- TheMcD
- May 4, 2013
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Monaca / Subject N 2024
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Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.
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Flower: 03/05/2021, 16:22
To be more exact, it was a memory of when Kazami was still living with Nagisa--
♪ BGM: Loyalist / Theme of Tachibana ♫
 Thank you, Sis.
Nagisa had begged Kazami to buy her some flowers that day. They were a little tight on savings, but a small gift like that wouldn't do any harm. Since Kazami worked at a flower shop, she could buy as many unsold flowers as she wanted for cheap.
What's this flower called?
 It's a rosemary. Isn't it cute?
Tips posted:TIP: Rosemary
Category: Includes fiction
An evergreen shrub of the mint family Lamiaceae, originating from the Mediterranean region. ''Mannenro'' in Japanese. The genus name ''Rosmarinus'' is Latin-derived from ''dew of the sea''. It can withstand droughts, illness, and direct summer sunlight, and is thus an easy herb to grow. In the language of flowers, it means ''memory'', ''remember'', and ''think of me''. It also appears in William Shakespeare's play ''Romeo and Juliet'' as a flower for remembrance.
The flower would remind Nagisa of her older sister, and Kazami of her younger sister. Even if death parts them, the memory of the flower's modest scent will forever bind the two sisters together.
Yeah! It smells great too!
Kazami smiled when she saw her sister's nose twitch from the scent.
But why did you want flowers so suddenly?
Um, well... I thought maybe I wouldn't be so lonely if I had flowers with me while I'm home alone.
Huh?
You see, whenever I smell flowers, it reminds me of you. 'Cause you always smell like flowers.
Oh, really?
So even when I'm alone, as long as I've got flowers in the room... it makes me feel like you're there with me, and I don't feel lonely anymore.
...
Nagisa's innocence wrenched Kazami's heart.
(So that's why...)
Kazami understand fully well what Nagisa was talking about. The flower shop's manager had told her about it before. According to her, it seemed that ''scent memories'', as they were known, were actually the strongest memories of them all.
Tips posted:TIP: Scent memory
Category: Nonfiction
The taste and smell of madeleines soaked in tea reminds him of a period in his past life-- a famous scene in the beginning of French literary master Marcel Proust's ''Remembrance of Things Past''. The protagonist and narrator remembers how he had also soaked madeleines in tea when he was younger, and the scent and taste triggered his memories of the past to unravel... Human olfactory receptors are said to be able to discern thousands of scents. Furthermore, out of all the senses, the sense of smell is the most directly connected to the hippocampus that governs over memory, and the amygdalae that govern emotions. It is very possible that a scent can trigger the recollection of memories that an individual has associated with it.
This phenomenon is called the Proust effect, after the aforementioned Marcel Proust. The faint scent of chlorine from when you get out of a pool and the appetizing aroma of dinner tickling your nose when you come back to your family home might make you feel nostalgic. Such experiences could be a result of the Proust effect.
Even if normal memories grew faint, those related to scents didn't fade away so easily. She also said that smelling something you once smelled in your past often brought back memories related to that scent.
(... So that's why Nagisa remembers me whenever she smells flowers, huh.)
Then perhaps putting flowers in the apartment would help alleviate some of Nagisa's loneliness. It saddened Kazami that she was unable to do anything else for her sister, but--
...Nagisa, I'll buy you lots of flowers from now on. Sound good?
Yeah!
Nagisa broke out into a broad grin that spread across her whole face, which Kazami returned in due. --It was a memory of their fairly trifling day to day life. Nagisa would some day grow up, and when she did, perhaps her memories of that day and the loneliness of being home alone would be long forgotten. But her memories of the scent of flowers would likely never fade. At least, that's what Kazami hoped. She wished that they'd never forget about these days of modest happiness...
Tips posted:TIP: Nagisa Tachibana
Category: Fiction
Kazami's little sister who was confined in LABO under the designation ''Subject N''.
After getting caught in the 2021 Rokumei Municipal Apartment Complex Gas Explosion, she was transported to the hospital. After receiving treatment and undergoing examinations, medical staff became aware of the fact that she was a Rank S Aptitude/Ability Level 6 Communicator, and had confined her in LABO with the official story that she died of a brain hemorrhage.
After she was trained by Koki Sumida, the commissioner in charge of her, she used Senses Sympathy to change his impression of her and get him on her side in a plot to escape which tragically failed. LABO labeled her deed as the ''Subject N escape incident'' and renewed security measures, allowing her no chance of escape. She felt the malice LABO bared towards her, which exacerbated her own malice. The repeated experiments eventually caused her the complete loss of self, leaving nothing but a ''shell'' of her former self, a mass of pure malice no different from the N-ified Alice Enflamme.
It is said that when a Communicator uses Senses Sympathy, they leave traces of themselves in the memories they view in order to differentiate between those memories and reality. In each segment of memory falsified by Subject N, Natsuhiko sensed the scent of rosemary. That scent was the heartbreaking evidence that she was once the girl called Nagisa Tachibana.
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Jun 21, 2017 17:25
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