Spring Flower of Days Long Passed (2)

Feverish, Guts cannot tell whether the little being is real when the cell opens and a nobleman enters with three guards. Ordered upright and inspected, Guts responds to a question about his wounds by spitting in the man's face. The guards beat him until the noble halts them, unwilling to worsen the injuries, and even applies medicine himself while revealing the plan: his son's first duel comes the next day, Guts will be the opponent, and he is expected to die. The noble departs without leaving food, so as not to strengthen him.

Bundled in hay, Guts drifts off until the tiny creature returns, teases his nose with a wisp of straw, and bolts behind the flower's stem when he sneezes. Reassured that he means no harm, it comes forward as Chitch, the spring blossom's spirit, who took her name from the squeak of the cell's rats. She insists she is no fever-dream and thanks him for killing the rat he ate, since it had been prowling her bloom. Unable to free him, she ferries him water on a leaf, warms his shivering body with her power, and lays a petal-leaf over his arrow wound that erases the pain at once.

When Guts asks her to treat the rest, Chitch falters on his back, her cheer draining away as she admits that every prisoner before him eventually left, and she fears the same loneliness again once he heals. Guts, half-convinced she is a figment of his own frailty, pinches her cheeks and promises that when he escapes he will carry her to a field of matching flowers he passed on the way in. Overjoyed, she resumes tending him until he sleeps. He wakes with his fever gone but finds her flower stripped bare and wilting, and her silent absence finally convinces him she was real. As guards open the door, he pulls the whole bloom free and tucks it into his waistband before being led out.

A nobleman announces Guts will be sacrificed in his son's first duel. Chitch, the flower spirit, reveals herself and heals Guts' wounds while confessing her fear of abandonment. Guts promises to bring her to a field of her own kind. He wakes healed to find her flower wilted and leafless, and takes it with him as he is led away.

The second part of "Spring Flower of Days Long Passed" spans twenty-three pages and ran in Young Animal issue thirteen on 22 June 2012 within the Elf Island Chapter. First numbered 329, it moved to 330 in the volume 37 reordering, and the matching magazine featured color art of Guts promoting the second Golden Age Arc film.