Chapter 7:
died living.
It was a Monday. The air was heavy, soaked with humidity that stuck to the skin like sweat. Clouds stretched endlessly above, neither moving nor breaking. He walked the same path to school, the one he’d taken with her every morning for the past few weeks. The one where she’d laugh softly about small things—how the power lines buzzed too loud, how that one orange cat near the corner store always stared at them like a guard.
But today, he walked alone.
No messages from her the night before. No “Good night.” No “See you tomorrow.”
He told himself it was nothing. Maybe she lost her phone. Maybe she was tired. Maybe she just forgot. People forget things sometimes.
But even that small lie cracked the moment he stepped into the classroom.
Her seat was empty.
He stared at it for a long time. Not even her bag. Not her water bottle, or the tiny rabbit keychain she always left hanging from her pencil case.
Just gone.
Homeroom passed. First period. Second.
Each minute stretched like a blade against his mind.
At lunch, he waited again, sitting by the window they always shared. The seat beside him stayed cold.
No one mentioned her.
No one asked where she was.
When he finally approached the teacher after class, his voice shook.
“Excuse me… Do you know where Aki is?”
The teacher looked up from his papers, blinking as if just pulled from a dream.
“Aki?”
He nodded slowly. “Aki. She sits next to me.”
The teacher paused.
Then frowned.
“Oh… right. Her. She transferred last Friday. Didn’t she tell you?”
The words didn’t make sense. They didn’t sound real. They felt like static echoing in an empty room.
“No. She didn’t say anything.”
“Strange,” the teacher muttered, scratching his chin. “Well, she submitted her withdrawal form. Officially transferred. Out of the city, I think. Maybe even the prefecture.”
A sharp pain pierced his chest, like something tearing.
“Transferred…?” he echoed.
The teacher was already moving on, flipping through papers, his voice distant.
“Probably best to let her settle in. Students leave all the time.”
He stood in the hallway for a long time after that. Unmoving. Numb.
She didn’t tell him.
Not a message.
Not a goodbye.
She was just… gone.
And something deeper, darker began to settle in.
He rushed home after school, nearly slipping in the rain. His shoes soaked through. He didn’t even feel the cold.
He opened his phone, hands trembling.
No new messages.
He scrolled up to her last one, days ago:
Good night, _.
That was it.
He typed a dozen texts.
Where are you?
What happened?
Are you okay?
Why didn’t you say anything?
No reply.
No “seen.” No blue checkmarks. Nothing.
He stared at the screen until his eyes blurred.
Then he did something desperate.
He called.
The line rang once. Twice. Then:
This number is no longer in service.
Something broke inside him then. Not loudly. Not violently.
Quietly. Like a single thread snapping in the dark.
The next day at school, her desk was gone.
Not empty.
Gone.
As if she never existed.
He looked around in disbelief. No one seemed surprised. No one mentioned her.
He asked a classmate—a girl who had once giggled at Aki’s jokes.
“Hey… do you know where Aki went?”
The girl blinked.
“Aki? Who?”
He asked another. And another.
Each gave the same answer.
“There’s no one named Aki in our class.”
“You’re probably confusing her with someone else.”
He ran to the staff office, heart pounding.
The records. There had to be records. Attendance sheets. Anything.
But when he demanded to see the homeroom log, the page where her name should’ve been was blank.
As if it had never been written.
As if she was never real.
He spent the rest of the day silent. Eyes dull. Mind hollow.
At lunch, he sat in the same spot. The window seat. Alone.
But he didn’t eat.
He just stared at the empty space beside him, where she used to be.
When school ended, he didn’t go home right away.
Instead, he wandered. Through the rain. Through alleys. Through empty parks.
He found himself standing in front of the train station.
The place where he once walked her halfway home.
But there was no trace of her now.
He sat on a bench and waited.
An hour passed.
Then another.
Darkness fell.
He still waited.
And when he finally walked home, he didn’t feel tired. Or cold. Or anything at all.
His parents didn’t ask where he’d been.
They didn’t even look up from their phones.
He lay in bed that night, staring at the ceiling.
The walls of his room felt like they were closing in.
And in that silence, he began to wonder:
Had she ever really been there?
Or was she just another thing that left him behind?
Another memory erased by a world that never wanted him to be happy?
His phone remained dark.
No buzz. No messages. No light.
Only silence.
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