Can You Remember Me? An Amnesiac Story [Updated 10/26/15]

[AntonSlavik020]

That little peek into the past was very interesting. Kinda depressing, but that was expected. Really enjoyed this update. Can't wait to find out what happened over that summer.

[Rogueldr44]

I'm still quite new to this whole fan-fiction thing, although I read quite a lot already. But I can already tell you that this one is just leaving me like a boy waiting for Christmas presents! It's catchy and sets an interesting light on Shizune. I really hope you keep up with this

Hell, you might even have made me want to write a story myself

[Mirage_GSM]

It feels like there's a section missing between part one and two, but I like the direction this is taking.
A bit of mystery solving never hurt a story

[bubeez]

Can You Remember Me? Chapter 15

The week rolls by quickly, a slew of problems and hopes speeding up time itself; I get the feeling of being swept away with the flow of time. Yamaku has seemingly changed around me. Buildings seem brighter, the bricks themselves giving off a sense of belonging. I haven’t felt this way about Yamaku in a long time.

“What are you worrying about?” Emi says with a flourish of her hand. “You’re great! Hisao is great! Nothing could go wrong!”

I nod slowly. “I asked him out, but… I don’t have a plan. And it’s already tomorrow.” I sip the rest of my juice box. Emi gave it to me after I happened to stumble onto the rooftop during lunch today. Rin quietly joined us afterward, without a hint of surprise at my presence, promptly asking us to sit on the floor with her today.

“You’ll be juuuust fine, Seiki. Somehow!” The morbid statement mixed with her fairy voice is oddly comforting; actually, more comforting than a positive statement coming from anyone but Emi.

“But keep me in mind. It is important to keep girlfriends in mind, right?” Rin says, poking at me with the edge of her sandal. I flick at her protruding foot, as if keeping a serpent at bay; the snake returns to its proper place, folding back under Rin’s body into usual sitting position.

I tuck away the rest of my concerns into a little pocket in my mind; hopefully this one does not have a hole at the bottom of it. Date. Homework. Tests. Date. Pill. Suzu.
Date. School break. Date. Memory. Date-

A pair of chopsticks speed under me, making a beeline for my lunch during a mild daze; Emi picks up the last of my meal and tosses it in her mouth without a hint of remorse. “Oh, cruel reality… once again…” I feign. Emi falls for it, batting an eye for a single moment; a moment is all I need to take a bit of her lunch and claim it for my own, chopsticks already in my mouth again before she catches wind of it. I see Rin nod, like a master to a blossoming student.

Lunch blows away like a fluttering petal these days; slow, deliberate, chaotic and ultimately unguided; I quite like that. Sometimes, I spend it with the tea girls, other times with the rooftop girls; I even head to the Student Council on occasion… I make sure to come in at lunch. Otherwise, work would be involved. Schoolwork is nonexistent before a long break, too. Mutou’s rants have lost about forty percent of their enthusiasm and cohesiveness.

As we come down from the rooftop, the sun is blocked from view, the sweet air is filtered by melancholy vents, and Suzu glances at me from the bottom of the stairs; my foot stops before it reaches the next step.

“H-“ I struggle out. Hi, hello, how’s it going. All three possibilities got mixed up in my mind, leaving nothing physical.

Suzu jerks her head downward with pent-up frustration spelled out on her face. She was never the good liar, really. She used to glow red when she had to speak in class.
Even now, watching her rub her eyes in a pseudo sleep-deprived manner with the arm of her blouse, she’s radiating remorse. “Hey…” she mumbles through a quivered lip.
She quickly acknowledges the two girls following me.


“I’ll see you two later.” A half-hearted hand wave accompanies my hastened goodbye; Emi is quick to pick up on the mood and takes Rin with her down the stairs. They soon fall out of sight. “Come on.” I head back to the rooftop, the echo of Suzu’s footsteps following me.

Instead of the floor where I had just enjoyed lunch, we sit on the bench overlooking most of the school grounds; this would have made an excellent Astronomy Club meeting location. Unsure of where to start, I go with my laundry list of thoughts. “I have a date this weekend.”

Suzu lightens up, releasing air in a quick, undignified chuckle. “This is really how we’re going to start this?”

