Chapter 128
What is memory? Why do people live carrying something so imperfect as memory?
Some say it is for survival. They say it is so the brain can remember one’s condition, recognize the state of being ‘healthy,’ and distinguish when that is not the case so it can respond accordingly. Beyond that, the link between survival and memory ran very deep.
Others say memory is everything that makes a person. They say the values and ethics every human must have, slowly built up since childhood, along with the traces of a life, are all melted into memory.
Neither side was wrong.
If you couldn't remember what was dangerous and what wasn't, your chance of dying rose, and if you lost all your memories, it was effectively the same as losing yourself. Both arguments were perfectly reasonable. There was no need to decide which one was the right answer.
In this way, memory had always been a fine weapon and means of survival for humanity, a shield for self-preservation. For thousands upon thousands of years, memory had etched trust into humankind.
And that became the source of the problem.
“…….”
By nature, people do not doubt their own memories.
Memory is something one experiences, learns, and comes to understand for oneself. To doubt it was little different from doubting yourself.
It was somewhat distant from self-reflection. In the end, even reflection was an act carried out through memory. People rarely considered that the memory itself might be wrong.
So while it was possible to forget something, it was utterly impossible—unless you were mentally ill—to invent an event that never happened and believe it had really occurred.
Because humans instinctively tended to repeat what they remembered. The only thing you could learn from a lie was more lies. Just as killing someone in your imagination would not make you a murderer, a human could only become who they are now through memories of reality.
Ian was the same. Born an orphan, he went through his school years like an ordinary kid. The sort of life you could find anywhere, running around to make money as soon as he became an adult. His life had changed completely after he picked up the grimoire, but that was, at least, the life he knew as his own.
But now impurities had crept into those memories.
-Ian! I told you to eat breakfast before you go! And straighten your tie properly!
Nagging shouted every morning by a faceless being he could only recognize as ‘Mother.’
-Ah, oppa! Let me borrow some clothes! I said I'd wash them and give them back!
The irritable whining of a younger sister who did not exist.
-Have a good day.
-Woof!
Even the voice of the ‘father’ who somehow seemed to resemble him, and the bark of the dog they raised.
Memories he had never actually experienced, and would never experience in the future, clawed at his mind like impurities.
The day they all went to a restaurant for their mother's birthday.
The day they moved because Father's business had hit it big.
The first time they brought home a dog, his younger sister's beaming face as she hugged the puppy, and so on.
His head was full of memories so intricate and detailed he could call each one up right now if he wanted.
As I said, memory is the most basic foundation that makes up a person. The fact that it was being contaminated in real time was by no means a good sign.
‘A mental attack? No, no. If it were a mental attack, there’s no way I’d have been affected.’
First-period class.
The man who looked exactly like the corpse Seo-ah had purchased was standing at the teacher’s desk, teaching math. Ian glared at him and calmly sorted out his thoughts. Seo-ah, sitting beside him, was also looking down at her desk and constantly muttering to herself.
“……My parents died when I was little. They got drunk, drove drunk, and crashed straight into a utility pole. My grandmother raised me, but I left home because she kept forcing me to become a shaman. My parents can’t possibly still be alive.”
Reconstructing memory.
Distinguish truth from falsehood in your head and protect yourself. Fortify the barrier so memory will not be dirtied by the supernatural.
It was not easy. Memory had no boundaries, and the past was always an abstract thing that could only be recollected, not observed. Distinguishing the truth from the falsehoods that had crawled into his head was an extremely difficult task.
If Seo-ah was even sweating coldly, then she must be teetering on the verge of delirium as well, and for an ordinary person telling them apart would be close to impossible.
But Seo-ah managed it.
That was thanks to her mental barriers being far stronger than an ordinary person's, to her being a mage, to her having exceptionally good memory, and, by a fortunate coincidence, to her being an orphan without parents.
It went without saying, but orphans do not have parents. So for both Ian and Seo-ah, simply filtering out memories in which parents appeared made it possible to catch the errors in memory.
And if any other memory felt a little off and involved parents, they could cut it away without hesitation.
‘Thank goodness I’m an orphan.’
Ian crossed his arms as he watched the teacher, who was lecturing while drooling.
‘The forced implantation of memories will only get worse as time goes on.’
Ironically, the attack invading his head right now wasn't mental in nature. It was closer to a one-sided implantation.
It wasn't about driving people insane, but about confusing them. That was probably why mental barriers weren't having much effect either.
He hadn't expected a supernatural power that attacked like this. It felt filthy. He thought he'd only be able to relax if he found the main body and killed it somehow.
In any case, if he wanted to get out of here, he'd have to kill it. Or maybe waiting until dismissal wasn't a bad idea either. If this was a spatial-type anomaly, there would eventually be rules for escaping it.
