Strange Memories With You, My Dear

After a long time, I received a call from Mineko in the latter half of January. As it would be difficult to get together after graduating from university and entering the workforce, the plan was to get together with members of our high school track team for the final time as students. On the scheduled day, we met at a bar near the nearest station to the high school we attended at 6 P.M.

“So, are you and Sato still together?” Some time after the drinking session began, I asked Mineko, who was seated near me. She shook her head and chuckled.

“No, we broke up a long time ago. I think it was about six months after we started university.”

“Ah, really?”

“What about you? How is Yuuko-san?”

“… Yes. Well, her body…”

I replied. Mineko looked doubtful and asked, “What do you mean?”

“Actually, She has been in the hospital since the end of last year. She was disoriented, so her memory is a little fuzzy right now.”

“Ehh?! Is that alright?”

“Yes. She said that she hadn’t completely forgotten everything, and that she would remember what she needed to in time.”

“But it’s not a big deal.”

“Yes, but maybe things could have been worse. At least for now, she’s on the road to recovering her strength and memory, so she’s good to go.”

I replied and drank my beer, which was getting a little lukewarm.

A male member of the club who was a good friend of mine sat in the front of the room. He had a fit figure in high school, but he looked to have stopped exercising and gained weight after university. The females, too, had their hair dyed and makeup applied to give a different impression. Mineko, too, had her hair changed from black and straight to dark brown and loosely curled inward.

What is now will be an illusion a moment later. Time passes, and what has been experienced becomes a murky memory. Important memories that are recalled often are consolidated each time, whereas less important ones go away.

I can no longer remember the scenery of the high school grounds as vividly as I used to, where I must have spent hours every day of my life. For more than two years, I must have seen a lot of things every day, had a lot of conversations with club members, and put in a lot of hard work, but all those hours were now as vague as fragments.

Still, the traces of it will always be etched somewhere in this world in some form or another.

Seeing Mineko for the first time in several years, my own troubles when I liked her, the way she looked when we were running track, the night scenes when we were going home together, her slender arms stretched out from her short sleeves, the lights of the street lamps that were still lit in the dim city when we were heading to practice together in the early winter morning, her white breath and mine emerging, the slightly fuzzy and rough texture of the jersey she was wearing, all these things came back to my mind, many, many things.

I was wondering whether Yuuko could recall her own memories, and this remembrance of my own past encouraged me. Human memories are vague. You can’t recall everything when seeing a movie in its entirety. Yet, there is a plethora of info crammed into the shards of memory that remain in a person’s mind, like fragments.

Even things we thought we had forgotten might be reawakened by happenstance. When you are listening to music or smelling a fragrance wafting in the breeze, memories from your distant past may suddenly rebound to you.

How are our memories and minds connected to this world?

I don’t know. But in this world, our memories are indeed preserved. Whenever we remember, the past that has passed will always come back to haunt us.

The party ended around 9:00 P.M., and Mineko and I, who lived in the neighborhood, rode the train back to Irisawa Station and walked home along the local road. I could smell the sweet fragrance of perfume or shampoo mingled with the smell of the tavern where I had just been from Mineko, who was walking behind me with a fluffy scarf wrapped around her.

It had been a long time since we had walked this town together. In the darkness of the winter night, the lights of a convenience store that had been there since we were in junior high school and a new shopping mall that had recently opened shone brightly. As we reached a pedestrian crossing and came to a halt, Mineko said,

“You see. How you used to ask me if I ever had the same dream over and over again?”

“Did I ask you that? I don’t remember.”

“I heard. In senior year of high school, just before the last tournament — Then, last autumn, I had the same dream several days in a row. It was a strange dream, like if I’m a little different from myself, but yet acting like myself.”

A number of cars with their headlights on were passing in front of us. The shadows of me and Mineko were repeatedly moving, splitting, and overlapping each other as they were illuminated by light from different directions.

Then I said,

“There was an overlap of information in your brain with yourself in a parallel world. And during REM sleep, the hippocampus was sorting through those memories, and I think that’s why you had those dreams.”

Mineko was silent. Then she said “Nakayama-kun, you’re drunk, aren’t you?” and turned her staring eyes on me.

I said, “Maybe so,” as I looked at the moon floating in the dark night sky.

◇

Yuuko had to stay some time in the hospital thereafter to rehab muscles that had weakened while she slept and to have her brain checked. I was on my way home from college to pay her a visit. I told Yuuko about our time together thus far. Although there was some uncertainty in her memory, including that of me, she seemed to have no difficulty in living for the time being.

According to the doctors, there appeared to be no effect at all, either on language or on what I remembered in my body, called procedural memory. One day, when she went to the piano in the hospital’s rehabilitation facility, Yuuko began to play a song with a slurred tune.

Fortunately, she remembered that she had passed her teaching certification exam. Her new position as a teacher at an elementary school in Tokyo has been delayed since she has not entirely recovered from this disorder, and she will have to relearn some things before starting work, but she has finished all of her university courses and will be able to graduate in March. Her immediate goal was to regain her strength so that she could attend the graduation ceremony.

She was able to walk without a walker or crutches after two weeks, but slowly. We’d converse in the hospital common room or, if the weather permitted, in the courtyard. I had finished my graduation research presentation and was on spring vacation. It was a pleasant day, with a gentle warmth from the sun. I went to the hospital, walked carefully to the courtyard with Yuuko, and sat on a bench in the sun. As I normally do, I reminded Yuuko about our past. Yuuko listened to the story with a smile on her face. Yuuko let out a little breath and fell down on her face after talking for a time and when the subject had died down.

