Dinner was quiet.
Kai sat across from his older sister, Aoi, while their father scrolled through his phone. The TV murmured in the background.
He stared at his rice, then asked, without looking up:
"Do you remember Mayu Tanaka?"
Aoi paused with her chopsticks mid-air. "…Who?"
"She was in my class. She sat next to me. Until yesterday."
Their father didn't look up. "Is this about another one of your ghost stories?"
"I'm not joking," Kai said. "She's gone. Everyone's pretending she never existed."
Aoi frowned. "Kai, are you feeling okay?"
The way she said it — soft, patronizing — infuriated him.
"I'm not crazy!" he snapped. "You used to tease me about her. Remember the time I—"
"Enough," their father cut in. "If this is about your mother again—"
Kai stood up sharply. The chair screeched against the floor.
"Forget it."
He left the room to the sound of his sister whispering, "He's slipping again."
The next day at school, the world felt off-kilter.
Teachers smiled too widely. Friends blinked too slowly. Conversations around him sounded like recordings on a loop.
When he bumped into Ren by the vending machines, Kai stared hard at him.
"Do you remember Mayu Tanaka?"
Ren didn't flinch. Just sipped his drink.
"I remember a lot of people who aren't here anymore," Ren said.
Kai's eyes widened. "So you do know."
Ren leaned in.
"But if you keep asking the wrong people the right questions, they'll start replacing you, too."
At lunch, Kai approached Haruto again — his best friend since elementary school.
"Haruto, I need to ask you one last time. Just be honest. Do you remember Mayu? Short, glasses, always humming."
Haruto shifted uncomfortably. "Kai, you've been acting weird lately."
"Answer the question."
Haruto didn't look him in the eyes. "I don't want to get involved."
"What does that even mean?"
"I said I don't want to—!" Haruto's voice cracked. His eyes darted around. He leaned in.
"She came to me the night before she vanished. She said she saw something. Behind the mirror. Something that looked like her, but wrong. Said it whispered her name backwards."
Haruto's hand trembled. "Next day, she was gone. And I— I made myself forget."
He stood up and walked away, nearly tripping over his chair.
Kai sat alone, heartbeat pounding.
So he wasn't the only one.
That night, Kai stood in front of the bathroom mirror, lights off, holding his phone as a flashlight.
He whispered his name.
Nothing.
He turned slightly — just to test a theory.
In the reflection, his face was delayed by a second.
And when it finally caught up — it smiled before he did.
He stumbled back, heart thudding, and the mirror cracked down the middle with a high-pitched shriek, like nails on glass.
The next morning, people avoided him.
Teachers didn't call on him.
Even his name was missing from the board during attendance.
He was still there — but slowly, quietly, something was pushing him out.
Just like Mayu.
At his locker, he found another note.
Written in shaky ink:
"They notice when you notice.If you want answers, stop trusting the living.Some of the dead still remember."
Kai crushed the note in his hand, eyes burning.
No one was going to help him.
He'd have to descend into the lie alone.