'Dark...?'
When Asha woke up, the first thing she noticed was the darkness.
When she was human, she could feel her lazy body, hoarse voice, and bad mood right after waking, but as a shattered gem, none of that remained.
It was strange for her to be completely exposed to this darkness since she always used her Appraisal to replace her vision.
If it wasn't for that, all her contact with the external world would be cut, and she would never be able to interact with anyone after being shattered.
Maybe she couldn't even escape from the kindergarten since she couldn't fix the Warp Pad in the first place.
Asha immediately used her Appraisal at a low level to check her surroundings.
'Priyanka?'
What she analyzed was none other than Priyanka.
Both were lying down on a bed. Due to their difference in height, it seemed as if Priyanka's body was completely covering hers while holding her in her arms.
The sight was so shocking that Asha became speechless for several minutes.
Why was she on Priyanka's bed and being used as a human pillow?
Little by little, Asha's memories came back to her, washing away her sleepiness entirely.
Her fingers started to tremble incessantly, and a faint light emerged from her gem.
Her emotions were so intense that her gem was becoming unstable.
The image of her holding a pillow in the middle of the night, trying to muster the courage to sleep with Priyanka, flashed in her mind.
Even when Priyanka hugged her, she had accepted it as if it were normal.
She remembered the way Priyanka caressed her hair and the feelings she had before falling asleep in her arms.
'I can't believe I did it...'
Yesterday, she thought she had been rational, but after waking up today, she realized how crazy her thoughts had been.
She had used the excuse that Priyanka was her friend to sleep together, simply because she was scared to be alone at night.
What was she? A child?
She wanted to punch her past self so hard that she would never think of such ridiculous ideas again.
Invading her friend's privacy in the middle of the night—her friend, who was married! She was so ashamed that she wanted to disappear.
Asha focused her Appraisal on Priyanka, who was sleeping peacefully.
Seeing Priyanka's slightly drooling face while her inner self was falling apart somehow calmed Asha's emotions.
Asha brought her hand to Priyanka's face and poked it.
Every time her finger touched her cheeks, Priyanka's face would frown slightly, and she would move her hands as if making strange noises.
Asha couldn't understand how a woman so serious could have such a cute side.
After a long session of pokes, Asha came to her senses.
'...'
Sometimes, she felt like she had lost her mind over the strangest things.
It wasn't the time to be playing with Priyanka's face.
Asha refocused her thoughts, her gem now showing no trace of light.
'I need to think.'
She felt a strong need to analyze and understand her current state.
Why did she react so strongly to a black suit or Doug?
A part of her gem might have been triggering it.
She checked for any strange parts affecting her actions. She didn't fully understand the neural system of her gem yet, but based on the small portion she comprehended, it seemed improbable that her gem was directly at fault.
Asha couldn't locate her past life's memories within her gem, which was equivalent to her brain.
There was a possibility she simply hadn't found the correct place yet, but she instinctively felt that even if she could analyze her gem in its entirety, she wouldn't find anything.
This was one of the supernatural factors of her existence as a reincarnator.
Her gem could store memories, but those memories began from the day she first woke up. Everything before that was like an empty shell.
She hypothesized that her gem bore natural traces of its species. This could explain her curiosity and altered behavior.
However, it didn't explain why she always overreacted to her old memories.
The best way to understand her situation was to analyze its patterns.
When she encountered the man from social services, it was his black suit that triggered her reactions tied to past traumas.
Previously, she would have felt slight discomfort, but in her new life, she felt as though she might faint after prolonged exposure.
So, the conditions were a trauma from her past, with the consequence being an amplified reaction that had existed before but was now much stronger.
How did this explain Doug?
The only connection between Doug and the social services man was their gender, but Asha didn't think she suffered from androphobia.
She felt discomfort not only around men but also with women in inappropriate contexts.
Medical exams, conducted by both women and men, didn't bother her much. In her mind, it was natural to be touched during exams or to receive injections.
She also felt discomfort when strangers touched her out of context, but her reaction to Doug was far more intense than simple discomfort.
It was similar to her reaction to the black-suited man.
This suggested that a trauma was being triggered by Doug.
A familiar figure seemed to overlap with his image whenever he approached her.
That figure had rough, strong arms, a body significantly taller than hers, and the clothes of a security guard.
Exactly like her late father.
Suddenly, everything started to make sense.
Every time she reacted strongly, it was due to past-life traumas. This was no different.
She was subconsciously visualizing her late father through Doug.
