The lights in the student council meeting room were brighter than anywhere else in the academic building.
Rather than a warm white light, it was a brightness designed to 'see everything clearly'. People sat on both sides of the long table in silence, with only the projected interface on the wall scrolling slowly.
The title was a single line:
'Final Cleansing Phase – Activation Confirmation.'
'The number of blank students has exceeded the safety threshold.'
The speaker's tone was flat and emotionless, as though reading a weather forecast.
The projection switched and charts appeared, showing grey areas gradually spreading to cover the entire campus model.
'Memory stability rate has decreased by 17%.'
'Causal continuity has been disrupted.'
'World self-check failed three times.'
Someone frowned. 'So that's why the final cleansing was activated?'
'Not "so"; it's too late.' Another person chimed in.
The air hung heavy for a moment.
The student council president, seated at the head of the table, raised a hand and all the interfaces froze simultaneously.
'Rules confirmed.'
He looked at everyone as if reciting a well-rehearsed oath.
'The ultimate purpose of the cleansing is not to punish abnormal individuals, but to prevent the world from collapsing.'
'We will only delete two types of existence.' Two lines appeared on the projection:
Individuals that cannot be stably recorded
Variables that will cause the restart to fail.
'The first type is blank students; the second type—'
The scene changes.
A red marker lights up in the model.
The label is cold and almost cruel:
World Error.
'World Error,' someone murmured.
'They didn't appear suddenly. They are remnants that weren't completely cleaned up in the last restart.'
Upon hearing this, someone in the conference room finally looked up.
'You mean... this world we're in now isn't the first time it's appeared?'
The chairman didn't deny it.
'Not the first time.'
'And it won't be the last.'
He continued to flip through.
The record list was full of deleted numbers without names because names were permissions granted by the world.
Every recorded existence will be remembered by the world, and those that cannot be remembered...
He paused.
'They shouldn't continue to exist.' "
Someone asked hesitantly, 'What if it was accidentally deleted?'
The Chairman glanced at him.
'That just means it was inherently unstable.'
Silence returned to the meeting room.
A confirmation button appeared on the last page:
[Final Cleansing: Countdown in Progress].
The chairman's hand hovered in the air for half a second.
'Before execution, final confirmation: Are there any unclassified but marked anomalies?'
The system responded automatically.
[Exists.]
A red dot flashed.
In the code name column, there were only four letters:
LI.
The Chairman's fingertip paused.
'Status?'
[Observable]
[Actionable]
[Not yet blank]
'Still hesitating?'
Someone sneered. 'Can the world hesitate?'
The Chairman didn't reply.
He pressed the confirmation button.
The countdown officially started.
'The final cleansing isn't about being right; it's about keeping the world running.' The projection ended and the lights returned to normal.
No one noticed.
As the cleansing began, the person marked 'World Error' stood at the other end of the corridor, clearly sensing—
— that the world had finally decided to kill him.
It all began with his shadow.
Li walked down the corridor as the setting sun streamed in through the window and cast a long shadow. When he looked down, he saw that the shadow was keeping pace with him.
However, after a couple more steps, the shadow slowed down.
It wasn't misalignment, but rather a delay, as if the frame rate of a video had suddenly dropped. He had stopped, yet the shadow continued to move forward.
Li stared at the ground, his throat tightening.
He raised his hand.
The shadow, a beat behind, made the same gesture.
He said nothing, simply continuing to walk.
The further he walked, the more the world felt wrong.
Though only a dozen metres long, the end of the corridor seemed stretched out; the echoes of his footsteps were unsteady, and for a moment, he couldn't hear the sound of his own shoes.
Instead, echoes appeared before him.
It was as if the world knew he was about to pass through it.
The strangeness intensified as he turned the corner.
The reflection in the glass window didn't immediately look at him.
The person in the mirror was a full second slower.
The face was familiar — it was his own — but the expression was different.
Li stopped.
The figure in the mirror finally looked up and met his gaze.
In that instant, he had the clear feeling that it wasn't the mirror reflecting him, but another version of himself being forcibly aligned.
He abruptly looked away, his heart pounding wildly.
This feeling was even more pronounced in the classroom.
When he spoke, it seemed as though he had drawn out the last syllable of each word; the sentences ended, but the final syllables lingered in the air, reluctant to dissipate.
A classmate frowned at him.
'You paused a bit?'
'No,' Li immediately denied.
As he said this, the world seemed to be a beat behind.
The chalk fell to the floor.
