The First Memory
The first memory of an angel in Eden began in a hospital in that country. According to the nurse who cared for me while I lay in bed, I had suffered memory loss due to a machine malfunction during immigration screening. Eden treated me as a victim of the accident, issuing a temporary ID and promising to help with my treatment. I stayed in the hospital until I could get up and move around on my own, then received a room in the women's dormitory. From then on, I lived a hectic life balancing treatment and work. Yet even amid those busy days, not knowing who I was brought a quiet unease. I had lost my memories so completely that I only learned my name was Elisha and that I was twenty years old by reading the personal details recorded before the loss. To adapt to daily life as quickly as possible, I spent my days asking questions and learning everything I could while receiving steady treatment. No matter how diligently I underwent every procedure, none of them restored my lost memories. Months passed without any sign of my memories returning. I had quietly given up and was learning to live in the present when, one day, I received word from the hospital that a scientist would now be handling my treatment.
Half-resigned to the idea that further treatment might be pointless, I made my way to the hospital where the scientist's lab was located. The hospital, already familiar from my many visits for treatment, was still bustling with people. As Eden's largest hospital, it naturally had a great many patients and guardians. While waiting for the elevator to go down to the fifth basement floor where the scientist's lab was, I ran into the nurse who had cared for me during my hospital stay. She was the protagonist of my very first memory and someone who had taught me so much; I greeted her warmly.
“Hello, Nurse.”
“Oh my, if it isn’t Elisha. It’s been a while.”
She smiled back just as warmly. Her petite frame suited the nurse’s uniform perfectly beneath her bright smile.
“Here for another visit?”
“Yes, I came for memory-loss treatment.”
“Still no improvement? You really need to recover your memories safely. Are you feeling any pain?”
“Not at all. I’ve been eating well and exercising hard, so I’m full of energy.”
“Health is everything. It’s heartbreaking when you’re sick.”
“You’re right.”
Her words resonated deeply; after all, my pain was mental. While we talked, I glanced sideways at the elevator. For some reason it showed no sign of descending from the top floor. The nurse, who had also been waiting, looked around before sidling closer and whispering in my ear.
“Have you been doing the massage I taught you?”
Huh? Did she mean that massage?
“The lower-abdomen one?”
“Yes, that one.”
It was the massage she had told me to do every time after bathing. She had said it was good for my health, so I had been doing it daily, though I had never heard exactly what it was supposed to accomplish.
“I do it after every bath. But what exactly does it do?”
“You know you have a uterus and ovaries in your lower abdomen, right? Stimulating and loosening that area regularly reduces menstrual cramps and improves blood circulation. It’s also good for ovarian hormone secretion.”
“Ah, I see.”
So it was a beneficial massage if done consistently. I was glad I had kept it up every day. The nurse glanced around once more, then leaned even closer to whisper.
“This varies from person to person, but it also makes it easier to feel with your uterus.”
“Excuse me?”
I didn’t understand what she meant by feeling with the uterus.
“The uterus can be developed into an excellent erogenous zone. Once you experience it, you’ll never forget it.”
“Uh…”
Was it normal to talk about this so casually? Even with my memory loss, this felt wrong. My face flushed at the embarrassing topic, but the nurse continued as if it were nothing.
“When you get a boyfriend later, ask him to hit your lower abdomen. It might hurt a little at first, but you’ll get addicted.”
At that moment, something Kate had once said flashed through my mind. Kate ran a puppet-and-android shop called Prometheus on Central Street. I distinctly remembered her mentioning a petite woman who bought an android and requested a precise control function for striking the stomach…
“Don’t tell me the android with the special stomach-hitting function was…”
“Oh my, how did you know?”
It was real? I had found the fetish memorable because it seemed so unusual, yet it turned out to belong to someone I knew. I was flustered.
Ding—
While I stood there unsure what to say, the elevator finally arrived.
“Ah, I have an appointment on the lower floors, so I’ll go first. It was nice seeing you.”
“You won’t tell anyone about the android, right? Keep it a secret.”
“Of course. I won’t tell a soul.”
The nurse pressed the button for the fifth basement floor and kept reminding me to keep the secret, winking until the doors closed. Somehow Kate’s words about how diverse people’s sexual preferences were felt very real in that moment. Who would have guessed that the petite, gentle-looking nurse had such an intense kink? Still, did getting hit on the lower abdomen actually feel good? It only seemed like it would hurt. The thought made my gaze drift to my own lower abdomen reflected in the elevator mirror. No way I had that kind of fetish. Even so… I was curious. Maybe I should try it just once.
I swallowed and lightly slapped my lower abdomen with my palm.
Thwack—
Huh, maybe I was too gentle. I didn’t feel anything special.
Thud—
“Ugh?”
