an unfortunate change in genre

Part 2

A baby's brain just isn't wired to remember things.

There are plenty of popular explanations for this among the scientific community, at least there were before giant monsters ate the scientific community, but among them was the simple explanation that early childhood was simply too boring to endure with a functioning memory.

The hours, days, weeks, and months that a baby would spend inside the womb with nothing to do but kick the walls experimentally. The months following that where the most interesting event in a day was blindly mimicking their surroundings while stuck in a relatively stationary position. Even the two years that followed where a child started to really process language and become coherent enough to begin learning rules and restrictions.

Terrible twos were partially so terrible because now that a toddler could understand restrictions, they could now go about breaking every one of them with fiendish delight.

Working memory, as we understand it, really only starts its beginnings at the age of three. Which is why most people would mark their earliest memories at that age. But even then, the final formation of a brain that coherently understands their surroundings and organizes it into a functioning memory bank only enters its completed stages at around the age of four.

All of this was casual information that anyone could learn with a quick google search or if they happened to take a neurology class focusing on early development. Or, in this case, if a high school biology teacher happened to go on a somewhat memorable tangent about it years ago.

It wasn't much of an explanation even then, but it was the one that made the most sense to Kim Rok Soo sitting alone in a playroom.

He wasn't normally left alone like this but the four year old had a vague understanding that his mother had just recently passed away and his doting father had become distraught and distracted with the consequences of that.

It had given him more time to think by himself. He'd always been a lazy child, or at least he viewed himself as lazy, and he liked time to organize his thoughts.

"Your time is twisted, Roksu."

He could remember his mother saying that to him gently, almost pityingly, before her passing. It hadn't made any sense to him at the time but he'd taken it to heart as one of the last things he remembered about her.

Memories.

That was really where things were starting to become strange.

It had started around the age of three, miscellaneous memories that simply didn't fit in the reality he lived in. Glimpses of a world that didn't make sense and a maturity that slowly began to weigh him down without ever asking for it.

And like clockwork, just as his enthusiastic biology teacher had stated, it was when he turned four that he could really conceptualize what those memories meant.

He was Kim Rok Soo. Thirty-six year old Grade 1 ability user and team leader.

He was also Roksu Henituse. Four year old toddler with twisted time, grieving the recent loss of his mother.

Both the identities melded into one and left him feeling strange in-between. Both names felt familiar and foriegn at once, his identity momentarily nebulous as the weight of his memories set in.

He thought it was a little funny at least, he'd always heard servants in the household whispering about what a queer child he was and now he knew that they were right. It hadn't bothered him much at the time but it was interesting to think about how his experiences and lifetime as Kim Rok Soo had influenced his thoughts and behavior as Roksu, even without having a coherent understanding of his memories.