LIGHTNOVELSTORY chapter 55
55. An Unwelcome Proposal 1
Her leaps from tree to tree are like something out of a ninja drama. I was worried about Momo slipping on the wet ground as the light rain fell. I was grateful to Momo for getting us to this place so much faster than expected.
All of those thoughts were blown away in an instant by the sight that met my eyes.
“…Oh, Onii-chan.”
Using the location-tracking app on my phone, I had made my way to a remote mountain area that straddled the prefectural border. Far from civilization, at the top of a mountain, there was a single factory in this desolate land.
The heavy rain that had been plaguing us for days had lightened up enough that a carefree person wouldn’t even bother with an umbrella, and Momo was calmly fixing her soaking wet hair.
Even though it was still daylight, the overcast sky and the dense trees made the place feel eerily dark, and a lone girl in a yellow hero suit stood there.
“You came! I’m so glad!”
Her brown hair was weighed down by the rain, losing its usual bounce, and her exposed knees and arms were dirty. Even so, Himawari ran towards me with a bright, innocent smile, like a puppy waiting for its owner to come home.
Her cheerful, carefree demeanor me.
“Himawari… why are you here? What happened?”
Her appearance vividly brought back the unpleasant images I had seen in my premonition. The faint reddish-black stains on the dazzling yellow and the traces of blood on her cheeks, which were not befitting a young girl. Despite the miserable state she was in, Philance Yellow’s eyes behind her mask always shone with innocence.
Could it be that I was too late? The clash between heroes. The most avoidable thing had happened, as suggested by the bloodstained yellow hero suit. It was impossible for a hero as great as Sunflower to be so bloodied in a routine disaster case. The only beings that could easily injure a hero are not ordinary people or humans, but other heroes.
“Hey. What happened?”
I couldn’t help but grab Sunflower’s shoulders, who looked up at me with a slightly puzzled expression. Sunflower’s small body trembled, and I was taken aback by how small and thin her body felt in the palm of my hand.
“Why are you so injured…”
I moved my right hand from her shoulder to her cheek and touched the blood that was thickly smeared on it. Then, it cleanly transferred to my fingertips. Sunflower’s exposed left cheek had beautiful skin.
She was injured but healed? No, that’s not right.
“It’s okay, I’m not injured at all.”
“Is this blood spatter?”
“Umm, if you say it’s blood spatter, it sounds like I attacked her. I just helped that person with his ability.”
That person. Ability. Blood spatter. It didn’t take long to imagine the worst-case scenario.
“Where is Nightingale!!!”
I didn’t have time to be relieved that Sunflower was safe, nor the Yuyu to be considered of the child, and I expressed.
“Whoa!?”
I don’t know the ranking of heroes’ strength. However, it wasn’t hard to understand what was happening by the fact that the unscathed Sunflower was covered in blood spatter. I don’t know if it was a matter of compatibility or fighting spirit, but Sunflower was too strong.
Sunflower shrank even further when I inspired, and pointed to a large tree diagonally behind her.
“O-over there…”
“Hmm.”
I let go of Sunflower as if throwing her away and ran in the direction she indicated. At that moment, of course, I had no room to notice how desperate Sunflower’s expression was.
“Nightingale! Nightingale!?”
I went around the back of a particularly sturdy tree and found Philance Green collapsed, leaning against the trunk. A large tank-like thing was detached from her back, and her hero mask was half-off her neck. Then, the suit on her left arm and both thighs was torn in unnatural places, and blood was oozing from them. The blood was slowly staining the ground at Nightingale’s feet, washed away by the rain.
“What the hell is this. What’s going on?”
I touched Nightingale’s body without knowing what to do. My fingertips were cold from the rain, so I couldn’t feel her faint breathing. Yes, I just couldn’t tell because of the rain.
“Nightingale, Nightingale, wake up… What should I do, first aid? No, before that, an ambulance… No, if I ask Peach, she could take me to the hospital…”
“I’m sorry, but that’s impossible, senpai.”
