Chapter 14
A white room? …Like a hospital?
"If that's the case, maybe we are here because of a common custom," Hoku suggests, aiming to pry open Yu-ze's brittle features and detect any unusual recognition.
However, Yu-ze only seems puzzled by Hoku's notion.
"What do you mean?"
Ah—he doesn't know. We are practically still strangers, Hoku thinks, suppressing the urge to grimace.
"My earliest memory also happens to be within a white room, but… I don't recall seeing children. How old are you anyway? There's no way you're a child."
Yu-ze chuckles and leans back, letting the center of his shoulder blades bump the side of the stump Hoku is sitting on.
His back curves a little as he settles deeper into comfort. The grass provides a cushioned pallet, accompanied by a subtle breeze.
For a moment, lying on the grass sounds more appealing than sitting on a solid tree stump.
"I think you are comparing traits. I can assure you that we do not speak of the same place. Otherwise, you would have been here a lot sooner."
Hoku raises an eyebrow reflexively.
"How would you know? You claim to have transparent certainty on the little aspects of your past that appear to you."
This time, Yu-ze breathes out, and his knees bend in an arch as he drags his right leg closer to his abdomen.
"I know it is impossible for you and I to have transmitted that same experience. I am uncertain because those memories have only visited me in mimicked dreams. You cannot dream in this place, but it is probable for our subconscious to revisit records within our long-term memory and form something in a state of dormancy," Yu-ze exclaims, sealing his eyes.
"That doesn't explain why I couldn't be related to those dreams—or memories."
Hoku folds his hands, angling his knuckles into a lower position before pressing them into his lap.
"I mentioned the reasoning when I began ascribing my history. If you were like the rest of us, then 'Hoku' would have been here long before the present. You probably remember waking up in a white room, but according to the fragments of my own memories, I was escaping from it."
He looks over at Yu-ze.
Yu-ze's expression is calm, and despite recalling such a seemingly dark subject, his eyelids remain closed.
"How… do you live out here?"
Hoku decides to reserve Yu-ze's response for later and changes the subject.
He's worried that if he appears too persistent about a matter Yu-ze has claimed to answer in its entirety, the other man will get irritated and refuse to give him further explanations.
Yu-ze might even rush the exchange so he can chat with someone empty of the same ignorance.
Hoku lowers his chin and shakes his head.
I shouldn't overthink. I am barely aware of his habits, much less what he considers annoying.
"Here as in the forest, or here as in the timestream?"
Hoku glances in front of him and hesitates before replying, weighing the benefits of understanding both.
I thought I stood in the timestream… are the allusions of the forest and timestream different?
"The forest, I suppose… granted, I've been handed the impression that it is the timestream."
Even though Hoku doesn't possess a wrinkle of either—other than it's the possibility that this stream is a 'sequel' to his universe.
"This isn't a forest."
Yu-ze's eyelids flutter open, but his lips remain closed.
Li had approached them insidiously at some point during their conversation.
Both of them face the direction of his voice, but it is only Hoku who needs to sober a scowl.
Juno is beside him, firmly clasping onto the piece of Hoku's shirt that Li had helped himself to.
"...Forgive me. I meant the nucleus, because forests have trees, right? Though this doesn't necessarily look like the organelle inside a cell either."
Li spares Hoku a bleak glance before looking away, hurling back from behind a wake of trees further inside the nucleus.
"Flaunting your intelligence doesn't make you any more aware of the universe you're residing in at present. If this were your typical forest, then it wouldn't be in our 'improved' universe. It's a nest of dead monsters, a domain that cannot perform the functions of a natural ecosystem. For that reason, we don't live here. We approach it for paltry resources."
"A nest—?"
"As for how we avoid death in the timestream, it relies upon the mantra we find ourselves in before reaching the next destination," Li says, harnessing a fervent glare and avoiding eye contact with everyone around him.
Hoku doesn't say anything even when Li stops speaking, hoping that he will immerse himself further into the subject so Hoku can profit off the information.
Throughout the expanse of his, and their placidness, Hoku gathers a few of Li's most prominent qualities.
Strangely, Hoku had noticed Li's unique appearance amidst their initial interaction but had refrained from letting it register past what he was seeing.
Li's hair is pale, nearly white in the sunlight. His eyes are almond-shaped and bear jade green irises. The color scheme of his features is entrancing.
However, despite the bright combinations adorning him, the darkened flesh above his cheekbone and his flaccid eyelids overwhelm his presence with lifelessness.
For some reason, Hoku's mind had regarded him as though he'd previously seen him a thousand times.
Can the brink of insanity induce strangers to omit a sense of familiarity? Perhaps as a way to cope with confusion…
"If you have a question, ask. Don't pretend you're mousy and belittle yourself," Li says. His head isn't turned, but Hoku can mildly detect the green stationed in the corner of his eye.
"Oh. What—what are the resources for? They must be vital if they bring you to a deadly place like this."
"Every crevice of this universe is deadly. We gather raw materials from the Recesses of life to start the process of forging an elixir. Though for you, it can be recognized as a weapon containing the only energy capable of slaughtering beasts such as The 'Return.'"
A familiar sensation of dread and fear arises. Hoku's hands feel hot, but his movements hardly adjust toward what he is trying to tolerate.
His fingers curl further into the bone gaps aligning with the rigid grasp of his hands.
There is rustling on the ground next to him, but he can only stare blankly at his hands.
He is secretly relieved when Yu-ze intervenes, his voice more weighted than when it was just the two of them chatting.
"A thoughtform convinces the timelines, which is effectively an intricate system woven from threads of pure energy, that the weapons exist. Your means of defense will be completely defective when you leave the stream."
Yu-ze hesitates for a moment, and Hoku draws in the air before turning his transfixed gaze toward him.
"The same can be said about the prior universe to the sequel. Even the most intricate machinery becomes an object the precise instant it leaves the universe that held the original foundation."
"Foundation, are you alluding to man? Humans are responsible for creating machines."
"Yes, which is why that universe can exist as one world inside a solar system of many more. The timestream is pure chaos. It is a loom of separate worlds all conjoined. Rather than planets that orbit the sun, however, it is a series of tangled threads that orbit the central stream."
Does he intend to uphold that I transmigrated to a failed universe that orbits itself because there is nothing to constrain the other worlds inhabiting it?
The Memoir Chapter 10
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Ever.
-The Memoir Chapter 10 end-