The student council members appeared after school.
They didn't suddenly stop her or call her into the office.
They simply happened to be there.
The window at the end of the corridor was open and the setting sun was casting a play of light and shadow on the floor tiles.
Mio had just reached the corner when she saw them.
Two people.
They were wearing smart school uniforms with unusually clean cuffs for this time of day. One was standing and the other was leaning against the window.
They seemed to be waiting for someone; perhaps they had just happened to stop there.
Mio slowed her pace.
'Mio-san.'
The voice wasn't loud, but it landed precisely on her.
She stopped.
The person standing there opened a thin booklet without looking up.
'This afternoon, you were near the noticeboard.' The tone was calm, as if confirming a fact rather than asking a question.
Mio didn't speak.
The person by the window smiled slightly.
'Don't be nervous, it's just a routine check.'
Routine.
That word sent a chill down Mio's spine.
The person finally looked up at her.
Their gaze was ordinary, even somewhat gentle.
'Recently, quite a few students have reported some "unnecessary confusion" on campus.'
He paused.
'We hope to minimise this.'
Mio heard herself ask, 'For example?'
The person closed the booklet.
'For example, excessive focus on things that don't exist.'
The air was still for a moment.
The person by the window spoke in an even softer tone:
'Sometimes people mistake coincidences for clues.'
'That's normal.'
He turned his head to look at the playground outside.
'Especially when under pressure.'
Mio's fingertips tightened, her nails digging into her palm.
'What if I said this wasn't a coincidence?' She spoke, her voice steadier than she had expected.
They both looked at her simultaneously.
But there was no surprise.
It seemed to have been expected all along.
The person standing up smiled slightly.
'Then you need to rest even more.'
'The student council is currently working on environmental improvements. We'll help everyone remove any unnecessary distractions.'
Mio stared at him.
'Remove them?'
The person by the window stood up straight and took a step closer.
He said softly, 'Not "remove you".
'Remove the reasons that are causing you confusion.' The words were spoken extremely slowly.
, as if to reassure or adjust something.
Someone passed by in the corridor.
The student council members stepped aside, nodding politely.
For a moment, they truly seemed like ordinary classmates.
After the footsteps faded,
The person standing up added,
'If you have recently experienced memory confusion, time distortion or an inability to recognise others—'
He looked into Mio's eyes and continued,
'Please contact us immediately.'
The sooner, the better."
They made way.
There was no threat, no warning and not even a contact number.
Mio walked through them.
As they brushed past each other in that instant, she heard the person by the window say in an almost inaudible voice,
'If you go any further, you might start forgetting things you don't want to forget.'
Mio didn't turn around.
But she knew it wasn't a warning.
It was more than that.
This was the last time she was allowed to pretend she didn't understand.
That night, Mio didn't go home straight away.
Instead, she took a long detour and bought the cheapest notebook she could find in a convenience store.
The cover was light-coloured and plain.
It didn't look like something important.
It didn't look like something that would be cherished.
Sitting in the last row of the bus, she placed the notebook on her lap but hesitated to open it.
The words of the student council still echoed in her ears.
'The sooner the better.'
The reason you're confused.'
Mio looked down at her hands.
She suddenly realised the cruel truth.
If the world erases 'acknowledged existence',
then recording this event itself creates recognition.
Keeping it in her heart
—it will slowly be eaten away.
She went home and closed the door.
The room was quiet, the ticking of the clock's second hand clearly audible.
Mio spread all the draft papers, sticky notes and old textbooks from her bag on the bed.
She looked at each one.
Some words were still there.
Some spaces were empty.
Some page numbers didn't match.
It looked as though it had been tidied up gently.
She took a deep breath and opened her newly purchased notebook.
First page.
She didn't write her name.
Instead, she wrote a question:
'If I start to forget, what will you leave behind?'
Her handwriting was steady and clear.
Mio continued.
She didn't write, 'Who is he?'
She didn't write 'What happened?'
She only recorded—
When the register was called today, the whole class paused for half a second.
The words on the noticeboard made me forget what was said.
