouldn't have!"
"I know you couldn't hold on anymore! All the pain you've accumulated over the years erupted at once, and you couldn't keep going! But let me tell you, who has never made mistakes? I've seen so many heroes—there are no heroes who never make mistakes or never fail! I dare say that in the same situation, they might not have done as well as you did!"
Though she was hearing words meant to encourage her, Hana instead trembled even harder and buried herself deeper into her knees.
Ash... thank you. Thank you for being so much stronger than me and still coming to comfort me—but, but!
I've already reached my limit. No matter what, I can't be as strong as you are right now.
"Do you want my answer? Then I'll tell you, I don't care! And you don't need to care what others say either. Just be yourself—"
"But I care—"
From behind the door against which they leaned, Nono Hana's voice, thick with tears and almost a scream, interrupted Ash. Then her broken, crying words reached Ash's increasingly stunned ears.
"I care about Pretty Cure. I care about Saya. I care about everyone—I didn't love the wrong person either!"
"Hana...?"
"It's just that, it's just that I don't have the right anymore! I can never love anyone again!"
"Goodbye, Ash."
"Hana!"
Hearing a rustling sound from behind the door, Ash immediately sensed that something was wrong and stood up again.
Fine, if I can't break down the door, then I'll break down the wall!
"Please, don't come looking for me again."
The conversation upstairs came to an abrupt halt. After a thunderous explosion, Nono Kotori and Hana's parents heard a window shatter and something fall onto the lawn outside. Then came the final shout.
"Move!"
Ash, who had just been upstairs talking with Hana, was now charging down the stairs at incredible speed. His barely healed body made alarming noises under the intense exertion, but he could no longer care about that.
After he tore away like a single rider leaving dust behind, all the Nono family could do was stare at the distinctly greenskin-style electric wheelchair Ash had left behind.
"What happened?"
Ignoring the Nono family as they worried over Ash's address while staring at the wheelchair, Ash focused entirely on chasing Nono Hana, who was sprinting ahead of him.
She said she couldn't transform anymore, but this—
"Stop, Hana! Don't go!"
Whether the wind pressure at his side could carry his words to her or not, Ash simply shouted as loudly as he could in an attempt to stop the woman running ahead with her head down.
Ash's words from behind did nothing to slow Nono Hana's steps. On the contrary, she squeezed every last bit of Tomorrow Energy and nearly exhausted strength from her body.
The chains were on the verge of breaking, and the prison was crumbling. The materials that should have been used to repair it had been diverted elsewhere, making the situation worse.
It was laughing.
Nono Hana continued to sprint ahead. Not even her blood-filled lungs and screaming legs could make her slow down, while Ash, chasing after her, could already feel his ankle bone beginning to shatter.
This blood-spitting marathon, born from careless words and a dead heart, continued. It was forcibly dragged on in a way that ravaged their bodies. Any Olympic referee with a conscience would have furiously stopped such madness, cursing them out while sending both of them to the hospital. But there were no such heroes here—only passersby dazed by the wind pressure, two confused runners, and an urban legend on the verge of being born.
No one knew how long they ran. Only when high-rise buildings could no longer be seen in either of their eyes did this desperate chase finally come to an end.
Nono Hana could not run anymore. Her faint Tomorrow Energy had long since been drained dry, and her heart, filled with gloom, could no longer produce new Tomorrow Energy. Her lungs, burning as though scorched by fire, refused to keep supporting her body.
Blood came out in a fragile cough from Nono Hana's slightly open mouth, while there was nothing at all in her unfocused eyes.
There was no possibility left. No possibility of continuing to run. If she did not receive treatment immediately, even this body, repeatedly ravaged, would lose the possibility of continuing to live, but—
What had supported her until now had quietly become something other than Tomorrow Energy.
Nono Hana's body jolted, then slowly fell as if in slow motion.
Extra Case File 68: The Absolutely Despairing Girl.
The bandages beneath Ash's clothes had been stained ever redder with blood by his violent movements, but he had no spare thoughts to care about that now.
She stopped!
In the worst possible way!
"Hana!!" Ash arrived too late and watched the woman about to collapse. His old medical knowledge told him that if she did not receive comprehensive, multilayered treatment immediately, this might become the last time Nono Hana ever fell.
Without thinking, he rushed toward her.
He believed he could create another miracle.
But compared to the body, the scarred heart and mind were the parts that needed "healing" even more... no.
Perhaps they were already beyond saving.
Just as Ash was about to rush over and catch her, Hana lost her strength, dropped to her knees, leaned backward, and finally fell. Yet that movement seemed as though someone had pressed pause—it forcibly stopped in that very instant!
Her waist was twisted backward and suspended at a ninety-degree angle. Her hands hung weakly toward the ground, limp as though her bones had been removed. Like a puppet whose frame had been taken away but which was still suspended by invisible strings, Hana maintained that eerie posture and, little by little, looked toward Ash with a smile uglier than crying, a smile from which even the last trace of warmth had vanished.
Now.
Even Ash, who feared smiling faces, who mocked killing intent and darkness as he pleased.
Found within his heart a feeling he had long forgotten. It was... pain.
Facing such an uncanny scene, Ash felt not the slightest fear. There was only sorrow for Hana, stirred within him.
Why, when I'm not even afraid of death, are tears falling? Why?
As if someone had pressed replay, she rose again like a marionette. Her arms spread and lifted to either side, as though imitating Nono Hana crucified upon a cross. Within Ash's heart echoed a heartbeat so real that he could almost hear it himself.
I will save her.
At this moment, his cynical mood, his impulsive desires, and the emptiness he could never fill were all cast aside by Ash.
There was only one voice, one thought in his heart.
I will save her.
If he knew what he had to do, that was enough.
Ash took a deep breath. When he opened his narrowing black eyes again, something seemed to burn completely away within those flame-like eyes. As though he had become a different person, Ash stood before her.
She was smiling, but Ash could hear it with perfect clarity—her crying.
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