She clearly understood that Doug wasn't her father and didn't even resemble him. But the fact that he was her adoptive father was enough to evoke trauma-like reactions.
Her father often returned home drunk, burdened by debts.
His job as a security guard couldn't cover the growing pile of bills.
Whenever he had the chance, he beat her to vent his frustrations.
The consequences were bruises on her face and body that lingered even into adulthood, along with the frequent visits of loan sharks to their home.
The word "father" was taboo for her, but she had endured his presence in her past life. Even after the abuse, she reintegrated into society and lived peacefully without outward signs of trauma.
Perhaps it was her personality, but she didn't feel anger or fear toward him.
She treated him as something to endure until she became an adult.
When he died drunk in a bar, her reaction was cold indifference.
And that was how she endured most of her traumas. She simply ignored them.
The past was the past, and there was no point in dwelling on it.
She preferred to focus on the present and future.
She had her grandmother to care for and debts to pay. She never had time to lament her "pitiful" circumstances.
She felt ashamed for comparing Doug to her father. They were nothing alike.
Maybe this situation would resolve itself with time. She just needed to disassociate Doug's image from her father's.
After a long session of reflection, she felt relieved.
Nothing was scarier than the unknown.
Her strange situation finally began to take shape.
If there was one oddity, it was that her new memories didn't carry the same weight as her old ones.
Her experiences as a gem—living abandoned in a desolate world and enduring torture in the desert—should have driven anyone to madness.
But she endured them. Her mind showed no obvious signs of trauma in her daily routine. Any effects were far milder than those from her past life.
So what was the essence of her old memories? Where did they come from?
Why couldn't she analyze them? And why did they provoke such intense reactions?
Asha felt that all her doubts would be answered once she uncovered the truth.
Her old memories, and even her unique abilities like Appraisal and Transmutation, were things she instinctively sensed but couldn't physically locate.
Perhaps these phenomena were tied to something abstract.
Something like... a soul?
The concept of a soul was abstract, even for science.
The human brain itself remained a mystery, and researchers were still striving to understand it.
But the existence of a soul could explain most of her doubts.
Maybe her gem was linked to her soul. That connection could explain why she retained her past-life memories despite their absence from her physical body.
Her powers, which couldn't be directly attributed to her gem, might also originate from her soul.
Something intangible, yet capable of storing data and communicating through her gem.
A soul.
With this assumption, she formed hypotheses to explain the influence of her old memories.
Her gem was a being akin to a human, but still fundamentally different.
The way gems processed memories and emotions differed significantly from humans.
This could mean her gem struggled to process her human memories.
Like a device attempting to open an incompatible file, her gem likely faced difficulty interpreting those memories.
As a result, her emotions were being amplified to an extreme degree because her gem couldn't fully understand her human experiences.
There was evidence to support this.
Her human memories were far more troubling than her gem memories. She reacted strongly to old memories but weakly to new ones. And her behavior often conflicted between her old self and new self.
It felt like two natures coexisting in a single body.
Her human self was at a disadvantage because it was inherently incompatible with her gem body.
It was as though she were experiencing a peculiar form of bipolarity.
This explained her curiosity and impulsive actions.
These traits stemmed from her gem nature overpowering her human nature.
The realization shocked her.
Every childish or irrational action was due to her gem nature.
If this assumption were true, resolving her situation seemed nearly impossible.
Unless she could manipulate her fundamental nature as a Peridot.
But was that possible with transmutation? How long would it take, and what would the side effects be?
Her traumas were also linked to her gem responding to her soul, yet she couldn't observe her soul with Appraisal or determine how her gem interacted with it.
For now, the only thing she could do was adapt.
It felt absurd that her intense brainstorming had led to such a simple conclusion: "Get used to it."
'Sigh... Let's stop thinking here.'
Asha used her Appraisal again. Priyanka was still sleeping, but her body showed signs of waking up.
Asha extended her hand toward Priyanka's cheek.
She couldn't feel much, but it had a kind of therapeutic effect.
There were still many things to consider, like how she would deal with Connie, how she would live moving forward, or how to regain her senses.
But looking at Priyanka sleeping peacefully while holding her in her arms made all those worries seem insignificant.
A faint smile appeared on Asha's face as she watched her.
'The things will work somehow.'
That was what she wanted to believe.
*
Author note
I'm late but I'm here. I rewrote it completely today, the old version was terrible. The next chapter is on day 22 and I'll update this series on Tuesday and Friday now at 2 PM (GMT-4).
I know this chapter lacks a lot of interaction, I'll compensate in the next ones. I hope you like it!