The numbness in her legs gradually faded, only to creep back unnoticed moments later, seemingly without end.
"Everything in the world is actually a rather meaningless cycle. What happened in the past will definitely happen again in the future, and what's happening now surely has a corresponding history in the past."
Perhaps because she had been spacing out for so long, Hua actually managed to recover some scattered memories in her mind.
That voice... it had to be his.
She felt a warmth well up from the bottom of her heart, but what exact emotion was it? She couldn't grasp it precisely. It seemed like sadness, yet also like relief.
It was like someone who had lost their childhood treasure box, only to suddenly find a tiny, insignificant part of it while cleaning out an old house one day.
Although it was only a minuscule recovery, it was certainly comforting enough... perhaps?
But... what had she said back then?
It seemed to require little effort to recall:
"But... why is it like this?"
Hua frowned. In her memory, the man's face was indistinct, only blurry edges visible. If it weren't for the familiar voice, she felt she wouldn't have been able to identify him.
Of course, more importantly, she felt something was missing as she recalled this part.
She was clearly experiencing this past from her own perspective, but...
But the state of mind she had during that conversation with Michael, the longing, the doubt, or whatever other emotions... they were all lost.
It was as if her recollection of the memory was merely observing the exchange between two other people from a first-person viewpoint. She couldn't grasp even the slightest hint of Michael's feelings at that moment, nor her own thoughts back then.
"..."
What she found even harder to accept was that when she tried to recall further, to remember what answer Michael had given, all she got was a blank.
These traces... always made her feel that perhaps she hadn't lost her memory due to injury, but rather that her memories had been "incinerated."
Have you ever seen paper being burned? Tossing stack after stack of paper filled with memories into a furnace with licking flames, watching these sweet or bitter memories dissipate into smoke.
But the burning is never truly complete. The paper is packed too densely, lacking oxygen during combustion, always leaving behind some charred, hard-to-identify edges that still hold something.
The memory fragment just now felt like that. Hua reached out, lightly rubbing her fingers together in the empty air before her.
"Click—"
She mentally supplied the sound effect, as if she had truly pinched the corner of that remnant page. With just a slight pressure between her fingers, the dark, charred, hardened edge would immediately crumble into dust, scattering on the floor.
"Sigh..."
When the numbness in her legs faded once more, Hua felt she could control her body again. Blushing, she finished using the folded paper, then pulled up her pants and stood up.
She pressed the flush button. The toilet showed no mercy to waste, the swirling vortex consuming everything into its dark depths.
"Vortex..."
Hua seemed to remember something else, but it was just a feeling of familiarity; not even the slightest image appeared.
"Water..."
More accurately, the sound of flowing water.
"Vortex and the sound of flowing water..."
Hua's intuition told her these seemed to be two very important images.
But why were they separate? Doesn't flowing water create a vortex?
This memory fragment was thoroughly destroyed, seemingly leaving only a tiny corner in the blank space, leaving Hua baffled by these clues.
She shook her head, deciding not to dwell on it.
But immediately, she clutched her head with both hands. Her mind felt foggy and somewhat pained; shaking it only made it worse, as if trying to fling her brain out.
Dragging her feet, she moved to the sink, gently turned the knob, and cold water gurgled out. Hua cupped some in her hands and splashed it onto her face, finally feeling a bit clearer-headed.
"Perhaps I can get some answers about the past from Michael. But..."
She glanced at her haggard reflection in the mirror above the sink, staring intently for a long time.
She looked about sixteen or seventeen, maybe seventeen or eighteen. Her features seemed ordinary; while not plain, she wasn't the type to stun at first glance. Also...
"..."
A practical build suited for movement.
"This is me..."
She reached a finger towards her reflection, seemingly wanting to smooth the furrowed brow of the person in the mirror through the glass.
But just as a thin layer of mist began to fog the mirror, before her fingertip felt the cold, hard touch, Hua suddenly found that furrowed brow strangely familiar...
Her vision blurred instantly. She quickly wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, and the knot in her brow deepened.
"Forget it... For the me I am now, recovering memories might be necessary, but the most important thing is... how should I face the people I once knew... and how can I become the 'me' I used to be again?"
She shook her head again, inevitably clutching it as pain flared.
"Um... Hua, could you open the door?"
Michael asked, knocking, likely having heard the flushing and running water.
Hua froze for two seconds, then leaned on the wall, taking quite some time to reach the door and turn the handle.
"Uh... I wasn't sure if you needed these?"
Michael held a yellow washbasin. A towel was draped over the side, and inside were a cup, toothbrush, and toothpaste.
"Thank you..."
Hua bit her lip, her reply barely audible, like the buzz of a mosquito.
She wanted to take the items, but as soon as her hand left the wall, she stumbled, nearly falling into Michael's arms.
"Careful."
