❀ Memory 07: Trivial Positive

[mysong]

Talking with Fuminori in the hospital

Earned: Day 151 late afternoon from Hakuren's Heart Game.
Taken: n/a
Shareable: No.
Form: Little spun sugar bird in Jasper


The Memory Itself
Start to 3:14

And so our nightly rendezvous began.

Saya came to my room every night at 3 A.M., skillfully taking advantage of the duty nurse's shift-change.

I was astonished to learn that she was living in hiding inside the hospital.

"It's so big that I never run out of hiding places," she said, answering my surprise with a nonchalant smile.

She told me that she had been living in the suburbs with her father, a doctor teaching at the hospital, but had found herself all alone when one day he stopped coming home.

After tiring of waiting for her father at home, Saya had decided one night to sneak into the hospital, where she'd lived for over two months while searching for his whereabouts.

"Don't you have to go to school?"

"No. Dad taught me everything I need to know. I'm really smart, you know."

She was a strange girl. While she looked and talked like an innocent child, she also had the ability to hide from adults and feed herself. Perhaps her lack of common sense was due to her youth, but the sharp intelligence and deep knowledge she periodically exhibited were not those of a child.

But such minor things were of no concern to me. To me, Saya was the only other human in a world gone mad. Her existence meant far more to me than the standards of society.

"Isn't it dangerous here? Have you ever thought you might be found?"

"Nope, never. I don't have to worry about finding food here, and it's a lot more fun than staying in Dad's house by myself."

"I looked through the patient lists and found the ones who have mental problems," Saya continued, grinning mischievously. "Sometimes I sneak into their rooms late at night and scare them. Even if they raise a big fuss, no one believes what mental patients say. They just brush it off as a bad dream."

Her confession reminded me that the hospital was famous for its ghost stories.

Who could have imagined that there was actually a real girl impishly roaming these hallways?

"So that's why you came to my room at first?"

"Yeah. -- Sorry, are you mad?"

While her pranks were hardly praiseworthy, I couldn't bring myself to scold her for the very thing that had brought us together.

"You shouldn't do it anymore. Will you come talk to me at night instead?"

"Yeah! That's more fun for me, too!"


With extreme care, I was able to conceal my sensory disorder. It was glaringly obvious that the doctors had no way to cure me, and the fact that I had just undergone a new treatment clearly still in the trial-and-error stage made me even more cautious.

How much interest would the doctors show in a patient exhibiting such an unusual side effect? As a medical student, it was easy for me to imagine the clinical coldness of the researchers. For the sake of my dignity, I was not about to become a pitiful guinea pig.

And so I hid my everyday discomfort and loathing behind a mask of normalcy, convincing the doctors that any signs of stress were merely a result of hospitalization.

Saya was my support. Looking forward to her nightly visits was the only thing that gave me the strength to overcome my daily torture.

Having hope can make an enormous difference in a patient's progress. With the aid of my secret nurse, I recovered at a pace that left the doctors stunned.

What Saya learns

❧ She visited Fuminori regularly in the hospital. She was living there while she looked for Dad...two months and counting, still no Dad.
❧ Dad taught her everything she needed to know so she never had to go to school. She's really smart!
❧ He's also a teacher in the hospital you know.
❧ She did like scaring the mental patients. No-one believes what they say so it's okay!
❧ ...Except it's not all that okay but hey, talking with Fuminori is more fun.
❧ Fuminori had to conceal his sensory problem. Saya helped by checking on him every night.

What this means
...I'm going to assume that Fuminori's name is brought up at some point in another implied side-conversation they had. It's about time Saya remembers what his name was!

At this point Fuminori is still more an interesting project of sorts. There are very few people in Saya's memories, and it's pretty clear that she hid from them...Possibly the fact that she was a monster had something to do with that. In Aather this is both less of a concern and more of a concern at the same time. People seem to like her now, but is it because she looks cute and human...?

...Either way. +30 to prankster tendencies.