"Yuuji, Yuuji, come over here, don't leave just yet."
Just as Yuuji remembered, instead of leaving, his parents stayed there beside the object that had just been displayed. Of course, the expressions on their faces made it obvious who had come up with the idea and who was simply playing along.
Yuuji walked over and, knowing what Clara was planning, placed his hand on one of the triangle's corners.
"Hehe." Clara smiled in satisfaction, pleased that her son knew her so well.
After that, she placed her hand on another corner and looked at Eicchi, who, with a helpless expression, did the same. A few seconds later... nothing happened.
"I told you it wouldn't do anything."
"Eicchi, don't be so pessimistic" Clara laughed. "With our souls linked, we'll be family again in our next life."
"I honestly don't think it worked either."
Yuuji agreed with his father. He truly didn't believe that some strange piece of metal, almost certainly mass produced in a factory, could anchor their souls or do anything mystical like that.
"We'll see." Clara didn't argue. She simply kept smiling as she answered with complete confidence that it had worked.
But Eicchi ended up ruining her mood.
"We won't. After all, even if we reincarnated and became a family again, we wouldn't remember our previous lives."
"Eh." Clara froze for a second, realizing he was right.
"Should we go to the next exhibit?" Yuuji asked, wanting to escape the awkward atmosphere.
"Let's go." Clara nodded quickly, spotting an escape route and almost hurrying away.
Meanwhile, Eicchi could only look at his son and sigh. It seemed his son would always take his mother's side.
For the rest of the day, the Yuuji family continued the guided tour, looking at several other "treasures" on display. However, they all looked so fake that not a single person in the crowd believed their supposed stories.
The themed restaurant was even decorated with the very same "unique" treasures that had supposedly been one of a kind.
Finally, by the time the sun set, the guided tour had ended as a huge disappointment for everyone, including Yuuji and his parents.
Feeling they had wasted the day, everyone got off the cruise ship and returned home, or simply to wherever they were staying.
The only exception was Yuuji, who disappeared and reappeared at the top of a pagoda in the middle of a small lake somewhere in China, inside a small private room with an elegant and peaceful ancient oriental style, soft music playing in the background.
To be precise, he was sitting across from Lala at a table.
"So, how did it go?"
"What about my parents?" Yuuji didn't answer the princess's question, instead asking his own.
"Don't worry, I just modified the scene a little so they wouldn't be here" Lala explained casually. "So, how did it go at the Bermuda Triangle?"
"It wasn't that boring. Well, it was boring and it did feel repetitive, but at least it wasn't as unbearable as before.
Even so, 'not as much' doesn't mean it wasn't."
"I see, then I was right and we've actually already solved your problem, it's just..."
"Wait, wait, I figured it out too, so... you don't have to say it out loud, right?"
Yuuji immediately looked at Lala in embarrassment.
"Huh? But Yuuji... what's the fun in that?" Lala tilted her head in confusion, wearing such an innocent expression that she fooled Yuuji for an instant, at least until he saw the mischievous smile that appeared on her face a second later.
"Damn it."
"I'm your solution. You love me so much that as long as you're with me, everything is fun!" Lala declared with the biggest smile she'd shown since Yuuji had met her, both this version and the one he actually remembered meeting months later.
"Arghhh. That's the cheesiest thing I've ever heard in my life. Please don't ever say something like that out loud again."
Just hearing it made Yuuji feel like he could die of embarrassment.
"Huh? But it's very romantic" Lala said.
"Yeah, romantic at the level of a romance manga for girls. Not at the level of Planet Earth" Yuuji complained.
"Ehehe, alright." Lala nodded, still smiling over her discovery. "Then, since you'll have fun whenever you're with me, there's no problem. After all, I don't plan on ever leaving your side."
"Yeah, and if you do, I'll probably already be cured by then. Though depending on how and why we separate, I might have other kinds of problems" Yuuji murmured to himself.
"Huh?"
"It was a joke, just a joke." As soon as he saw Lala's expression, he immediately took it back. "Since the problem is already solved, we can leave now, right?"
"...Alright." After a second, Lala nodded as she composed herself. "So Yuuji wasn't lying to me before when he said changing things doesn't make them more fun, only more complicated. It just turns out he loves me so much that it doesn't apply whenever I'm around, hehe."
"I asked you not to say those things out loud, please."
"I was just recovering from you talking about us separating." Lala pretended to be offended before taking Yuuji's arm again. "Then, let's go."
