“And what does this ‘almost pitiful sense of duty’ entail?”
Shizuku couldn’t help but to pose her question in an interrogating tone. From her point of view, by claiming that Ikki couldn’t win against Moroboshi, Kiriko had just unfairly insulted her beloved brother. However, Kiriko did not make that claim without reason.
“You remember Moroboshi’s little sister from the restaurant, right? And you remember that she was mute?”
“I do, yes. The Seven Stars King told us that it was a mental thing.”
“It was because of Moroboshi that she became mute.”
“What?!”
“At least, that’s what he believes. I don’t really agree with it.” Kiriko began to tell Shizuku the origin of the feeling of responsibility that carried Moroboshi forward. Six years earlier, everything had started when tragedy struck Kansai’s greatest young knight, a boy known at the time as the Star of Naniwa. “On a weekend, Moroboshi and his family left by train for a park. However, there was an accident. It made national news, so I expect that you two know about it as well.”
Shizuku nodded, as she and her family had been watching the news as that story broke.
“I remember that hundreds of people died in the disaster. I never knew that the Seven Stars King was in it until my brother told me earlier today, though.”
“Yes. So many lives were lost in that awful tragedy. The fact that he’s still alive today may mean that Moroboshi is extremely lucky. But he was far from being uninjured. His sister and parents had gotten away with only minor injuries, but he wasn’t so lucky, and lost both of his legs.”
“He ‘lost’ them? As in, he was crippled?!”
“That’s right. Capsules, the pinnacle of modern science and medicine, can reattach lost arms, legs, and, depending on the situation, even heads. They’re miraculous, to say the least. However, they can only reconnect; they can’t recreate limbs that have been completely mangled.” In other words, Moroboshi’s wounds were beyond healing by even modern medicine. “Though he survived, the Star of Naniwa—hailed as the most talented knight in all of Osaka since the Demon Princess herself—was forced to withdraw before the final tournament of his Little League career.”
It must have been horrible for him, to the point that it was unbearable. But at the time, Moroboshi was crippled, unable to even walk. How could he have fought like that? It had to have been an awful decision to make, but that was his fate. His inherent cheerfulness had allowed him to adapt to his new life without knighthood.
“However, there was someone whose emotions could not adapt the way his did.” It was his sister, Koume Moroboshi, Kiriko explained. As for why, there was one sad reason. “The day of the accident, she was the one who had insisted that they go to the park.”
“Ah! Th-Then Koume…!”
“Correct. She blamed herself for it all.”
If Koume hadn’t pestered them to go to the park, her brother would have lost neither his legs nor the promising future he deserved. If she hadn’t been so selfish…
She continued to blame herself for what had happened to him, so much so that her heart broke. As a result, she lost the ability to speak. It was as if she had chosen to never force anyone to listen to her selfishness again.
“I had no idea.”
“Ailments of the heart and mind are complex. Unlike injuries or bodily ailments, the symptoms and treatments are far too individualized. We doctors are, unfortunately, powerless. One man remains, though, who continues to try to heal her ailment.”
Based on the sense of duty that Kiriko had mentioned, Shizuku knew precisely who that man was.
“That would be Yuudai Moroboshi, yes?”
“Yes. At the time, he’d given up on knighthood, but the calamity within her lit a fire inside of him.”
Kiriko then claimed that, not even six months after the accident, Moroboshi visited her after having somehow caught wind of her research on limb-regeneration magic through the use of cells from the rest of the body.
“Please, Doc! Make it so I can fight again!”
He probably hadn’t even told his family about his plan before he’d crawled his way from Osaka to Hiroshima. His muddied, tattered body had seemed to ooze determination.
“I willingly agreed to his request. Not because I was impressed by his zeal in any way, though; his appearance just presented a good opportunity for me. I’d been searching for a guinea pig, after all.” Her honest, straightforward statement was also rather alarming. “Teehee. You must think I’m horrid. At the time, though, I was certain that I could do anything—that it was okay for me to do anything. I didn’t hesitate in the slightest as I marched into God’s territory, creating limbs willy-nilly.”
“Then Moroboshi’s legs are…”
“Mm-hmm. I scraped tissue from all over his body, broke it down to the molecular level, and then formed it into false legs that would imitate his old ones.”
As a fellow water mage, Shizuku was aghast at the Medico Knight’s skill. There were probably fewer than three water mages in the world who could recover someone else’s lost limbs. Furthermore, using her method, Moroboshi’s body was the only source of tissue, removing any chance of his body rejecting the new limbs as foreign matter.
“Hmm. But if you used tissue from the rest of his body to recover his legs, which are almost half the body, wouldn’t that leave the rest of him in rather poor shape?”
