Game for a Memory
Chapter 4

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He awoke in the forest again. Shadows of flames flickered through the trees but they told him nothing. The mansion could be in any direction. So could the shore. But there was something underneath him. Pattering like rain – and yet there'd been no rain in Rokkenjima that night that might have saved them. The storm was out at sea where he couldn't see through the canopy of trees. And it didn't really matter because he was being picked up and moved to different squares like a chess piece and he was both screaming internally and tired of it all.

But collapsing into a heap wouldn't move things along. He could only watch these scenes as though they were more than curiosities – and to half of him, they were more than curiosities. That was the problem. Those two parts of him were not reconciled. They would never reconcile. Battle Ushiromiya was a ghost of the past that wouldn't settle, and Hachijo Tohya was a zombie of the present who'd died long ago. Restless dead who couldn't cease to move and wasn't that a pity? They might've had freedom otherwise instead of these fragmented memories of another life and that other life quarrelling for control. And yet…what was death? Was there an afterlife or a cessation of thought or reincarnation or one of those many theories of after-death that lived? Death was itself a cat-box… perhaps even the mother of all cat-boxes. Only the dead themselves knew what happened and the dead man told no tales.

And mystery writers tried to uncover the truth amidst their theories for all the cat-boxes in the world except that one.

And he was just the same. He didn't care at all to find out what lay beyond the moment of death.

But still… He hoped it was silence. The silence that would stifle those plaguing echoes. That would allow him to shut his eyes and ears to this place, to these shadowed memories and the life of a person he'd once been but no longer was. He may as well died and been reincarnated – or perhaps he had and that moment of black waters in between was the secret to the cat-box of death he could never tell the world. The Rokkenjima cat-box on the other hand was one he could tell the world, if he ever pierced the memories of Battler Ushiromiya together… If he ever wanted to.

He didn't. Doing that would mean accepting too much, sacrificing too much. Hachijo Tohya was too fragile an existence to do that.

Hachijo Tohya had fallen fighting exactly that… and drifted unto the shores of Rokkenjima.

Or perhaps he had died and the chapel was his funeral scene. After all, the ocean of life didn't flow straight into the chapel.

But that didn't matter right then. The game was still in progress and he wasn't sure what his objective was but he did know that the Endless Sorcerer was a kind game-master. He knew…or he remembered. Remembered the despair Beatrice cultivated. Remembered the despair BATTLER cultivated as well…though his despair was so naïve, so unintentional. A moment's kindness or pity or naivety led to a child's game twisting into an awful tragedy…

And didn't Ange Ushiromiya deny those games as well, where one might have had the happiest tragedy if only she'd allowed it to take form?

And there was more that science and the laws of mystery could not explain. Illusions or delusions or hallucinations that seemed more real than the actual incident themselves, all born from the black hole where the truth slumbered and that made the question of whether magic existed to be all the more worthless… Because one could just claim it a dream and the argument stopped right there.

But that didn't help him leave the dream, nor forget it.

There was still the forest, and the smoke that rose from it and coloured the night sky grey.

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He wandered through the forest. Unlike the shore, there was no particular landmarks that deep in and he had no idea what he was looking for. Eventually he found it though. A hole in the ground as though there'd once been a well… and yet, what did a small island like this need a well for?

Perhaps it was the underground passage. The passage that was said to lead to both the buried gold and the second mansion where the lord of the island had kept his mistress. A dark passage riddled with traps or a light one rimmed with lanterns? Which was it because he saw both and neither in his memories, and the hole in the ground gave nothing away at all.

He climbed down slowly. There were footholds and he followed them, slipping once or twice along the way. The tunnels curved and slunk away into shadows and nothing, memory or otherwise, told him which way to go. He was wandering blind again, blind with two sets of memories to guide him and it was laughable, frustrating and painful too.

His fingers dig into his palms in an effort to stop himself from spiralling right down that road again, and he just picked a random direction and strode on.

.

It was called Kuwadorian, Tohya recalled. And it was supposedly the home of Kinzo's mistress, or the witch of the island, or perhaps the two of them were one and the same and not at all. It didn't really matter. The popular versions of the tale told that Eva Ushiromiya sought refuge here, in the quiet abandoned place on the far edge of the island where even the explosion hadn't quite reached… It was the only place on the island that was still standing. That and the port but there was no shelter to be found at the port.

No-one had considered the missing boat to be of any importance or concern. Perhaps they expected it had been cast adrift, or there hadn't been a boat parked there at all (because, after all, they'd arrived on a cruise and had been scheduled to leave on one as well) or that it had been Eva to take the boat… But that in itself suggested there must be at least two, or else Eva and Battler had left together.

He shook his head. That was the mystery lover in him, trying to puzzle out the cat-box. The human who wanted a peaceful life wanted any mystery but that one, the one that dug up far too much – and yet the truth was still buried beneath those dregs, wasn't it? He still had an incomplete picture, and was that the fault of the incomplete memories or something else aside? Because he saw the recreation of the boat scene and there had been no Eva there. And yet how, then, had she left Kuwadorian? Why would the port have held more than one emergency boat to begin with?

And why had Eva run to Kuwadorian? How had she known the blast radius would not include it? Why had she not made straight for the boat so she could be out at sea, unbound by the land and have a higher chance for survival with a blast of unknown radius imminent?

Then again, had Eva known about the blast beforehand at all, or had she fled for some other reason? There were too many questions and many a person had posed them to the new head of the Ushiromiya family…and not one of them had been answered. Even when her name was slandered across newspapers and mystery novels alike, she had not spoken in her guilt or in her defence. And the public took her silence to mean her guilt and ran with it.

And as far as he went… She was the only one he didn't see after he left the guest house.

And why was that? He still didn't recall but it didn't really matter either… or perhaps it did. Perhaps the answer was there: in that window of time before the bodies of the Ushiromiya family was laid out like a pack of dominoes and then the escape from a burning grave began.

Kuwadorian had never been in the picture. Not for him.

But Eva Ushiromiya claimed it her refuge in the one and only statement she ever gave of the Ushiromiya incident. And the forest was choking on smoke and the mansion still stood, was still safe. And empty. Completely empty.

Or he wasn't looking in the right places, because he found her finally, curled up near the underground entrance (and how had he missed her when he'd emerged? Unless she'd been behind him) and crying the names of her husband and son…

And that didn't look like a woman who'd just murdered them at all.

And yet… He couldn't reconcile them with that image, either. Perhaps Battler Ushiromiya had more fond memories of her, but to Hachijo Tohya, she was the living embodiment of the Rokkenjima massacre that had split his soul and given birth to him. Should he be thankful for that birth? Perhaps. But the existence of Battler Ushiromiya stirring within him was giving him a life as though a man possessed by the devil. And that may seem melodramatic to anyone else, but they had never struggled themselves so completely, had never been faced with such strong denial of their own memories and their own souls… Even the amnesiac had it easier, and often afterwards he'd wished those memories hadn't drifted ashore at all.

And now… Did it matter whether Eva Ushiromiya was innocent or guilty as the public screamed? Did it matter what slumbered in that cat-box? To Battler Ushiromiya it mattered, but Hachijo Tohya sought just one thing: freedom.

'Some call ignorance freedom,' said the voice of the Endless Sorcerer behind. 'Others call knowledge that instead.'

'So you will answer all the puzzles and then leave me in peace?' asked Tohya.

He didn't expect an answer. They were still in the middle of their match, after all.