“Not this!” Alec muttered under his breath as he flipped another page hastily. He switched between two pages before throwing the book aside and picking up another. “And not this too! Nothing!”

With a frown, he put the book down and started pacing in front of the table.

‘All the books are related to magic!’ he thought with his hand on his chin. ‘Nothing historical except magical history. And even those are too vague to extract any information from. No country names, no continents, no big events… It’s as if the only place that exists in this world is the academy!’

Then, Alec punched the table next to him with rage.

‘There are also no details about the technologies of this world albeit some crude inventions. No ancient artifacts… No magical tools… At most some brief mentions of such things. Maybe they were too connected with their origins and were deemed a threat that could make us remember the outside world by the anti-memetic entity… But why? Why is it trying to make us not know about the outside?’

‘And I could notice this only now,’ he contemplated. ‘Is there anything left? Are there other things that I’m incapable of noticing? How far does this thing go?’

Anxiously, Alec remembered the words of Professor Andrew.

‘Not only that but whatever this anti-memetic magic is caused by, it’s regaining energy. Maybe I will lose all the awareness I had as soon as I step out of the library, or the potion runs out.’

‘And the thing is, I won’t even know when it happens. I will go back to living in the academy as normal. I might even forget about the second level of the library forever.’

Knowing this, Alec sat back down on the chair and took his head between his hands. They exchanged ideas with the mana brain, trying to figure out some way to resolve this problem.

“Wait…” Alec muttered. His face brightened up momentarily. Getting up once again, he rushed toward a nearby bookshelf and started rummaging through. He didn’t even pay the respect of leaving the books on the shelf, as he threw aside the ones he picked up but didn’t need.

“There!” he shouted. In his hand was a book called “On Ancient Gravity”. This was one of the more esoteric but comprehensive books about gravity which Professor Andrew had talked about but refused to give to Alec.

Opening the first page, Alec read the first few lines to satisfy his curiosity.

[What is gravity? Many might laugh at my question, but the answer seemed more complicated to me. Our modern physics simply tells us that objects attract each other, and the formulae we have deduced work almost perfectly. But we can neither recreate gravity magic nor perfectly calculate orbital and stellar mechanics. What is the reason behind this? I feel like the mismatch of time in our low-orbit magic satellites might contain the answer to that…]

‘Low orbit magic satellites?’ Alec read with awe. He rubbed his eyes to make sure he wasn’t misreading. However, he then realized that such a construct wouldn’t be out of the question with telekinetic magic. Professor Andrew could lift both of them into the air and fly pretty fast. What was stopping them from launching some satellites into low orbit for research?

As Alec read book after book, he kept finding more and more details that pointed toward general relativity. Although some people came somewhat close, no one theory had managed to take the spot next to classical physics.

“If I keep searching for gravity magic, that might help me circumvent the memory alteration and remember the library’s existence. The gravity magic is not related to the anti-memes or the outside world after all…” he muttered. “It might just become the anchor that connects me and this library. And if I keep coming back here, I will always have the chance to regain some clearance.”

Looking around, Alec smiled.

“This place will become my sanctuary. A bunker. I will come here to exchange books on gravity magic every weekend,” he thought. “That way, I will have a reason to come here that hopefully surpasses the restrictions on my memory.”

However, as his thoughts kept churning, Alec noticed a bag in a corner of the room. It was an unassuming student bag, looking exactly the same as any other.

‘Huh… There is another student who comes here?’ he questioned in his head curiously. With relaxed steps, he approached the bag and opened it to see its insides. Other than a small notebook, there was nothing else of note.

Putting his hand in, Alec picked up the notebook and inspected its cover zealously. There wasn’t anything that clued what could be written inside, so without further ado, Alec opened the notebook.

“This… This is my handwriting,” he muttered when he saw the letters. This made Alec shiver in place. Although he kept his cool on the outside, his heart had already started beating faster once again.

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‘So I actually came here before? How is that possible? There might be some blank spots in my memories, but from the outline of those holes, I can deduce that I never had the possibility of coming here. Did I find a secret passage or something?’

Closing and reopening the notebook from somewhere in the middle and reading the writings, Alec found the thing even stranger. It was written similarly to a diary, however, writing diaries had never been his thing.

[I met a girl called Ariel today. I have had very short romantic interactions in my past life, and I can only hope that this isn’t one of those. Adjusting to my life in this world is hard, and some emotions that can help me keep going forward are all I need.]

“What..?” Alec muttered as his brows rose into a genuine frown. Skipping a few more pages, he kept reading.

[The hidden passage I have found into the library’s second floor has helped me greatly. The temporary entrance authorization Ariel gave me has also done wonders. I definitely don’t want to see the defensive ward arrays activate. However, this place feels weird, as if it messes with something in my head.]

