Strange Memories With You, My Dear

Chapter 03.02

From A World Not Here

Translated by KuroNeko
Edited by Omkar

We boarded the train and made our way to the hospital. When I probed  her about the details on the train, she told me that her grandma was Yuuko’s paternal grandmother, or Fukuhara-sensei’s mother. 

The large main hospital was within a few minutes’ walk from the train station. Yuuko got two cards for the visitors to wear on the chests at the entrance and handed me one of them. We entered the building through an automatic door. The reception area was on the ground floor, a wide space with a lot of sofas. She stepped in front of me and walked briskly, as if she was used to going to this hospital.

“There’s a store upstairs, so I’ll go there and get what I need.” Yuuko then hit the elevator button. We rode the elevator to the second floor with an old fella in a wheelchair and a woman in her fifties pushing him. The concession counter could be seen from the elevator hall.

“Wait a minute, I’ll go quickly.” Yuuko hurried over there and returned a few minutes later with a bag of disposable diapers, Kleenex, and other items.

“Sorry to keep you waiting.” Yuuko said and returned, and together we rode the elevator again up to the fifth floor where her grandmother’s hospital room was located.

We sanitized our hands with alcohol before entering the big room. The grandmother’s bed looked to be the first one in front of the door. “Hello,” Yuuko exclaimed as she opened the partition curtain.

“Grandma, I came to visit you.”

“Ah, Yuuko-chan.”

The elderly lady, who was dressed in a delicate pink hospital gown, raised herself and smiled into her wrinkled face. Then, from beside her, the elderly lady, noticing me, turned her gaze toward me. As if wondering who I was, she tilted her head, asking, “Who…?”

“Nice to meet you, I’m Yukinari Nakayama. Umm, I’m dating Yuuko-san.” I said in as polite tone as possible and bowed my head.

The elderly lady smiled as she glanced at me. Then Yuuko said, “Grandma, I’ve come to introduce you to, My boyfriend,” she said smiling. And perhaps the old lady had come to grips with the situation at that point.

“Ara, Yuuko-chan’s boyfriend.” She smiled at me and made a small bail. I bowed my head once again.

“That’s right, Grandma.” Yuuko replied beside me.

“How old are you? What do you do?”

“I am twenty-two years old. I’m still a student… I’m studying Physics.”

“Ah, so it’s the same as Shou-chan’s.”

“Grandma, that’s the thing, Yukinari is my father’s student.”

When the old lady heard this, she exclaimed in surprise, “Huh, really?”

“Yes. I’ve been in his lab since last year and he’s always been a great help to me at the university.” As I nodded my head in agreement, Yuuko pulled out two pipe chairs next to the bed and beckoned for me to sit, saying, “Yukinari, sit down.”

Grandma was a talker. Despite the fact that the talk was mostly with Yuuko, I was sitting by her bed, listening in. She spoke in polite, old-fashioned feminine language, as if she were an actress in an old Japanese picture, and her demeanor was elegant. Her voice was strong, and she didn’t sound like she’d been in the hospital for a long time. After a while, the nurse entered and told us that it was time to change her diaper. I came out of the hospital room because I thought it would just bother her and it is impolite of me to remain there. “I’ll be back soon,” Yuuko said to the elderly lady as she swiftly restocked the shelves with the supplies she had bought earlier. 

We sat on seats across the four-seater desk after buying refreshments from a nearby vending machine (I grabbed a cup of low-sugar coffee, Yuuko got a cup of milk tea). There were scales, a blood pressure cuff, and shelves filled with newspapers and books in the common room. Aside from us, there was a young female who looked to be toying with her smartphone impatiently and a gray-haired old man in pajamas reading a newspaper.

“I heard she had dementia… Well, you know, she was able to have a normal conversation. I don’t mean to be rude, but I thought she was having trouble communicating.” I took a sip of my canned coffee, put it on the desk and said.

“Somehow, in my grandmother’s case, she seems to be in relatively good shape during the day. But in the worst cases, her memory gets jumbled up and she suddenly becomes like a child, or she mistakes people. The other day, she thought my father was my dead grandpa. ‘Where did you put your stamp?’ She kept asking my father over and over again. I’m sorry, but I was kind of freaking out and laughing a little bit when I saw it on the side.” Then, with a giggle, Yuuko laughed reminiscently.

“I see.”

“I wonder what it’s like to be in that kind of jumbled state of memory.”

“I guess it’s something different than what happened to us.” When I said this, Yuuko laughed a little.

“Maybe we have become a bit dim too?”

“That’s the way we should be interpreted now. We actually knew each other in elementary school, but we forgot about each other because of amnesia or something.”

