Chapter 6: The Reconstruction Of The Memory Palace
I
The atmosphere was very solemn. After Hotaru shed her tears, she was determined to rebuild Minami’s Memory Palace, plank by plank, even though she wouldn’t remember her. It was a gesture of goodwill and friendship, and even if Minami didn’t remember her, Hotaru would always remember the acts of kindness that her friend did for her, the courageousness she did in facing down her bullies, and thus giving her the strength that she needed to stand up to the leader of the bullies herself.

Hotaru carried the imaginary lumber to build the Memory Palace plank by plank to make it emulate the house that Minami remembered and loved growing up before her parents were lost. She even allowed some books from her library in her own Memory Palace to be on Minami’s shelves for safekeeping and trusted Minami with those books as she began to formulate her views of the world and opened up portals to the imagination and a sense of self that was bred on beauty and wonder and marvels and knowledge that books could offer. Yukiko lent some from her formidable library, and some artifacts, along with Kaede on various psychological texts in Minami’s library to keep, while Takara lent some books of his own to Minami’s library and memory warehouse.

They stocked and reshelved the furniture, dusted down and cleared the sawdust, put up the plaster and scaffolding, and made the foundations of a sturdy home that resembled the house that Minami grew up in. Hotaru even placed a photo of Minami’s smiling Mom, who held the peace sign toward the camera, and another photo where Minami and Hotaru were sitting together on a sofa reading a children’s book together as a kid. Hotaru smiled fondly at that picture and fingered the edge of the frame before she held back tears again.

“If you need to cry again, let me know,” Kaede whispered.

Hotaru shook her head before she straightened her back. “I need to get over this! Even if…even if Minami doesn’t remember me, we’re doing the best we can to give her a headstart! She has all these wonderful books in her mental library. They will teach her all that she needs to know about the world.”

“Sometimes one needs real-life experience rather than the life of books, you know,” Yukiko said, even though she was a bibliophile herself. “Of course, that is not to discount the tremendous help and wealth of knowledge that books present. Several lifetimes lived in a single time, all the author’s wisdom and mistakes are put on display so that we can learn how to navigate our own lives. Aren’t they wonderful?”

“Yes,” Hotaru said, smiling tentatively toward Yukiko. “There was a children’s book that we loved growing up. It was a fairytale about a prince who went incognito and saved the wrongs of the kingdom as a masked crusader who would perform good deeds against the continent and get into all kinds of mishaps and trouble along the way. It sounded so romantic, and when I thought about the prince being a hero to his people, I was like, ‘I wanted to be like that prince, who would save others and help others.”

“That is a very inspiring book,” Yukiko said with a smile as she flipped her fan open. “The obstacles he had to overcome, the character transformation he experienced along the way during his adventures as he encountered a misbelief about himself and learned to overcome his initial flaw was inspiring. He had so much room to grow, but once he became the powerful person and king of his country, his story came to a satisfying conclusion and I enjoyed it very much.”

“Ah yes,” Kaede said, joining in on the conversation. “I thought the prince was always put under pressure to always perform and be perfect, but he found that instead of going out of his way to help others all the time, he could afford to be selfish for himself and take care of himself a little more. It’s an interesting Aesop’s Fable, obviously, though I mean, it works.”

“A fitting character arc,” Yukiko agreed before she said. “Honestly…though Minami’s selflessness is something to be commended. She was able to react under pressure, and if we get her under our PsiCo expertise team, she would be a valuable asset to us all.”

"I know that she'll be a valuable member of your team," Hotaru said with a smile before she wilted. "I want to help too, though I think I cause more trouble than I help at times. People have often called me meddlesome or a 'no-good' do-gooder, and sometimes people have resented it when I tried to help them."

Yukiko shook her head before she placed her hands on Hotaru's shoulders and looked deeply into her brown eyes. "You need more self-confidence in yourself. There's absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to help people for helping's sake. Even if people don't appreciate it, even if people don't want or need your help, it's a noble principle to do because doing good deeds and kind acts out of the goodness of your heart is something that should be normalized and praised. Everyone can use a pick-me-up every now and then, you know?"

Hotaru brightened before she said. "You know what, you're right. I'm not going to let anyone get me down, ever! Well, sometimes there will be rainy days and sometimes there will be sunshine, but I'm hoping for more days with sunshine than rain!"

"That's the spirit," Kaede said, smiling toward her newfound friend Hotaru. She put the last plank in the house, looking over their work with satisfaction before they all gathered around the comfortable futon that Minami rested upon and dozed away underneath the duvet. "Now, we'll wait for Minami-san to wake up."

Hotaru began wringing her hands, biting her lip, and saying nothing. "Oh, what if she doesn't wake up, though?"

"She will," Yukiko said, snapping her fan shut. Not to worry about it, dearest Hotaru. We have faith that she will fight through whatever torment she is going through with whatever soul power she has. Because when I took a look at Minami's life force, she has a great amount of spiritual energy that is larger than any capacity I have ever seen."

