Inside the bamboo house, Ruan Mei entered the folded space Qi Zhimu had left behind.
The doll acted on Qi Zhimu's memories—meaning there had to be records.
Unless her student had violated procedure and risked memory loss, transmitting memory data required backups.
If the doll's database had no answer, then she would find it herself.
"Formatted…"
Fine.
That wouldn't stop her.
Ruan Mei forced down the chaos in her chest, focused, and placed her slender fingers over the console.
Minutes passed. Data torrents flashed endlessly across the screen.
After an unknown span of time, she tapped the final key.
All deleted data restored.
Including Qi Zhimu's digitized memory backup.
To her, this required only time.
After all, nearly everything inside Qi Zhimu's head had originated from her instruction.
She selected the final year before his death and began reviewing.
And quickly found the central problem:
Digitized memory could be watched, but everything was silent.
No voice. No thoughts.
Like a lifelong film with no audio and no subtitles.
To hear thoughts and voice, one needed either the original owner—or a living carrier.
Ruan Mei could see him building the doll before death.
But she still couldn't read why he built it.
He didn't owe her. Any emotional bond should have ended with death.
So why leave a doll—to maintain the thread between them?
Was it simply because she was his teacher, the one who pulled him back from death?
Respect? Love?
When she thought of her own childhood teachers, she couldn't even recall their names, much less their faces.
Respect and affection froze in the past once contact ended.
A student's love for a teacher was not comparable to love between family.
Ruan Mei believed she understood love.
Her life had been tangled with it from childhood. She could sense subtle differences—different "scents" of love.
She was not Ah Mu's family.
So his love for her should have been like her love for teachers—fixed in the past.
Yet Qi Zhimu's actions once again exceeded expectation, impossible to interpret.
Just like that year when he was eighteen and suddenly touched her foot.
She had no similar experience and could only attribute it to biological desire for the opposite sex—wrong, given their relationship.
A student should not desire a teacher.
So she corrected him.
Confined him for a few days, and he never repeated it—an obedient student of rules.
Then came the time he deleted her data and tried to persuade her to stop forbidden research.
But that, too, could be framed as instinctive caution toward the unknown.
Concern—another form of a student's love for a teacher.
Not a punishable mistake.
Their principles diverged. His aptitude could no longer absorb deeper knowledge. Forcing him to stay helped neither of them.
With what he already knew, in most civilizations he could live vividly.
And so, to fully devote herself to research—
She let him graduate.
Lost in confusion, Ruan Mei stared at the screen.
With the original owner dead, only one option remained:
Find a carrier.
Her first thought was the doll.
Plant the memories into its core, adjust its program, and use it as a carrier.
But it was inefficient.
Perhaps Memokeepers had more efficient methods.
Or certain Curios.
If the doll was unsatisfactory, then only one choice remained—
She would become the carrier herself.
Ruan Mei decided and acted.
To bear another's memories without being of the Remembrance—this was no child's play.
High difficulty. High risk.
Among the Remembrance faction, even "burners" could forge memories and implant them into a target, reshaping them into another person.
The concept was similar.
If mishandled, the lightest outcome was mental disarray—forgetting who you were.
Worse: memory collapse, neural damage.
Fortunately, her research involved memory from the start.
To resurrect her parents, this step was unavoidable.
Her fingers clattered across the console. She compiled a transfer program at high speed.
Then she found the device and attached electrodes to her temples.
Without hesitation, she pressed Start.
She didn't sleep. She remained conscious.
Pain speared through her skull.
"Transfer rate too fast…"
She realized she'd been reckless.
Trying to receive an entire lifetime in five minutes was impossible.
She adjusted—twenty minutes.
Still pain.
One hour—the discomfort eased enough to endure.
Now, she only needed to wait.
Ruan Mei began flipping through Qi Zhimu's memories from the year he became her student.
Even after the transfer, she would have to do this—like reading a new book.
Without turning pages, there was no next page.
Skipping pages meant missing key details.
She had to proceed in order.
…
That year, Qi Zhimu was eleven. His illness had been nearly conquered.
A child, home destroyed, parents gone, his homeland turned to cosmic dust—nowhere to go.
"I can take you as my student. Are you willing?"
"I am."
Ruan Mei nodded, took his hand.
"Then come with me."
"Where are we going, big sister?"
"To a world with only the two of us. This place isn't suitable for research. And from now on, call me 'Teacher.'"
"…Okay. But what about Teacher's home? If nobody takes care of it, it'll fill with dust."
"The relocation Curio isn't in hand. I can't move it for now. I'll retrieve it later and relocate it then."
"I understand… Then when the time comes, let me help Teacher bring your home to that world with only us."
The boy looked up, smiling cleanly and purely.
"Home matters. Little Mu already doesn't have one."
"Teacher… you can't become like me."
Ruan Mei's gaze went distant.
Something inside her felt as though it were being scratched at.
She had forgotten this memory almost completely.
She had even forgotten where her home was.
With Qi Zhimu's memory as the key, the lost past became clear again.
Later, Qi Zhimu never returned to relocate her home.
Not because he didn't want to.
Because she had said: No need.
The Company sold everything—portable manors included.
With enough credits, you could buy any scale you wanted.
Why make the student travel back and forth?
Back then, he said:
"When Little Mu graduates, I'll come back and watch the house for Teacher."
And she said:
"As you wish."
....
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