Sakura closed the distance between them and launched punch after punch. She wouldn’t have another chance to press in this close to her enemy. She wanted to get in as many blows as she possibly could.
She attacked in quick succession, but the surface of Kido’s body failed to crack.
“Eeah! Enough!” Kido waved the tail piercing Sakura, and her body slid smoothly off.
Her chakra immediately closed up the wound where it had punctured her.
“So we both have the little trick of self-healing, hm? But what are you going to do now?” Kido asked, tails floating lightly in the air. “You can only attack with your fists. And there’s no point in trying to wait out the effect, you know. I still have a decent stock of the Tailed Beast drug.”
“It’s true, I can’t actually do anything. All I have are fists, so all I can do is punch.” Sakura brushed away the dirt on her face and glared at her opponent.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand. Why do you not stop when it’s so clearly pointless to continue? I find it simply mysterious.”
“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” Sakura said. “I want to take you down. I won’t let you make a drug or anything out of Sasuke’s eyes. And I’m not letting you make the Tailed Beast drug either. I won’t let you build your military company. That feeling—my feelings—they haven’t changed! So I’ll face off against you, however many times it takes!”
So I’ll tell Sasuke how I feel however many times it takes!
…Wait. What?
Abruptly, a feeling of love for Sasuke rose up in her heart, knocking her off-balance.
Was pummeling Kido’s hard outer skin making her think of her love for Sasuke, a feeling that went unrewarded no matter how many times she told him about it?
No. It’s not unrewarded.
Sasuke and I have been getting closer bit by bit.
“I’ll see you soon…”
They had gotten all the way to that point.
And this fight with Kido was the same. Sakura hadn’t abandoned all hope yet. As long as her chakra held out, she intended to keep pummeling him.
“No matter how many times you try, the result is always the same. Your fists will lose their power before you injure this body of mine.”
“Sorry,” Sakura said, clenching her fists. “But I’m used to attacking over and over and being repelled!” She started running.
Arriving in front of Kido, she hurled her fist at him.
Hit! Hit! Hit! she chanted as she beat at her opponent. He tried to dodge her or guard, but she simply and intently continued to strike the same place.
She saw a momentary lapse in his guard and grabbed hold of the chance to plunge her fist toward him. The punch that landed was solid.
She watched as a single crack raced along the purple outer skin.
Yes! she shouted to herself triumphantly.
Suddenly, Kido opened his mouth wide. Instantly, Sakura intuited danger. She could see highly concentrated chakra being readied in his mouth.
This is bad! Leaping backward to one side, she crossed her arms in front of her face. A Biju Bomb?!
Immediately after she had this thought, a lump of chakra was launched from Kido’s mouth.
The spherical lump had likely been compressed within his body, but the moment it left his mouth, it swelled up to a diameter of a meter or so, and headed straight for Sakura.
She managed to evade a direct hit, but it still glanced across half of her body. And from that alone, the impact was tremendous.
The force of the tails paled in comparison with this chakra blow, and Sakura went flying into the woods, smashing through several thick branches before slamming into an enormous rock and coming to a stop.
Sliding down onto the ground, she couldn’t stand again right away. Just breathing sent a fierce pain racing through her body. She checked that her limbs would move properly as she finally stood back up.
“Stop already. The condition you’re in now, you won’t be able to evade the next Biju Bomb,” Kido said, walking toward her. “You really will die, you know.”
“I won’t. Stop,” Sakura said. Her voice was slightly hoarse. “After all, just a little more and…”
Kido cocked his head to one side. “A little more? What is that supposed to mean? It’s all you can do to stand. I am uninjured. Isn’t this what they mean by a ‘hopeless situation’?”
“Uninjured? You?” A slight smile rose up on Sakura’s lips.
Kido’s face became doubtful, and he turned his gaze toward his own chest. And then he noticed it.
That the crack running along his skin was not healing, that pieces in the center were beginning to peel away and fall off.
“Wha—! How is this—!” Kido panicked. “Why isn’t it starting to heal?!”
“Because the cells there are already dead.”
“Dead…?” The skin on his chest continued to peel off and fall away in chunks.
“My punches were working. I only made it seem like they weren’t.”
Kido stared at her intently without saying a word.
“While I was pounding on your chest, I was also sending healing chakra. What actually happened was my healing chakra instantly repaired the cracks that appeared. So it looked like you weren’t hurt, like my fists weren’t doing anything at all.”
“You healed the damage…? For what purpose…”
“To speed up the death of the cells, obviously,” Sakura told him. “A wound healing basically means that the cells in the area divide anew and block the wound opening. But the number of times the cells in your body can divide is limited. Your armor’s hard. But if you keep forcing the cells to divide, at some point, they die, and you can break through that point. Practical trick of Mitotic Regeneration.”
“Ridiculous. Don’t think that a scratch like this will decide this contest…!” Kido’s face twisted in rage.
Sakura clenched her fists. It was just as he said—simply making a hole in part of his armor didn’t mean she had won.
One more hit!
Sakura started running to launch one final blow at that hole with everything she had.
She drew her arm back and determined her target.
In her field of view, she saw Kido’s mouth opening.
A second Biju Bomb! Sakura guessed.
“Haah!” Dropping low about ten meters in front of Kido, she slammed her fists into the ground.
The earth shook, and Kido wobbled and lost his balance. In that instant, Sakura danced up before him.
Today’s second—!!
“Oh yeeah!!”
The Cherry Blossom Crash, the last of Sakura’s chakra riding on it, slammed into Kido’s chest.
She felt her fist sing at the perfect hit. As if to prove it, Kido flew through the air, cutting down enormous trees and pulverizing massive boulders.
✦ ✦ ✦
Hit with a blow the likes of which he’d never felt before, Kido flew.
And as he flew, he spit up blood.
Blood calling up bits of memories from the depths of his brain.
His father collapsed, vomiting blood.
“Dad! Dad!”
Kido and his mother raced over to where his father knelt at the edge of the bed.
“Why did he stop taking his medication?” the doctor said to his mother, scoldingly.
I was convinced he was taking it. In the end, his mother never uttered these words that had to have risen up in her heart.
He found so many white capsules in the drawer of his father’s desk.
There was nothing inside them. They were just empty capsules.
“You always forget to take your medication. From now on, please make sure you take it in front of me.”
“Ha ha ha! All right.” His father laughed and flashed a white capsule at his mother. “See? I’m taking it.” A capsule with nothing in it, empty.
“Pretty great, huh, Kido? Now you can go to the academy like everyone else.”
“Yeah. Thanks, Dad!”
Despite his sickly nature, his father had gone out on missions to earn money for them. And thanks to that, Kido had been able to go to the ninja academy. He had half given up on the academy because he knew money was tight around the house, so this news was like the song of angels in his ears.
But the truth was different.
His father had a chronic illness and had to take a certain medication for it.
An expensive medication.
He stopped taking it.
He kept taking the empty capsules in front of Kido and his mother, and saved up the money he would’ve spent on that medication.
His father gave up on his own life and put the money for his medication toward his son’s tuition.
“Pretty great, huh, Kido?”
“It’s not even a little bit great…” he told the portrait of his father over and over again.
If he had money, his father could have taken his medicine.
If he had money, his father wouldn’t have died.
If he had money—
Money—