What is a memory but a story you tell yourself?
...
The gardener soon stopped smiling and turned away, continuing to water the flowers.
Hmmm...weird...
I stared at his back for a moment before turning away. I stared at the door then at the board, tapping my fingers against the desk.
3...2...1...
Silence.
I blinked, "Wha-"
RING! RING!
The bell rang twice, signaling the start of a new period.
SHIFF!
The door swung open, and from beyond it, my classmates scampered into the room. Their movements hurried and frantic as they scrambled for their seats.
The girl who was sitting next to me...Eni, took out two textbooks from her pouch and placed them on her desk.
Economics...hmm? A general subject I guess...
The rest of the class followed suite, taking out their stationery and textbooks as well but I in particular simply watched.
My legs remained propped up on the desk, my hands folded lazily behind my head. And yet, no one batted an eye at my blatant disregard for classroom etiquette.
Except for a raised eyebrow from Seba across the class and a furtive glance from Bells, no one called me out.
CLING.
The door slid open and a middle-aged man stepped in; brown haired, tall and slender – he was Mr. Shawn, our math teacher.
Huh?
I raised an eyebrow, my gaze turning to the side.
Didn't we have...
I glanced at Eni's textbooks; they were Applied Mathematics.
"Oh."
My gaze returned back to the stern man who without acknowledging the class's greeting began writing on the board.
Mr. Shawn's fingers swerved across the whiteboard, the ink from his marker painting equations with neat, methodical handwriting, numbers and symbols arranged in rigid perfection.
That's Mr. Shawn for you...always about order and perfection...
A flawed concept.
SHIFF.
The lesson droned on. Mr. Shawn's voice melding with the sound of chalk tapping against the black board.
I stared at them, not truly reading, not truly absorbing.
Instead, I observed.
My classmates, Mr. Shawn and even the world itself. I paid attention to the incongruities of the space, the gaps in my memory, my abnormally low attention span and the startling fact that despite being able to hear Mr. Shawn's voice, I could make no sense of his words.
I noticed how Seba stared at Zara intensely instead of Vicki, how Ayarr slept in class despite being a top student, how Dex was listening intently to the lecture and how Vicki sat at the back instead of the front.
I noted how Mr. Shawn wore his tie loose instead of straight, the oddness of his posture, his enthusiastic expression and his claims on solving the Reinman Hypothesis.
I perceived how sunlight bathed the lockers on the walls despite the fluorescent bulbs being the only light source, how the garden could be seen right out the window despite our class being on the fifth floor, the wood scraping sounds made despite the chairs being made of metal and most importantly...
How the class didn't react despite my strange manner of sitting.
Time passed.
The lecture droned on, surpassing the usual time of an hour or at least my preconceived notion of it.
After all, time doesn't exist in the brain.
HA...
Alright...let's get this over with...
SCREE...
I pushed my desk forward, rising to my feet.
The action immediately caused the class to look in my direction and the lecture to come to a halt. Mr. Shawn who was drawing out an equation on the white board, stopped but didn't turn to me.
He spoke, "Alex...do you have a question?"
"Yes.", I shrugged.
"What is it?"
"So... how long is this script?"
"What?", Mr. Shawn's voice came out sharp but I paid it no mind.
"Oh please, drop the act. I know already that this is all an illusion. Everyone here, including you, are all fakes. Actors."
"Pfft!"
The boy who was seated beside me, Ola, stifled a chuckle. Some began to whisper while some stared at me with gazes that seemed to say, "Is he crazy?".
But I paid them no heed.
Mr. Shawn shook his head and let out an exasperated sigh, "Look, Alex after the class...if you don't mind, I can have you introduced to a counselor of sorts. She'll be sure to-"
I cut him off mid-sentence, "Stop acting. Mr. Shawn's not even that nice."
Silence.
A sudden lack of sound engulfs the world and the shadows slowly grow deeper. I feel a gradual weight press onto my shoulders as the class's gaze remain locked on me.
"Alex, please sit down.", Mr. Shawn says in a tense tone.
I remain silent for a moment before walking back to my seat, slumping back into it.
The class's attention snaps away from me as the lecture continues, as if, nothing happened.
