Casablanca Memory

A standalone side story, this piece first ran in the September 1993 issue of RunRun magazine before appearing in Volume 11 of the original manga and, later still, in the second book of Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Short Stories. Its spotlight falls on Rei Hino, filling in her history and her strained bond with her father, Takashi Hino.

On Rei's April birthday a boy hands her a bouquet, which she brushes off and pushes onto Usagi, insisting she cares for neither boys nor flowers; the moment reminds Usagi and Ami how little they know of her, since the three attend separate schools. At the Hikawa Shrine, Grandpa Hino passes along a gift from her father, a white dress and blooms she recognizes as Casablanca lilies, her favorite. Her grandfather explains that Rei dines with the politician each year on this day, a relationship soured ever since her mother's death.

The dinner unfolds at the Rain Tree restaurant, where she joins her father and his secretary, Kaidou. A music box there plays a tune sharing the eatery's name, stirring memories of the hours she once spent with Kaidou. She recalls piecing together that the yearly presents came not from her father but from Kaidou himself, and how a year earlier she had told him she would depend on no one and never wished to marry, a feeling he echoed. As the rainy season arrives, that same Rain Tree melody spreads through the city on countless music boxes and leaves everyone gloomy, while Rei begins reliving her betrayal, when she once watched Kaidou grow close to another woman and later learned he had been matched with the daughter of a powerful political family.

Carrying flowers to Makoto's apartment, Rei finds her friend entranced before a Rain Tree box, murmuring about a senpai; she smashes it, freeing an evil spirit and transforming into Sailor Mars. A flood of memory returns, including Kaidou's confession that he lied at her father's orders and the kiss that followed her admission that she wanted to wed him. The woman from the restaurant piano reappears with a ghostly Rain Tree, revealing she has been draining human energy through the boxes and the rain, and she proves to be Zoisite in disguise, bent on avenging Jadeite. Sailor Mars calls her crows Phobos and Deimos and drives the enemy off with Akuryo Taisan, resolving to leave the past behind and lean on her friends rather than romance. By August she is lounging in a beach chair, the rainy ordeal now feeling like a distant dream. Takeuchi's preface credits the story's spark to a restaurant outing with the 1990s anime voice cast, where Rei's actress Michie Tomizawa named the Casablanca lilies outside, and the Rain Tree box itself was modeled on an Art Deco lamp the author once owned.