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You remember being Hikaru in a different way than you remember not being Hikaru. Hikaru's memories are separate: you know they're not really yours - they belong to the meat that you, the bigger you, is wearing, the husk of flesh and still blood. You can touch the neurons to each other in a similar way that you can fill the lungs and pulse the ventricles of the heart, and then you're there, in the middle of a creek, your trouser legs rolled up but not quite enough. Water wicks up the cuffs where you should have rolled them up more, cool on your legs, droplets falling down over warm skin. Your heart beats without your willing it to, a strong, steady pulse that you notice/don't notice inside you, your lungs filling and emptying on their own accord.
Not far away, Yoshiki bends at the edge of the creek, using a long stick to poke at a likely-looking pile of leaves, looking for frogs. You watch him, the thoughtful, intent look on his face, the way his hair falls down over his eyes as he bends to push a shrub aside and - there, he's found one, it leaps out over the creek, flinging itself out into nothingness and air for a long, hovering second, before it falls down with a comically loud splash. You laugh without thinking about it, and Yoshiki looks up and smiles at you, his private smile, the one he doesn't show to almost anyone else. The one he doesn't have to hide, not here, not with you.
Yoshiki smiles like that with you, too. The real you - even though he knows you aren't only Hikaru. Sometimes. Not as easily, maybe, as he did before. Because they're rarer, you remember every one of them, like small hard gems that you don't have to shift the meat to make; they're always there, deep inside you, waiting. You could pull them out, if you liked, unzip yourself and curl them out into the world.
You could give them back to him, if you wanted. You think about it sometimes. But then you see the solitude in his eyes, deep, black, like night in the mountains, and instead you quirk the edge of Hikaru's mouth, smiling at him, waiting for him to smile back at you.