Michael supported her arm with one hand, steadying her.
"Still having trouble moving?"
Hua gave a minuscule nod.
"Lean on my shoulder."
Hua obeyed without hesitation.
Then, Michael slowly took a step forward, and she followed, returning to the sink once more.
"Look at me, I forgot this!"
Michael smacked his forehead, and a thermos appeared in his hand.
It wasn't that the sink faucet couldn't adjust temperature; he just thought Hua might be more accustomed to using a thermos.
And indeed, she was.
So, Hua washed up facing the mirror, while Michael leaned against the nearby wall.
Initially, Hua would glance at him occasionally, but she soon realized his gaze wasn't directed at her.
His eyes focused on a point somewhere in front of him. Hua was certain there was nothing there; perhaps precisely because it was empty, it qualified as a temporary resting place for his gaze.
With someone waiting nearby, she naturally wouldn't take forever washing up. Soon, she was sitting back on the edge of the bed, supported by Michael.
Michael sat down in front of her again, this time with little hesitation:
"Hua, you should understand, more or less, that your memory has suffered some kind of loss, right?"
"Mhm."
"Then you should also guess that I'm here not just to visit the sick, but also with the duty of psychological counseling."
"Of course, I'm not a doctor. Technically, Su should be handling your therapy. But considering your memory issues, you might adopt an overly guarded stance towards people you once knew... so, in the end, I came."
"Mhm."
Hua nodded mechanically. By now, she had heard four names from Michael's lips:
Hua was herself. Michael was right in front of her. Then there was Elysia, and Su.
However, names alone couldn't piece together a complete memory.
"Listen carefully, Hua. If you simply want to know what happened in the past, I can, through certain means, directly [play] those events back in your mind right now, and then you will know everything."
"But."
Hua softly uttered the word, then quietly waited for Michael's turn of phrase.
"But, if we do that, you'll merely have watched everything that happened to you up until now from a third-person perspective. I don't want that."
"So, what do you need me to do?"
Hua pressed her lips into a thin line. If memories were water, she was currently extremely dehydrated, nearing death from thirst.
Fortunately, a clear spring was nearby, but then Michael came over, stopped her, and told her she couldn't drink the water before her.
This might anger some, but for Hua, it was precisely this that made her feel everything he said was true and reasonable.
After all, if not out of genuine concern, who, aside from certain people with peculiar desires to see others suffer, would willingly do such a thankless task?
Therefore, she unhesitatingly prepared to follow Michael's words. After all, memories weren't water; she wouldn't actually die of thirst.
"Hmph..."
Michael closed his eyes, letting out a long breath through his nose, then spoke softly:
"Your memory isn't completely lost. It's not a formatted deletion, but an [incineration]. Do you understand what I mean? It's like a fire burned away the paper storing your memories, but some edges always remain... Uh, Hua, why are you looking at me like that?"
Hua shook her head, silently retracting her puzzled gaze—How strange, can two people really have the exact same feeling and analogy for the same thing?
"I think I understand what you mean... You want me to actively search for those memory fragments. Once I understand enough about the past, you'll then [play] the past memories for me from a third-person perspective. This way, I can better feel [my former self], right?"
"Yes, that's it..."
Michael hadn't finished speaking when Hua shook her head again.
"I can't do it."
"Hm?"
"Just now... I tried. But, even in those fragments, although I experienced everything from a first-person perspective, to my senses, it felt like watching something happening to someone else."
She had expected Michael to change his approach after hearing this, or at least re-evaluate the entire plan.
But she guessed wrong this time. Michael didn't fall silent. Instead, he narrowed his eyes and gave a faint smile.
He held up a small mirror in his hand, placed it in front of Hua, and asked:
"Take a look. Do you notice anything unusual about yourself?"
Unusual?
Hua stared at her reflection in the mirror, blinking.
"Ah..."
She let out a soft sound. Michael withdrew the mirror and pointed a finger towards her eyes.
Then, he held the mirror back up in front of her again.
Hua pursed her lips, looking at herself in the mirror.
More accurately, meeting her own gaze in the mirror.
Although they were looking at each other, her expression was somewhat strange—her eyes didn't seem to meet, but rather gazed somewhere farther off. Her blue irises were like stagnant, unchanging water, lacking depth and light...
Of course, perhaps none of the above mattered.
What truly mattered were her reddened eye sockets, and the whites of her eyes, slightly red and streaked with blood vessels.
"..."
Had she cried? When?
Her clear, distinct memories only spanned the previous few dozen minutes, so "searching" for anything was quick.
It was when she was staring at her reflection in the sink mirror, feeling the familiarity of that furrowed brow, that her vision had blurred unconsciously.
"From your subjective emotional standpoint, perhaps those memory fragments struggle to resonate within you now. But they are, after all, things rooted within you."