The student council said, 'It's not about dealing with me.'
No subject.
No object.
Only phenomena.
She wrote slowly.
After each entry, she paused for a few seconds.
To see if the world would stop her.
It didn't.
The notebook remained quiet, like a trap.
This made her even more uneasy.
She turned to the next page. This time, she wrote a single sentence:
A whole sentence.
After writing it, she closed the notebook and counted to ten.
She opened it again.
The sentence was still there.
Tears welled up in Mio's eyes.
She finally understood.
The world wasn't indelible.
It was waiting for her to decide whether to hand it over.
She sat on the bed, clutching the notebook, for a long time.
Finally, she made a decision.
In the corner of one of the notebook's pages, she wrote a very short line:
'When you read this far, it means you've begun to forget.
Don't be afraid. Keep writing.'
She paused, then added:
'Preserving memories is the fastest way to erase them.'
After writing, she tucked the notebook under the mattress.
Not the safest place.
But it was a place she could remember.
Before turning off the light, she lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling.
For the first time, she wasn't afraid of losing her memories.
Instead, she knew clearly that:
From this moment on, she was on the opposite side of the world.
On the third day, Mio noticed that something was wrong.
It hadn't happened suddenly, and the notebook hadn't been blank the moment she opened it.
It was just too smooth.
Every night, she checked her notebook at the same time and under the same light.
That day, as usual, she flipped to the first few pages.
The notes were all there, the handwriting intact — not even the punctuation had been altered.
She should have breathed a sigh of relief.
But instead, she felt uneasy.
She lowered her head and read them again.
When the teacher took the register today, the whole class paused for half a second.
No problem.
The words on the notice board made her forget what was said.
There was no problem there either.
The student council said, 'It's not about dealing with me.'
Mio's gaze froze.
She clearly remembered what she had written that day:
'It's not about dealing with you.'
She remembered that 'you'.
This wasn't a slip of the pen, nor was it a hazy memory.
It was her original wording, which she had deliberately kept.
Mio quickly flipped through the pages.
In the corner of the same page, she found the small note she had written to her 'future self':
'When you read this far, it means you've begun to forget. Don't be afraid; keep writing.'
It was still there.
But her heart sank slowly.
The world hadn't been deleted or erased.
It had simply become more plausible.
She immediately flipped to yesterday's entry.
The handwriting was still hers, but the tone was wrong.
It was too calm, as if it had been edited.
One entry read:
'A slight collective attention deficit occurred today, possibly related to fatigue.'
Mio stared at the sentence, her fingertips tingling.
She would never have written something like that.
This wasn't a record, but a conclusion.
She flipped forward, then backward.
The more she looked, the more uneasy she felt.
The notebook's contents were slowly approaching a 'plausible explanation'.
The anomalies hadn't been erased; they had just been presented as normal. She closed the notebook.
Her hands were trembling.
The world wasn't stopping her from recording.
It was teaching her how to speak for it.
Mio abruptly flipped to the last page.
It had been blank.
Now, a line of text appeared.
The handwriting was identical to hers.
'Over-recording accelerates chaos.'
Almost instinctively, Mio tore that page out.
The sound of the paper tearing was jarring in the room.
She clutched the torn page in her hand and crumpled it into a ball.
She breathed heavily.
Her heart was pounding.
This wasn't a warning.
This was a demonstration.
The world was telling her, 'I can write your story your way.'
Mio suddenly realised something far more terrifying.
If, one day, she opened this notebook again and found that she completely agreed with its contents, that would be the real failure.
That would be the real failure.
She stuffed the torn pieces of paper into the deepest part of the drawer.
Then she sat back down at her desk.
She picked up a pen.
This time, she didn't open her notebook.
She wrote the first line on a brand new sheet of paper.
She wrote slowly and with great force.
'Please do not organise, summarise or understand the following.'
She paused, then added:
'If this sentence is rewritten, it means I've already lost.'
Mio looked up at the room's unchanging furnishings.
She suddenly smiled.
It wasn't relaxation, but confirmation.
The world had already made its move.