I woke up slowly to the sound of arguing.

“—dying?! Joan was—”

“—that’s what I said—”

“—never wake up again—”

“—brain dead—"

Two red-heads were arguing with a woman with dark skin and violet hair done up in lots of tiny braids. The younger looked as if he was about to cry and the one in the wheelchair looked uncommonly distressed. None of the three seem to have noticed my awakening.

I sat up and looked around. This wasn’t where I fell asleep. Where was I?

I looked at the three arguing people. They still hadn’t noticed me.

“Uh, hey guys!” I lifted a hand in greeting. “What’s up?”

Their heads whipped around to me so fast I feared for their necks. They all looked like they’d just seen a ghost. There was silence for a solid minute, a minute in which my smile grew strained and my arm started aching.

“Guys…?”

The red-headed kid burst into tears. I panicked.

“Kid?! W-what’s wrong? Is it my fault? Oh my god it’s my fault isn’t it, I’m so sorry for whatever I did!”

“You, you idioooot! Joan, I hate you!”

He latched onto my waist tightly. I hesitantly laid a hand on his back.

“There, there…? I, uh, hate me too?”

I looked to the others for help. The one in the wheelchair threw his hands up and wheeled out of the room. In the corner, the woman was completely absorbed in her own thoughts, muttering something under her breath. No help was to be gotten from there either.

How do, how do I deal with a crying child? Do I just, like, pat them?

I patted the kid on the head. He cried harder.

Shit, did not work! Okay, think, Joan, think! Fuck, I’ve never missed google as much as I do now. ‘How to make child stop crying’ ‘how to make child not sad’.

I came up empty. Guess there was nothing to do but let him cry it out then.

Ten minutes later, the wheelchair-bound red-head came back in. He still looked mad and I still had no idea why.

“What’s up?” I greeted him.

He looked as if he wanted to wheel right back out again, but took a deep breath and deigned to speak to me.

“Joan. What’s the last thing you remember?”

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“Uh… falling asleep on the sofa? Yeah, I fell asleep on the sofa. Why am I here now?”

“I carried you here.” Broken out of her thoughts by the re-entrance of the older red-head, the woman spoke up. “Young Arswen here came to me in the very early morning, crying about how you wouldn’t wake up.”

Arswen, huh?

I looked at his pouting face closely.

Nope, don’t recognise this kid at all.

But they seemed to know me, and it’d be rude to suddenly go “WHO ARE YOU”. Like, who does that?

Also, it’d probably make the kid start crying again and nobody wanted that. For now, I’d just go with the flow.

“I wasn’t crying,” Arswen sniffled.

“Sure, darling,” replied the woman. “When I used [Diagnose] on you, I found your health and mana points were rapidly decreasing and brought you back here for treatment. You’ve been unconscious for two days. Just an hour ago, when I checked on you, your mana was at zero and your health points seem to have stabilised at 9. I called Arsral over as your closest relation to discuss what he wanted to do.”

“Amder said you’d never wake up again,” the teenage red-head, ‘Arsral’, said.

“Yes,” Amder agreed. “This is quite frankly a miracle. Let me use [Diagnose] on you again.”

She reached out for my bare arm, but only touched me when I nodded my consent.

Her eyebrows shot right up.

“You’re in perfect health,” she announced. “Not only is your health back to a hundred percent, so is your mana. How is this possible…?”

She descended into muttering her theories and Arsral had to clap in her face to bring her back to reality. She blinked.

“Sorry,” Amder said. “How are you feeling Joan?”

I pondered the question.

“Great, actually. I haven’t felt this refreshed in ages,” I said, surprised by how good I felt. I felt like a morning person who’d gotten up to watch the sunrise at ass’o’clock, like a surfer bro who’d reunited with the sea after several dry months, like an ex-nicotine addict whose withdrawal symptoms had finally disappeared, etc.

Now, if only this apparent amnesia of mine would go away…

She did a few more standard checks and gave me a clean bill of health. She did ask me a few questions concerning memory, but they were all of stuff I remembered. Through her questions, I found that I more or less remembered places and events, but not people.

Strange. But the brain is the most complicated organ in the human body after all.

The red-headed brothers and I went home after that. Arsral ordered me to take the rest of today and tomorrow off, and forbade me from doing any more [Evaluation]. I couldn’t remember whether he knew about my circumstances and powers or not, so I didn’t tell him the cause of all the trouble was because I touched the [Evaluation] screen.

My room on the second floor of the shop was exactly how I left it. I didn’t recognise the shop name itself, but the setting out was familiar. I also didn’t recognise the black ball of fluff with ears that flew at me as soon I entered the shop, but judging by Arsral and Arswen’s reactions, this ball of fluff was something important to me.

I sat on the bed and patted it. It cooed happily.

Time to abuse my powers of [Evaluation] to keep it a secret that I have amnesia.

The time to tell them I couldn’t remember anyone had gone and passed. If I did it now, it’d just be awkward.

> Name: Kuro

>

> Species: Lesser Mana Vampire

>

> …

Oh, right, I remembered Kuro now. I lit a hand up with Demon Flames and Kuro happily absorbed them. I also remembered a fight which it helped me win.

‘Vampire’ might be a misnomer, since Kuro has the skill [Amplify], which allows it to amplify the skills of its host depending on how much mana is being fed to it. Since I have an inexhaustible supply of mana substitute, how much Kuro will amplify my skills is solely based on how much it can absorb. So it's less like a parasite and more like a symbiote.

I could remember every action I made in that fight, but could not for the life of me recall the faces or identities of the people I fought. Oh well. They’d probably never come around again. And surely none of them would have declared me his rival and challenge me whenever he could. That’d just be silly.

Content in the knowledge that I would be able to go on with life as before, I drifted off.