The quiet hum of the hospital at night was louder than it had any right to be. Machines beeped in soft rhythms. Footsteps padded down hallways. Distant coughs echoed like whispers of forgotten memories.
Ethan lay awake in Lily's hospital bed, staring at the ceiling, trying not to break down.
He didn't remember me. He didn't remember me at all.
He had asked Masaru three different ways. "Do you remember Ethan?" "Your nephew?" "Your sister's son?"
Each time, the answer had been the same: confusion… and denial.
But Ethan remembered everything. His graduation. His favorite songs. His college dorm. His mother's smile when he got accepted into university. All those memories burned in him like an open wound, still real, still his—and yet, no trace of him existed in the outside world.
"Was I erased?" he whispered to the darkness. "Or… did she take my place completely?"
The thought twisted in his chest like a knife. He wanted to believe Lily hadn't done it on purpose. That her final words—"Enjoy your life this time"—meant she gave him a second chance, not stole everything he was.
But if that was true, why had even time forgotten him?
The next morning, Ethan asked for a wheelchair and access to Lily's old belongings. A nurse helped him sift through a small storage bin of folded clothes, notebooks, and a cracked pink tablet.
He clutched the tablet like a lifeline.
Once alone, he tapped the screen and logged in, guessing Lily's old password from memory — their childhood pet's name: Momo.
It worked.
The interface loaded slowly, but he ignored the outdated OS and opened every folder, every message history, every app.
Nothing.
No photos of him.
No texts from Ethan.
No family group chats with his name.
It was like the universe had deleted him with surgical precision. Even when he checked social media, there was no record of Ethan Nakamura. Only Lily. A girl who'd posted once every few months about flowers, the weather, and the occasional manga panel.
But I existed. I lived. I was there.
In a last-ditch effort, he typed his own name into a search engine.
No results found.
He felt sick.