‘……For now, it’s best to think of everyone except Seo-ah and me as monsters.’
Ian loosened the tie strangling his neck a little and stared at the teacher in his corpse state.
The corpse had all its organs removed and its abdomen wide open, so naturally there wasn't a trace of vitality in it.
Its skin was pallid, and in the hollow where its eyeballs should have been, only a deep void remained. Yet no one felt fear or suspicion toward him.
Some students tapped their lips with ballpoint pens, focusing on the lesson.
Some fooled around with one another, and some secretly tapped at their phones under their desks.
A classroom that was perfectly ordinary. That made it all the more alien.
If blood had been splattered everywhere and corpses had been piled up around him, he would have felt more at ease than he did now.
A sense of disconnect.
The disconnect caused by something utterly out of place in an ordinary setting wrapped around his whole body.
“Now then, why don’t you try solving this one, Ian?”
Just as he was scratching at his throat in frustration, the teacher suddenly spoke Ian’s name.
His voice was as bleak as you'd expect from a corpse, but it was enough to bear down on the entire classroom. Ian's movement froze for a moment, and Seo-ah, who had been quietly taking deep breaths, turned to look at him.
“……Yes?”
Ian asked back. The fact that he answered with honorifics alone was enough to show how incredible his patience was.
The corpse smiled brightly anyway.
Flies and maggots crawled out of his mouth.
“Tsk, you weren't paying attention in class? I told you to solve this problem. Come up here, quickly. For someone in the top ranks of the school, this should be easy enough, shouldn't it?”
“…….”
“Come on, hurry up.”
The corpse said, flicking the piece of chalk in his hand. Ian glanced at Seo-ah for a moment, then let out a breath and got to his feet. His chair slid backward with a scrape.
He walked to the blackboard. The slippers he'd changed into dragged along the floor, and he took a piece of chalk hanging on the board to solve the problem.
It wasn't a particularly difficult problem. He solved it as much as possible in his head, slowly writing down the numbers. All the while, he looked around as if he were thinking.
Outside the window.
Outside, where the sun did not exist, all four seasons coexisted. He hadn't known it before, but seeing it from up high, he could understand clearly. Some of the school's street trees were cherry blossoms, while the rest were lush like summer trees or colored with autumn leaves, and some had snow settled on them like flowers.
Seasons changing from moment to moment also meant time in another sense. So he could tell that the time in this space was very strange.
Window.
The windows overlooking the hallway were covered in handprints. Hanging above them was someone's head.
All of them were strangled corpses (絞殺體), their eyeballs gouged out and their tongues sticking out.
Curses continuously spilled from their mouths. These were things he hadn't seen when entering the classroom.
That was enough for him to realize this classroom was a kind of ghost story. Perhaps those strangled corpses were the ghost story connected to the classroom.
“…….”
Locker.
Nothing unusual. Next.
Blackboard.
Even though no letters had clearly been written on it, a chilling scraping sound came from it as if it were scratching by itself. Several of the students shouted at Ian not to do it, but Ian didn't react. It hadn't been done by him in the first place.
Lastly, the seat.
On the chair that should have been empty once Ian stood up, an unfamiliar black shape sat brazenly.
It changed from moment to moment, draping itself in a school uniform and beginning to assemble a face. Then its face changed in an instant until it looked similar to Ian's.
[……What?!]
But just before it could complete its perfect transformation, it froze as if something invisible had grabbed it by the hair, then vanished on the spot, black blood pouring from its neck. Looking closely, Seo-ah's guardian spirit had cut off its head.
‘So there’s even a doppelgänger.’
Ian clicked his tongue at the sight.
Well, doppelgängers were a common kind of ghost story, after all. And in a limited place like a school, they would be even easier to use for confusion. It was a relief to have dealt with it quickly.
‘It doesn't react just because I kill it. Is an act recognized as some kind of exorcism okay?’
Thinking that, Ian finished solving the problem all the way through.
“That's correct. Go back and take your seat.”
“Yes.”
He gave a small bow.
He greeted the corpse and returned to his seat.
If the doppelgänger had still been alive at this moment, he'd probably have gone into cardiac arrest and died the moment their eyes met.
Just thinking about it made his heart race on its own. If he let his guard down even a little, his head and neck would surely end up waving goodbye to each other.
‘Could this be about the same difficulty as the hospital... no, if it can even toy with memories, it might be worse than that.’
Ian let out a long sigh, sat down, and turned to Seo-ah.
“Feeling better?”
“Yeah. I don't like it, but if I hurt myself, the mental attack gets a bit weaker. It also makes it easier to pick out the memories.”
She stuck out her tongue a little and nodded. A small drop of blood had gathered at the damp tip.
“……Well, that’s a relief, but why your tongue?”
“I was dealing with it in a hurry. From now on I’ll just use a knife and keep it simple.”
