Chap 11 : The Wall of Human Evidence
It was covered in memory-squares.
Dozens of them. Possibly hundreds. Arranged in frames of different shapes and colours, layered over one another as though someone had simply continued adding memories until the wall surrendered.
A visual archive of human existence.
A shrine to emotional vulnerability.
I stepped closer.
There was a photograph of Mum and Dad standing on what appeared to be a beach, both wearing enormous dark eye-shields and making strange hand signs at the camera.
I stared at it.
They looked like they were attempting a low-level summoning ritual.
Or signalling distress.
I could not determine.
Next to it was Mina—Tangled Menace herself—standing in what appeared to be some sort of ceremonial celebration chamber. There were different colours of floating bags. Streamers. Decorative nonsense. She was holding up a drawing that was too small to make out, grinning at the camera with several teeth conspicuously missing.
I paused.
“…Was she injured,” I murmured, “or is this considered a successful outcome?”
Further down was a memory-square of a group of people I did not recognize gathered around a table overloaded with food. Every single one of them was raising a glass toward the camera, smiling like they had collectively agreed to document their own future regret.
Humans did this often, I had learned.
They gathered. They ate. They drank.
And then, for reasons beyond logic, they preserved visual evidence of it.
I leaned back and studied the wall.
Strange.
I recognized none of these moments.
And yet. They were all smiling.
And there, among all of it, was me.
Or rather. The human Sera.
She was everywhere.
As a tiny bald infant with a furious expression so deeply offended by existence that I felt an immediate and profound kinship with her.
As a small child dressed in what appeared to be some kind of ceremonial root vegetable.
I stepped closer.
No.
Not a root vegetable.
Worse.
It was a garment composed of two violently clashing colours that should never have been permitted to coexist in the same realm, let alone stitched together into one wearable offense. Her hair had been divided into two hanging ropes on either side of her head, and she was holding a piece of paper with the solemn expression of someone presenting tribute to a lesser god.
There was another image of her older, standing stiffly beside another equally uncomfortable-looking girl. Both were baring their teeth in the unnatural, vaguely threatening way humans often did when being recorded.
This one, however, had tiny shiny metal things attached to her teeth.
I frowned.
What in the lower realms had happened to her mouth?
Was it decorative? Punitive? Ceremonial?
I could not tell.
Then there were the more recent ones.
A girl with brown hair and brown eyes. My hair and My eyes. holding up a silver-scaled river beast nearly the size of her torso, grinning at the camera with the kind of reckless, unguarded joy that made something tighten quietly in my chest.
I stared at that one the longest.
She looked… Happy.
Not feared. Not untouchable. Not powerful.
Just happy.
It was, frankly, deeply unsettling.
“That was when we went camping in the mountains of Jeju.”
I spun around so fast I nearly ascended out of pure panic.
Dad stood in the doorway to the kitchen with a square cloth draped over one shoulder like some kind of domestic battle sash. His expression was a fragile combination of caution, apology, and the deeply human optimism of a man who had clearly suffered much.
He had not been there a moment ago.
I was certain of it.
“Sorry,” he said quickly, lifting both hands. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. I came home early. Thought you might be hungry.” He gestured vaguely with the cloth. “Mum said she’d be home soon. I was going to make some food, and then I heard movement and—” He paused. “You were out of your room, so I decided to hide so I wouldn’t scare you.”
I stared at him.
He stared back.
I looked at the doorway.
Then back at him.
“You hid,” I repeated.
“Yes.”
“In your own dwelling.”
“Yes.”
“From me.”
“…Yes.”
I considered this.
“That is deeply pathetic,” I said.
He looked mildly wounded. “I was trying to be respectful.”
“You were lurking.”
“I was strategically waiting.”
“You were haunting the food chamber like a nervous bread spirit.”
To his credit, he did not deny this.
Instead, he adjusted his glasses and said with solemn dignity, “You’ve been in there for four days.”
“I was contemplating.”
“Contemplating.”
“Yes.”
He nodded slowly, as though this were a perfectly acceptable explanation and not something a mildly unstable cult leader might say before being arrested and thrown into the death chambers.
“That’s… good,” he said. “Contemplating is good.”
“It is.”
“What were you contemplating?”
I turned back to the wall of captured memory-squares.
“Why humans insist on preserving visual evidence of themselves during moments of weakness,” I said.
There was a pause.
Dad looked at the photographs.
Then back at me.
“…Fair enough,” he admitted.
He shifted awkwardly and gestured toward the wall.
“Do you want to—I mean, would you like me to—I can tell you about some of these. If you want. You don’t have to. You can go back to contemplating. I just thought maybe—”
“Yes,” I said.
He blinked. “Yes?”
“Explain the memory-squares.”
“The… photos?”
I looked at him.
He looked at me.
“Yes,” he said quickly. “Right. The memory-squares which we called photos or more precisely photo-graphs.”
And then something changed in his face.
A small light behind his eyes.
Hope, perhaps.
Or relief.
Or the quiet astonishment of a man who had expected rejection and was trying very hard not to look too pleased about being tolerated.
He stepped toward the wall carefully, like he was approaching a startled woodland creature that might flee if he breathed too hard.
Which, in fairness, was not entirely inaccurate.
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