Chapter 12
Juno greeted Hoku with a smile before reaching over to ruffle the twins' hair.
"I see you found your way. Finally decided that exploring isn't going to save your life?"
Hoku stared down at his boots.
"I'm only messing with you, kid. Though please take me seriously when I tell you that some things are better left as mysteries."
"Sorry," he said at last.
Juno nodded, as if to assure him, then looked toward something behind them.
"I need to speak with someone else for a moment," she said, frowning slightly. "In the meantime, if you haven't already, gather the names. We should have spare supplies. See if Yu-ze or Fleur can tend to your head wound."
"Wait—" Hoku trailed off.
Hoku took a few steps, then stopped in front of the man in black.
"She's right," the man said. "Every discovery comes with a cost. Anything we know was never meant to be known. You're not supposed to understand this universe. If you do… you'll be reset."
Hoku froze. His expression stiffened, and his pupils contracted.
How was he supposed to move forward when everyone around him seemed to know more?
Yu-ze's hand landed on his shoulder, its warmth cutting through the cold rush in his veins.
Sweat gathered across Hoku's forehead.
"Let's discuss another subject for now," Yu-ze said. "Surely, you must be somewhat curious about the guests you've been stranded with. I only know so much about their backgrounds, but when it comes to names and habits, my understanding is a little better than nothing."
Hoku swallowed, then asked, "What is your name?"
"Yu Ze Yong," he replied, gesturing for Hoku to walk with him.
As they went on, Hoku noticed Li polishing the blade of his sword with the strip of brown cloth torn from his arm.
The others had already gathered around Juno and were chattering away.
'Hm...they seemed close, but not so much as the twins do.'
Hoku glanced up at Yu Ze. "Does Juno have any family?"
Yu Ze lifted his brows. "If you mean by blood, none that we know of."
"Oh." Hoku pressed his lips together and lowered his gaze to the grass.
After a moment, Yu Ze let out a soft breath of laughter. "No need to look so troubled.
He seemed to think better of something, then added, "Though Juno is rather different. Most of us found one another afterward. She and Li have lived under the same circumstances longer than the rest of us."
That was not what Hoku had expected.
"Then they're distant relatives?"
Yu Ze shook his head.
That was not what Hoku had expected.
"So they're distant relatives?"
Yu Ze shook his head. "No. It's more a matter of mentor and scholar, as they put it. Still, the two of them have likely been together longer than any of the rest of us."
Hoku rubbed the back of his head, unsure of how to respond to the man.
By then, they had come to another tree stump, and he stopped beside Yu Ze.
"What about you?"
"What about me?"
"You mentioned knowing little about their pasts. Does that include your own?"
Yu-ze lowered himself beside it.
For an instant, something slipped from beneath his mantle. He adjusted it before Hoku could properly see it.
Hoku did not look for long. It had seemed too slight to be anything like Li's.
Yu Ze patted the smooth base of the stump, and Hoku sat without protest.
When Yu Ze reached beneath the mantle again, he drew out a small brown cotton pouch. He loosened the drawstring with both hands and tipped the contents into his palm.
Frayed gray bandages, a few silver pins, three small vials of ground herbs.
After setting aside the bandages and pins, he rose.
"Tell me, Hoku. What is it you're really asking?"
Hoku frowned a little. "My only memories outside the Sequel are of a white room and other children. I may be wrong. It may have been something else entirely. But the last thing I remember of your world was heavy rain... and gunfire."
Yu Ze stepped behind him and rested a hand on his shoulder.
"Use your sleeve and wipe the blood from your face. Then pull your hair back. If I leave that cut any longer, it will only worsen."
Hoku did as he was told, rubbing the blood from his cheek and the side of his neck before holding his bangs back with one hand. The worst of the throbbing had already passed.
"If that is the case," he said, leaning back a little to catch Yu Ze's expression, "then perhaps we came from the same beginning."
Yu Ze's hands paused. "What do you mean?"