"Hua, memory isn't simply paper as the analogy suggests. When a stack of paper is thrown into a fire, where it remains unburnt is random—though adjusting how it's thrown and other external factors can interfere with this process, it's ultimately an objective phenomenon."
"But memory tied to the soul is a completely subjective product. This means that any memory fragment you can still vaguely grasp, no matter how small, is absolutely not a meaningless 'edge' to you. They either correspond to extremely important events that happened to you, or extremely important people. In short, they are things you were unwilling to completely abandon even in the all-consuming flames."
"And now, your conscious mind can no longer resonate with them, but your body's subconscious response still exists. Do you understand?"
"I understand."
Hua opened her mouth, then quickly pressed her lips together again.
In contrast, Michael's voice always seemed drawn out.
"Besides..."
He offered Hua a gentle smile:
"Some things, you must remember for yourself for them not to be truly forgotten. And you really shouldn't forget them. Because compared to those bitter or sweet pasts, the 'present' you possessed in those moments is something that absolutely shouldn't be forgotten, absolutely, absolutely!"
"So, let's try again."
Michael looked at Hua again, but inexplicably, he met a pair of eyes misted over.
"...Michael, before we begin, there's a question I really want to ask."
"Feel free to ask."
"You..."
Hua's chest suddenly heaved twice rapidly, as if that single word had emptied all the oxygen from her lungs.
Correspondingly, her expression gradually calmed:
"Michael, I vaguely remember you once talked to me about the topic of cycles."
"[Everything in the world is actually a rather meaningless cycle], was it this?"
Michael raised an eyebrow, quickly recalling the corresponding past moment.
"Mhm... My memory cuts off the moment I asked why. So I wanted to ask, the answer you gave back then... what exactly was it?"
Michael blinked rapidly, then leaned his full weight back against the chair.
"It's actually very simple."
Hua couldn't tell if this sentence was Michael's current answer or merely a relay of what he said back then.
"The endlessly repeating cycle of this world is simply because [He] wills it so."
"Is that it?"
Hua was somewhat disappointed.
The so-called [He] could be a truly existing god, or perhaps one of the many laws of the world.
But regardless of the interpretation, Michael's words felt too casual and simplistic, making it hard for her not to feel disappointed.
The reason she was so persistent about this question wasn't just because it was the first memory fragment she'd caught, but because an irrational intuition told her that Michael's answer might genuinely affect the question of "how to be the me I once was."
But the more hope she placed in it, the more disappointed she felt now.
However, when she belatedly looked up, she met Michael's playful gaze:
"Tsk, your reaction is exactly the same as back then."
"..."
"The [cycle] I just mentioned was discussing another problem from the perspective of a different dimension."
"But I know that's not what you wanted to hear. What you want to know requires a more detailed perspective, narrowed down to human history."
"Hua, [What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun]. This is a truth summarized by humanity itself—the cycle of humanity itself. That's what you really wanted to ask about, right?"
Hua nodded blankly. With her memory missing, she couldn't even recall which book said this, let alone whether this was truly what she wanted to ask.
But she quickly realized Michael was just repeating verbatim from memory; it only seemed abrupt because her part of the interaction was missing.
"It's simple. Ultimately, no matter how times change, humans are still humans. Because of the instinct for [Survival], humans develop countless inherent flaws. And because of these flaws, corresponding virtues arise. The counterpart to [Survival] is [Sacrifice]."
"These two instincts act as the endpoints of an open interval. All human actions, whether driven by emotion or reason, can ultimately find their place within this interval. So human history, stripped of its era-specific decorations and looking only at humanity itself, is essentially just repeating cycles."
The hope ignited in Hua's eyes died down again. Although Michael had said a lot, she knew clearly this wasn't what she was looking for.
But Michael smiled again:
"Hua, if you reduce humanity down to a single individual, it's actually the same. Your subconscious encompasses the set of all your potential actions. When you can't remember your past and don't know what to do, if you follow your subconscious, you will naturally make the choices you once made. And for you, that's another cycle."
"Did you think that's what I was going to tell you? Hahahaha! Of course not!"
After a burst of laughter, Hua suddenly felt she couldn't understand Michael's words anymore, because they were no longer repetitions of the past, but a prophecy cast upon the future.
However, this prophecy seemed aimed at more than just Hua:
"Hua, you should indeed remember that phrase—your past self forged your present self. But perhaps you misunderstand it slightly."
"You think you've lost your past, but isn't it precisely your past that led to this result? Therefore, [Losing your past] is itself part of your past. And what you need to do now is step towards your future based on this past."
"Maybe, precisely because all the past was burned away, your dreams will become clearer, your future steps lighter... This might be a blessing in disguise that Kevin and I wouldn't even dare to imagine, who knows."
"However, if you still insist on finding your lost memories, then why not... go and forge a future [where you can reclaim your memories]."