The Memory Pawnshop: No False Hopes

If you could pawn your memories, what would you trade, and what would you trade them for?

At twenty-two, Lin Yan became the manager of a pawnshop that didn’t exist.

The shop stood at the end of an alley in the old quarter. Beyond the door to its main room was a corridor that should not have been there. A ledger waited on the counter to be filled in, while pawned memories lay sealed away on the shelves. Some people had pawned their love, some their talent, and some even themselves.

The first customer was a sixteen-year-old girl. She pawned her music to bring her mother back to life.

Then Lin Yan saw it: the golden smoke rising as memories were extracted, the Entropy Spirits devouring memories in the darkness, and the power awakening in his left eye, letting him see the very essence of memories.

Tucked inside his journal was an old photograph. On the back, a line was written: “A blood debt from thirty years ago must be repaid by the grandchildren.”

A woman who came looking for him said, “Your parents didn’t die in a car accident.”

And his grandfather’s letter held just one sentence: “The pawnshop isn’t a business. It’s a prison.”

If memories are everything that makes you who you are, are you still yourself once they’ve been stripped away?