Shizuku had also considered the question Alice posed. In response, Kiriko confirmed the pair’s apprehension to be true.
“You’re quite perceptive. Yes, he was in very poor shape. First, obviously, all of his muscles were deteriorated—to an almost life-threatening extent. Additionally, to make bones as big and durable as the femur, I had to drastically reduce his bone density, giving him osteoporosis.”
After the treatment, Moroboshi was so weakened that breathing alone hurt his sternum. The only time he had ever been that close to death was during the accident itself. That, however, was only the beginning.
To get his skin-and-bones body to move with the same freedom it had before the accident, he had to rebuild his musculature. He didn’t have time to waste, either, as if he didn’t do so quickly, his muscular atrophy would put his life in even greater danger. To prevent that from happening, Kiriko forced him to put his twig-like self through muscle training similar to that done by professional athletes.
“Of course, in his state, even that wasn’t going to be enough.”
His hollow bones would shatter. His muscles would snap in two. His tendons would constantly tear, causing nerve ruptures. He gritted his teeth as he ran with broken legs and lifted dumbbells with broken arms. Of course, every time he broke, Kiriko would use her recovery magic to bring him back. Yet that only meant that he would face the pain of breaking thousands of times.
The rigorous training he’d undergone was tantamount to torture. Vomiting and incontinence were daily occurrences. Kiriko recalled that Moroboshi’s rehabilitation was like a living hell.
“After three months, I was forced to give up.”
“No surprise there. He went through far too much.”
“I can’t believe he lasted that long.”
Alice and Shizuku figured that he gave up far too late, if anything. What he’d done no longer fell under the category of rehabilitation. Continuing that would have been the most bizarre thing one could have done. However, their expectations were betrayed.
“You’ve got it wrong. I was the one who gave up, not him.”
“Huh?”
“Just as I always do with guinea pigs, I kept a log of my observations. But clearly, he’s no guinea pig; he’s a human just like you and me. Watching a fellow human go through months and months of suffering like that made me feel like I was going insane. To be honest, I really believed I was. Even in my dreams, I could hear his cries.”
After three months, Kiriko could think nothing except that her research was the devil’s play. She had to put it to an end immediately; modern prosthetics were incredible enough. They wouldn’t be able to carry magic or function as smoothly as his old legs, and it would be impossible for him to revive his career, but at the very least, there were prosthetics efficient enough that they wouldn’t get in the way of his everyday life.
There was no reason for her to have him continue with his rehabilitation. Having decided as much, Kiriko finally proposed that they put an end to it and that she use her magic to return the makeup of his legs to his upper body.
“But then, Moroboshi told me something.”
Kiriko could recall the exact words Moroboshi had said to her. His face glistening with sweat, his breathing ragged, he pleaded with her to let him keep going.
“Doc, do you know what the last thing Koume said to me was? She was sobbing up a storm, and she just said, ‘I’m sorry’. Ever since that day, she hasn’t said a single word, and it’s all because I’m such a wretch, because I got hurt like this. I made her think she was indebted to me. I made her think her wanting things was a crime.
“So no, I’m not stopping now. I gotta tell her that there’s nothing to apologize for, that she doesn’t have to worry. But I can’t do that if I’m like this. Everything I lost in that accident—my legs, my strength, my status—I’m gonna take it all back and show her that I’m okay through results instead of words. If I don’t, she’ll keep blaming herself forever!
“That’s why, until Koume forgives herself and starts talking again, it doesn’t matter how many bones I break or muscles I tear! I’m never gonna let her see me hunched over in pain again! That’s what it means to be a brother!”
“After that, Moroboshi kept going with his rehabilitation. He refused to give up. And a few years later, his desperate struggle finally bore fruit. Yuudai Moroboshi, the Star of Naniwa, returned to center stage equipped with strength not inferior to what he’d had before.” He then climbed all the way to the peak of Japanese student knighthood, becoming the Seven Stars King. “But even then, Moroboshi hadn’t achieved his self-imposed duty. Until the day Koume speaks again, he’ll continue to struggle.”
Not even his desire for a real fight with Ikki was for the sake of his personal ambition; it was all for his sister. The driving force that had let him crawl his way up from the depths of hell, the willpower born from his brotherly duty, still burned unceasingly within him. Kiriko knew that full well, which was why she also knew about his strength.
“As someone who’s been watching him progress since day one, I can guarantee you this much: Yuudai Moroboshi isn’t the kind of boy who can be defeated by the simple ambition of wanting to win. Those who fight for people other than themselves are truly strong.”