These hues from so many years past hurt my eyes, as if my vision wasn’t used to such pristine color. Such brightness. So different from the glimmer and flash of neon lights I had become accustomed to. A small figure waved in the distance, surrounded by calla lilies, and the camera zoomed in. A little girl with an upturned face, beaming, clutching a bouquet in one small fist and holding the brim of her sun hat with her other hand. She thrust the flowers in the sky, pointing at the camera overhead, and her mother approached from behind, laughing, putting a hand on her daughter’s shoulder. They waved together, smiling up at the camera, and it panned out until they became dots, swept across the field of flowers below, before lifting to show the horizon, the lush mountains punctuating the skyline.

A knot rose in my throat and I swallowed it, even as a light breeze brushed against my cheeks. I could almost smell the earth again, the mountains and pine. Something that I’d missed since being forced to leave my makeshift home in Yangmingshan. The image froze and slowly faded from the screen, until it was only white once more and Daiyu and I were lying in a dimly lit theatre. It felt still. Encapsulated.

“I created this for you,” Daiyu said in a soft voice after a long silence.

“But how did you—”

“I’ve spent so much time trying to understand you. Your motivations,” she said. “Trying to figure you out.” She let out a small breath. “You didn’t say a word when you kidnapped me.”

I involuntarily snatched my hand back—we had watched the short films with our fingers entwined. Blood surged into my head, filling my ears with white noise for a moment.

“It took a long time to walk back to your home,” she continued. “Two hours and twenty-seven minutes to be exact, according to my suit.”

“Your suit?” I repeated, uncomprehending.

“I never remembered anything, Jason. I still don’t remember.” She turned on her side, shifting closer to me, so I could smell her clean scent, the strawberry shampoo she used. It took every inch of my will not to shrink from her. I didn’t know if I was ready for what she was about to tell me. I had no clue as to what she would say. How would she end this?

“Your memory-wipe held,” she continued, “but my father was using me to test a new enhance, without my knowledge. My suit recorded the kidnapping. We had imagery from whenever I wore my helmet, and voice recording for the entire time. The camera didn’t work properly, so everything was dim, fuzzy. But the voice recording was crystal clear.”

I breathed in and out, in and out, letting that sink in. This was how Jin had created a bad rendering of me.