"...We're still here." Yuuji nodded, but almost a full minute later they were still sitting there. "Did something go wrong?"
"No." Lala shook her head with an unreadable expression. "I just remembered something.
How many memories away are we from the Guiana Highlands?"
"Not too far, around two weeks after this. Why?" Yuuji asked in confusion.
"Since Yuuji wasn't lying to me about what he found fun, I was just wondering what really happened in the Guiana Highlands. You told me nothing important happened there, but the Yuuji with all his memories told me he met an Amazon tribe and saved them from a group of dinosaurs."
"Isn't that a little toxic of you?" Yuuji raised an eyebrow.
Since he had never lied to her, it didn't really bother him, but he felt that once he recovered his memories, he'd probably be upset with Lala.
Of course, that depended on Lala not being the one upset with him for lying.
"Should I be worried that I might be ruining my own relationship, the one I don't even remember?" Yuuji thought to himself, but after seeing Lala searching through something on her phone, he simply shook his head, having reached a decision.
"No. Ever since she got here, Lala has already seen too many irregularities compared to the situations she's supposedly going to hear about later. Even if I convince her not to go to the Guiana Highlands, her suspicions won't disappear."
In short, it wasn't that Yuuji didn't want to salvage the situation, it was simply that, at this point, it could no longer be saved just by avoiding it.
Although Lala had only mentioned the Guiana Highlands, the conversations she occasionally had with her talking hairpin revealed that she had already found enough inconsistencies that she could no longer ignore them.
On the other hand, he had also realized that Lala's smile was dangerous. Because she had been cheerful ever since he met her, until she said it herself it had been almost impossible for him to notice how she truly felt and how much this actually mattered to her, enough to do something as toxic as searching through her boyfriend's memories for answers.
It made sense, after all. From what Yuuji understood, he could have been lying to Lala about his entire past ever since they met.
Although Yuuji had a theory about what might be happening, he had no way to confirm it yet. Perhaps after seeing this final memory, he would be sure.
"When I recover my memories, I have to find a way to make sure she only smiles when she's genuinely happy" Yuuji decided at that moment.
He had no idea that, in reality, it was something he was already working on solving.
Meanwhile, as Yuuji thought about this, Lala selected an image on her phone, and the moment she tapped it, the surroundings changed, transforming into the Guiana Highlands as Yuuji remembered them from a few months ago.
Unlike the previous times, this memory resembled a three dimensional projection where Yuuji and Lala merely watched without interfering, as if they were watching a movie.
In it, Yuuji and his parents, accompanied by several guards as well as the guide, crossed the area, stopping from time to time to take pictures of the animals and the scenery, sometimes touching exotic animals, sometimes simply enjoying a place that very few people on Earth had ever reached.
With Lala watching the entire memory in complete concentration, everything unfolded with perfect normality.
The most supernatural thing that happened was encountering a white tiger that shouldn't have been in that region, which was quickly sedated by the guards before they contacted an animal rescue center to take care of it.
Amid that normality, the sun eventually set, the three of them decided they had seen enough, and they left.
They didn't walk back the same way. Instead, after waiting a few minutes, they spotted a helicopter in the sky. It landed near them and picked them up, dropping them off a few minutes later in a town on the outskirts, where they spent the night. Exhaustion had turned the beds into natural sleeping pills for all three of them, and they fell asleep only minutes after lying down.
Of course, despite how enjoyable the trip had been for the trio, none of what they experienced involved prehistoric animals or a highly advanced indigenous village in danger.
As the projection naturally continued toward the next memory, Lala was no longer paying attention.
She was simply curled up on the transparent floor of the room, her arms wrapped around her legs, her face hidden between her knees.
Yuuji quietly sat down beside her.
"You don't remember why you lied to me, do you?" Lala asked in a tearful voice, not daring to show her face.
"I don't" Yuuji answered honestly.
"And do you think if I ask you once we leave here, you'll tell me the truth?"
This time, Yuuji thought about it for a second before answering honestly again.
"I've known you for less than three days, and I already don't want to lie to you at all..."
"Then..."
"No. Let me finish" Yuuji interrupted her. "I've known you for less than three days, and I'm already certain I don't want to lie to you. He's known you for much longer than that, and he still lied to you.
If it was important enough for him to lie despite that, then I don't think I'd tell you the truth even if you asked me."
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+15 chapters in advance on Patreon.
p-atreon.com/IAMME26
(just delete the hyphen)
80 power stones = 1 extra chapter (cumulative)