'Thud.'
The sound came first; the image followed.
Li finally realised that he hadn't just been marked.
He was drifting out of sync with the world.
At noon, he went to the restroom.
He turned on the tap and the water flowed, but he didn't immediately put his hand under it.
There was a brief, silent pause; the water was there, and so was his hand.
Yet between them, as if written into the rules, there was a gap.
He jerked his hand back, causing the water to splash onto the sink.
He leaned against the wall, breathing heavily.
This wasn't a hallucination or a physical problem.
The world was becoming uncertain — was he even still considered to be here?
His phone vibrated.
A system notification from an unknown source appeared:
[Status Update: World Error]
Synchronisation rate decreasing.
[Suggestion: Remain Still].
Li stared at the words, then suddenly smiled.
The smile was soft and brief.
'Quite thoughtful.'
He continued walking.
If he was truly going to be deleted, at least one thing needed to be confirmed before complete sync.
He walked towards the rooftop.
As the wind blew, he felt his body split into two points in time.
One was already standing at the railing; the other was still at the door.
The overlapping dizziness almost made him lose his balance.
Just then, he heard someone call his name.
It wasn't a voice, but rather a feeling as if he was being pulled back from his memories.
He turned around.
Mio stood there, pale.
She looked at him, then at his shadow, which had appeared late, and her pupils suddenly contracted.
At that moment, Li finally understood: as the world began to act, it also allowed certain people to witness his erasure.
Li first realised he was being followed when his shadow appeared again.
It wasn't moving more slowly, just extending further.
He stopped and noticed that his shadow was still moving forward, but that a blurry outline was overlapping its edge.
Someone had stepped into the moment he hadn't yet reached.
'Don't turn around.'
The voice came from his right, low and as if spoken close to the edge of reality.
Li didn't move.
The person stepped out.
He was wearing a school uniform casually, with a loose tie and rolled-up cuffs, as if he had long since abandoned his identity as a student. His eyes were bright, but not in a normal way; they were the overly clear light of someone who had stayed up too late.
'You've been marked,' he said. 'World Error, right?'
Li's heart skipped a beat.
'How did you know?'
'Because the way you're walking now,' the person said, glancing at his shadow, 'is exactly the same way we used to.'
'We?'
Two more people emerged from behind the wall.
One of them was wearing headphones, but there was no music playing; they were just for noise isolation. The other person twirled an old student ID card with a worn-away photo.
'Remnants of the Nightclub,' said the first person. "Though there aren't many left now."
Li recognised the name.
It was the club from campus legends — disbanded, denied and even treated as a collective hallucination.
"Weren't you guys eliminated?" Li asked.
"Yes, the failed elimination." The person with the student ID card smiled.
They led Li to a place that no one would go to.
In the basement of the old school building, a door that should have been sealed shut had been forced open from the inside as if it were a pre-prepared exit.
There were no lights inside, only emergency lighting. The walls were covered in papers.
These weren't posters, but torn documents: shredded student lists, system screenshots, dream sketches and the afterimage of a countdown.
Li immediately recognised the familiar words:
[World Error]
[Reboot Failed]
[Residual Variable]
'The world reboots periodically,' said the person wearing headphones. 'Each time it fails, a batch of "unstable factors" are deleted.'
Blank students receive the lightest treatment. Those like you are residual variables after the reboot.'
Li's throat tightened. "So I'm not the first?"
The person with the transfer student ID handed him the worn-out document. 'But you're the first, and you can still walk normally.'
On the back of the ID, faded lettering read:
'Individual remaining after the seventh reboot.'
Li's fingertips grew cold.
"And what about you?"
'We should have been deleted, but we got stuck in the middle.'
'The world's memory of us is incomplete, yet it can't completely forget us.'
'So we can only operate at night, when the system isn't paying attention.'
This is how the "Night Walker Club" got its name.
Li remained silent for a long time before asking the most crucial question.
'Why did you come to me?' The three men exchanged glances.
Finally, the first man to speak said:
'Because you possess a state you've never had before.'
He pointed to Li's shadow.
The delayed outline was slowly stabilising.
'The world is hesitating over whether to delete you.'
'And hesitation means—'
'You could potentially influence the rules.'
There was a moment of silence.
'Of course,' he added. 'It also means you'll be targeted sooner than any of us.'
'Come with us and you'll become a target. Don't come with us and you'll be eliminated immediately.'
Li looked up at the torn records.
Those who were deleted didn't even leave their names behind.