"My earliest memory is also of a white room," Hoku said. "Only I don't remember any children in it." He glanced up at him. "And you are certainly no child."
Yu Ze let out a low breath of amusement as he fixed the last pin in place. Then he settled back onto the grass.
Hoku lifted a hand to the bandage, feeling carefully along its edge.
"You are drawing comparisons," Yu Ze said, leaning back against the stump. "But we are not speaking of the same place. If we were, you would have come here much sooner."
Hoku raised a brow. "And you know that how? You speak with certainty about things that only come to you in pieces."
Yu Ze drew one knee closer. "Because it is impossible. What I remember of that room only ever returns in borrowed dreams. And there are no dreams here. What rises during dormancy is only memory turned over in the dark. That is not the same thing."
"That still doesn't explain why I couldn't be tied to those memories."
Hoku folded his hands in his lap.
"I already told you why," Yu Ze said. "If you had come from the same place as the rest of us, then Hoku would have been here long before now. You remember waking in that room. I..." His eyes drifted shut for a brief moment. "I remember getting out."
Hoku studied him, noting his expression had hardly changed.
"How did you get here?"
Yu Ze was quiet for a while.
Then he asked, "Here as in the forest, or here as in the timestream?"
'I thought this was the timestream... did I misunderstand Polaris?'
"The forest, I suppose," Hoku said at last. "Though I was under the impression they were the same."
"It is neither."
Hoku whirled his head around. Li had come up without a sound.
"Then what is it?" Hoku asked.
Li sized him up before looking away again.
Yu Ze answered first. "Strictly speaking, it is a mantra set within the time—"
"Haven't you heard?" Li interuppted. "The archivists struck it from every category they had. On the voyage charts, it is labeled as nothing more than a burial nest of monsters." His gaze shifted toward the trees. "Better for the rest of us. Fewer scavengers find their way here."
Yu Ze folded his arms. "So we all have things left to learn."
As Hoku looked between the two, waiting for one of them to continue, he found himself properly taking in Li for the first time.
Li had a striking face. Beneath the branches, his pale hair looked almost white in the shade, though wherever the dappled light reached it, the color warmed to a soft gold. His eyes were olive-green and slightly tilted at the corners, their keen color making the dark circles beneath them look strangely out of place. The beige outer robe he wore was drawn over darker layers, with a short sheath and a small sack hanging at one side. It was plain, but not carelessly so.
'One bad night doesn't leave a man with eyes like that…'
"If there's something you want to ask, ask it."
Hoku's fingers twitched at his side. He swallowed once, then forced himself to ask, "What are the resources for? They must be vital if they bring you to a place like this."
"Every part of this universe is perilous," Li replied. "We gather raw materials from the Recesses of Life to begin forging an elixir. For you, it can be understood as a weapon—the only energy capable of killing the inhabitants."
Hoku's palms grew warm, and he pressed his fingers harder into them.
"An intricate system woven from pure energy called vitalis, in which the weapons exist. However, they serve nothing outside of the timestream."
"The same applies to the universe before this one," Yu-ze continued. "Even the most intricate machinery becomes nothing more than an object once it leaves the foundation that sustains it."
"Foundation," Hoku repeated. "Are you talking about humans? The humans who create machines?"
"Yes," Yu-ze confirmed. "That is why that universe can exist within a solar system. A world among many, orbiting a star. But the timestream is different. It is not a universe. It is chaos. A loom of separate worlds, all entangled. Instead of planets orbiting a sun, there are threads splitting around a central stream."
'A failed universe,' Hoku thought.
'But why had I been spared here?'
The Memoir Chapter 9
[This section has no objective]
Rule 14
Memories are a concept derived from creation. It is impossible to forge memories in the sequel and equally impossible to reserve them from another universe. Any living being with such an ability will be targeted by the designated monstrous lifeforms inhabiting the timestream.
Do not speak of a past that has never existed. There is only what remains in your presence.
-The Memoir Chapter 9 end-
The Memoir Chapter 10
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Ever.
-The Memoir Chapter 10 end-