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"Even a diamond must find its place in the light to be seen."
The city at night felt too wide, too bright, and yet too small. Streetlamps stretched in measured intervals down streets she had walked many times before but each step echoed differently now, hollow. Rikka carried her books under her arm - the weight familiar and grounding, and yet heavier than she remembered - not because of their mass but because of the expectation they carried.
Rikka had dreamed of this: lectures, rotations, the steady pulse of study and purpose. She was well liked, top of her class but the dream did not settle as she had imagined. Instead, it left a quiet ache in her chest, the kind she first felt when she realised that the world could hurt in ways she could not repair.
At the hospital, she moved through the ward with precision, checking charts and administering care. Every action was deliberate and calculated. Yet her thoughts wandered, slipping between the hum of fluorescent lights and the soft beeping of monitors.
A small boy, most likely no older than seven, tugged at the sleeve of her coat.
"Can doctors fix sadness too?"
The question caught her so completely off guard that she blinked twice before answering. She swallowed and smiled, careful, controlled. A smile she once practiced for presentations, for missions, for moments when someone's life hung in balance.
"I… we all try our best," she said, letting the words hang. She did not mention that sometimes her best felt pitifully insufficient - or that even as Cure Diamond, she had been powerless in moments she could not calculate or control.
A memory flickered. When she found Ira half drowned on the beach that day, the fear, the urgency, the strange calm that followed. She had steadied her hands when it mattered most, chosen without hesitation and in that instant decided she wanted to heal people in every way a doctor could.
Other memories rose unbidden: Makoto's calm during fights, Alice’s careful planning, Ai's small hand tugging hers as she took care of her. And, brighter and younger, Aguri's wide eyed determination, insisting she would help, even when the world seemed impossible. Those lights had guided her once, and they were still there, faintly, in the quiet hospital air.
Later, as she left the building, the winter chill wrapped around her, biting at her neck and hands. Her reflection appeared in the dark glass of a closed shop, faint and wavering. For an instant the face staring back was not just her own: it was the gleam of the self who had stood beneath summoned light, faced despair and not faltered.
She touched the glass, half expecting it to be warm instead of cold and for the briefest moment, she wondered if she had lost that self entirely.
Who am I now?
The sea smelled faintly of salt and old driftwood. Rikka stood on the edge of the sand, watching the sun bleed into the horizon: gold into orange, orange into a gentle violet. She had arrived in this quiet seaside town for a short medical rotation but the real reason she had come was more personal. Regina had sent word that she was home, that the studio was open if Rikka wanted to visit.
Ever since her highschool graduation, Regina went on to study the creative arts. She travelled the world, painted anything and everything and always wore a smile that exuded pure happiness.
The house was a riot of color and scattered canvases, jars of brushes half cleaned, sketches pinned in loose clusters on every wall. Regina appeared at the doorway smiling in a way that seemed impossibly unrestrained, impossibly free.
"It's been a while, hasn't it?" Regina said, her voice carrying a certain warmth that was almost disarming.
Rikka nodded, summoning the casual tone of a polite visitor though part of her had come to see how someone else managed to live without measuring every heartbeat.
They sipped tea on the porch, the sky melting above the distant sea. Rikka noticed how Regina's fingers traced the rim of the cup unconsciously, how her eyes crinkled into effortless laughter. She envied it, the ability to exist in the moment without analyzing.
"Do you ever miss it?" Regina asked suddenly, gesturing vaguely toward the horizon, towards everything Rikka had once known but could not name. "The battles, the magic, the… light?"
Rikka’s throat tightened. She shook her head before she could think, but the motion felt false even to her.
"I… I'm not sure," she admitted softly, eyes tracing the horizon. "I think I was just doing what I had to do. I don’t know if it’s something I miss."
Regina chuckled gently. "You think too much, Rikka."
"Someone has to," Rikka said, quieter than she expected. She laughed, a low, even sound, and for a moment the air between them carried no questions just the settling warmth of the sun disappearing behind waves.
Fireflies began to blink faintly in the tall grass near the porch, tiny specks of light flitting in and out of sight. Rikka watched them but their meaning did not touch her yet. Not fully. She only felt the pull of memory - all of it whispering from the past, echoing here, at the edge of her awareness.
The rain fell softly on the city the next night, steady and calm against the window pane. Rikka sat on the edge of her room, staring at the street below, blurred by the rain and passing headlights. A message on her phone lit the dark: 'Are you free this weekend? I’m speaking nearby.'
After a tearful graduation, Mana being Mana, went on to do great things - youth politics, public speeches and volunteer work. She's beloved by the community and constantly surrounded by people.
By the time Mana arrived, soaked and laughing through the drizzle, Rikka had poured two cups of tea. They sat in silence for a few minutes, listening to rain on the roof and the soft hum of the city around them.
"You’ve changed." Mana said finally, her eyes searching Rikka's. Not accusing, just noting.
"I could say the same." Rikka replied.
They spoke of lectures, rotations, mundane events. They laughed at old jokes that had not aged, and at fleetingly chaotic memories of the team. Rikka’s mind drifted briefly to Ira ince more, to the shock of finding him, to the clarity that had solidified her dream. She thought of the younger faces she had guided and been guided by: Aguri, still young, still learning; Alice, clever and thoughtful; Makoto, steady and grounded; Regina, full persistent courage and happiness despite once being consumed by darkness. Every one of them had left traces in her, like facets in a diamond.
When Mana finally left, Rikka lingered by the window watching her silhouette vanish beneath the pink umbrella. The rain blurred the scene, washing the city in silver and her reflection overlapped with Mana's departing figure. In the glass, her eyes caught the faintest glimmer of sunlight refracted in a drop of water.
And she understood.
The light, her sense of self had never left her. It had only changed shape. It was in her presence, in the way she noticed trembling hands and steadying breaths, in the careful ordering of thoughts that made her useful, in the laughter of those she loved, in the courage of the young and the old alike. Every fragment, every memory, every choice - had grown with her. Even though Cure Diamond no longer exists, her wisdom, her strength still lives on in Rikka. Even though the Precure weren't really Precure anymore, the laughter and warmth she experienced still lived.
Rikka didn't need to 'find' anything. She grew, organically, quietly - and so did the light, her identity. She stepped back from the window, shoulders loosened, and let herself smile. A very real, slow, deliberate smile.
"I thought I’d left it behind. But maybe the light never needed reclaiming. Maybe it just… grew up with me."
Outside, the rain slowed, and a single droplet caught the sun, refracting across the glass. For a heartbeat, it glimmered like a tiny diamond, and Rikka finally let herself see it.
She was still shining. She always had been.