That was the first thing that came out of my mouth. Four years have gone since I met Yuuko, and I’ve given it a great deal of thought, but I still can’t figure out the explanation, logic, or anything else about the phenomena of sharing memories that we had never experienced. I tried not to think too much about it, because the thought of it creeped me out. It didn’t affected my life or Yuuko’s life in any way, and the strangeness of that time was already overshadowed by the memories of our four years together and the closeness of our relationship, so we didn’t talk about it much anymore.

“I see. —Hm? But wouldn’t that be strange? Why didn’t Minami-san remember us?” Yuuko said.

“Don’t think about it. You’ll get stuck in the ditch.”

Yuuko then said, “I know,” and laughed.

After about twenty minutes, we went back into Grandma’s hospital room and talked again.

After that, the old lady would occasionally repeat the same story or was inconsistent in what she was saying after a lengthy conversation. However, I think we were able to communicate with each other through direct conversation, even though the meanings of words and topics were new to me.

After talking for about thirty minutes, we decided to leave the hospital.

“I’m leaving, Grandma.” Yuuko said to her grandmother.

I, too, bowed my head, continuing, “Sorry to have disturbed you.”

“Yukinari-san.” Granny called me. I stopped and turned around and she bowed her head slightly, saying, “Would you mind looking after Yuuko-chan for me?”

I nodded “yes” again.

Then I bailed out the elderly lady who was sitting on her upper body and walked to Yuuko, who had left the hospital room earlier. It was already late when I left the hospital. We went to Ikebukuro and had dinner together at a restaurant before returning to our respective homes. As the sun set, it got a bit chilly, so Yuuko took a gray cardigan from her bag and put it on.

“I’m sorry, I asked you to go out with me out of the blue.”

“It’s okay. It was nice to talk to your grandmother.”

“I was thinking that I wanted to introduce her to you as soon as possible. Mom sure did forget something at the right time.”

Yuuko then laughed. The afterglow of the setting sun from the side had turned her black hair a lovely chestnut. She’s wearing high-heeled shoes, so her head is higher than usual.

“It was.” I said, and Yuuko nodded.

“Yes. She may not be able to remember new memories anymore, but I wanted my grandmother to know about you.” 

Yuuko’s face, which was a touch lower than mine, was partially obscured by the setting light, and I couldn’t see it completely.

◇

Myself, Kobayashi-san, and Asano, three undergraduates, all had the same thesis subject. To examine if quantum computation is indeed conceivable by carrying out numerous experiments and simulations with materials that have been identified as potentially useful in quantum computers. Although not directly related to the main research theme of this laboratory, new methods of quantum computation, it was a research project assigned to undergraduate students with the goal of learning the fundamentals of this field and collecting data on various methods of quantum computation for future use. Of course, we each write our own thesis, but the research is done together by the three of us.

Fukuhara-sensei began his career in theoretical physics as a student of physicist Yoshihide Fujisawa, who is also the namesake of the D-F method quantum computer. His biggest contribution was a revolutionary theory that postulates two parallel universes, known as “Coupled Worlds,” which Fukuhara-sensei apparently studied when he was young. However, since becoming an independent researcher, he has achieved outstanding results in application, and this laboratory is likewise classified as an experimental one.

As undergraduate students, we will work on fundamental research topics, but as graduate students, we will do research directly relevant to the laboratory’s major project.

Kobayashi-san reportedly lived in the United States between the age of 10 to 15 due to her parents’ job, and she spoke English fluently. So we reviewed the literature and articles that we felt would be useful together, primarily hers (she reads English twice as fast as me and Asano), and then the three of us planned the simulations and experiments together. The aim was to conduct experiments using this laboratory’s equipment or special equipment borrowed from a larger laboratory at the university to see if the outcomes were as predicted or if they differed. The experiments were carried out once or twice a week, with myself and Asano mostly responsible for putting up the equipment.

The results of our experiment did not turn out as planned one day, some time after the rainy season started in the Kanto region, and we spent the evening until approximately 8:00 P.M. trying to figure out what was wrong. Other senior graduate students were present in the laboratory, as was Nagasawa-sensei, an associate professor in his early forties and a sub-leader of the Fukuhara Lab who was overseeing graduate students. Nagasawa-sensei was from a corporate background and had long been engaged in quantum computer-related research.

Suddenly, I heard the lab door open. When I looked in that way to see who it was, I noticed Fukuhara-sensei changing his shoes into lab slippers. He approached us and asked, “How are you progressing with your thesis?”

“It’s quite a struggle.” Asano said with a wry smile.

“The way I just tried it, the coherence time wasn’t as long as I assumed it would be.” I said.

