Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories The Novel (light novel)

by Tomoco Kanemaki

“I’ll hurt you!” The Replica rushed at Larxene with his sword. She easily knocked him back.

  “Stupid little toy! You think you could hurt me? Where would you ever get a thought like that? But hey—look on the bright side. Naminé will erase the memory of me knocking you flat, along with everything else in your head. Instead, she’ll implant the loveliest little memories you could ever hope for! Who cares if they’re all lies? No big deal!”

  Darkness…began to surround him.

  “No, don’t…” The darkness came in, covering his mind. “NO!”

  It swallowed up everything, even the sound of his own scream.

  CHAPTER 4

  REPLICA

  HE WAS INSIDE THE DARKNESS, thick and black as ink.

  Where am I?

  I can’t see anything. I can’t hear anything.

  Who am I?

  He could see himself. The boy looked over his body.

  Blue pants and a yellow shirt. Black gloves and black wristbands. His hair, he could just see it—that was silver.

  This is…me?

  But something felt terribly off. It didn’t feel like this was his own body.

  Except it was. He was in it.

  The boy began walking.

  Everything around him was pitch-dark. He couldn’t even tell whether he was really moving.

  But feeling like he had to keep going anyway, the boy walked.

  “The door will soon open,” he heard a voice say.

  “Who’s there?!” he shouted and then touched his own throat in surprise. That’s what I sound like?

  “You have nothing to fear. There is no need to fear the darkness. Now, go… Hero of darkness.”

  It felt like he’d heard this voice before somewhere. But he couldn’t remember who it might be.

  Actually…he couldn’t remember anything at all.

  Out of nowhere, light opened up in front of him. The boy shut his eyes against the dazzling brightness.

  Then a soft rush of sound came. Was it…the ocean?

  Slowly, he opened his eyes to see a wide expanse of blue water. The waves lapped at a beach of sand nearly as white as the sea foam.

  Two boys and two girls sat on the shore, leaning close together as they talked.

  He was not far away, but they didn’t seem to notice him at all.

  “Why do we always do what Riku says!” The brown-haired boy angrily sprang to his feet and ran off.

  “Sora, wait!” The red-haired girl went after him.

  So the brown-haired boy’s name was Sora.

  The two left behind were a boy with silver hair and a girl with light blond hair.

  The silver-haired boy…was dressed the same as himself. Blue pants, a yellow shirt. Black gloves and wristbands. Silver hair, that was the same, too. And his eyes were blue.

  “Naminé, aren’t you going after him, too?” The silver-haired boy stood up and brushed sand from his pants.

  “But if I do, then you’ll be all alone, Riku,” the girl called Naminé replied in a tiny voice, still sitting. She held a sketchbook and crayons.

  “I don’t mind being alone,” said Riku and turned away from her.

  “But Sora has Kairi…and you’ve got me.”

  “Huh?” Riku looked at Naminé again.

  A bit of color had come into her cheeks. She giggled softly. “Riku, can I draw your face?”

  She laid out the crayons beside her and opened the sketchbook. Scribble, scribble—and like magic the blank white page gave way to Riku’s smile.

  Riku and Naminé laughed together.

  “Hey…you kids…,” said the boy with no name.

  But the moment he spoke—the world spun into nothing.

  He slept inside a huge pod.

  A man in a black cloak with a hood pulled up over his head stood there.

  The boy opened his eyes. Seeing him awake, the man pushed back his hood, revealing long, dull blond hair and a sallow face.

  Conversion – 13 percent complete

  The three of them ran up the seashore.

  Three—Kairi and Sora and him.

  “Wait up, Sora!” he shouted.

  Kairi was chasing Sora, and he was behind them. Maybe they were playing tag.

  “Hurry up, Riku!” Kairi called over her shoulder.

  It was the same name as that silver-haired boy on the beach.

  Am I…Riku? Is that my name?

  Then…that boy was me?

