Finding Memories

It’s been two weeks since Shiori’s concert. With our pretty fat paycheck, things were looking up for us at the very least. The newfound money pretty comfortably helped with our lifestyle for the meantime, and that let us focus on one important thing.

“How am I going to get my memories back?”

Miharu asked. I used my newfound money to install a bulletin board in my apartment, which we’ve already been putting to good use. There were a ton of papers, files, and pictures that I tacked onto the wall. They depicted rifts, locations, history, and most important of all, Honoha.

That girl was going to be the key to getting Miharu’s memories back. I owed her this, after all. Especially since she started to remember things. What kind of a soulmate would I be if I didn’t help her out?

“Our best bet might be to wait until the next rift appears. Then we’ll be able to find Honoha and take her knife,” I said. “Then we can figure out how we can use those rifts to get your memory back.”

“That’s so reactive,” Miharu frowned. “We can’t just sit around and wait until Honoha emerges out of nowhere. We need to look for her. No more waiting, because I can’t handle having this… this lingering memory in my mind.”

“Then…” I crossed my arms. “We’re going to need to find some place with strong, lingering emotions. We know those are rift hotspots, so we just need to pinpoint those and try and stake them out.”

“But how are we supposed to know? We’ve only dealt with rifts after they form.”

“We have a contact that knows, don’t we? I knew that would become useful sometime. And, it’s already our job.”

***

“Rift hotspots?” Our friendly neighborhood horse officer responded to our question.

“Yes. We don’t know where Honoha is, but we know that she’s out there,” Miharu said. “It’s only reasonable to assume that she’ll pop up there again.”

“Hm,” Junpei thought for a moment. “To my knowledge, she went directly through a Rift that she created, correct?”

I nodded. “It was weird. We’ve never considered going through those either considering the apparitions that come out of them. But, she just went straight through it.”

“Interesting. Interesting.” Junpei got up from his desk and looked out the window. “We never considered it either. Too much of a safety risk. But we do have some knowledge on spirits, that could help your ghostly friend there.”

“What is it?”

“How the afterlife works. This is important because from what we can tell, those rifts connect to the afterlife to form apparitions, like how a mirror does. From what I can tell, that catgirl cuts in weak spots to the afterlife in order to summon her rifts. But, going through it…”

“You mean she’s in the afterlife?” Miharu asked.

“Mhm. And if she wants to get back then she’ll have to punch a hole back through. Admittedly, it’s pretty dangerous there. I dunno if that girl is even coming back after the stunt she pulled.”

“I feel she is coming back,” I responded, confidently. “If Miharu can come from the afterlife, then so can Honoha. We’ll just need to cut her off when she comes back.”

“If you’re so insistent, then…” Junpei reached for his desk and dragged out a small circular device. A compass. He flicked it open and handed it to me. The two of us looked at it pointing west from our current location.

“What’s this?” Miharu said, looking at it.

“This is how we figured out Shiori’s concert was a prime spot for rifts. It’ll tell you where emotional energy is, but I wouldn’t say it's a surefire. Just something to keep in mind.”

“I see. Thanks for the help then. We’ll try to look out.” I said before beginning to leave, but then I realized something and turned around. “Wait. One more thing.”

“Hm?”

I turned around and pointed at myself. “What if this is somewhere that I don’t have access to. Can I enter? On your authority and all.”

“...no?”

“...”

That plan was bust. Well, it was worth a try, I guess. If it’s somewhere that I don’t have access to, I guess I’ll have to use some… unsavory methods. I looked at Miharu, who seemed to understand me. This was more important than anything.

***

Following the compass, Miharu and I were walking down the streets of Yamiyami, heading to wherever the device pointed us. Miharu seemed to be focusing herself, and with our soulbound connection I could feel her trying to sense anything.

A decent walk later, we found ourselves by an apartment building. A poor old thing, though it had more capacity than mine. It stood relatively tall, and it wasn’t too far from my own home.

“Seems like it’s here,” I said.

“Something about this place feels familiar, even if I’ve never been here before,” Miharu stated. “About the… the vibes. I guess… the magical energy?”

“Thats a good sign, then,” I said, before making my way into the building. The lobby was pretty empty, but there was a lady with fish fins and gills on her cheek drinking water at the reception desk.

Miharu looked around, but I immediately went to the desk. I had a sneaking suspicion.

“Do you have a resident by the name of Honoha?” I asked.

“Yes.” The fish lady blandly responded.

“What apartment does she live in?”

“...”

That was the second time today I got hit with a hard rejection, but this girl didn’t even have the grace to put it into words.

“I don’t think you can just ask that,” Miharu said, leaning over my shoulder.

“I know.”

But I at least knew that the catgirl lived here. I just need to find out which apartment. And I have a way to find that out.

***

Miharu and I stood on the outside of the apartment building, in some musty back alley. Various windows stacked high above us, the prime target of this expedition.

“I know I can walk on walls with your power,” I said. “We’ll just take a peek inside until we find Honoha’s.”

“This seems illegal…” Miharu said.

“It’s only illegal if we get caught. Plus, she’s a city-wide threat anyways so I don’t think privacy concerns should be at the top of our list of priorities.”

With that, Miharu entered my body. With her power, I took one step onto the wall, defying the laws of gravity and began to begin my search. A lot of these yielded no results from just looking at the window alone. Either curtains or nondescript rooms with no defining features, but we kept on looking and looking.

Until we heard a voice shout at us from the alleyway.

“What the hell are you doing?”

I turned around, and saw a certain feral miko looking up at me.

“Hey. Azana.”

