The school day began like any other.
But Kai noticed something different the moment he walked into class: a desk was empty. The one in the corner by the window — Mayu Tanaka's.
She wasn't the type to skip class. Always early. Always smiling. Too organized to vanish without a word.
He looked around.
No one else seemed to notice. Or care.
"Where's Mayu?" Kai asked Haruto during break.
Haruto blinked. "Who's that?"
"Mayu. Tanaka. She sits next to the window—"
"You mean Yuka? She's always been there."
Kai stared at the desk. A different girl sat there now. She looked up and smiled like nothing was strange.
"She's new," Kai whispered.
Haruto shrugged. "She transferred in last semester, dude."
No. She didn't.
Kai remembered Mayu. Her clunky glasses. Her purple mechanical pencil. The way she used to draw spiral shapes on her desk when bored.
But now… even the spirals were gone.
That afternoon, a substitute teacher took over their literature class. Young. Pale. Too still.
He never blinked.
"Open your books," he said, "to page one-nineteen. The section on memory."
Kai hesitated. "Sir, do you know what happened to Miss Kawaguchi?"
The class went silent.
The teacher smiled — small, thin, unnatural.
"There is no Kawaguchi here," he said.
"But she's—" Kai started.
The substitute closed the book. "Sometimes, we remember things that don't belong. It's best to forget them."
Then, calmly, he erased Mayu's name from the attendance sheet.
Kai rushed to the student records office after school. The lady at the desk barely looked up.
"Tanaka Mayu. Class 2-C," he said.
Her fingers clicked across the keyboard. "No such student."
"I sat next to her for three months."
"Are you sure?" she asked, almost gently. "We don't have any record of her ever enrolling."
Kai stepped back, pulse racing.
The class photo — gone from the bulletin board.
The old seating chart — freshly printed. With a different name in Mayu's place.
Even her locker was cleaned out. Labeled with a different number.
It was like she'd been wiped out of reality.
He returned to the classroom, desperate for anything.
Behind her old desk, stuffed between the cabinet and wall, he found something: a single notebook page.
Scrawled in shaky handwriting:
"I saw it watching us. It hides in reflections. In the corners. Behind the teacher's smile.
I thought I could ignore it.
But now it's looking at me."
At the bottom:
"Tell Kai—if he starts hearing the static, run."
Kai's throat tightened.
How had she known he'd be the one to find this?
Kai sat outside as dusk fell, gripping the note like a lifeline.
The world felt… thinner.
Shadows stretched wrong. Voices from inside the school echoed like they were underwater.
He looked at his phone — no messages from Mayu. The chat log was gone.
But he remembered her laugh. Her favorite drink. The way she used to tap her pen when nervous.
She was real.
He was sure of it.
And now she was gone.
Not just disappeared — erased.
And no one else seemed to notice.
No one but him.