Day: 120
Days Left: 5360
Lives Saved: 0
Returning back to Rin, Corinna stood motionless, her breathing short and staggered.
"Did you get the nails?" asked Rin, her mask still on, the black words growing and shrinking as they swirled around.
Corinna snapped herself out of her trance and handed Rin the nails, then went back to being consumed by her own thoughts.
That woman had lost all of her memories... because of her.
It was all her fault.
Corinna remembered how the now named 'Jessica' had looked at her. She was a complete stranger to her. She didn't recognise her killer.
'Killer...'
That was the right word for it. Corinna had erased all of Jessica's memories. All that was left was the shell of a body and an empty mind void of identity and self. That was how Harmony had made it seem.
Harmony...
Would she have forgiven the person that had stolen her memories from her?
No.
Of course not.
Who would?
Would she have wanted to know what she had been like before? About her past?
Or would it just make everything more painful?
Something inside of Corinna's stomach twisted and knotted itself together. Every time she thought about Jessica and Harmony, and their loss of memories, it grew tighter. She then thought about her own memories, how she had managed to record most of them in her notebook. Neither Jessica nor Harmony had that. They had nothing from their past, apart from Harmony's goal of regicide.
The knot inside her stomach had doubled in size, the pain branching up to her heart. Corinna knew the only way for it to become untied was to confess. Though Corinna had little she could tell Jessica of her past, at the very least she should know who was to blame.
"Everything alright, Corinna?" asked Rin, looking back at the young woman that had been frozen still in thought for quite some time.
"I just need to go somewhere quickly," responded Corinna, Rin's words bringing her back to reality and out of her trance. Sucking in a quick breath, the young woman rushed back to the shop section, weaving in and out of the shelves, searching for Jessica.
"Need help finding 'Somin'?" Sumit appeared, leaning against a bookcase with a smug grin. "Get it? 'Soomin'... 'Something'... 'Sumit'?" When he saw Corinna's perplexed expression, the young man gave up. "That joke has never worked on anyone-"
"Where's that woman from earlier?"
"You mean Jessica? Oh, she's left. Not too long ago though so she should still be nearby-"
"Thank you!" Corinna darted out of the trading post, swiping up her spear as she left. She heard Ivette and Sumit calling out her name in confusion, but Corinna continued running towards the small figure on the horizon.
As she got closer, the terrain became more difficult, the land now scattered in hills and slopes, the grass damp and wet from the marshes. Corinna's feet slipped and slid as she rushed up the slopes, almost losing her balance if she hadn't used her spear for support.
Jessica was now within earshot. The woman span around, hearing the frantic footsteps and staggered breathing of Corinna. Clutching onto a spiked baseball bat, seemingly her only weapon, Jessica called out to the exhausted blonde woman, "you alright?"
Corinna, gasping for air, stopped a few metres away from the spectacled woman, back bent and heaving as she attempted to regain her energy. She gazed down at the ground, making only glimpses up at the woman before her.
What now?
She had run all this way, but now she couldn't even mutter a single word. Even after she had caught her breath, she was speechless. All Corinna could do was stare back at the woman, the one that she had taken away the memories of.
"It's Corinna, right?" asked Jessica, lowering her bat, no longer cautious. "Did I leave something behind at Ivette's? Did I forget something?"
A twinge of pain spiked inside of Corinna's stomach. "Yes..." she mumbled with a quivering lip, inaudible to Jessica. Corinna looked up, only able to achieve eye-contact with the woman for a mere second before gazing back down at the ground. "Do you not remember anything?"
Jessica paused for a moment, seemingly to study Corinna, before answering with a solemn, "no." Her hand trembled as it reached for the back of her neck, to her brand, then quickly fell back to her side, fist clenched. "I don't remember anything. I just..." The woman pushed back her new ill-fitting glasses as they slid down her nose. "I woke up buried in a scrapyard. I was too weak to get myself out for a while, I was trapped for a few days. I don't know how I got there-"
"It was me." Corinna covered her mouth, the words had spewed out without her even thinking. She trembled, her hand clutching her spear even tighter. "I hit you around the head... the impact would have... if this wasn't in The Eternal Abyss..." Corinna gulped down any saliva in her mouth to soothe her throat. "That's how you lost your memories."
There was a long moment of silence.
When she had finally summoned the courage, Corinna looked up to see Jessica, her head low, hands clenched, and the baseball bat slightly raised.
"You..." Jessica spoke through gritted teeth, her voice breaking. "You did this to me?"
Corinna's heart stopped beating for a brief second. "I'm sorry. I-"
"You took away all of my memories?"
"Yes. And I'm-"
"Do you know... how it felt?" Jessica took a step closer to Corinna. "To wake up with nothing. Knowing nothing about yourself and how you got there? To eventually learn that you're in The Eternal Abyss and not knowing why? Why did you deserve to be imprisoned here?" She took another step. "Why were you such a bad person to belong down here?"
"M-maybe it's best not knowing why-"
"I'd rather live knowing why I'm a murderer than be an empty shell of a person!" Jessica was now mere inches away from Corinna, towering over her.
"I'm sorry-"
"You're not sorry! If you were sorry, you wouldn't have abandoned me in a scrapyard!" Jessica stepped forward, forcing Corinna to stumble back close to high inclined slope. "I was paralysed for three days, trapped under there. If you were sorry for what you did, you wouldn't have left me there! You would have stayed with me and helped me when I woke up! Why!" Her voice wavered, breaking into a quivering whisper as a single tear streamed down her cheek. "Why didn't you help me..."
"I..." Corinna's eyes began to water too, causing the woman in front of her to look like a wobbly blur. "I..."
"You don't know what it's like to have lost everything and be alone. For there to be no one there to help you..." Jessica raised the spiked baseball bat. "But you soon will!"
Corinna evaded just in time, the nails embedded in the bat scratched across her shoulder, scraping off a chunk of skin. She staggered back, dodging another of Jessica's wild swings. "I don't want to fight you!"
"I thought you were sorry, weren't you?" Jessica prepared to initiate another attack. "And you know what would make up for it!"
Waiting for the right moment, Corinna tripped Jessica, and, using her own power against her, managed to steal the baseball bat off of her. Losing her balance, Jessica grabbed onto Corinna's dress and pulled her along as they both fell and tumbled down the high slope.
Corinna blacked out for a few seconds, her body aching and trembling from the fall. As she regained her vision, she heard gasps of pain and heavy breathing. It was from Jessica. She had landed on top of Corinna's spear, the blade impaling her stomach. The woman grabbed hold of the spear.
"Don't pull it out," Corinna whimpered, her voice sore. "You'll bleed out-"
Jessica pulled the spear out, doing the exact of Corinna's advice out of spite. Her head bowed down, hand pressing against her wound, she threw the spear in Corinna's direction. "Just leave me alone."
"But you need-"
"Leave me alone! I don't want your help!"
Corinna picked up her spear, hesitating as she looked down at the injured woman, her glasses once again damaged, the frames snapped.
"Leave. Now."
Corinna nodded solemnly and walked away.