  “C’mon, Riku! You’re such a slowpoke!” Sora yelled, far ahead.

  So it’s true… I’m Riku?

  But his vision went strange, warped, and he stopped. The soughing of the waves turned ugly in his ears.

  No—it wasn’t the sea. He couldn’t hear that anymore. This was something weirder. What was that noise?

  Then he saw nothing but gray…and he fell again into nothingness.

  The boy stood in front of a little cave.

  He could hear an awful sound…like something enormous growling.

  But…wasn’t the sound he’d been hearing something uglier?

  “Ssh. Quiet…” He turned to look at the other boy behind him—that was Sora. “We’ve gotta be careful…”

  So they were about to go inside.

  Right… Sora had been saying there was a monster in the cave, so they’d come together to try and catch it.

  That was a huge adventure for us back then.

  The ceiling of the cave had a great big hole in it. The blue sky leaked in.

  “See? It was just the wind making that noise.”

  “Aw, that’s all? I wish it was a monster!” Sora folded his hands behind his head, sighing with overblown disappointment.

  The wind began to blow over the cave again, moaning and howling.

  “Huh? Wait, what’s that over there?” Sora ran to the back of the cave as if he’d spotted something.

  “A window… No, wait, it’s bigger than that…” Unhurried, the boy followed Sora. “A door…?”

  There was a big door. One that looked familiar. He must have seen it before…somewhere…but where…?

  He looked at it closely, but there was no doorknob or keyhole to be found. “There’s no way to open it, though,” he said, looking back at Sora, who kicked at a pebble.

  Sora was a year younger than him, but sometimes, the boy thought, he really acted like a little kid.

  “Hey, Sora,” he said. “When we grow up, let’s get off this island. We’ll go on real adventures, not this kid stuff!”

  Sora looked at him and grinned. The wind raised another terrible growl.

  The boy looked behind him again. The door began to shine with golden light…and then that light swallowed him up.

  It hurt. His heart hurt, his breath hurt. Why did it have to hurt this much?

  He was in a dim chamber. Everything was lavishly decorated, but still, it felt lonely somehow.

  The boy clutched at his chest, gasping with the pain.

  “Riku…”

  At the sound of that name he looked up suddenly to see a tall woman clothed all in black.

  She held a staff in her hand, and her cape fluttered with every step. Some kind of awful smell was clinging to her.

  “Remember, relying too heavily on the dark powers could cost you your heart,” she said.

  That seems to be your problem, he tried to say, but the words stuck in his throat.

  Why was he thinking like that? How did he know her, anyway?

  Because I’m the one called Riku…?

  He didn’t know. He didn’t understand anything.

  The boy floated inside the pod.

  “Do you understand me, Replica?”

  Hearing the voice, he slowly opened his eyes. There in front of him was the man in a black cloak with long dull hair. The cold, cruel smile that clung to his lips gave the boy a terrible shivery feeling.

  “You will become stronger,” said the man, “because whatever power that hero of darkness has will be yours.”

  At th
at, the boy closed his eyes again.

  Conversion – 35 percent complete

  “Hey, Riku… Suppose you get to another world. What would you do there?” Kairi said, staring into the sunset.

  Sora stood behind her. In the middle of the trio sat the little raft.

  The white sand…the sound of the waves. It was that island.

  The boy already recognized that name as his own. Riku…that’s my name.

  And yet something just felt a little bit off.

  “Do you just want to see, like Sora?” Kairi asked.

  The boy mulled it over for a moment and replied, “Well, I haven’t really thought about it. It’s just… I’ve always wondered why we’re here on this island. If there are other worlds out there, why did we end up on this one?”

  He squinted against the brilliance of the sinking sun.

  “And suppose there are other worlds,” he went on. “Then ours is just a little piece of something much greater… So, we could have just as easily ended up somewhere else, right?”

  This tiny world on these little islands. He wanted to see other places. He wanted to know why they were in a place like this.