I waved, before continuing on with our search.

“Don’t you dare ignore me!” Azana annoyingly insisted. “Do you think that you can just get away with suspicious activity right in front of me?”

I rolled my eyes. It seemed like she wasn’t going away, so I hopped down and let Miharu exit me so we could have a chat. “This isn’t suspicious. We’re investigating.”

“By peeping into people’s private houses?” Azana said. “Yeah right.”

“Since when did you have a sense for justice? Aren’t you the one who tried to tear out my heart and eat me?”

“The important thing is, you’re doing something suspicious and I don’t like it,” Azana growled. “So you better have a damn good explanation.”

I sighed. Looks like I’m going to have to waste time with an explanation then.

“We’re looking for my memories,” Miharu said. “And Honoha. I got a flash of memory when I went into her Rift. So, if I can find her then maybe I can recover some more of my memories.”

“How does that explain you breaking into random apartments?” Azana pressed.

“We sensed magical energy here. A hotspot. Miharu’s apartment is somewhere in here, so I assumed that it’s from there. We’re going to try and stake her out, because there’s no way she isn’t coming back.” I said.

“...”

Azana seemed to pause for a second, then she sniffed the air. Another sniff, then another. Then, she latched her claws into the walls and began climbing the apartment building.

“Uh?” I raised my finger. “Okay, what are YOU doing?”

Azana didn’t respond, and kept on sniffing on the wall. She crawled across the building continuously trying to look for something. Until she eventually gets to a window. “It’s this one. You’re looking for this one.”

“Huh?”

Both Miharu and I were shocked. One, that she did all that, but two was that she was helping us at all in the first place.

“Thanks…?” Miharu said.

“I’m going to be keeping an eye on you two to make sure you guys don’t mess anything up. Under my strict supervision,” Azana said. “I’m not sure how you get in here without breaking into it though. The window is locked.”

“Well.”

Miharu and I fused once more, and I jumped onto the window next to Azana. With a bit of energy pushing into the lock, I triggered a few mechanisms which opened the window cleanly. Nothing broken, and we could enter easily. “Here.”

“Hm,” Azana gave a nod of acknowledgement and then rolled into the window. I did too, and closed the window behind me. Looking inside the apartment, was this place unbelievably bare. A kitchen, a bed, and literally nothing else.

“Reminds me of the pre-office days,” I said.

“Lots of people really do live like this,” Miharu popped out of my body. “It’s so barren.”

“Just a fact of life,” Azana said. “What were you planning on looking for in this apartment?”

“Well, I was hoping she had any info on her knife, but I don’t think she has anything at all,” I answered.

Still, out of curiosity, I began to rummage through what was there. Food cabinets, mostly, because that was the only place where there seemed to be storage. It had about what you expected, food. Nothing too useful.

“You also said you wanted to stake this place out for her, yes?” Azana asked. “We’re gonna be squatters for a while then.”

“It’ll be fine. I promised Miharu I’d get her memories back, so that’s what I’m doing,” I responded. “By the way, since we’re trying to uncover that. Uh, how did you find Miharu? Before I got wrapped up in everything.”

Azana crossed her arms. “My job is a soulhunter. I sniffed out a wayward soul, saw profit, and thought I could cash in.”

“Thanks for that…” Miharu shivered.

“And then you attacked me cause I was there, thanks,” I shrugged. “But, I guess none of this would have happened without you. So I’d be dying of hunger instead of soul attacks.”

Azana scoffed. “And I would have a good bounty. But now that girl is protected by the police, so it’s over now.”

“I remember waking up in a junkyard, I think. That was before she attacked me,” Miharu said. “I don’t remember anything beyond that though. Besides the fact that I must stand for hope and justice.”

“Well. I guess you’re doing that now,” I said, before I saw something in the corner of my eye. Behind all of the soup cans and ramen packets, a small case. A knife case. That was it.

I reached for it and grabbed it. It was light, and empty just from the outside. It wasn’t a particularly fancy case, with just a black design. I looked at the other two. “This is where the knife was stored.”

“Congratulations genius,” Azana rolled her eyes. “We don’t have the knife, do we?”

“Well. Maybe there’s some info attached to the case,” Miharu suggested. “Open it up.”

I followed Miharu’s instructions, and out of it, a piece of paper fell out. It was handwritten, and a bit messy. I could only assume Honoha had put it in there.

It seemed to have a jumble of arrows. Next to each line of arrows, was a word. Permanent. Vacuum. Quick. Summoner. It was like the cheat sheet for a fighting game combo, listed out.

“Huh,” Miharu looked at it. “I wonder what this all means.”

“It’s pretty clearly the knife slashes required to perform a different rift move. She has a lot of those, it seems.”

“That’ll explain why it’s not just one kind of rift she summons. And that will also make her way easier to beat next time,” Azana said. “Wasn’t expecting that to be useful.”

“Yeah. Really.”

I closed the knife case and took a seat on the bed. The only thing we had left to do was to wait for Honoha, if she ever came here. But, the strong sense of emotional energy meant that it was inevitable.

Just needed to wait. And wait. And wait.

Until, a sharp rumbling came across the entire room. An earthquake? Or… maybe…

I got up and grabbed Kyoha from my back. “Miharu, possess me!”

Miharu nodded and instantly went into my body. Azana also shot up in alert. It seemed like our target had arrived sooner than we thought. In the center of the barren room, a knife popped out of thin air, before tearing downwards and ripping open a hole in space. An arm emerged, and so did a face. Two cat eyes appeared out of the rift, and looked at us as it exited.

Looks like we’ve got our catch.