3. Fragments of Memory Erased

 

A silence reigned in the room of fantasy, as I had decided to call my dog's room in these few seconds. Yet, he didn't take long to respond to my request.

"Emma, it's 4 a.m.; I doubt you're even awake."

Ah.

I checked my phone, noting the time. I had let time slip away since my research and encounter with all the magic locked in this room, forgetting that I hadn't even closed my eyes until then.

"Anyway, wouldn't it be better for everyone, including myself," remarked the demon king, yawning as he wagged his tail confined in the jar. "If we went to sleep as soon as possible? I'm really tired and was only woken up for this..."

Finn placed his paw on the jar again, making it slowly vanish once more.

"Alright! Alright! I'll keep quiet!"

"Finn, I didn't ask you to do that," I retorted, sitting down, exhausted from standing. Soon after, my dog left the jar alone.

"I don't like the tone she uses with us, that's all," he commented, lying down on the floor equally tired.

The drowsiness of both was truly contagious, so I made my best effort to contain myself.

"T-Then... tomorrow morning, no, wait, tomorrow afternoon, after we have lunch, you'll ask that Daisy person to come. If you've met before, there shouldn't be a problem. Unless you're lying to make your poor readers jealous, hehehe..."

"Definitely, we should all go to sleep. Your owner is missing a screw in her head," replied the Doberman, covering his muzzle instantly. However, Finn stayed silent.

He just stared at me, letting out a soft sigh.

"I'll call her tomorrow, but I can't guarantee she'll come. I'll do my best if that makes you feel calmer." With the sigh of a puppy, Finn approached me, resting his head in my lap and placing his paw on my leg. "... But there's a prior thing we must do."

I looked at him, confused, taking him in my hands and holding him up to eye level. I could feel his soft and tender texture as he maintained a passive gaze.

"Is something wrong? Are you okay?" I asked him, seeing him smile with subtle calmness.

Finn happily wagged his tail, placing his paw on my forehead.

"[Memory erased]"

"Eh?"

Punzzzzzz

While I looked at his adorable face, I felt a great shock in my head.

........................

........................

........................

"Woof!"

"Wait, what am I doing here?"

***

"Today is another day.

And I've decided not to leave my house until I become a millionaire.

I know, it's completely illogical, but give me a chance to explain.

My name is Emma Jupiter, I'm 22 years old, and I'm a hikikomori.

I recently made a great discovery, something that completely changed my life. Something that has brightened my life since the accident a year ago.

"Woof!"

I could work online from home.

Out there, where people are wandering, there are folks who pity me. They know what happened a year ago and speak to me with sympathy.

"Woof! Woof!"

Then, those same people talk to my family about my condition and call at ungodly hours.

So, I only have one thing in mind: to do something as soon as possible - to get rich working online and move out as quickly as I can.

"WOOF!"

It's still early, so I have to analyze the data, numbers, and figures from the receipts of an anonymous company. It's a tiring job, but I'm good at it in the end.

"........... woof"

After finishing with the documents, I made myself a breakfast and lunch that I ate almost at the same time each day.

And then, I go back to work.

I must strive to get out of this situation, anyhow.

I closed the door of my room and immersed myself in the internet, like every day, searching for job offers. With no plans to do anything else, I stayed there for the next few hours, undisturbed by anyone.

"..............................................."

"Hey, I know it's not my business, but are you okay?"

"...... No, I don't understand. The memory erasure spell was supposed to temporarily remove the strongest memories from her brain... but now it seems like she can't even see me. Or she's at least ignoring me."

Outside my room, I could hear annoyed murmurs from the neighbors, so I put on my headphones and focused on my studies.

"Why did you want to erase her memory in the first place? I thought given the situation, you were fine with her knowing your true identity."

"That's exactly why I did it, for her. Just... look at her. She's worn out, tied to a miserable life because of her family. She doesn't eat well, doesn't talk to anyone, and shuts herself in every day."

"Almost like you."

"Her reactions, her expressions, how she spoke... I could feel her racing heart and a great disappointment in her soul when I cheerfully revealed my identity. She was completely filled with stress and tension everywhere, and I only hurt her more even if she didn't show it completely."

"And then?"

"All I wanted was for her to be able to go back to her usual life, but this time with me by her side."

"And now we don't even know why you're not present in her mind or in her life at all. You seem to have accidentally erased yourself from her memories..."

"....... Damn it, no... I didn't want that."

"Would you have walked away from your blog?"

"What?"

"Would you have stopped being Fush Naemon for her?"

"Fush Naemon," I said in an instant, stopping typing on my laptop upon hearing the neighbor's voice.

............

Where... have I heard that name before...?

"...... I... possibly, yes. I thought it would be better to have a life by her side where I could soothe her insecurities and anxieties and help her like any regular dog. And thus, she could get the best ending, like in video games."