  “That’s why we need to go out there and find out. Just sitting here won’t change a thing.” He started walking down slowly toward the shore. “It’s the same old stuff. And I want to go.”

  “You’ve been thinking a lot lately, haven’t you?”

  The hint of sadness he heard in Kairi’s voice—was it just his imagination?

  “Thanks to you,” he said. “If you hadn’t come here, I probably never would have thought of any of this.”

  Right…I really liked Kairi. She was special to me.

  But Kairi liked Sora.

  I always knew that.

  “Thanks, Kairi,” he told her.

  In that moment he had really wanted to tell Kairi how he felt. But he couldn’t do it.

  “I’ll make it so the girl is yours.”

  The voice whispered to him from somewhere. He turned. “Who was that?!”

  Before he knew it the sea had turned black as ink.

  “What is it that you want?”

  Whoever it was seemed to murmur right next to his ear.

  Around him the ground turned black, too. Darkness was spreading out from him. And then it covered him completely.

  “I’ll make your wishes come true.”

  He didn’t want someone else to grant his wishes. He wanted to earn those things for himself.

  But back then…I wanted Kairi to be mine, no matter what it took.

  I did? No… It was Riku who wanted that, willing to do whatever it took.

  Everything faded into black.

  It was his own room in the castle. Maleficent’s castle—Hollow Bastion.

  “Kairi… Sora…”

  He decided he would do anything to get Kairi’s heart back. Even if it meant getting his hands dirty with darkness.

  The boy rose from the bed and walked out. If he climbed the stairs to the tall tower, he would reach the small balcony at the very top. He liked to look out on the view from there.

  It felt like there was a gaping hole in his heart where the wind blew through. Like he was the only person in the whole wide world…

  The cold wind brushed at his cheeks.

  When he woke up, he was standing on the beach.

  Sora peered into Naminé’s sketchbook. “That doesn’t look like me at all!”

  Naminé looked up at him anxiously. She was drawing a portrait of Sora in her sketchbook. But apparently there was something about it that Sora didn’t like.

  “I think it does,” said the boy as he looked at the drawing. It captured Sora’s pouty face perfectly.

  “It does not!” Sora yanked the sketchbook out of Naminé’s hand.

  “Sora! Give it back!” she cried, but not before Sora began ripping apart the pages.

  “Hey! Sora?!” the boy shouted.

  Right before their eyes the sketchbook was getting torn to shreds.

  “You’re so mean…” Naminé crouched down, trying to gather up the shreds of paper. But Sora shoved her and stomped on the pieces.

  “How could you…? Sora, I… I don’t ever want to see you again!” she shouted, starting to cry.

  “Sora, I don’t ever want to see you again!”

  And then everything faded.

  “You’re serious?” Larxene said a little condescendingly.

  “Of course…” Vexen knocked on the panel.

  Beside him, Naminé gazed at the boy in the pod.

  “I’m so sorry…”

  She had no idea whether her quiet murmur could reach him.

  Conversion – 43 percent complete

  The boy was in a marble hall. It seemed to be part of a great big castle.

  “Where am I…?”

  He looked around. He couldn’t remember ever seeing a place like this before.

  A door opened, and he sensed another presence. Someone came running up to him.

  “Riku! Is it really you?!”

  That voice… It was Sora.

  And his own name was Riku.

  Repeating that name in his mind, he looked at Sora, who looked ready to run up and grab him in a bear hug—but he stopped short.

  The boy felt like there was a thick fog over his memory. How…did I get here?

  “What’re you doing here?” Sora blurted.

  “Not happy to see me? Let me know if I’m getting in the way of something more important.”

  The words tumbled out effortlessly, but they made him uneasy. The boy snorted at Sora. No…we got separated…and we were looking for each other… Something like that?

  And now, we’re both looking for Naminé.

  That was the basic outline… Wait, outline?