The moment I hit harder, a strange sensation spread from inside. It was oddly ticklish, yet carried a strangely pleasant pain…
Ding—
The elevator chimed its arrival. I gasped. I didn’t fully understand what had just happened, but I felt as though I had almost stepped into a dangerous world. Pleasure from pain? I hurried out of the elevator to shake off the unfamiliar, awkward sensation.
I was looking around for Research Lab 7 when a woman with shiny red straight hair and glasses, wearing a lab coat, approached me.
“Are you Elisha?”
“Yes, that’s me. Are you…”
“I’m Isabel. I’ll be in charge of your treatment from now on. Follow me.”
After calmly introducing herself, Isabel turned and walked ahead, her long hair swaying. Ah, she used the same hair product Emma used. Emma was my roommate and a maid trainee who used expensive cleansers to match her employer’s status. I had heard they were very costly, so Isabel must be well-off if she used the same one.
The research wing on the fifth basement floor had fresh air circulating despite being underground, probably thanks to the ventilation system working hard. It felt crowded with researchers bustling about. Various unfamiliar machines lay scattered across the floor, and from somewhere came the sound of an explosion.
Huh? An explosion?
Startled, I turned my head to see a lab door burst open, black smoke billowing out. A man stumbled from the room, covered in soot.
“Cough, cough! Hey, bring me the next test subject!”
“Already? It’s only been less than an hour.”
“The recent test subjects are in poor condition. They can’t even handle simple experiments.”
What kind of experiment caused explosions? And had the test subject died? While I glanced sideways at the lab the voices were coming from, Isabel spoke nonchalantly.
“Don’t worry about it. Sometimes it’s better not to know.”
“Ah, yes.”
Following Isabel, I arrived at Research Lab 7. Unlike the chaotic research wing, it was quiet and tidy. Once the door closed, no noise from outside could be heard. One side of the lab held an operating table and a reclining chair, along with various surgical tools and strange equipment I had never seen before. Oh, was that a scalpel? It looked incredibly sharp and shiny.
“Change into these clothes and wait in the chair.”
“Yes.”
The clothes she handed me while I was busy looking around were loose garments with the front fabric tied to the side at the back. They resembled the outfits worn by test subjects in dramas I had seen on video. Those test subjects had suffered all sorts of terrible things at the hands of mad scientists. Suppressing a growing sense of unease, I neatly folded my own clothes, put on the provided outfit, and sat down in the reclined chair to wait. The chair was softer than it looked; I felt I could fall asleep in it.
A moment later, Isabel approached holding a small device with a screen and sat in the chair beside me.
“First, I should explain your current condition. I heard you lost your memories due to a malfunction in the role-assignment device. I’ve discovered a few things.”
When she operated the device, a holographic display in front of the chair lit up. The three-dimensional image it projected looked like a human body and slowly rotated in midair.
“This is a full-body scan of you. Do you see the area near the cervical vertebrae where the brain connects to the spine?”
“Yes, I see it.”
So that was a precise scan of my body. I hadn’t recognized it because it was opaque.
“There’s an augmentation component there.”
Looking closely with wide eyes, I could indeed see something near the cervical vertebrae. Reflexively, I reached up to touch my neck, but felt nothing. The idea that something unknown existed inside my body made me a little frightened.
“What is an augmentation component?”
“It’s a computational device implanted near the cervical vertebrae to assist brain activity.”
I still couldn’t understand even after the explanation.
“The one in your body isn’t a standard Eden model, has no external connection terminals, and is quite small, which is why it took so long to find. It appears to simply assist brain function, but…”
She flipped through the screens rapidly, rattling off difficult terms. No matter how earnestly she explained, I couldn’t follow. I stared blankly, waiting for her to reach a conclusion.
“In short, there’s a high probability that the memories you can’t recall due to amnesia are stored in the augmentation component’s memory device.”
“Then, if we could access the memories in the augmentation component, it might help with the amnesia?”
I waited anxiously for her answer, feeling as though I had finally found a way to recover the past I had been unable to recall.
“I can’t guarantee it, but the possibility is high. For now, I’ll try restoring power to the augmentation component indirectly. Since it has no external terminals or wireless connectivity, we can’t check its status directly.”
As she spoke, she began attaching wires connected to a nearby machine to my body one by one. Several electrodes were placed on my head, the back of my neck, and the center of my chest.
“You might feel a slight sting, dizziness, or even faint, but it’s nothing serious.”
What? Fainting wasn’t serious? This woman seemed dangerous.
“That doesn’t sound like ‘nothing serious.’ Isn’t it dangerous?”
“It’s fine. It won’t affect your life, so don’t worry.”
“W-wait a moment—”
Before I could stop her, she activated the device. A sharp pain shot through me, and everything went black.