"Cheating always has bad consequences."

They stopped talking about that Fush character. Better for me.

"I found out that programmers earned well, so whenever I could, I tried learning some popular programming languages; however, I have to admit I wasn't good at it at all.

The neighbor's idea wasn't bad; maybe making a video game would be good.

No, focus. We need a better-paying job first.

"I have to do something to fix this. Woof! Woof!"

"We've seen that barking at her doesn't work; she even ignores you even when you walk beside her in the hallway."

"At least I'm trying to help; I don't want to leave my owner in that state."

"And why should you? You locked me in here unable to do anything. You deserve it."

"....... I won't have anything to eat if my owner doesn't feed me first."

"Fine, fine, fine. Let me take care of it, but I'll need you to get me out of here first."

"....... I don't trust you."

"You can lock me up again if you think it's appropriate, right? Just do it; I have more power than you for these sorts of things."

Suddenly, the sound of a shattered jar echoed outside my room, making my skin crawl.

Did I have rats in my house?

"Done, you're out and you've gotten stronger. Now help her, or I'll lock you in something smaller."

"Why am I still a Doberman?"

"What?"

"I'm the size of a Doberman, I have a Doberman's snout, and I have a Doberman's sense of smell. Why haven't I returned to my original form?"

"That has nothing to do with it! If you hurry, I might bring you back to your original form if you stop bothering me."

"Grrrr... You owe me one, Husky."

The door to my room began to shake a bit, so I turned to see what might have caused it.

However, a Doberman's head phased through the door like a ghost, hitting me right on the forehead, as I watched that enormous dog disappear as it passed through my head. And just like that, it vanished from my sight.

.............................

"I'm hallucinating, I think I'm working too much."

***

"Wh-What is this...?"

Before the Doberman, a completely dark room loomed around him.

Based on his powers, he had managed to enter Emma's mind without causing her any harm. The plan was simple: rescue her true self from there and make her replace her current self.

Essentially, there were two Emmas, the current one and the former one, and he only needed to switch their positions and confine the current one in the trunk where the previous one was.

However, there was nothing around him, which quickly puzzled him.

It was common to find a perception of how one organizes their own mind in that place, but the fact that everything was empty was too disconcerting.

With stealthy steps, and under what seemed to be hard stone, the demon king began to walk carefully.

"What was her name? Emma, I think that was it. Emma! Are you here?"

For a long while, his paws only led him into even greater darkness, until he spotted a bit of light at the end of the path.

"Emma! Is that you? I mean, I doubt you'd remember me, I don't care, but someone is paying me to make sure you remember him. Are you there?"

Running on all fours toward the light, he found a girl with black hair in an office suit, typing rapidly in front of a laptop monitor. She was seated on an office chair and a regular work desk. And apparently, she had written too much text in a single document.

"What are you doing here? Are you the current you or the former you? If I get this wrong, I'll be put in a smaller jar; come on, answer."

However, the girl just kept typing faster. It wasn't a data document she had in front of her as her usual job, but a text file.

Noticing that, he approached, standing on two legs and holding onto the desk to read what she was writing.

[Fush, fush, fush, fush, fush, fush, fush, fush, fush, fush, fush, fush, fush, fush, fush, fush, fush, fush, fush, fush, fush...]

Approaching nearly a hundred pages, that manic girl couldn't stop obsessing over such a simple name. Still, she showed clear signs of fatigue and dark circles on her face.

"You're obsessed with Fush... Are you the real one then? Doesn't matter, you're coming with me. I never make mistakes."

Releasing a bark, he made her levitate in the dark space, taking her away while she continued typing incessantly.

"Now... I just have to find your current self, the ordinary one. But why is your mind like this? Where are your memories? Your friends, your family, and all that."

"..........."

"No response, huh? Well, you do your thing. They don't pay me to talk to you."

".........."

"...Won't you talk to me even a little bit?"

".......... Fush. Who is Fush?"

"What?!"

Carefully placing her on the ground, the girl stopped writing, turning to look at the Doberman.

"I can't get it out of my head, no matter how much I write it. Tell me, Doberman, who is this Fush?"

"S-So, you're the current you? God... you're making things complicated for me. I'd better return you to where you were."

"......... Fush..."

Levitating her again, he began walking toward the place where he had found her, but there was another light there once again.

And just like the first time, there was an Emma typing non-stop on a laptop, typing the same four letters over and over.

"Fush, Fush, Fush, Fush..."

Except this time, she was saying it out loud.

"Well... here are both of you; that was really quick. Hey, the one sitting there, are you the one before the one I have floating right here?"

However, she ignored him again.

Both girls, the one on the ground and the one being held in the air, kept typing the same thing incessantly.

"This isn't normal. Let's try something..."

