Retrograde Amnesia

The scent of the cake in my hospital room made me remember the accident. The taste of orange chicken at the mall that brought my favorite food back. The sound of the vinyl that revealed the pigtail girl. The situational environments that made me the hero of the Sports festival and brought me back to her old home. The combination that brought my entire life back in Aomori.

That was the Proust effect.

I knew the methods that could bring her memories back, but I didn't know how to do it. All my instances were purely coincidence, but Proust experimented with the theory by consciously knowing the goal of nostalgia. Which would work for her?

Whether I deliberately told her my plan to bring her memories back or not, there was still the problem with the process. For the next few days, I had to experiment with very little in my arsenal.

I didn't have any proof of our trip to Mt. Maruyama besides my drawing. I brought it in to show her, and it proved not enough to have her remember the entire day. I then brought the peer outings logs from the orphanage to see if that could work, but just reading to her what happened like a book didn't do the trick either; if anything, it had left her more dispirited.

For the trip to the mall, I showed her the Tsukki raccoon pin she bought, but I knew using what she ordered at the food court would have been better. I read the logs and surfed my memories, but I couldn't remember what she ate.

There was nothing to show for our Sports Days, nor for the creation of our inside joke. I tried speaking to her using the joke and explained the meaning behind it.

"Oh, I understand…sort of. Umm, shall I––ah, we [I] try it? It's a bit difficult for me––ah sorry… Umm okay, 'I' is 'We'? 'You' is 'Us' or 'We' as well?"

She only confused herself more trying to understand it, just like the outsiders.

Aomori was my best bet, due to the souvenirs. I had gotten the caregivers to fetch them from her room, and I brought them over to see if she could recall. The wreaths we never got to hang for Christmas, the bag with the Hirosaki Apple Park logo, the RONDselia collaboration items we bought.

"Yes, I remember going there with you."

A premature smile appeared.

"However… I don't recall much from it. You said…we picked apples as well? I…I don't remember that."

The effect was similar to my first involuntary memory with the car accident; short and vague. Our greatest journey together was nothing more than hazy, like the storm that rained on us that day. I had one final ace currently up my sleeve: The most recent drawings she made herself during our punishment phase.

That was it.
That was the one to do the trick.
That was the closing act that everyone would applaud for.
That…didn't happen.

She inspected the drawings as she sat up from the hospital bed. She remembered drawing them, but they didn't bring back her entire memories, nor did they seem to reawaken the passion she had in her eyes. I felt close to her, I loved her. Due to our childhood together, she still felt close to me, but there was no reciprocation for my feelings. Perhaps it was always like that.

She distressed, "I…I'm wholeheartedly sorry, Vieira-kun. I can see that…you're trying your best, but I can't…remember anything."
Anguish was prominent on her quivering lips and fallen eyes.
"The events you speak of…they sounded fun…they sounded pleasant…but I can't remember my side."

I was doing it all wrong.

She reached for her phone and showed me a text message I had sent her.
"'We treasure our company'? What…does that mean? I… Does it have to do with that joke thing? I…"
She masked her face with her hands, sniffling was poorly suppressed and hiccups still escaped her tightened lips.
With muffling, she said, "It…probably means something special…to us, correct?"

The Ringomori Yoru in front of me was a more sensitive version from the changed girl I last saw during winter. I had been doing it wrong. I wasn't helping her, I was torturing her.

➼ ➼ ➼

It was a miracle that my hair hadn't all fallen out from all the times I pulled it from frustration. In my room, I sat in my chair and slouched over my desk with my eyes shut.

What more can I do? I thought. My second-rate Proust effects weren't enough, and now she's a victim of retrograde amnesia.

She was gone, reverted back to her depressive and reserved self that I only saw as an acquaintance. I had been ingenuous. Stuck in my little and innocent bubble with her, I thought nothing could penetrate it and attack us from the outside. I was wrong.

I hadn't been happy in my second life until I met her again, and that left us vulnerable to attacks of the real world. We had been greedy, desiring bliss to turn around our entire lives and find some cure for our depression. All we wanted was to find meaning in a life without guidance.

Life wasn't fair, it wasn't a book. There was no guarantee that everyone had a fairytale ending, nor did it use every bullet point foreshadowed to complete the story. I knew that, because I had an extra bullet point still unused, but I wouldn't use it.

The girl I loved joined the parents. I could try to get her back by making the dessert that brought me back, but if I couldn't make it as perfect as hers, then I'd fail. If that happened, what else would I have?

I had enough. There were times before where ignorance was bliss and I should have left things at that, but I didn't and it led me down a steep slope with no brakes. Enough, I gave into ignorance. I stayed frozen in time, failing to keep my word about always visiting her at the hospital and chose to not think about restarting our relationship again.

I was ready to repeat my mundane life the next morning. A cycle like a laundry machine, that was what my life was after giving up.

After all my changes, I was still rotten to the core.

➼ ➼ ➼

The truth was always hidden behind a mask. A red herring that persuaded people into believing false pretenses. I had given up, but the truth was I never could.

It had taken me three weeks – nearing March – to see the truth in a dream.

I was with her in the room of her old home. We were older, perhaps attending the same university. She was feeding me a slice of apple cake that I had finally baked to her perfection. We took a video about it.

She said, "We [I] can't wait for us [You] to see this."

My eyes shot open at seven in the morning.
Her videos, I thought.
I leaped out of bed and rushed down the hall.

It was only the second time I entered her room, after being stopped a previous time. There was hardly any change to the interior from when she passed out. Her Aomori souvenirs were returned to their spots by the caregivers.

I didn't pry into anything too personal, and simply scanned her room for the devices I desired. On her desk were the modern versions of the Proust effect.

I pulled out my phone and made a phone call to the man who introduced me to Marcel Proust and his phenomenon.

"Hello, Shizuko present."

"Shizuko-sensei, it's me, Vieira Chamaru. I need to know if the Proust effect could be tied to videos too."

There was shuffling on the other side of the line, he must have been going through his notes. He intonated a few "Hmms" as he tried to determine a verdict.

"I can't say for sure. Proust never had our kinds of videos in his time, and there aren't many known research papers that explored that part of the phenomenon. But, the main effect is to prove that positive emotions tied to memory are stronger than time itself. If you have something like that, it could work."

That was enough for me. I needed her to see her own videos about our peer outings, about our lives together.

Her videos were meant to be nothing more than a continued hobby inherited from her mom. She documented them for her parents' sake, and perhaps in case she conceded to an illness, then her life would be immortalized in the compilations she made. One could say she did die and joined the parents, but I intended to bring her back to life.

I sat on her chair and opened her laptop. I felt a sour taste in my mouth for not asking permission, but I'd accept any punishment she'd give me if it worked. There was no password necessary, valid for how little people knew about it. I opened one of two applications on her desktop and it revealed all of her video files – even the ones her mom made.

She must have remembered all the ones she's made herself up to the point of our first peer outing. It was wrong of me, but I wanted to see the videos that had carried her through life. I only stumbled across them by accident. Curiosity killed the cat, only satisfaction would bring it back.