The castle courtyard echoed with cruel laughter.
"Look at him grovel!" King Wapol's voice boomed across the snow-dusted stones, his massive frame shaking with amusement. Beside him, Chess and Kuromarimo snickered like hyenas, their weapons glinting in the pale winter light.
Twenty soldiers raised their rifles, sights fixed on the old man kneeling in the snow.
But Doctor Hiluluk wasn't weeping. He wasn't begging. A serene smile touched his weathered face as he pressed his forehead to the frozen ground.
"Thank you," he whispered, the words steaming in the cold air. "The Isshi-20 are safe. That's all that matters."
Dalton, standing rigid among the king's guards, felt his breath catch. "Doctor, no—"
"Don't point those at me, boys," Hiluluk said, rising slowly to his feet. His voice carried a strange, peaceful authority that made several soldiers lower their weapons an inch. "I'll be dead soon enough without your help."
Run faster. Run faster!
Through the pines, a small reindeer crashed through snowdrifts, his blue nose flaring with each panicked breath. Chopper could see the castle walls now. Could hear the laughter.
Please, Doctor. Wait for me.
---
"You think this is funny?" Hiluluk's voice rang out, clear and strong. He brushed snow from his patched coat. "A country where the king laughs while his people sicken? Where doctors are executed for caring?"
Wapol's grin vanished. "Shoot him."
"Wait!" Dalton stepped forward, but Chess's blade pressed against his throat.
Hiluluk ignored them all. He reached into his medical bag and pulled out a small flask. The liquid inside swirled, cherry-red and strangely luminous.
"You see, I've been sick for years," Hiluluk said conversationally, as if discussing the weather. "Incurable, really. But a man only dies when he's forgotten."
He noticed Dalton's tears then. The guard chief's shoulders shook with silent sobs.
"Ah, Dalton," Hiluluk said softly. "Don't cry for me. Cry for this country. It's the patient here, not me."
He unstoppered the flask. A sharp, chemical scent filled the air.
"My task is done," Hiluluk declared, his voice swelling with pride. "The cure won't come from a medicine. It'll come from those who remember what it means to care. From those who—"
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!
Three shots rang out. Not from the soldiers—from the trees.
Chopper burst into the courtyard, screaming, "DOCTOR, NO!"
But Hiluluk was already raising the flask to his lips. His eyes met Chopper's across the distance. He smiled—a real, warm, father's smile.
"Remember me, my boy."
He drank.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then light erupted from Hiluluk's mouth, his eyes, every pore of his skin. Not fire—brilliant, blinding light, like a hundred suns compressed into one human form.
"WHAT IS THIS?" Wapol shrieked, shielding his eyes.
The explosion wasn't sound. It was silence—a vacuum that sucked all noise from the world before releasing it in a single, thunderous BOOM.
When the light faded, only Hiluluk's hat remained, drifting down like a autumn leaf to settle gently in the snow.
Silence.
Then Wapol's laughter shattered it. "He actually did it! The fool blew himself up!"
Something in Chopper snapped.
A roar tore from his throat—not a reindeer's cry, but a raw, human scream of agony. He charged, hooves tearing up stone, tears freezing on his fur.
"MONSTER!" a soldier yelled.
Rifles swung toward him.
But Dalton moved faster. He threw himself between Chopper and the firing line, taking three bullets in the back. He collapsed, blood already staining the snow crimson.
"Run…" Dalton gasped, his eyes meeting Chopper's. "Don't… become another sacrifice… for this cursed country…"
Chopper hesitated, his heart tearing in two directions.
Wapol's shadow fell over Dalton. "You disobeyed me," the king purred, his voice dripping with malice. "You let the monster escape. What should I do with a guard chief who betrays his king?"
Dalton struggled to rise, failed, spat blood. "I serve… the people. Not you."
Wapol's smile turned feral. "Then let's see how long you last without your precious principles."
As Wapol raised a fist that began to morph and reshape into something metallic and cruel, Chopper turned and ran. He ran with Hiluluk's hat clutched to his chest. He ran until his lungs burned and his legs gave out at a familiar doorstep.
Dr. Kureha's house.
With trembling hooves, Chopper planted Hiluluk's flag—the flag with the cherry blossom emblem—into the snow. He pounded on the door.
When it opened, he didn't beg. He demanded.
"Make me a doctor," Chopper said, his voice raw but steady. "Make me the kind of doctor who can cure any disease. Even the disease of a kingdom."
Kureha looked from the flag to the tears freezing on the reindeer's face. She didn't ask what happened. She already knew.
"That's a dangerous wish," she said quietly.
"I don't care."
---
Back at the castle, Dalton dragged himself to his knees. The courtyard was empty now except for him and Wapol. The king's right arm had transformed into a massive, spiked cannon.
"Last chance, Dalton," Wapol said, the cannon barrel glowing with heat. "Swear loyalty. Or become another stain on the snow."
Dalton spat blood again. "You don't understand… do you? That explosion wasn't just a death."
He looked toward the mountains where the Isshi-20 hid. Then to the town below where people were already whispering, already remembering.
"It was a seed," Dalton whispered. "And it's already growing."
Wapol's cannon glowed brighter. "Then let's see how well your seed grows without its gardener."
But just as Wapol prepared to fire, a thunderous CRACK echoed through the mountains. Not an explosion—something worse.
The eternal snows of Drum Island were beginning to move.
Avalanche.
And at its crest, riding the wave of snow and death, came a figure Dalton recognized—one of Wapol's exiled rivals, returned with an army at his back and the mountain itself as his weapon.
Wapol turned, his cannon arm faltering. "Impossible…"
Dalton laughed through the blood in his mouth. "Looks like your kingdom has two diseases now, Your Majesty. And the cure for both… is you."
As the avalanche descended toward the castle, and the rival's war cry echoed through the valley, Wapol made a choice—not to fight, but to flee. He transformed, his body reshaping into a bizarre, mobile form, and abandoned his own castle, his own people, to the coming destruction.
Dalton watched him go, then turned to face the wall of snow and steel descending upon everything he'd ever sworn to protect.
---
Chopper heard the avalanche from Kureha's doorstep. He felt the ground shake.
"What's happening?" he whispered.
Kureha's face was grim. "The kingdom is dying its final death." She looked at Chopper, at the determination in his eyes. "Come inside. Your training starts now. But know this—by the time you become the doctor you want to be, there may be no kingdom left to save."
Chopper followed her inside. The door closed.
Outside, the flag with the cherry blossom emblem whipped in the wind born of crashing snow. And in the town below, as people saw their king abandon them, as they saw the avalanche coming, they did something unexpected.
They didn't scream.
They didn't panic.
One by one, they hung cherry blossom flags from their windows. A silent, blooming rebellion against the coming winter.
And deep in the castle, bleeding out on the stones where his friend had died, Dalton smiled as the world came crashing down around him.
Because sometimes, a country needs to shatter before it can be remade.
And sometimes, a cure needs to hurt before it can heal.
---
Cliffhanger: As the avalanche buries the castle and Wapol's rival claims the throne, a single medical text survives in Kureha's house—opened to a page describing a legendary panacea called the "Amazake" that can cure any disease. In the margin, in Hiluluk's handwriting, a note reads: "The final ingredient grows only where a true king has fallen. Find it where Drum's heart beats underground." And outside, in the newly rearranged snowscape, a single cherry blossom tree has begun to grow where no tree should survive—its roots reaching deep toward something ancient, something powerful, and something very, very awake.
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