She pulled a knife made of bone out of her bag.
A blade ground from the bones of something not human. It had been magically treated, so there was no need to worry about it being contaminated by a ghost story. Ian nodded and waited until class ended.
Then, thirty minutes later, a bell rang from the speaker to signal the end of class. The corpse, which had been enthusiastically teaching mathematical formulas, stopped moving, opened the front door without a farewell, and walked out.
“……How rude. And that thing calls itself a teacher.”
“It’s not a teacher. It’s a corpse.”
“Ah, right. How annoying, damn it…….”
Seo-ah muttered as she ran a hand through her hair.
Then the classroom's back door burst open, and a black-haired girl entered the classroom. After looking around and confirming Ian's position, she ran straight toward him.
“Senior!”
Grab!
She leapt into Ian's arms, and Ian unconsciously caught her.
“Ehehehe. Seniorrr…… I came to find you since it was break time…….”
“…….”
“Mmm…… I like you, senior…… your smell too, sniff sniff…….”
“……Who are you?”
Seo-ah asked, frowning. For some reason, a hint of anger had crept into her voice.
“I’m the senior’s girlfriend!”
■■■ answered directly. Resting her chin on Ian's shoulder, she smiled brightly at Seo-ah.
“Hello, senior's friend. I don't really know your name! Not that I have any intention of remembering it!”
“……Are you insane? Hey, I'm your senior too. Show some respect.”
“Mmm? To me, there’s only one senior. The others are…… ahaha. Sorry, but I don't see them as people.”
“……Ha, what a complete fucking bitch—”
“Seo-ah.”
Ian cut Seo-ah off.
“Calm down.”
“……No, Ian. That bitch started it first and—”
“You’re too emotional right now. No, rather, you’re probably being assimilated into ‘the memories of you as a high school student.’ So don’t get worked up. You’ll be consumed.”
“……Ah.”
Reason returned to Seo-ah's eyes. Ian forcibly pried ■■■ away from his arms, where she was humming, and continued speaking.
“Keep replaying your memories. I understand that it's hard to do, but you still have to. Otherwise, it'll be hard to survive.”
“……Yeah, thanks.”
Ian nodded to Seo-ah, then looked down at ■■■ and muttered in a low voice.
“And you, don't act so casually toward Seo-ah. She's my friend too, after all.”
“……Senior.”
“If you don't like it, then break up with me.”
At his serious tone, ■■■ stared at him silently before letting out a soft laugh.
“I see, so that’s how you’re going to play it?”
“……What?”
“I’ll go along with your tune. Because you’re playing along with mine too, senior. But senior? Even so, I can't allow any other females. In your life, I have to be the only woman. Our children want that too.”
“…….”
“My heart is as deep as the sea of the universe, but it isn’t wide. It’s just enough to drown only you, senior.”
She clasped her hands behind her back and planted a peck on Ian's cheek. A red lip-tint mark was left on his cheek.
“Honestly. You're so adorable I could eat you right this second.”
■■■ said that as she leaned her face toward Ian's lips.
That was when it happened.
Creak!
The classroom's front door flew open with a harsh sound. ■■■'s head turned on its own toward the door, and through the open gap a teacher in a suit entered the classroom, clicking her heels on the floor. Her pure white hair swayed lightly with her movement.
A strong hyacinth scent rushed in. The flower fragrance wasn't sharp, but it wasn't faint either; it filled the classroom.
“Hmm.”
She turned to look at ■■■ and spoke with a blank expression.
“First year. Go back to your own classroom.”
“……Ahaha, that fucking bitch came, huh?”
“A woman who gives off a flower scent is better than one who reeks of fish.”
The woman, with a staff badge hanging around her neck and Lea written on it, set a textbook on the table.
“And seeing someone as old as you act all junior-this and junior-that is utterly revolting. Do you really want to go that far?”
“……Watch your mouth, Whitey. Before I tell my husband what you really are.”
“You, too? I think I'm better than a monster that stuffs everything it sees into its belly whenever it's bored.”
“So you want to try me?”
“Hmm. The only reason your head is still attached to your neck is because I'm merciful. So shut up quietly and disappear. I really don't know what kind of nonsense you're pulling, bothering him like that and then crawling back in the moment you get a chance. Did you put tentacles on your neck instead of a head?”
“Ahaha, for someone deformed enough to have eight arms grafted on, you sure have a big mouth, teacher. And you were still later than me for your first kiss. What's so impressive that you're shouting about it like that? Our senior’s ears are going to rot. Hng.”
■■■ covered Ian's ears with her hands and grinned.
Lea's eyes tilted by about five degrees.
“Take that hand away.”
“I don't want to,”
“…….”
Gulp.
Ian clamped his mouth shut and remained silent.
For some reason, it felt as if the entire school were trembling in fear.