Hotaru stared in open-mouthed admiration, before she said, "Minami-chan is really amazing, isn't she?"

"You're amazing too, you know," Yukiko said as she 'bonked' Hotaru on the head with her closed-up fan."You resisted against Hypnos and didn't let out a single peep about Minami. You're a true friend indeed, and it will be something I'm sure to explain with valor when Minami wakes up so that she has it imprinted in her mind about what a wonderful and caring friend you are."

"Eto," Hotaru said. "Do you think that...Minami would still like the same things? Do you think that she will be able to experience the anime shows that we used to love as though for the first time again? I can't wait to see her reactions to them, though oh, it's gonna be so hard not to spoil her!"

"I know the feeling," Kaede said with a wise smile on her lips. "I'm sure that you and Minami will make some good new memories together, as the best pair of friends that we've ever seen!"

Takara looked musing for a moment, before he looked toward Minami and said nothing as he gazed upon her sleeping profile.

Very quietly he said, "About that other girl...the girl who went into the coma...is there anything we can do for her?"

Yukiko considered for a moment, before saying, "It seems like her Memory Palace wasn't damaged as much as Minami's was, though she will wake up with a very frightful memory of what happened, though no one will believe her that it actually happened. Sometimes even when the paranormal happens all around us, humankind wants to remain ignorant of the things that lay behind the veil."

Hotaru bowed her head. She knew how hard humankind tried to deny things that did not fit within their paradigm of reality. It was the way of things, and when it came to losing their sense of being right to admit that they’re wrong, they would rather live in denial.

“You know, I’m still kind of on the fence about this,” Hotaru said, while the rest of the PsiCo team looked toward Hotaru and regarded her words with a solemn weight. “I love to help people. I remember that storybook about a prince who would go about performing good deeds because it’s the right thing to do. Though about my own story, my own adventure—I’m not sure what I should do. I mean I read a lot of books, I want to be a writer, and I want to experience life, but sometimes, I’m just afraid of going out there and living life like it’s meant to be.”

“As long as you have a solid support network, you can overcome anything,” Kaede said gently. “We can be that support network for you, Hotaru. Just remember, once you go to the paranormal world—there is no turning back.”

Hotaru laughed with a bit of a humorless chuckle, before saying, “Gosh, Minami and I would gossip about ghost stories all night long when we were young and didn’t think a thing about it. How strange it is that ghosts and the paranormal are real!”

Yukiko folded her arms underneath her voluminous chest. “That is only a natural reaction of the people who come to us for our expertise.”

“Right?” Hotaru said before she looked downward. “I’m still digesting all this.

“It is strange indeed to think about,” Yukiko said with a nod of her head. “However, there is something that I want to show you, Hotaru.”

“What is it?” Hotaru asked, with her heart fluttering in her throat.

Yukiko slid out a book from the various tomes that were in Minami’s room. She handed it to Hotaru, and Hotaru flipped through all its pages. It was all blank.

“Eh?” Hotaru said, trying to look for something within it, whether a quote or a written line, though there was none. “There’s nothing in it!”

“That’s the point,” Yukiko said. “That is for Minami to write her warehouses of memories into—her new experiences and thoughts and passions and hopes and dreams as she relives life as though reborn anew again.”

“It’s like the legend of a phoenix,” Hotaru whispered before Yukiko nodded.

“We’re going to keep Minami for observation for now with our facility and also rehabilitate her, as she was a personal victim of Hypnos. I’m sorry that we couldn’t do enough to protect either of you, so think of this as trying to redeem ourselves for our failure to do so. We’ll pay for everything, of course.”

“That is generous! But…”

Yukiko arched a brow.

Hotaru bowed her head.

“Is there a reason why you’re being so nice to us?”

Yukiko split her cherry-red lips into a smile, before she said. “Obviously things in life don’t come for free. In truth, we wanted to study Minami and see if she has a ‘re-awakening’.”

“Eh? A re-awakening? What’s that?”

“It’s a phenomenon where a person suffers a ‘soul death’, that is, their psyche gets shattered in the Phantom Realms and this affects their physical body in the real world and causes it to land in a coma,” Yukiko said. “Because of this, when a person is in a coma and unlikely to wake up again save for professional expertise, Minami has had professional care and restored her personality, saving her memories. Though perhaps without her memories, she will experience something else instead. A phenomenon known as a re-awakening, which allows her to grow immeasurably beyond her original capacities.”

“You mean…she’ll have stronger superpowers or something? Speaking of which…what is this Phantom Realm stuff anyway? I mean it all seems surreal and different and I can’t make sense of it!”

“The Phantom Realms are a psychological realm, where ghosts and other things linger on another dimension, a superliminal space where anything of the imagination and psyche could happen,” Yukiko said. “It’s an interesting phenomenon created by the collective unconscious of humankind—but it’s also the primordial soup or ‘ether’ of ‘souls’ and ‘psyche’.”