I kick my feet, skirting above the tiles. “Do you have a better idea?”

She returns to our natural way of talking. “Not really, but... wow. The words escape me.”

“It’s with Hisao.” Even hearing it from my own voice is jarring.

“Duh. You know that you asked him during class, right?” She leans her head back on the back of the bench, searching for some comfortable way to rest her head.

“Good point. At least he said yes,” I say, masking unfiltered embarrassment with snarkiness.

“Well it’s not like he would have ever said no. From my view, you have him totally wrapped around your finger.” She crosses her arms in front of like an authority figure, but her sleepy eyes draw away from the spectacle.

“Really? Doesn’t feel that way. It’s more like this awkward thumb-of-war between me and him.”

Suzu laughs again, giggling into her sleeve. “I knew you were going to say that. You complicate facts like it’s your job.”

“Yeah. I’ve learned a lot about complicating things, though.”

“Oh?”

I breathe in, reminiscing about rooftops past. “I used to see the concrete, the wind, the chain link fence. I built this happy little metaphor, with me somewhere in between.” I breathe in and out slowly, returning to those similar images.

Suzu puts a hand on her chin. “I remember. You had this really tragic look on your face when you would talk about it.”

I nod, continuing. “It was convenient. It took wild ideas that made no sense, and made it a pretty little picture I could look at. There I was, and there was everything else; do you get what I mean?”

Suzu lurches her body forward, resting her arms on her thighs in concentration. “No… but I’m trying. Keep going.”

“Life is too stupid for that, though.”

“Stupid…?”

“Not stupid. At least not in the normal definition. A metaphor has to make sense…. It has to have logic, or it isn’t a metaphor for anything. But how do you make a metaphor for something that makes no sense?”

“I guess you can’t, really.” Suzu concludes.

“There is no concrete building, no wind, no chain link fence… that would be too easy, I think. If life was so complicated, we could at least try to make sense of it. But it’s too stupid for even a metaphor.”

Suzu takes a long pause, flouncing her hair, performing her concentration. “When did you become a madman?”
She laughs, and I follow. We laugh, and we laugh, and we laugh, both at my lunacy and the fact that we both ignored the class bell. Oh, well. This laughter is worth all the lecture time in the world.

After a few more seconds, Suzu lets her laughter pass. “So…. I’m sorry.” She lets the words hang in the air to dry, deliberation on her mind. “I’m not very good at being a best friend. I should have told you everything I knew that you had forgotten. But I got swept up in the fun.” She hangs her head down, and I can see the bags under her eyes quite clearly. From crying, lack of sleep, or a combination thereof… I am obviously not the only one with troubles.

“Forgive and forget. Or is it going to be ‘forget and forgive’ in this case?” I laugh, though it rings hollowly. “I still need my best friend.” That rings solidly.

Suzu nods her head, dabbing her eyes with her sleeve again. I wait for her excuse, probably ‘the sun got in my eye.’ Instead, she returns her gaze at me, not finished wiping the exhaustion from her eyes. “There’s one more thing… before I pass out here. Which I guarantee will happen soon.”

I clear my throat. “What’s up?”

Suzu reaches for her bag, fumbling through her array of sweaters and other warm, cozy objects; a small, tattered notebook emerges from the inside. She holds the notebook tenderly, as if it might tear itself up at any moment. This notebook has certainly been through quite a lot. “You left this in my room a long time ago. We were returning some of your books to the library, and this got mixed in… you probably dropped it after I fell asleep. I haven’t read it.” She begins to nod off. “After what happened with Shizune, I looked around for this thing… I had forgotten about it until now...”

With the last of her energy, she presents me with the notebook. The title reads: Seiki’s Diary.

...

I sit at my desk as the sunset touches my back. Sometimes, during the night, I shift my desk to just under the window sill to catch the falling moonlight. My bed occupied by a certain narcoleptic, I carefully move my desk across to the same window sill, hoping to catch some of the golden twilight. The notebook sits idly in front of me, unassuming and waiting to be opened.

