The false memories did not fade.
They lingered at the edges of his consciousness like phantom limbs, ghostly echoes of a life he had not lived. As he tried to fall asleep that night, the scent of grilled hot dogs would suddenly fill his senses, or he would feel the phantom sensation of a small, waxy crayon in his hand.
He would be walking down the street and for a fleeting, terrifying moment, he would see the world from a lower perspective, the view of a small child.
He would catch himself humming a lullaby he had never heard before.
These flashes were disorienting, but the emotional residue was worse. He was haunted by a free floating sense of paternal love for children he had never had, and a profound, aching grief for a mother who was not his own.
His own emotional landscape, once a familiar and stable territory, was now contaminated by these foreign feelings.
He felt like a house that had been burgled, his inner world disturbed and rearranged by an intruder. He tried to hide it from Elara, but his distraction and sudden moments of dissociation were too obvious.
He was jumpy, irritable, and prone to long, brooding silences. The easy warmth that had defined their relationship was being chilled by his inner turmoil.
Finally, she confronted him, her face a mask of loving concern. "Yohan, talk to me," she pleaded, cornering him in the living room as he stared blankly out the window at the river. "Something is wrong. Ever since the incident. You are here, but you are not. It is like you are miles away."
He could not bear the lie anymore. The secret was a wall between them, and he needed her, his anchor, more than ever. He took a deep breath and confessed everything.
He told her about his illicit trip into the quarantine zone, about the impossible houses, and about the memory flashes he had experienced after touching the family's belongings. "They feel so real, Elara," he said, his voice cracking. "When it happens, for a second, I am that person. I feel their love, their joy. And then it is gone, and I am just left with the echo. It is mixing with my own memories, my own feelings. I am starting to get confused about what is mine and what is theirs."
Elara listened patiently, her expression shifting from shock to a deep, analytical sympathy.
She was not a Harmonizer, but her work in the archives gave her a unique perspective on the nature of memory and reality. She took his hands in hers, her touch firm and grounding.
"It is psychic residue, Yohan," she said, her voice calm and steady, a stark contrast to his own agitation.
"Extremely potent, given the circumstances, but that is all it is. Think of it like a song you cannot get out of your head. It is intrusive, it is annoying, but it is not you. The trauma of the Inversion must have imprinted those people's final, strongest emotions onto their surroundings. You are a Harmonizer. You are more sensitive to these things than anyone. You just touched a live wire." Her explanation was logical. It was straight from a Harmonizer textbook.
He wanted to believe it, to reduce his experience to a known, manageable phenomenon. "But it feels so real," he insisted. "Of course it does," she said soothingly. "That is what makes it so frightening. But you have to anchor yourself, Yohan. Anchor yourself in what you know is real. In our memories. Our shared past. That is the real you."
She smiled, a small, reassuring gesture. "Remember that little cafe in the old district, the one with the blue door? The one we went to on our first anniversary?"
Yohan's mind immediately grasped for the memory, a lifeline in his sea of confusion. "The Blue Lantern," he said, a faint smile touching his own lips. "I remember. It was raining that day. We were the only ones there."
"Exactly," Elara said, her smile widening. "And you spilled your coffee because you were trying to make a point about psychic resonance theory, and you were talking with your hands."
Yohan laughed, a real, genuine laugh. The memory was sharp and clear, a perfect, unadulterated piece of his own life. "I remember that. The owner was very gracious about it. He said it gave the floor character."
"He did," Elara agreed. "And I remember thinking, even then, that I could spend the rest of my life listening to you talk, even if it meant a few coffee stains."
The warmth of the shared memory spread through him, a comforting balm on his frayed nerves. She was right.
This was real.
This was his.
The other memories, the flashes of someone else's life, were just echoes, psychic noise. He had a foundation, a past that was solid and shared with her. But then, a subtle dissonance entered the harmony. A small, jarring note.
"It was tea," Elara said, her brow furrowing slightly. "You spilled tea, not coffee. A big mug of Earl Grey. I remember the smell of bergamot." Yohan's smile faltered. "No," he said, his own certainty unwavering.
"It was definitely coffee. A dark roast. I remember the bitter smell. You even joked about my bitter personality." They looked at each other. The warmth in the room suddenly cooled. It was a small detail, a trivial discrepancy.
The kind of thing any couple might misremember after a few years. But in that moment, for Yohan, it was a seismic event. He had reached for his anchor, his solid ground, and it had shifted beneath his fingers.
"It was tea," Elara repeated, her voice a little less certain now, a flicker of confusion in her own eyes. "I am almost sure of it." Yohan stared at her. He was absolutely, one hundred percent certain it was coffee.
The memory was crystal clear in his mind. But she was just as certain it was tea. One of them was wrong. One of their perfect, shared memories was flawed. And if this one was flawed, how many others were? What if their entire shared past, the very foundation of his identity, was not the solid bedrock he believed it to be, but a patchwork of approximations and contradictions? The reassurance she had tried to give him had backfired catastrophically. The psychic residue from the Inversion was not just an external contaminant.
It was a catalyst that was now revealing the cracks that were already present in his own reality. The conversation was over.
He mumbled something about being tired, and she let him retreat, the unspoken, terrifying question hanging in the air between them:
Whose memory was the right one?