Chapter 32: Lost Memories
"Where were you, Mister?"
"Mister was playing a game."
She was sitting on the bed with her knees pulled to her chest, looking at me the way she looked at things she hadn’t fully decided about yet.
"You left without telling me. My head started hurting because I was so bored."
"..."
Is she regaining her memory.
If her memory was coming back it meant today might be the last day she remembered none of it. The forest. The piggyback. The cave. Mister’s Miss.
After today she would know exactly who she was.
And she would have no idea who I was to her.
I crossed the room and pulled her into a hug before I thought about it too much.
She was surprised. Then settled.
I held it a little longer than usual.
Then I let go and left without saying anything.
The corridor was quiet.
It’s fine, I told myself. It’s better this way. She gets her life back. That’s the point.
It didn’t feel fine.
She was the main heroine. She had a story that had nothing to do with me, a path that had been written long before I arrived in this world. Whatever this was koala, lost puppy, Mister’s Miss it was always going to end when her memory came back.
I needed to go home.
Better to be forgotten than to complicate something that was never mine to keep.
I kept walking.
***
(Tessria’s Pov)
I woke up to a headache and a ceiling I didn’t recognize.
Everything felt slightly wrong.
I blinked.
The bed was enormous. Soft in a way that felt almost offensive.
Did I become a princess?
The boy in the chair beside the bed.
Dark hair. Asleep with his arms crossed and his head tilted at an angle that was going to hurt his neck when he woke up. He looked like someone who had sat down for a moment and lost the argument with exhaustion.
Who is he?
I sat up slowly.
Did he bring me here?
I looked around the room. Large. Well-furnished. Not anywhere I had context for.
The last thing I remembered clearly was the summoning. A high-rank spirit contract. I remembered the circle. I remembered the pull. I remembered the moment it tipped past the point of return.
After that, nothing.
Or not nothing.
I looked at the boy in the chair.
He wasn’t going to wake up on his own anytime soon.
I didn’t wake him.
Instead I pulled my knees to my chest and waited, watching the light come through the curtains.
He woke up about twenty minutes later.
His eyes opened and he was already present, already scanning the room before he had fully straightened.
They landed on me.
"You’re awake."
"Yes," I said.
He studied my face for a moment, then reached over and poured a glass of water from the table beside him. Held it out without comment.
I took it.
"How much do you remember," he asked.
"The summoning," I said. "And then nothing. Or something, but I can’t reach it."
He nodded.
"You were injured when I found you," he said. "In the forest. Head wound. Leg injury. You’d been there a while by the look of it."
"The forest."
"Deep forest. The kind nothing lives near voluntarily." A pause. "You were crying."
I didn’t know what to do with that information so I said nothing.
"I brought you back to the estate. Had the maids sort out the rest." He leaned back in the chair. "That was about a week ago."
"A week."
"Give or take."
I looked down at my hands. They looked fine. Whatever had happened to my leg had healed cleanly.
"What’s your name," I asked.
"Yuta."
"Yuta," I repeated. "You’ve been sitting in that chair for a week?"
"Not continuously."
He looked at me with an expression I couldn’t fully read.
"What happened to me," I said. "After the summoning. Do you know?"
"Some of it."
"Tell me."
He was quiet for a moment.
"The contract pulled more than you had," he said finally. "High-rank spirits don’t take partial payment. You gave everything you had and it took the rest." He paused. "Your memories went with it. Not permanently. They come back. But it takes time."
"How much time."
"Depends on the person." He glanced toward the window. "You’ve been recovering. The fact that you’re asking coherent questions is a good sign."
"You’re not telling me everything," I said.
He looked at me.
"No," he said. "I’m not."
"Why."
"Because some of it isn’t mine to tell. And some of it..." he stopped. Started again. "Some of it will make more sense when you have more of yourself back."
I didn’t push.
"Okay," I said instead.
He stood.
"There’s food if you want it. The maid will bring anything you ask for." He moved toward the door. "Rest. Don’t go anywhere alone until you recover your memories."
"Yuta."
He stopped.
"Thank you," I said. "For finding me."
His expression changed. Brief. Gone before I could name it.
"Don’t mention it," he said.
And left.
The door clicked shut.
I sat with the quiet for a moment.
Then, from near the window, a presence settled beside me on the bed. Invisible to the eye.
I knew this feeling.
"Sylph," I said quietly.
The curtains shifted.
You remembered my name. The words arrived without sound, their shape settling in the room. That’s a good sign.
"What happened to me?"
You pushed past the limit of the contract. The high-rank bond requires full spiritual presence as collateral. You didn’t have enough and you offered it anyway.
"I know that part."
You collapsed in the transit space between the summoning circle and the bonding plane. I pulled you out. Mostly. The forest was the closest point of return I could find.
"You left me in a forest."
I left you somewhere you could be found. I calculated correctly.
I thought about the boy in the chair. A week of coming back to sit beside someone who didn’t even know his name.
"He found me."
Yes.
"What else aren’t you telling me?"
A pause.
"And he still brought me here."
Yes.
"Why."
I don’t know.
I looked at the closed door.
"Can you tell me what I was like? During the week."
The curtains moved slightly. Something in the quality of the silence shifted.
Your behavior, Sylph said, could be described as attachment-focused.
"Meaning."
You followed him. Consistently. You would not remain in any room he had left.
I processed this.
"How closely."
There is a small animal, Sylph said, native to a continent neither of us is from. It selects one object and does not release it.
I looked at the door.
"...Ah," I said.
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