I glide over the cover of the notebook with my finger, tracing out the age and cracks of the portal to my past. I knew something regarding my past must have existed, but I did not expect a cracking, leatherbound bundle of papers. I look at the title again. Seiki’s Diary. The name is mine, the handwriting is definitely mine, the smudging from my left-handedness is there… I flip to the back. “If found, return to…. Room 119.” I mouth out the numbers, undoing the buttons on my sleeve. Staring back at me is the same order of numbers, the cheat sheet on my arm telling me what I had already guessed. The golden light of the sunset glares off of the black leather. I avert my eyes to something else of interest. A crumpled paper at the corner of my desk intrudes on the usually empty surface… It’s the list of Emi’s desired nicknames for me. I still haven’t chosen, and I don’t want to any time soon; to be honest, these are all equally horrible. ‘Sputnik Seiki.’ That’s… not terrible, actually.

I set the paper down, where I will probably forget it was there; this is probably why it was there in the first place. It’s frightening to think that this could have been the fifteenth time I’ve picked that paper up and put it back down. Hopefully I’m not doomed to repeat this process ad infinitum…

Another glance around the room leads to a revelation: I actually have….. stuff. In my room. A spare teacup on my dresser. A few charcoal pencils in a small cup. A paper menu for a nearby take-out restaurant. The next Star Wars novel I have yet to read. Even a flyer for a job offering nearby. I stuff it in the nearest desk drawer, out of sight and out of mind.

“…mmmfffff.” Suzu rustles out from my bed, legs hanging over the bed frame.

“Your hair is a mess.” I joke, pointing at the stalagmites of hair emerging from her freshly awakened head.

“Mmmmmfff.” She shakes her head but only serves to rearrange the clumps of hair in equally disarrayed fashion. “In other news… you should really clean your room.”

“Right. I should clean my room.” A roll of the eyes accompanies each word. “Meanwhile, you have a stuffed animal petting zoo.”

“It’s tasteful.” she pokes her tongue out at me. Looking out of the window, Suzu glares out at the sky. The sun has already dipped low, the sky an ever-deepening shade of
blue the closer we come to it. The sun is becoming bearable to look at, it’s intensity cut in half by the horizon. “It’s getting late… Astronomy Club?”

Her offer is hard to turn down; I haven’t stargazed since the festival. “Sorry, I can’t tonight.” I swivel in my desk chair a bit. “Date tomorrow.”

Suzu claps her hands. “No worries. Go get ‘em. Do you need me to remind you again in the morning?”

I put a hand up. “Preemptive measures.” Unrolling my sleeve, I reveal the newly written words on my arm. ‘Date. Hisao.’

Suzu nods her head approvingly. Her eyes move from out of the window to the desk right under it; sitting squarely in the middle, the notebook. “Did you take a look yet?”

I swivel again in my desk chair. “Not yet. Thinking about it makes me nervous.”

“What’s there to be nervous about?”

“It’s like finding a book written by yourself, about yourself, filled with memories that you mostly can’t recall.” I look out of the window again towards the darkening sky.
“Like walking into a really dark room.”

“Ahh.” She sits a while longer. “It’ll be okay, though. I’ll walk in with you.”

“Thanks.” I appreciate the thought. “I’ll probably have to carry you in, though.” I make a mock pillow out of my hands, leaning my head on it.

We laugh. That deep, true laugh again. She says nothing else, content with sitting and enjoying the rest of the moment.

I want to enjoy the sun just a little longer.

I think about the dark room, knowing that I will face it one day, at the behest of a single step into an unfamiliar place. A single flip of the next, mysterious page.

Before nighttime, though, lives the warmest light.

[AntonSlavik020]

Interesting. Looking forward to what Seiki finds in her diary.

[bubeez]

Added a little more to the end of the last chapter; I like the new ending more than the previous cliffhanger I had. Sets up the atmosphere I really wanted for these upcoming chapters, too.

[sloth4]

This was really enjoyable and pretty much the only OC fic I've ever gotten into. I hope you pick it up again at some point, I'd really like to read more about Seiki's adventures.

[PKMNthiefChris]

While I am sure this is a dead fic at this point I just want to say it was a wonderful piece for what is here and the scene where Seiki confesses lying and explains her amnesia was particularly good.