When the world on the screen came from the podium on the bright water and suddenly sank into a faint blue silence, I realized that this dive was not a competition. My fingers were not controlling, but gently brushing — brushing the edge of the old album, brushing the toy pony floating under the water, brushing the misty mirror on my mother’s dressing table. _A Memoir Blue_ is an interactive poem without dialogue. It invites me to immerse myself not in the swimming pool, but the deep pool of memories about growing up and mother that world champion Miriam hides in the bottom of his heart.

The art style of the game flows elegantly between two realities: the world of Miriam’s adulthood is simple lines and calm color blocks, full of modern loneliness; and the fragments of her childhood memory are presented as soft watercolor brushstrokes, warm but fragile, like old paintings soaked in water. My interaction was gentle and metaphorical: rotating an octave box, the room under the water slowly turned over, revealing the dusty corners; opening a drawer, what gushed out of it was not an object, but a vague ripple of sound waves about quarrels. I’m not solving the mystery, I’m helping her carry out a careful psychological rescue — to carry out those important fragments that are at the bottom of the consciousness but dare not be easily touched out of the water one by one.

The fragments of memory gradually become clear with the depth of the dive. I saw the figure of a little girl waiting for her mother to get off work by the empty swimming pool, which was pulled like a light mark under the water wave; I touched the medal she won for winning the championship for the first time, but in my memory, I lay coldly by the table without moving dinner. Water has become the most appropriate metaphor: it is not only a medium for her achievement, but also a barrier to isolate emotions; it is not only a training ground, but also an abyss that floods the true self. The boredom of repeated rowing, the desire for mother’s recognition, and the silent pressure faced alone behind the applause turned into swaying light spots and silent flowing shadows under the water.

The climax of the game has no fierce conflict, only a gentle arrival. In the deepest part of the memory, the adult Miriam finally came face to face with his childhood self. There was no dialogue. They just completed a few simple actions together — immediately winding the toy and closing the unfinished diary together. When she sat in the back seat of her mother’s busy bicycle as a child, and as an adult, she finally gently pushed the car from the back, the world of watercolor and lines mingled at that moment. Forgiveness and reconciliation have never been declared in words. It is just like a light that finally penetrates the deep water, illuminating all the once lonely outlines.

When the last memory was properly placed, Miriam surfaced. She is still by the pool, but something is different. In front of the screen, my hands seemed to be stained with the moisture with chlorine water and the smell of childhood. _A Memoir Blue_ does not tell a story about victory. It tells a necessary sinking and return. It makes me believe that the deepest strength sometimes does not come from faster and stronger breakthroughs, but from the courage to dive into the most silent blue in my heart to rescue the little self that has never really left and needs to be hugged. Above the water is the champion, and under the water, there is the complete person.