Snow White's Return Chronicle
The flower vase on the bedside table caught her eye first. A faint medicinal scent lingered in the air, sunlight slipped through the narrow gap in the window, and a dull ache brushed across her chest—still present, even though her heart had been pierced.
On the table beside the bed lay a neatly folded note.
『When everything ends, could you read a book to the patient in room 517 instead of me?』
She already knew who had sent it, without needing to check. The handwriting was unmistakably Snow White’s.
“……What is this?”
At that moment the hospital door opened. The attending physician stepped in and, seeing Kano Sazanami sitting up in bed, his eyes widened.
“……You’re awake?”
“……Yes.”
The doctor hesitated for a second. His expression looked as if he couldn’t believe the sight before him was real.
He slowly lowered his gaze to the chart and murmured in a trembling voice, “To be honest, the patient surviving is a miracle.”
“……”
“No, even calling it a miracle isn’t enough.”
The doctor unconsciously ran a hand through his hair while correcting the chart.
“The patient’s heart had been completely ruptured. Normally such an injury would have proven fatal before reaching the hospital. In fact, death might have been instantaneous.”
Kano quietly looked down at her chest. Near the left side, a strange, knotted scar stood out clearly. The doctor swallowed dryly and continued, “The strangest part… is the sign of emergency care.”
“Emergency care?”
“Someone temporarily sutured the patient’s heart.”
A cold silence settled inside the room.
“It was an impossible method. Look at the CT scan. Do you see any suture marks? The problem is that this has nothing to do with modern medicine.”
“……”
“The blood vessels and nerves were forcibly, crudely yet meticulously intertwined. It was physiologically impossible—something that couldn’t have happened in a normal surgery.”
The doctor pointed at the photo, unable to believe what he was seeing. “Yet the patient is alive. Her organ function is even normal. Who… could have performed such an operation?”
Kano had no answer. The last thing she remembered was shoving Top Speed aside and the sensation of Swim Swim’s blade driving straight into her heart.
“……This is the first time I’ve seen anything like this during my medical career.”
“It’s almost as if someone forcibly held a person’s life in place.”
The doctor stared in shock when Kano stood up and began to walk. A patient with that level of injury should have been bedridden for days.
Room 517. A single-patient room shrouded in privacy.
Multiple machines beeped steadily, keeping the patient’s life on life support.
On the plaque beside the door, a familiar name was written.
[Gaku Shinomiya]
A mage from the Magical Kingdom and a man who had once cooperated with her to keep magical girls out of the deadly selection test. Kano remembered him from middle school as the high-school boy who had helped her after a fight.
“……”
On the bed he looked pitiful. One eye was bandaged tightly; the other stared blankly into empty space. At the sound of Kano approaching, his lips moved with obvious effort.
“……◇₩&@@&?(Who…?)”
The sound was strange—jumbled syllables that weren’t quite words. Brain damage had robbed him of the ability to speak.
Kano understood instinctively how he had come to this. The grotesque scar on her chest explained it all.
“It was pointless of you to interfere…! If you had that kind of power, you should have used it to heal yourself first!”
Kano poured out her frustration toward him in a quiet voice.
She couldn’t read his mind like Snow White, and she could no longer transform into Ripple. But the self-loathing rising in her chest refused to stop.
“What kind of idiot am I…?! Why did I have to drag someone like you into this because of me…?!”
Gaku’s face remained dazed, yet he shook his head slowly.
Kano suppressed the surge of emotion. Everyone around her seemed to meet misfortune. She had become Calamity Mary’s target because she was unlucky, and everyone nearby had died because she was unlucky.
Just as she was about to blame herself again.
(Snow White thought the same thing. You two are really alike.)
A voice came from somewhere.
Kano startled and looked around, but there was no one else in the room. A faint light was leaking from the pocket of Ripple’s jacket. She carefully pulled out the object—it was the Lucky Rabbit’s Foot, the magic item Snow White had received from Hardcore Alice.
This item, which supposedly summoned luck in times of danger, had somehow become the medium that let her hear Gaku’s thoughts.
(Ripple… The “separated soul” Snow White mentioned was you after all. I thought I’d heard that voice somewhere before, but it was actually Sazanami-san.)
“……Sorry, I was keeping my mouth shut. But when did you become a mage?”
(I’ve been one since I came to this world.)
“This world?”
(I’m not from here. Maybe an immigrant would be a better way to put it. I’m not even part of the Magical Kingdom. In other words, I’m an “isekai person.”)
“……May I ask? Why did you come to this world?”
(That’s a bit hard to explain. I’ll just say my world has become a place where no one can live anymore.)
“I see….”
Kano answered rather calmly. Hearing his voice was already like a miracle.
(Surprisingly accepting, huh? With the Sazanami-san I know, you should have been yelling that it was nonsense.)
“……What kind of character do you think I am?”
(You know, the tsundere type who came to visit but was forced to give homemade cookies she burned to a crisp because she wanted to give them to you.)
“You… have been thinking of me like that until now?!”
(No way!)
“Shut up! I’ve never baked cookies in my life!”
(……Where did your signature tongue-clicking habit go? Without that, you wouldn’t be Sazanami-san.)
“……There’s a friend who promised she’d become a magical girl who doesn’t click her tongue.”
(That friend must be Top Speed, right?)
“……Yeah. How did you know?”
(You have no friends, after all!)
“What? This is really…!”
Kano clenched her fist and squeezed Gaku’s good arm.
(Aah! It hurts! Let go! I’m a patient, so please stop!)
She loosened her grip slightly.
(I thought you were about to die. Your strength is ridiculous. Ah, I guess you can hear everything. Since you’re using the same magic as Snow White…)
“I was trying to control my strength too. More importantly, I have a question. Is Top Speed safe?”
Gaku was silent for a moment before answering.
(I made her run away, but I don’t know her current situation either. You should believe in Snow White.)
“……I really hope she’s safe this time.”
(She will be. Definitely, definitely.)
Gaku’s confident tone echoed inside her head. But Kano’s eyes soon drifted downward.
“I… I can’t transform into a magical girl anymore.”
(That’s natural after you twisted Fav’s contract to break it. Of course you can’t transform.)
“In the end I couldn’t help anyone. I knew what was going to happen, yet I almost let Top Speed… die.”
Kano’s voice trembled.
(You blame yourself, and I blame myself too… Haa, I don’t know the full details of the tragedy you two are going to face in the future. But right now Snow White is desperately fighting to change the ending of that tragedy. And you saved Top Speed by pushing her aside. Isn’t that enough? You two are like the two main characters of the same story.)
“I… I’m not some kind of hero. I made you like this.”
(It’s all because I was careless. It’s not your fault at all. If I hadn’t been so careless, I would have easily defeated a girl like Swim Swim.)
Kano offered a small smile in return.
“They say the ugliest thing in the world is giving excuses after losing.”
(That’s true! Even the mages of the Magical Kingdom can’t imitate even half the magic I use.)
“Right, right. I wonder where that groundless confidence comes from.”
Kano muttered to herself while sitting on the chair and opening the book Gaku had pointed to. The book he had asked her to read was, of all things, the light novel Magical Daisy.
In the quiet hospital room, Kano’s clear voice began to recite the novel’s sentences.
How much time had passed? The book was closed, and Kano, who had been reading to him, fell asleep with her head bowed beside Gaku.
(A light novel about magical girls… I guess it doesn’t matter what happens.)
Gaku looked at the sleeping Kano who had saved him and silently swallowed a laugh.
Even with a crippled body and an opaque future,
the sunset streaming in through the window was warm.