  The way the word outline came into his head made him feel uncertain, but he kept glaring at Sora anyway.

  “Huh? I didn’t mean that…” Sora hung his head.

  “Hmph. Never mind the excuses. I bet you’d all but forgotten about me.” The boy was speaking about Sora, but it was really out of frustration with his own memory.

  “Are you crazy?” Sora protested. “C’mon, I came all this way looking for you!”

  “But you’re not anymore, are you?” said the boy. “Now the only one you’re trying to find is Naminé. You don’t care about me.”

  “That’s not true!” Sora burst out.

  Sora, you never think of anything but Naminé, the boy thought. I was the same…but you have Kairi.

  So why can’t you just let me have Naminé?!

  “Well, Sora, you never gave a thought to her feelings, did you?”

  “Naminé’s…?” said Sora, as if that surprised him.

  “Ha. I knew it. You don’t really care about her, either. Just because you want to see Naminé—well, it doesn’t go both ways. But that wouldn’t have crossed your mind, huh?”

  “But…,” Sora stammered.

  Why would she want to see you after what you did to her?

  “In fact, Naminé doesn’t even want to look at your face,” Riku added.

  “Why not?!”

  The boy understood, then, that Sora must have begun to lose his memory, too.

  But even so…Sora was forgetting too much. Such important things…important memories.

  Sora was on the verge of forgetting everything. Even about me, the boy thought.

  But he didn’t even understand how he knew that Sora was losing his memory. That made him more uncertain about himself.

  I hate Sora.

  Naminé doesn’t want to see him, either.

  Those were the only definite facts he had.

  “You should ask your memories…about why Naminé disappeared from the islands. If you remembered that, you’d know.”

  “Did I… Did I do something? Is it my fault?” asked Sora. “Riku…?”

  “Go home, Sora. I’ll take care of Naminé. Anyone who goes near her…has to go through me!” The
boy raised his sword at Sora. Darkness enveloped him, and he felt strength course into his body.

  “What—what’s wrong with you?!” cried Sora. “We’re supposed to be friends!”

  “Please, Sora. Since when did you ever care about me? Naminé’s not the only one who got sick of looking at you. So did I!” he shot back and leaped at Sora.

  Why don’t I want to see Sora? Why am I so angry?

  His heart was full of doubts and questions—but he swung his sword anyway.

  “Riku, stop it!” Just in time, Sora blocked his strike with the Keyblade. “…Ngh!”

  “So, you’ve gotten a little bit stronger, huh?”

  The Sora he remembered had always lost when they fought.

  “What do you mean you’re sick of looking at me?” Sora yelled. “Why would you say that?!”

  “Hmph… Because I was holding it in until now, that’s all. I’ve never liked you, you know.”

  Never…? Even as those words left him, he felt reluctant to say them. I really never liked Sora at all?

  He wasn’t sure. He just couldn’t remember.

  “If you’re serious…then I’m fighting for real, too…!” Sora brought the Keyblade down on him.

  He barely managed to block. Sora was strong. And it was true strength.

  “Hey, are you sure I got stronger, or are you slipping?” The slight smile that Sora showed him—it was the best sort of smile, the kind you give to someone you care about, and the boy felt bewildered.

  He didn’t understand how Sora could smile like that at him. He didn’t understand it, and that made him sad and resentful. It hurt.

  The memories…the feelings in him were all muddled and confused.

  “Riku!” Sora was driving him back. The boy shoved away and ran.

  I don’t understand… And for him the lack of understanding was terror.

  He wanted to run away from here. He wanted to go somewhere else.

  Somewhere…far away.

  Larxene and Vexen loomed over the boy collapsed on the floor in the corridor.

  “Ugh, I told you he wasn’t ready yet,” said Larxene, prodding the boy with her foot. “This is all your fault for rushing things, Vexen.”

  “I seem to recall you saying that Sora had already made it into that floor.” Vexen hoisted up the boy’s limp body and turned away from her.