"Jenny, why do you always seem so isolated?" a voice asked, pulling a little girl slowly from her thoughts.
Her eyes fluttered open as she began to observe her surroundings, lifting her hand to see a bandage wrapped around it.
She found herself seated in a room that was luxurious and extravagant, as if part of a palace, while at the same time very familiar.
'Where am I?' Jenny wondered, memories flooding back of the last horrifying image of the man who had killed her and had once again come in an attempt to kill her family once again.
"Jenny, are you okay?" the voice called again, breaking through her reverie. She looked up to see a boy sitting just an arm's length away, his deep amber eyes focused on her.
With one hand, he was giving the bandages back to a maid standing nearby.
"R-Ryuk?" Jenny gasped as recognition washed over her. The same boy who had shattered her life was now seated before her.
Her mind swirled with confusion, her eyes wide as she processed the sight of him—the same gaze, the same face.
She hesitantly reached out her hand to touch his, confirming he was real.
"Hm, at least you've started to follow my orders," he remarked with a faint smile. He glanced at the slave he had bought a few days earlier, recalling how she had spent that time yelling and resisting, often getting herself injured.
Each time he had appeared, she had only shouted at him, prompting him to use his authority as a slave owner just to get her to call him by his name.
Seeing her suffer from the effects of the slave seal, he had wondered if she would continue to fight against him.
But now it appeared she had healed, at least partially.
"What, you basta—I want to go back!" Jenny attempted to protest, her anger bubbling beneath the surface. She wanted to lash out, to punch him for her suffering, but somehow her body remained frozen, as if she were trapped in a memory of her childhood.
Her mouth moved against her will, echoing words that felt foreign to her, 'Wait, what is happening?'
"Jenny, you need to think calmly," Ryuk urged her, his voice steady. "Your parents literally sold you into slavery, do you understand?" He repeated the message he had been trying to convey for days.
His intentions for reaching out to her stemmed from a deeper understanding of the fate that awaited her; he did not wish to play the role of the villain, nor did he want to see her destiny align with heroine role.
'Damn you!' Jenny yelled, though her words only echoed in her thoughts. She yearned to kill the boy standing before her, convinced that he was responsible for all her suffering. Yet, her body betrayed her, repeating her earlier words: "They were in need of money; please don't blame them."
Jenny's mind froze, not understanding what exactly he had done to her.
As it did, her eyes turned towards the direction beside her, where she saw a silhouette of a glowing white womanly figure.
She appeared completely humanoid with golden eyes, giving that figure a completely different look than a normal human.
'Hm, it's confusing; you seem to have two memories in this body.' Esme, looking towards the black and white world where she was currently inside Jenny's mind, looked towards the little girl, stretching her finger as she placed it on her forehead. Thinking for a moment, she finally reached a conclusion.
'Oh, so you are regressed back to the past.' Using one hand, she punched the palm of the other as she understood why Jenny had two memories as one inside her mind.
Esme felt everything was now making more sense, prompting her to separate both memories.
Instead of focusing on present life, she filtered out those belonging to the past, as from her perspective, she understood that the reason this girl seemed to hate Ryuk had something to do with her past life.
'Wh-who?! Who are you and what's going on here?!' Jenny's eyes widened. Though she was not in her physical form, but just a mere consciousness looking towards something that was playing with her mind, she yelled out, inquiring with complete shock, trying to understand who this woman was.
'Let's fast forward,' Esme, ignoring Jenny's voice, snapped her fingers as Jenny's mind started to play out all the scenes while her consciousness yelled.
'Stopppp! Who are you!'
The feeling of this could be compared to how the human brain stores memories as data while the consciousness uses those memories to maintain its existence and make decisions.
However, those memories didn't determine the personality of the individual, and presently this consciousness had no control over the brain, which was flashing the memories.
It was similar to another consciousness infiltrating the brain while using memories.
'Hm, nothing particularly angry one,' Esme went through the memories as she naturally found the confusing behavior of Jenny, where she acted immaturely while growing, having her perspective completely deteriorate to the level that she took everything for granted.
Though Esme's interest was in that boy's memories, she wanted to know more about him.
And definitely, she was not skipping all the memories where Jenny was alone and only playing those where that boy was present.
Yeah, definitely not; she was here for work.
Not to see her hubby's childhood pictures.