The boy Who Wrote to Be Remembered

Kazuki's Diary – Entry 294

"Wake up sweetie. You don't want to miss your first day of high school."

Mom's voice drifts under my door. Waking me up today, just like how she always does. I didn't set my alarm – not that turning it on would make any difference. I just didn't want to go. I never liked school. Always felt like a waste of time and energy to me when I could be playing games, reading books or binging anime. Why should I sit in a class full of loud and noisy people? Answering endless questions about lessons that are useless, for long hellish never-ending hours.

Mom always has a smile on her face when I tell her all this. To her it's like a morning radio that she never gets bored of. Even I get tired of my nagging sometimes.

Still, I pull on the uniform, put lunchbox and books in my backpack and head out.

As I was leaving the house, mind started racing through the escape plans: the empty park bench behind our house… the arcade as soon as it opens...

And the moment I step outside the house, she is there waiting.

"Good morning Ms. Hasunuma, how are you today."

It was Hana Shimizu. In this world besides my mom and games and books, I don't care about anything, except her. She is the reason why I reached high school. She helps me study and do my homework and sometimes in mornings like this when I'm extra motivated to skip school, she pushes me there.

"Take good care of him dear Hana." Mom tells her as she watches me from the door step.

"Hey Kazuki, excited to meet new people today, aren't you?" she said with a smile taking a jab at me.

"Yeah, can't wait to meet a bunch of people who are all friends with one another before the school even begins."

she laughed to my suffering. "But we're friends already too, right?"

I nod, looking away before my face betrays me. I wonder sometimes how someone as good looking and smart as her is friend with me, she's always the top of the class in every subject there is. I'm neither smart nor physically good looking. Is she friends with me out of pity or is it something that I can't see in myself?

Once we reached school, I felt all eyes on me.

"Look how beautiful she is and who's that loser next to her."

"No way she is friend with that guy."

"Maybe he is her brother or something."

"Must be a creep trying to get close to her."

And on and on people were gossiping all day. I knew I should have skipped the school today. Each one stung, and I winced for Hana – she hears it all, too.

She did the smart thing and didn't make enemy on the first day. Thank God the first day ended without being asked a question. The moment the bell rang; I left without her. This way she didn't have to be embarrassed of introducing me and had a chance to talk to others with ease. She didn't tell me this but I don't think she needed to.

Kazuki Hasunuma had been sick most of his childhood. The kind of sickness that came and went without warning – fevers, infections, mysterious conditions that doctors couldn't always name. He missed days and sometimes weeks of school and when he did show up, he wore a mask. Eventually, the other kids stopped talking and playing with him. While his classmates were playing together and making friends with one another, he sat on the bench all by himself. They stayed away from him to the point that made him feel invisible. He never learned how to make friends. Watching others talk and connect so easily made him feel like he was somehow less—like something essential was missing in him. That quiet jealousy turned inward, and he buried himself in books and games instead. Little by little, he became a shut-in, an outsider with no one to call a friend.

Except for Hana. She was the one exception. The one person who kept showing up, who treated him like someone worth the effort. But even with her, that feeling of inadequacy never disappeared.

Kazuki's Diary – Entry 295

It's been a week since high school started. A long, awkward, painful week.

Hana still walks with me every morning. She still smiles and says the same things she always has. But something’s different now.

Other boys are trying to talk to her. Some are already calling her by her first name, flirting in ways I never could. I hate it. I know I have no right to, but I can't help it. Every time I see her laughing with them, something in me twists.

I should have gone to a different school. Maybe it would've been easier—not seeing her surrounded by people who are smarter, funnier, more confident. People who are better than me.

Maybe this is for the better. She is a good person. She deserves the best, or at least someone better than me. Because the truth is, I don't deserve her. I've known that for a long time.

I wish I was more.

More than just the quiet kid.

More than a shadow in the corner.

I want to be someone who matters.

Someone you could proudly introduce as your friend.

Someone worth remembering.

The kind of person who could be in a story. The kind of person people look up to, or rely on, or admire.

But that's not me.

As Kazuki scribbled the final words of his diary entry, his desk began to tremble. First gently—like the distant rumble of a passing truck—then violently, jolting his pen across the page.

He paused, confused. There had been no earthquake alert on his phone. No sirens.

And then the room turned red.

Not a flicker. Not a blub. A flood of deep, suffocating crimson—seeping from the walls, the ceiling, the very air around him.

He opened his mouth to call out to his mother, but no sound came. His throat locked. Panic surged in his chest. Kazuki tried to move but even his body betrayed him—frozen in place, muscles stiff, limbs useless. That’s when he heard it.

Voices. Chanting.

Low, guttural, rhythmic—words spoken in a language he’d never heard before. It resembled something old and primal, like tribal rites echoing through time.

Kazuki's eyes widened as the light deepened. Symbols—faint and flickering—began to burn into the walls and ceiling in gold and black. Strange shapes. Arcs. Circles. Lines that danced like they were alive.

The air thickened with a metallic taste, like molasses pressing against his chest. A soundless scream welled in his throat, never escaping.

"What is this?"

"Am I hallucinating?"

"Did I just die?"

The thoughts echoed inside him – desperate, fragile, cracking at the edges.

A pulse tore through the room—boom—like a heartbeat not of this world.

Then the walls cracked. Not with fractures, but splits in reality itself. Threads of darkness unraveled around him, as if space was being peeled open, stretched, inverted. The symbols flared one last time—blinding—before everything collapsed inward.

The last thing Kazuki saw before being swallowed by the void…

Was himself.

His body hunched over the diary.

From behind.

Like a ghost.

And then—

Silence.

"What kind of nightmare is this…?"