I pulled the scrap of yellowed paper from behind the locker's rusted vent. It wasn't standard notebook paper; it felt like dry skin, translucent and cold. On it, the words were written in a dark, brownish ink that smelled faintly of copper.
"Mokagan totoo. Makatagon hindi. Makatugo."
As I whispered the words out loud, the hallway lights flickered. The buzzing of the fluorescent bulbs intensified into a low scream. I looked down at the English translation scribbled in pencil on the back, but the lead seemed to be vibrating, the letters rearranging themselves as I watched.
The translation changed. It no longer said To see the truth. Now, it read: BECOME THE ABSENCE.
I looked up, and the lockers on the left side of the hallway were gone. Not moved, not stolen—just gone. In their place was a flat, gray void that hurt to look at. A teacher walked past me, humming a tune, stepping over the edge of the abyss as if he were walking on solid ground. He didn't see the hole in reality because he wasn't looking for the truth. He had "hidden the lie."
But I had read the words. I had "answered." My reflection in the trophy case glass began to blur, the edges of my face turning into the same gray static as the missing lockers. The book wasn't a story. It was a countdown.
The air in the hallway grew impossibly cold, the kind of cold that doesn't just chill your skin but settles deep inside your marrow. I tried to drop the paper, but it clung to my fingertips like a wet leaf, the copper scent now thick enough to taste. My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic rhythm that felt like the only thing keeping me anchored to the floor.
I looked back at the gray void where the lockers used to be. It wasn't just a hole; it was an appetite. It was spreading, slowly eating the edges of the floor tiles, turning the "real" world into a smudge of nothingness. Then, the static reached my knees. I couldn't feel my feet anymore.
The Unspoken Rule
A voice—dry as parchment and coming from nowhere—echoed in the silent hall. It didn't speak in English or the ancient tongue. It spoke in a vibration that rattled my teeth.
"To read is to witness. To witness is to be claimed."
I scrambled backward, tripping over my own dissolving legs. I reached out for the trophy case, but my hand passed right through the glass. The gold medals and silver cups didn't break; they simply flickered out of existence as my "absent" fingers touched them. I was a contagion of nothingness.
The Second Translation
I forced my eyes back down to the paper in my hand. The pencil marks were dancing again, frantic and jagged. The words BECOME THE ABSENCE began to bleed downward, forming a new, final sentence in English:
"DO NOT LOOK AT THE ONES WHO REMAIN."
I looked up instinctively. At the far end of the hall, the teacher who had been humming stopped. He turned around. His face was a smooth, featureless mask of skin—no eyes, no nose, just a slight indentation where a mouth should be. He began to tilt his head, sniffing the air, sensing the "gap" I was creating in his perfect, lie-filled world.
He wasn't a teacher. He was a placeholder. And I was the error he was meant to delete. I pressed my back against the wall—the only solid thing left—and realized with a jolt of terror that the "Evidence of Absence" wasn't a mystery to be solved.
It was a harvest. And the school was the field.