“Sorry, are you tired?”

When I asked her that, Yuuko shook her head and said, “I’m sorry.”

“I do remember properly that I liked you. But I still couldn’t connect the memories in my mind… Like fragments, a number of fragments get mixed up in my head, or disappear…”

“It’s okay. Take it slowly, you will remember.”

Memory is intertwined with many things, Mr. Burley said.

She said that the memories of reality and the memories of the parallel world in her mind have both been weakened to the same degree, but that the memories she does not use would be forgotten over time, while the ones she recalls often, the memories she need, will be naturally strengthened. If we continue to spend time with her, the weakened neuronal connections may re-establish spontaneously, and the worm-eaten memories may be filled in. This world has the imprint of our past, and humans have the ability to remember it. So I’m sure it will be fine, I’m sure of it.

“Hold on, I’ll get you a drink. Yuuko, what would you like to drink?”

“Ah, then, milk tea.”

“Okay.”

There were several vending machines queued up, but I returned to the bench with an iced milk tea in a plastic bottle from her favorite maker and a coffee for myself.

“Hero you go.”

“Thanks.”

Yuuko took a sip and accepted it. Two small children, a boy and a girl, ran by us, joyfully shrieking. I wonder if they are children visiting someone. They seem energetic and smile a lot. Then, out of nowhere, Yuuko mumbled something.

“Pool… Amusement park…”

I was like, “Do you remember that?” I asked.

But eventually, I realized, that’s our memories of the other world. It was ironic. Just when I thought she was about to share a memory about me, she revealed that it was a memory of us from the other side of the world. However, Yuuko continued with these words.

“The hydrangeas and azaleas were in bloom… From far away, a boy in uniform walked up to me…”

I gasped. Now, in her memory, we are about to meet again.

“I remember… We met then, didn’t we…?”

She looked up and said with a happy smile on her face. Then, closing her eyes, she put the scene into words.

“The sun was setting, and from far away, I heard a sound like something striking metal… There was a soft early summer breeze… Sitting on a bench, having a drink together, and talking… Yes, just then, I was drinking this, this milk tea!”

“Yes, yes that’s right.”

As if evoked by her words, the scene from the amusement park where we first met flashed across my thoughts. The way the vending machines and streetlights glowed white as the surrounding landscape sank into the darkness of dusk, the hardness of the bench I was sitting on, the bitterness of the coffee I was drinking at the moment, the way Yuuko’s short-cut hair easily persuaded in the wind when we were in high school… Those moments, those memories came flooding back to me.

I was very happy that she remembered her own memories, even if it was only one.

“When your body is healthy again, let’s go to different places. If you actually go to the place, you may remember many things that you have forgotten.”

Her brain is activated by stimuli from the outside world. The smells, sounds, and sensations of the air, as well as the varied knowledge of this world, abruptly interfere with our memories and bring them back. The weakened neuronal connections were strongly linked again.

“If you actually visit the place, you may come up with something else.”

When we first met, she was right.

We’d been building up a lot of memories over the past four years. If we gather the pieces of her memory in such a way again this time, the threads of her history that have become entangled may be organized into a single thread.

“We’ve done the same thing before.”

I said, “What?” Yuuko tilted her head.

“We share a common memory of the unknown. We actually went to check out the various places in that memory. You, eighteen years old then, called it ‘Collecting Fragments of Memories’.”

Yuuko’s physical strength recovered promptly, and her brain was spared any surgical damage. She is scheduled to be released next week.

“That name sounds like me.”

“Since it’s you, you probably still have the notebook you used at that time. There was lots and lots of information written. Look for them when you get out of the hospital.” I said.

Yuuko still has a sense of her former self. I was going to keep supporting her so that she could make her memories her own again.

“I can’t wait to remember things and get back to my old self.”

Perhaps cheered up by remembering one thing, Yuuko said with a smile. I was happy that she wanted to bring back memories of her time spent with me.

“You’ll definitely remember. And once we’ve done something similar. Besides, there are definitely traces of our memories left in this world. Let’s pick it up again.”

I was overjoyed when Yuuko awoke with no significant side effects. Perhaps her brain might have arranged the information efficiently without memory rarefaction, and she could have awoken with a whimper without memory confusion. Perhaps a world like this exists someplace else. Who knows whether what I and the others around Yuuko did was the proper thing to do.

But this is the only world I’m in. Even if she can’t remember much of her past, she can build up her memories again in the future.

“I’ll give you a summary of where we went and what we did the next time I see you.” I said, remembering how we were when we first met, “I’m going to write about me and you for hundreds of pages, like a novel.”

“So many?” She said as she laughed.

And so, our “Collecting Fragments of Memories” began again.

This time, to search for our own authentic memories of our youth, not the phantom memories of a parallel world. For starters, over the spring, I spent every night when I came home from the lab writing a 300-page book about what had happened to us. I received an email from me in the other world that I never imagined I’d get again, the world that I was fated to be a part of, the other day. He wrote a text describing his and Yuuko’s experiences in that world.

I wrote this text in reference to it so that Yuuko here can discern the difference between what happened in this world and what happened in the world to which she was bonded.

—I hope this helps her to recover some of her memory.

With this in mind, I saved a text describing what happened to me and my girlfriend at the end of my adolescence, between the ages of 18 and 22, in my cell phone memory.

I’m going to give her this data tomorrow when I visit Yuuko, who is reviewing her studies to become a teacher at home until she is assigned to an elementary school.

And then, if there was some place she wanted to go, we would both go there, just like we did that summer when we were eighteen.

——END.