06. Record
In a room filled with spring sunlight, a woman sits at a desk by the window.
A small notebook lies before her.
Saturday, April 21, 2040
8:35
Clear skies; the air is a little dry.
I can hear the birds singing clearly.
I'm a little sleepy because I stayed up late last night, but I want to do my best and get lots of laundry done.
After writing this, she sets down her pen and flips through the pages.
The pages contain many signs whose appearance lies somewhere between writing and geometric figures.
Nearby is a piece of cloth stretched taut in a round wooden embroidery hoop.
A needle is stuck into its center, beside a small embroidered shape matching one of the signs in the notebook.
She traces the embroidery with a finger.
There was something compelling about this key-like shape.
She could not stop thinking about the data she had restored the other day, so she secretly sketched it and brought the sketch home. She was not really supposed to—not before the review...
As she idly studied it, the idea came to her to try embroidering it.
Did people back then wear them like this too?
Carving them into stone... No, no, that would have been much earlier. Life in 2026 should not have been all that different from life now.
She had been small then and did not remember much, but apparently it had been a difficult time.
The professor said it was probably “something DOUJIN-like,” but she believed the signs might truly have been used in rituals, or possessed powers like magic.
After all, the world had been so inconvenient and dangerous. People could not have survived without things like that.
The world was neither inconvenient nor dangerous now. It was peaceful, without any major conflicts.
And yet, something felt just slightly misshapen.
Once you knew the Great Forgetting had occurred, it was hardly strange to feel as though an empty hole had opened inside your mind.
Stroking the embroidery, she considers her plans for the day.
When she touched it, she somehow felt she could see a little farther ahead.