“I’ve heard about those things,” Hotaru said thoughtfully. “In psychology books. Are you perhaps referencing Carl Jung?”

“That’s exactly the person that I’m talking about,” Yukiko said with a smile as she unfurled her fan and waved it to her face, jutting one slender and shapely leg out and holding it in the air, showing a scandalous amount of creamy white skin that uplifted the split skirt of her Chinese dress with intricate floral patterns. “Jungian psychology is very fascinating, isn’t it? The foundation of psychology and everything else started with Freud and Carl Jung, who was one of his students. As the people who populated the modern psychoanalytic movement, they are usually well regarded in circles of intellect, though of course there are some debates and moments of intrigue that expand upon their original theories or rebuff them entirely. Such is the way of science, though sometimes psychology isn’t considered to be as tangible of science as say, chemistry or biology.”

Hotaru looked down at Minami’s sleeping face on the futon before she noticed that she was coming up with a high fever. She got a clean washcloth with compressed ice, giving the cool water and bag to rest against Minami’s forehead. She wondered if the reconstruction of memories led to this high fever, though she knew that this was something that Minami had to fight before she made her way to consciousness again.

“Do your best, Minami-chan,” Hotaru whispered, before squeezing out some tears. “I want you to fight. You always fight for everyone else except yourself. But please. Please. Just make sure that you make it through and fight this! Not just for my sake, but your sake!”

Kaede looked down upon Minami, who adjusted the coverlets on Minami’s sleeping body and while Yukiko adjusted the air conditioner to make sure that Minami was cool enough underneath her blankets. Takara continued holding Minami’s hand, closing his eyes as though recollecting some lost memories, and Hotaru gazed at this for a lingering few seconds before turning away.

“Takara-kun,” Hotaru began, while Takara continued to hold Minami’s hand and look toward Hotaru with a violet-eyed gaze. “Are you familiar with Minami-chan in any way?”

Takara regarded her for a few moments before he let out a sigh. He put a hand on Hotaru’s shoulder, before saying, “I’m sorry if I’m being unseemly by holding Minami’s hand. It’s just something that I wish someone would do for me if I were not in high spirits or not feeling well, that’s all.”

Hotaru blushed a bit, before saying, “Oh…I see…”

“Is there something that you wish to say to me, Hotaru?” Takara said kindly, his violet eyes with a gentle shimmer in them.

Hotaru shook her head. “Ah, no! I just…I thought…Do you fancy Minami-chan?”

Takara gave her a measured gaze, before saying, “I thought that her actions today were commendable. I’m rather impressed with how she handled things and saved everyone by being quick on her feet. She had an intuition that knew what to do and was sharp on the job. I think she would be a good fit for us paranormal investigators.”

“I see,” Hotaru said, looking down at Minami’s sleeping head and fluffing her pillows as best as she could. “She wouldn’t want to be babied like this, though sometimes she needs to learn how to be taken care of, you know?”

Takara smiled, before saying, “You know a lot about your friend and care about her with your whole heart. I also find that commendable. What I found impressive is that no matter how hard Hypnos tried to probe your mind and leak her secrets, you wouldn’t spill the beans. Not one word out of you. It must’ve been tough.”

Hotaru became flustered and fiddled with the ends of her skirt, fidgeting her legs and squirming. “I…I don’t know about that. But that person, this Hypnos…he’s going to come back again, isn’t he?”

“Who knows,” Takara said vaguely, a far-off cast to his eyes as he continued to hold Minami’s hand.

Hotaru bit her lip, yet she said nothing.

Minami started to stir and moaned.

Everyone leaned forward, pressing closer to see whether Minami would make a full recovery or not.

“She’s not out of the woods, yet,” Yukiko said solemnly. “Though I think this is a good sign. If we make further progress in her rehabilitation, she will become better at living life without her memories. Memories form a huge identity of who we are—we are not only our present selves but our past and present working in tandem with a long-term future self that we’re projecting through a decision-making process that idealizes win/win scenarios for everyone, hopefully.”

“Would you call this a win/win scenario, though?” Takara said solemnly, his face drooping in sadness toward Minami’s plight. “I mean…Minami has suffered so much for the sake of everyone else. She sacrificed herself so that no one else had to suffer.”

“She would’ve done it anyway if you tried to stop her,” Hotaru said with a laugh before she blew her nose in a hankie. “That’s just how she is. Stubborn as a bull, the phrase goes.”

“But that stubbornness is probably the character trait that we need when it comes to hunting down spooks and mysterious phenomena that happen in this area,” Takara said with a fond smile before he tightened his grip on Minami’s hand.

Minami continued to shift and moan underneath the blankets, letting out sighs of frustration as her fever peaked and pulsed. Everyone decided that the best thing to do was to wait until her body stabilized and recovered on its own with its natural antibodies and white blood cells fighting the foreign invasion of an infection. Once she stopped tossing and turning in her bed, she slowly cracked her eyes open and eyed their faces.

“Who…are you people?” she asked.