“What caused it?” Sensei asked us. Then Kobayashi-san, who had started up the simulation software and was fiddling with her computer, looked up and answered.

“Perhaps our prospects were wrong. I’m re-running the simulation one more time now.”

“I see. If things really don’t work out, consult with me or Nagasawa-sensei.”

“Yes.” We nodded.

“Nagasawa-sensei, I am leaving for the day, so please take care of the students. Also, I’ve emailed you the data for the documents you asked for.”

“I see. Thanks for your work.” Nagasawa-sensei said.

“Are you leaving, Sensei?”

Fukuhara-sensei was carrying a leather bag, which he always carries to work. When I asked, he nodded, a mysterious expression on his face.

“Yes. Lately, my mother, who is in the hospital, hasn’t been feeling too well… I’m going to go check on her at the hospital now.”

“Are you okay?” When I asked in surprise, he moved his head vaguely.

“Well, she’s pretty old now.”

When Yuuko introduced me to her a month ago, she said she would be ninety-three years old this year. Although the average life expectancy in the country’s statistics had been continuously growing since the turn of the century, as one might assume, people were at an age where they had no idea what would happen at any given time.

“I see…”

“Well, good luck to all of you. There’s still quite a bit of time before you have to submit your thesis, so don’t get too rooted now.”

He then walked out of the lab, his hands in his slack pockets. The three of us then decided to take a short break since our minds were starting to churn. I fetched a bottle of tea from the living room refrigerator, and Kobayashi-san began brewing instant coffee. I went to the lab, sat on my chair, and texted Yuuko on the chat app, “Your father told me about your grandma. Please tell her that I wish her the best if you intend to visit her soon.”

“Thanks. I’ll let her know.” And I got a message right back. Yuuko always comes with illustrations of adorable characters. But this time there was none of that, only text.

I sipped my tea while putting my phone in my pocket. Kobayashi-san, who had returned to the laboratory with a cup of coffee in her own white mug with dark blue lines, asked, “Girlfriend?”

“Yes.” I nodded.

“Speaking of which, do you have a boyfriend, Kobayashi-san?” Asano, who had started playing a mobile game nearby, asked.

I initially worried if the topic was a minefield, but Kobayashi responded in a crisp and natural manner.

“I had until last year, but we broke up.”

“Really? I’ve never heard of it before.” Asano threw out the game console and leaned forward.

“What was he like?”

“He was an art student of the same age. I met him at a part-time job and he asked me, so we went out for about six months.”

“Kobayashi-san and an art student… Incompatible—”

“What do you mean?” Kobayashi fixed her gaze on Asano with a chilly glare. Because she doesn’t always display her emotions, it’s rather frightening when she gets a thorn in her side.

“No, I mean, the equilibrium. I think there aren’t many men who can be compatible with a beautiful and smart woman like Kobayashi-san.”

Asano was talking nicely, and Kobayashi-san and I stared at each other with dumbfounded expressions on our faces.

“We had the same interests, though. He and I both liked Kandinsky.”

“… What’s that?”

“A painter.”

Asano began to check for the person using his smartphone’s voice search feature after Kobayashi responded in a few words.

“What on earth is this?”

Muttering this, Asano showed the screen to us. A geometric picture was displayed, with circles and straight lines in various colors.

“Painting.”

Kobayashi-san also said in a few words.

“Is it not Physics-like.”

“Where?”

Asano and I stared at the screen. And we both said, “Physics…?” tilting our heads. That being said, I’m starting to get that impression.

“Now that the break is over, let’s start the simulation all over again.”

Kobayashi-san set her drink down on the desk. We returned to our thesis topic and began simulations with some newly conceived conditions. It’s already dark outside the window. But there were still a lot of people in the lab, looking at computer screens and papers or arguing in front of whiteboards, so it was a vibrant atmosphere.

I remembered Yuuko’s grandma, whom I had met that day. Was there something wrong when Sensei left work early to go to the hospital? When I thought about it, I had a peculiar nervous sensation in my chest, like if I were squirming. It was pouring quietly outside the window because we were in the rainy season. Droplets of water coated the window glass of the laboratory, leaving streaks of streaming water.

“Nakayama-kun, the next simulation will be set up like this. Don’t dawdle, check it out.”

Kobayashi-san, who was operating the computer in the lab where the three of us were stationed, said, shifting her chair so that she could see the monitor easily.

“Ah, sorry.”

I looked at the monitor and read the numbers on it.

“OK. Let’s do it.”

“Copy that.”

Kobayashi clicked the enter key to run the simulation. I thought that when I got home today, I would contact Yuuko again and ask her for more details about her grandmother’s story.