Chapter 8: No One’s Left

The next morning came, but it didn’t feel like it. The sun didn’t rise — not in his world. The sky was pale, colorless. The air smelled of metal and wet dirt.

He got out of bed not because he wanted to, but because routine was the only thing he had left.

Aki was gone.

And nobody remembered her.

Not his classmates.

Not his teachers.

Not even online — he searched for her name, her social media, old group messages where she’d replied with laughing emojis or sent blurry photos of lunch.

Nothing.

Every trace had vanished.

Even their chat history was gone. The messages, the timestamps — blank. As if he had been talking to a ghost.

He tried to tell himself it was a glitch. A bug. Some kind of mistake.

But the fear told him otherwise.

People don’t disappear like that.

Not unless they were never meant to stay.

He walked to school under the grey sky. His steps felt slow, as though the ground had turned to sludge. The street felt longer than usual, like it was stretching away from him on purpose.

At school, he kept to himself. He stopped asking questions. The teachers looked through him. The classmates avoided his eyes.

Someone knocked over his bento during lunch and didn’t apologize.

He didn’t react.

He just stared at the mess of rice and eggs on the floor. The spilled soy sauce soaking into his notes.

He didn’t move to clean it up.

He just sat there, hands on his knees, motionless.

The teacher scolded him for not cleaning.

He bowed his head without speaking.

His voice felt too far away to reach.

After school, it rained again.

Of course it did.

He stood in the rain without an umbrella this time. His classmates passed by, laughing. A few glanced at him but quickly looked away.

When he got home, his parents didn’t ask why he was soaked.

They barely noticed him.

His father was on a business call. His mother stared blankly at a TV drama.

He walked past them in silence and shut the door to his room.

Then he sat on the floor.

He stared at the wall for a long time.

The house was quiet, too quiet. He started to hear faint sounds that weren’t there — someone whispering behind the wall. Footsteps in the hallway that never arrived. A soft voice humming a melody he couldn’t quite place.

He covered his ears. But the silence was louder than any sound.

He thought of Aki. Of the way she used to look at him — like he mattered.

And now?

Now, even his memories felt thin. Blurry. Her face was starting to fade.

He looked at his notebook. The one with the drawing — the seedling.

It was ruined now. The ink had run from the rain. The page warped and torn.

He tore it out.

Then another.

Then another.

Until the whole notebook was empty.

Or maybe it always was.

That night, he didn’t sleep.

He just lay there, staring at the ceiling again, feeling like he wasn’t real.

And at some point in the darkness, a single thought took root in his mind:

Maybe I imagined her.

Maybe he’d created her to escape the loneliness.

Maybe that’s why no one remembered her. Why no one cared she was gone.

Maybe it was all in his head.

The thought didn’t hurt.

It didn’t even scare him.

It just… fit.

Like puzzle pieces snapping into place.

Like truth.