“So I did come here before. But when did that happen?” he talked to himself. He rolled his eyes to the side for a few seconds to think before coming out empty-handed.

‘After leaving the infirmary? No, after that? Somewhere before I started taking the stat upgrade potions?’

Flipping a few more pages, Alec kept reading. There were a lot of mundane events mentioned in the diary, and the fact that he remembered none of these things made him uncomfortable.

[I have been researching gravity magic for a while and managed to figure it out. Using The Author’s Pen has helped me out a lot. Even though I went into a mana coma thrice while trying out things, I think it was worth it. I can even hide it as telekinetic magic! I knew spending my time researching magic was worth it!]

‘I… I recreated gravity magic? How? And if I did, why would the past me not leave memories regarding that?’

[Recently, there have been more and more strange happenings in the academy. I think there is something wron— Anyway. My relationship with Ariel has finally reached the next stage, and I have a really good feeling about how things are going…]

‘Was this about the first time I started realizing anti-memetic magic?’ he contemplated. The words that were crossed over were strangely hard to read. Something Alec correlated to the anti-memetic effects on it.

[There really is something going on. My memories… They are... Strange? It’s as if there are some things I’m looking over, or as if I can’t even perceive some things. And this happens only when I am inside this library. What might cause that I wonder.]

‘Idiot… It’s not that it only happens when you are in the library…’ Alec thought while switching to the next entry.

[…But I can only notice it whenever I am in the library. So, I will try and make this place a sanctuary of sorts. A place where I can figure things out.]

Another page flipped, and Alec kept reading.

[As if the shackles around my mind are becoming looser and looser, I think I will reach the truth soon. I’m hoping to be in the library when that happens, so I can get the most out of it.]

‘Hah… At least you achieved that,’ Alec muttered before flipping the page. However, he found the next page to be written hastily as if he were losing his mind at the time of the entry.

[This should be the end. I haven’t managed to come far, as of the consequences of my actions. The only thing I could barely figure out was the fact that I am being affected by anti-memetic magic, but whenever I try and think further, I hit a roadblock. Even while writing this, I can feel my memories slipping away by the moment. In maybe mere minutes, I will become an unaware shell. Merely a transmigrator who thinks he crossed over for funsies. My only wish is that I won’t become an anti-meme when I do, lest I might go unnoticed and die a death of confusion and starvation.]

‘Wait… Wasn’t I in front of the infirmary building when I lost my memories?’ Alec thought to himself. ‘Were the memories left to me fake?’

[I can’t help but feel like an idiot for all the mistakes I have made. But I know me. I know I will climb my way back up to this point, possibly with even more knowledge than I have now. All the stats I have grinded will remain, and all the mistakes I have made will hopefully be engraved into my soul, so I don’t make them again.]

[If I had another chance at this, I would have focused more on increasing my stats instead of randomly trying out The Author’s Pen. I should have kept to what I knew worked, such as potions and simple actions, instead of depleting my mana so many times. I would have used more of the stat upgrade potions I figured out, instead of spending my time studying gravity magic.]

[I would have tried and gotten a mana brain. I would have tried and asked for help from my peers. Talked to Ariel or Evan about all this…]

“What..?” Alec muttered, his eyes widening in terror. “No mana brain..?”

[Tomorrow, we will have the final practical exams. I will probably face Evan in a duel, and I doubt I can beat him. Still, even with no chance, I will go ahead and try. While finishing, I will leave you with the knowledge I have accumulated on gravity magic. So you can progress it even further. This war… This war where we don’t even know who we are fighting against… This war which we barely know that we are participating in… It is a thorny path. No one else but we can walk and rewalk it. These were my last words to you. Bye, future me.]

Like the end of a noisy reverie, Alec found himself isolated. The voice of the notebook echoed far into the distance and disappeared. As if he had talked to a person he liked for the last time, he yearned for the notebook's continuation. He had felt alone before, but never this much. His shoulders shivered under the pressure he felt, as his mind churned to make sense of what he had read.

‘Even though I lost my memories, I had the mana brain and high stats by my side to help me carry some over. But what if I didn’t? What if I was put in a similar situation, but with no tools in my hand to manage it?’ he thought.

‘I have always thought that I have crossed over at the start of the semester, in the infirmary… I assumed that Evan had accidentally killed the original Alec in their fight, and I was the one who took over his body…’

‘But what if that’s not the case?’

‘What if I crossed over before that, and lost my memories at one point?’

Then, some words told to him by Evan way back when he had recently crossed over came to his mind. Seemingly innocent words that only started making sense now.

[You were a bit... Different back in the first semester. Many people were surprised by your sudden change in the winter break, you know?]

As the notebook slipped from his hand and fell on the floor, Alec found himself out of breath.

‘I didn’t cross over at the start of the semester…’

‘I crossed over half a year earlier!’