My gaze continues to linger on my desk before I turn to the girl next to me, my face wide with a smile.
"Eni. Lend me your pen."
It was a simple, harmless question but one said with immense malice behind it.
Eni hesitated for a moment, seemingly reluctant before handing me it.
"W-what are you going to do with it?"
HOO...FWOO...
I took a deep breath, trying to calm my beating heart down before saying,
"This."
And with that, I slid the sharp tip over my throat.
...
A memory is merely a whisper.
A fleeting narrative.
A recollection reshaped every time it is recalled.
It is not truth, not fact, but an illusion—woven from the frayed threads of perception, twisted by time and tainted by the mind's biases.
So then...
If a memory is nothing but a story, what happens when the storyteller ceases?
Simple.
It breaks.
Or at least that was what I thought...
...
My gaze fluttered open to a large hall.
One packed with several students spotting a signature pink uniform.
Huh?
Several dozen spotlights illuminated my figure as I clenched a sheet of paper in hand.
Is... this...?
A presentation.
Specifically speaking, the memory of a presentation.
A presentation I had back in my first year of high school. One that had ended in a woeful failure.
I recall how I had frozen on stage, barely able to muster up words with eyes that darted frantically across the room.
In other words, this was a memory before my sporadic change.
A frown came to my face as I watched the eager crowd.
D-didn't it work?
I had died.
I was supposed to have broken free.
So... why?
"Teachers and students! Young and old! Give it up for our next student, the top of the Legacy High first years, Alex."
CLAP! CLAP! CLAP!
The audience thundered with applause as their expectant gazes weighed on me.
I knew this moment.
It was my first year of high school.
A simple presentation. A meaningless task. And yet, back then, it had unraveled me. My fingers clenched around the sheet of paper; my voice lodged in my throat like a broken clock unable to tick.
I exhaled sharply.
This was just a memory.
And yet…
Why did it feel so real?
The silence pressed in, thick and suffocating. The weight of every gaze was unbearable, drilling into me, waiting for me to speak.
My fingers twitched as my pulse quickened.
HA...
My lips curled upward.
How ridiculous...
SHIFF.
I let the sheet of paper slip from my fingers. It floated down, slow and deliberate, spinning lazily in the air before settling onto the stage floor.
Gasps rippled through the audience.
I smiled wider.
"Let's cut the crap."
My voice rang out, clear and unwavering, shattering the fragile silence.
The murmurs swelled, confusion, disbelief and judgment.
TMP. TMP.
A teacher stepped forward from the side of the stage, a woman with strict glasses and an unyielding expression. I remembered her. The one who had scolded me for stuttering, for hesitating, for failing to meet expectations.
"Alex, pick up your script.", she ordered, her voice sharp and commanding.
My grin grew wider as my eyes sharpened, my voice came out low and raspy, "Or what?"
"Huh?", the teacher was taken aback.
The murmurs in the crowd rose. A few students leaned forward, intrigued by the defiance, while others whispered behind their hands.
The teacher's frown deepened, "You're making a fool of yourself."
I laughed.
A sharp, sudden sound that cut through the tense air like a blade.
"A fool?", I echoed, tilting my head, "Ah...I remember now...I'm the Fool."
The moment I said that, something in my mind clicked and along with something in the air shifting.
"I see now..."
"What? What do you see? You fool?", the teacher asked with a scowl.
I chuckled, "You see I had originally thought that this illusion was being perceived by me as my memories but I was wrong...I'm not the one telling this story, even though its mine."
"The memory of the classroom and this memory are forlorn memories. I had willingly forgotten them because of how plain one was and how humiliating the other was as well."
"So, if they're forlorn memories, the one telling the story is none other than the memory itself. A memory that yearns to be remembered."
After all the hardest memories to forget are those that one yearns to forget.
"And... your point?", the teacher asked, not even bothering to put up the mask anymore.
I chuckled.
"It means that if I want to escape then I have to destroy this memory."
And to do that...
I turned to the audience, to the vast student body, and let out an unhinged smile,
"I'll have to slaughter..."
Those were my last words before the system spoke,
[Equipped Item: Silver Lining.]