Momo was standing behind me, who had become useless in my panic. Momo, who was standing with her arms crossed and looking composed, whispered slightly as I showed her a pale and unreliable expression.
“We can’t take Nightingale to the hospital like this.”
“Impossible, why? This isn’t blood spatter, she’s badly injured. We have to take her to the doctor quickly…”
In the middle of these mountains, and there had just been a landslide, there was no guarantee that there would be a road for an ambulance to pass through. Nightingale was badly injured, even to the extent that I, with no medical knowledge, could tell that every second counted. If it were Momo’s speed, it might still be in time.
“A human being this weak can’t withstand Momo’s speed. Weakened… is too vague a word. It’s too risky to carry a dying person on your back.”
Dying. Momo stated it clearly and observed Nightingale’s condition much more calmly than I did, and without hesitation, she removed her mask.
Nightingale’s lips, which were tightly shut, were tinged with a lifeless blue-purple, and for a moment, I imagined a corpse in a drama.
“Nightingale’s ability is to manipulate blood. Is this anemia from overusing her ability…? No, judging from Sunflower-chan’s appearance, something more tragic may have happened.”
“Don’t tell me, are you saying Sunflower did it?”
Even though Momo came over here, Philance Yellow, who was still standing in the same place where she was at first, could be seen on the other side of the giant tree. I couldn’t see her expression from here, but the way she was looking slightly up at the rain looked as if she were trying to wash away the blood spatter with the rain.
“You noticed it too, senpai, that’s why you confronted her like that. Apparently, Nightingale had her blood drained until she was on the verge of death. Thanks to that, it seems that the mission was cleared.”
Momo muttered as she looked at a palm-sized device that was rolling around next to Nightingale.
“I said she was on the verge of death, but if we leave her alone, she will die. The recovery ability of our heroes hardly works at all when we are unconscious. Since it’s based on the emotion of the power of love, it can’t be activated even ten percent if we are unconscious. Even now, Nightingale is barely maintaining her physical strength subconsciously… Thanks to that, she’s still alive, but she’s in a state where an ordinary person would have died a long time ago.”
She was making a calm judgment of the situation, as if she were a police officer or a doctor, but it wasn’t that Momo was cold-hearted, but rather that such an event was within the range of crises that heroes could be prepared for. The possibility of dying themselves, of facing someone’s death, was something that could happen to heroes at any time.
Perhaps, I was the only one who was panicking about Nightingale’s condition at this place.
“What should I do? What should I do?”
“For now, I’ll just apply pressure to the wound with a towel, but anything beyond that… all I can do is call out to Nightingale-san to wake up.”
“At this rate, Nightingale-san will die, isn’t there anything we can do? I’ll do anything I can. I don’t want to be a useless Philansblue, I don’t want Nightingale-san to die, and I don’t want Himawari to become a murderer. Is there nothing I can do?”
If Himawari and Nightingale-san were just fighting, I might have been able to intervene and mediate between them. But I can’t think of anything a hero can do now that it’s almost too late.
“I would have said something if I knew a way. But there’s nothing anyone else can do. It would be best if Nightingale-san recovered and woke up on her own, but Nightingale-san’s abilities as a hero were originally weak, so. ..Ah.”
Momo’s eyes widened as if she had caught her own words, and then her face clouded over slightly.
“Momo?”
“…”
“Did you think of something?”
Momo clearly pursed her lips intentionally, her gaze darting around as if she were hesitating or didn’t want to say something.
“Is it a difficult method? If you have a suggestion, please just say it.”
“…Okay.”
As she said that, Momo looked away from me, her mouth slightly upturned as if she were a smile, or perhaps mocking forcing something. After taking a deep breath, Momo continued in a small voice that was barely audible over the sound of the rain .
“If senpai… if Sora-senpai were to whisper his heartfelt love to Nightingale-san, she might be saved.”
What a joke. I was about to say it half-angry, but Momo’s face was so heartbroken as she made such a ridiculous suggestion that I lost all desire to deny it.