Creating a purple aura and levitating the second Emma as before, he kept them both typing as they were from the beginning.

"So... one of you two is the real one. I just have to figure out who."

The only difference he could see between them was that one was speaking the name aloud while the other was typing silently.

He turned around to concentrate better and placed them on the ground. And as soon as he did, he heard new typing behind him.

A third Emma now occupied the spot where the first two had been at the start.

"W-What...? Wait, no, this doesn't make sense. There can only be two of you. Who are you?"

"I am Emma, who are you?"

This third girl seemed more free to speak, yet she continued typing "Fush" even faster on the keyboard than the other two.

The Doberman looked around, trying to understand what was happening.

"Which one of you is Emma?"

"We all are," replied the third Emma, who kept typing without needing to look at the keyboard, unlike the other two. "Why do you want to know?"

"There can only be two of you, a real one and a fake one. Why are you making this job so complicated for me?"

The third Emma looked at the two girls, then looked back at the dog.

"I only see one."

The Doberman fell silent, looking closely at all three, turning his head from side to side repeatedly.

"They... are just one."

This one would fall silent, walking among the three to inspect them closely, circling around each one.

Definitely, they were identical. In appearance, figure, in what they wrote, their surroundings, how they dressed... everything.

They simply spoke differently.

"That means... you three... are the same, but clones of one after the other."

The third Emma smiled but turned back to continue typing incessantly.

"And someone... must be creating these clones. Or something. The mind itself? Is this silent void creating more copies of yourself?"

"Only someone capable of knowing themselves can create such an identical copy, don't you think?" the third Emma would say, leaving the Doberman with an even greater doubt.

The keyboards of the three Emmas kept sounding incessantly.

".................."

"Fush, fush, fush, fush, fush..."

"Maybe I should eat something, but I have to finish this job."

They were all the same person, yet they were so different.

"They... They're like layers of the same person."

At that moment, the Doberman could better understand the situation, walking aside, distancing himself from the three.

"Each one is a facet of the same girl, like the layers of an onion. Simply... when I try to remove her from there, another one appears, acting differently to see if that gets rid of me and leaves me alone. For each one I take out, a different one will come out; therefore... they are all the real Emma, just showing a different face to try to escape the situation. Each one trapped in a different perspective of what surrounds her, but ultimately..."

The Doberman would stop upon hitting an invisible wall amid all the darkness.

"The true... remains hidden."

He sat in front of the wall, making no attempt to pass through it.

"Emma, you're there behind it, aren't you?"

But no one answered.

"This is the only wall around here, and probably if I delve deeper, I'll discover it's not just a wall, but a box where you confine yourself. Am I right?"

Again, no one responded.

The Doberman wagged his tail, letting out a sigh.

"Are you the Emma sending copies of yourself to make me go away and leave you alone?"

"...................... What... do you want?"

A faint voice sounded behind the wall. Although he couldn't see anyone behind it, he knew that, weak as it was, her true personality was still alive.

"You're acting weird out there, ignoring Finn and making him nervous. By any chance, do you still remember him? I suppose the memory erasure affected you."

"Who is... Finn?"

The Doberman tilted his head, somewhat surprised.

"Wait, seriously, you forgot?"

Below the wall, a sheet was passed, where it was written:

"'Memory Erasure Magic: Applies to the strongest memories retained by the user it's applied to'; wait, how do you know that?"

"You said something similar a while ago, didn't you?"

The canine placed its paws on the wall.

"Then you did hear us!"

"I've been ordered to forget you. And follow the orders given to me. I am the consciousness of what's right and what gets rid of the bad, but I won't argue that this mind is affected again by presences that will only disturb in its life."

"... Are you really Emma...?"

The Doberman stepped back as the wall opened, revealing a space where he could enter.

Nervously, the canine cautiously stepped inside, seeing a room entirely white all around, leaving him astonished.

And in the middle of that place, was the same Emma, seated on a chair in front of a laptop, typing incessantly.

"I am Emma, the real one, Emma."

Unlike the other three, she was incessantly writing an enormous code on the computer, alongside a heap of file boxes and sheets organized by labels, piled up in large towers that seemed like they would collapse at any moment over her.

"What is all this...?"

"I have a lot of work, every single thing that Emma, I mean myself, needs to suppress from her memories, so I have to archive it in one of these boxes."

The girl's mind had been corrupted, at least several years back, by the large number of files filling up that enormous room.

"I stopped working when my grandmother died, and I passed out. Before, I took care of making my mind and body work to do everything possible so that I could make Mom and Dad happy. But since they left, I abandoned this body to its fate. It wasn't until your spell brought me back."

"Was it Finn who cast the spell and you say you don't remember?!"

"All I know is that a sharp pain attacked me and I woke up. But I heard '[Memory Erasure]' before that, and made sure to keep it. So, it's just a theory, it was some magic or I'm hypothesizing. Whatever it was, I'm happy to be back; this body has been completely out of control."

