When the crack reappeared, there was no commotion.
No alarm sounded and there was no surge of spiritual pressure.
Without that surge,
no one even noticed its emergence at first.
It simply hung silently above the old classroom building, more stable and distinct than any previous manifestation.
It resembled a deliberate mark left behind.
Li was the first to sense that something was amiss.
Not because of any anomaly,
But because it felt too 'normal'.
The light at the edges of the crack no longer flickered chaotically. Instead, it pulsed rhythmically, neither expanding nor contracting, but beating at precise intervals.
Beat by beat,
like a heartbeat,
or a countdown.
Li stood below, gazing up at the fissure, feeling a dull ache in his chest.
Suddenly, he realised something:
The crack had never been out of control.
It had merely been waiting for confirmation.
'So that's how it is,'
he murmured.
It wasn't the world cracking apart.
It was the world confirming itself—
Whether to keep certain things...
In that instant, a thought flashed through his mind that shouldn't have surfaced.
Not fear.
not escape,
But instead, an intensely specific, intensely personal and slightly inappropriate question arose:
If she vanished, would I remember her?
The moment the thought appeared, Li himself froze.
He couldn't even say who 'she' was.
She had no name and no face.
No face.
No complete memories.
Yet this 'she' occupied an unusually vivid space within him.
For the first time, such clarity stirred in him, awakening a fierce resistance to being erased.
The light streaming through the crack paused abruptly.
As if it had caught something.
The next second, the light patterns at the edges coalesced into a clearer structure.
Not symbols,
not words,
but a phased convergence signal.
The confirmation procedure countdown was initiated.
Li's throat tightened.
He finally understood.
This was not a warning.
but a notification.
The world was no longer watching.
You are an anomaly.
She is a variable, too.
Next—
Either assimilate or be eliminated.'
Li clenched his fists.
For the first time, a determination crystallised within him, too strong to ignore.
Not 'I want to live', but:
But:
'If she left a trace for me, I cannot pretend nothing happened.'
The light within the fissure flickered once more.
The countdown continued.
Deep within the dreamscape, a name that should have been recorded
remained missing.
At 03:07, Mio realised that the act of recording itself constituted a violation.
During this time slot, the academy's archive system entered its lowest monitoring frequency.
This was not for security reasons, but because—
The world assumed that no one would attempt to defy it at this hour.
She drew the curtains, blocking the corridor light, and paused her fingertips on the desk for two seconds.
Then, she activated a folder that wasn't listed as permitted.
She named it:
'The Forgotten Records'.
It wasn't an archive or a report.
Just a simple, almost childish idea.
If the world was going to erase something, at least someone should remember it.
The glow of the screen reflected in her pupils.
The first entry was an incident from three months ago.
A transfer student who, according to everyone, 'never enrolled'.
Not on the student roster.
Not in the group photos.
Even his desk had vanished overnight.
Only Mio remembered him.
She typed his name and archived it.
The system automatically popped up a warning the next second:
[Record anomaly]
Insufficient Data Integrity.
[Source: Unknown].
She ignored it.
She continued recording.
Entry Two:
Entry Three:
Entry Four:
People erased by the world, events rewritten; logical, yet emotionally fractured voids.
As the entries multiplied, a dull ache began throbbing at Mio's temples.
This wasn't physical discomfort.
It was her prophetic ability warning her.
'You are touching something that should not be perpetuated.'
She took a deep breath and clicked the 'Sort by Number of Edits' option.
She selected 'Number of Modifications' for the sorting order.
Then she saw that name.
Li.
Not one entry,
Not two entries,
, but an entire row.
The name was like the lingering shadow of a file that had been repeatedly dragged and attempted to be deleted, but always failed.
Mio's fingertip paused imperceptibly.
She tapped the first entry:
[Record ID: 017]
Subject: Li
Anomaly: presence fluctuations.
Status: Incomplete.
The sentence ended abruptly.
It wasn't because she hadn't finished writing.
It was because the latter half had been erased.
Mio's breath caught for a moment.
She tapped on to the next message.
[Record ID: 021]
Subject: Li
Anomaly manifestation: Slight temporal axis deviation.
Remarks: This went unnoticed by anyone that day.
Another abrupt termination.
Not gibberish.
Not an error.
But a clean, decisive 'termination'.
It was as if someone was standing behind her, reaching out to snatch the sentence away.
A chill ran down Mio's spine.
She scrolled rapidly.
Every record concerning Li was like this.
Just as the description was about to reach the 'core', it ended abruptly.
Without warning.
Without a trace.
As if the world were saying:
'You may observe,
But you cannot understand.'
She suddenly realised an even more terrifying truth.
It wasn't her recording Li.
But—
The world was repeatedly trying to erase him.
And they had failed.
Mio's gaze settled on the most recent entry.
The timestamp read 'yesterday'.
She had no memory of writing it.
[Record ID: 039]
Subject: Li
Status: Verification in progress
Risk level: —
The cursor blinked.
It was as if it was waiting for her to continue typing.
Mio's heart clenched violently.
She knew this feeling well.
the harbinger of a prophecy about to unfold.
But this time, she saw nothing.
No visions of the future.
No fragments.
Only an overwhelmingly pure intuition.
If she continued writing, she would lose something.
Mio slowly withdrew her hands from the keyboard.
Yet the next second, a line of text automatically appeared on the screen.
It wasn't her input.
The font was slightly out of focus, like a shadow emerging from within.
[Note: This entity should not be completely erased.]
Mio's pupils abruptly contracted.
She immediately severed the connection to the system and closed the terminal.
The room plunged into darkness.
The sound of her heartbeat became eerily clear in her ears.
She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes.
Yet an image surfaced in her mind.
Not of the future,
but of a moment she had witnessed long ago and had never dared to confront.
In the dream, Li stood before the fissure and turned back.
She wasn't afraid,
but peace.
As if to confirm:
At least someone still remembers me.'
Mio opened her eyes.
She murmured something she hadn't even realised she'd said:
'So that's how it is.'
She wasn't recording the forgotten.
She was racing against time, and against the world.
Li—
— was the entity that had been repeatedly deemed "erroneous", yet had never been successfully deleted.
On the desktop, the "Forgotten Logs" folder glowed quietly.
Mio sat up straight once more.
This time, she hesitated no longer.
She created a new entry:
Subject: Li
Permissions: Owner Only
Status: Ongoing monitoring.
In the notes section, she then typed her first complete, uninterrupted sentence:
'As long as I remember, you remain.'