Turning to the canine, she pointed a finger.

"And I have no intention of going back."

The Doberman stepped back at the threatening yet calm look from the girl.

<<She won't listen... But it seems, as the situation stands, this is the best destiny for her. This way, she can concentrate better and focus more calmly and rationally on her work and overcome her situation. Looking at it this way... it's favorable.>>

Emma continued writing a long code, staying fixed on her monitor. She kept typing different things that the powerful Doberman had never seen before.

However, she started floating in the air, leaving her astounded.

"What are you—?"

"I'm not paid for your sanity, you're just coming with me. I'll make you remember Finn no matter what."

In vain attempts, the real Emma tried to escape from that aura that immobilized her in the air with her entire desk and chair.

They quickly left the white room, the door in the wall closing just after they were gone.

"Let me go! This body and mind will go out of control if I'm not there to control it!"

"I don't even know you enough for that to matter!"

Starting to sweat, the Doberman increased the pace, speeding up.

"You remember someone named Fush Naemon, don't you? Then you must have a trace of Finn's memories somewhere."

"Fush Naemon? I have no idea who you're talking about, let me go, I've told you!"

Despite her demands, the Doberman just kept running, carrying her through the air.

<<She doesn't remember either... Not a single one of the 4 Emmas seems to remember it...>>

It wouldn't take long for him to encounter the three Emmas again, typing on their laptops just as he had left them.

"You three are coming with me too!"

"Huh?" the three said in unison, floating in the air and stopping typing for a moment.

"Where are you even taking us?" the real Emma asked, seeing the Doberman run into the infinite void.

The Doberman fell silent, gritting his teeth for a moment to capture the only missing piece in the puzzle forming in Emma's mind.

He turned to look at the three Emmas for a moment, observing their screens with the repeated word "Fush." It was then, in a spark of his brain, that everything made sense.

He stopped, taking a breath to calm himself.

"None of the four of you remember someone named Fush Naemon?"

All four denied it, each with a different tone of emotion.

"But still, you three are obliged to write 'Fush' over and over again on that laptop, isn't that right?"

"Wait, what are they doing?" the real Emma asked, incredulously watching the screens of the three copies. "I didn't program them to do that."

"Of course not. Because, all this time, there has been someone else under the control of these, someone else who has been taking control of Emma's mind with the same power you had from the beginning."

"W-What...?" asked the real Emma, confused.

"Heh... Who do you think has been taking control of this body and mind while you were inactive? That's right, there's a fifth Emma!"

Everyone fell silent for a moment as the Doberman sniffed the rocky ground, stepping firmly.

"Someone who gives orders just like you, but who hides where they would never be found. Where she could act quietly without being discovered."

Picking up a rock from the ground with his teeth, he placed it aside. He repeated this several times, using his magic to make several rocks float at once, still keeping the Emmas in the air.

"The place where she can act hidden forever, where her true self is hidden. Where she hides her love for that fool Fush Naemon."

The Doberman stepped back from the hole he had made in the ground, retrieving a glowing purple sphere from his mouth, letting it hover in the air just inches from his mouth, expanding it larger and larger every second. When it reached a tremendous size, he hurled it into the hole.

"She's hidden beneath the rocks, which is nothing more and nothing less than the strongest layer of any living being's consciousness!"

The four Emmas fell into a deep void alongside the Doberman, with the rocky ground shattered, all plummeting downwards.

Into a void that seemed never-ending.

However, an immense light blinded them swiftly, revealing a massive laptop where, in gigantic letters, a code endlessly repeated the instruction to write "Fush."

Writing on it, an enormous Emma focused on never stopping, surrounded by gigantic books of her favorite author and all kinds of memories she had of him.

"This is... The subconscious."

Upon hearing the presence of the Doberman and the four girls, the giant Emma looked up, making eye contact with them, rendering everyone silent.

And in that moment, they began to descend more slowly, as if time had frozen, part of the Doberman's magic freezing their suspended state as well.

"All of you are the same girl who is super organized, paranoid, previously outgoing, and a fan of a fantasy writer who keeps a certain demon king awake at night. But you won't stay sane if you work separately."

Thrusting his head backward, he flung the four Emmas toward the giant Emma, all propelled forcefully toward her.

"And all of you will work together forever and bring back the original Emma!"

"Wait! Without me, she won't be able to move forward! You'll hurt her more!"

However, the canine smiled with a wicked look.

"I'm not paid for that, silly."

Without further ado, he focused his mind on a single spell and cast it towards the five.

"[Soul Merger]!"

In a flash of light, sparked by the collision of the four caught in the Doberman's violet beam, the entire place was bathed in blinding white.

And absolute silence finally descended.