During the first lesson's register, Li had a premonition that something was about to go wrong.
It wasn't intuition, but rather a strange sense of emptiness, as if the world around him were loading more slowly.
The teacher flipped through the attendance book, his finger sliding down the lines, calling out names in a monotonous rhythm: 'Chen?' 'Here.' 'Lin—' 'Here.'
It was his turn.
The teacher's fingertip paused noticeably, then skipped over his name.
Li looked up and instinctively responded, 'Here.'
No one turned around.
The teacher didn't even frown; he continued to call out names as if Li's response hadn't been recorded by the system.
He thought it was a coincidence.
Until the second period, that is.
The homework was to be handed in on paper. Li finished the last question, flipped to the top left corner and wrote his name as usual:
'Li.'
The next second, he froze.
It wasn't an illusion or a lighting issue: the name had faded from the paper.
It wasn't an eraser mark, but rather as if the ink had suddenly lost its ability to exist: the colour had drained away, leaving only a blurry indentation.
He rewrote it.
'Li.'
The character barely touched the paper before the wet lines began to twist as if dragged into gibberish. The strokes broke and overlapped, finally becoming a shapeless black blob.
He stared at the blob, a chill running down his spine.
A classmate sitting next to him glanced over. 'What are you writing? Scribbling?'
Li replied, "My name."
The other person chuckled, "Your name is so abstract?"
He didn't reply.
During the lunch break, he logged into the student system to check his details. His account and student ID were there, but his photo was missing.
— was empty.
It wasn't blurred; it simply didn't exist, as if the database had never stored that face in the first place.
The name field only had one line:
'Field error: Unable to display.'
Li stared at the line of text for a long time, his fingers numb with cold.
During the afternoon roll call, he was overlooked once again.
He suddenly realised something:
It wasn't that they were ignoring him; rather, the world at every level of 'recordation' was refusing to acknowledge that he had ever existed.
At that moment, the following chillingly calm thought flashed through his mind:
'Not ignored, but refused to be recorded by the world.'
The bell rang, the classroom erupted into noise and everyone stood up, chatted and left.
Li remained seated, like a line of code flagged as an error by the system, yet still visible on the screen.
The world continued to turn, but it no longer saved him.
Even before she fell asleep, Mio sensed that something was wrong.
She lay in bed with the room lights off, the light from the window filtering into thin lines through the curtains. Usually, this was the easiest state in which to fall asleep: her consciousness would relax, the world would soften, and she would be able to reach out and touch someone else's dream.
She did.
She closed her eyes, slowed her breathing and tried to 'search' for Rei, as usual.
Not a location or a scene, but a familiar feeling — so intuitive that it needed no identification, like instantly recognising him in a crowd.
But this time, she couldn't find him.
She stood at the entrance to the dream for a moment.
Black.
Not the black of night, but a darkness that had yet to unfold completely. There was no wind, no sound and no flow of time.
Mio paused, thinking it was just her state of mind.
She tried again.
This time, she ventured deeper. Afterimages began to appear at the edges of the dream: a broken corridor, an unfinished noticeboard and a half-open textbook. These were all familiar elements, yet they couldn't piece together a complete scene.
She still couldn't see Li.
'Strange.'
This was the first time she had spoken in the dream.
The dream didn't respond.
Usually, as soon as she approached Li, the dream would brighten automatically, the colours would focus and the outlines would become clear, as if the whole world were welcoming her arrival.
But now there was nothing.
Not blocked, not rejected.
She couldn't find her target.
Mio's heart sank.
She forcefully activated her ability, as though dipping her hand into unmarked water. The dream became unstable, the image shook and the edges were torn.
She caught a glimpse of a scene:
An empty desk and a chair pushed aside, but no one was there.
The next second, the image collapsed.
Mio opened her eyes, breathing rapidly.
She sat up and found that her forehead was covered in cold sweat. The room was eerily silent. Looking down at her hands, she noticed her fingertips trembling.
Something was wrong.
This wasn't a malfunction of her ability.
She knew her ability inside out: as long as the other person was acknowledged by the world, she would find him.
She suddenly realised a terrifying possibility:
It wasn't that she couldn't enter Li's dream; it was that Li's 'place' was being erased from it.
Mio hugged her knees, her throat tightening.
For the first time, her fear wasn't about losing control, the backlash or being discovered.
It was a question she had never considered.
What if, one day, she couldn't find him in her dreams anymore?
Did that mean the world had already begun to abandon him?
Outside the window, the wind whispered softly.
Mio whispered as if to confirm or perhaps to plead, 'Are you still there?'
'Are you still there?'
Yume didn't answer.
Neither Li nor Mio was the first to notice the empty seat.
It was an ordinary student sitting at the back.
He casually remarked, 'Hey, this seat used to be occupied, right?'
No one answered.
The desk was immaculately clean. There was no graffiti on the surface and the drawers were empty. Not even a trace of tape had been used — it seemed to have been deliberately restored to its 'factory condition'.
The teacher walked into the classroom, her gaze sweeping over the entire class without hesitation. 'Everyone's here today.'
"Everyone's here today."
Li, sitting diagonally at the back, looked at the empty seat and felt a tightness in his stomach.
He was certain that someone had sat there yesterday.
That person wasn't a friend or an acquaintance; just a classmate who kept a very low profile. In fact, if there hadn't been fewer empty seats, Li wouldn't have even thought of him.
After class, he tried to ask around:
'Do you remember who sat over there?'
The other person thought for a moment, then shook their head. 'It's always been empty, hasn't it?' The other person answered more bluntly: 'You're mistaken.' "
Li didn't ask any more questions.
In the afternoon, more discrepancies began to appear on campus.
Class attendance and seating numbers didn't match, yet all systems displayed perfectly normal information. Student lists showed skipped numbers, but there were no abnormal notifications. In the surveillance footage, someone walked into the frame, only to be instantly obscured by the background the next second.
The video was like a timeline that had been repeatedly erased.
In the afternoon, the student council entered the classroom.
This wasn't a routine check, but a targeted patrol.
They held tablets whose screens displayed not names, but rows of grey entries — no avatars, no notes, only a status bar.
[Blank]
Li's heart skipped a beat.
The student council members stopped in front of the empty seat.
One of them glanced down at the screen, confirmed something, and pressed a button in the air.
In that instant, Li saw something she wasn't supposed to see.
The empty seat flickered.
As if there had been a signal interruption, the image distorted, then returned to normal immediately.
'Processed.' The student council members said.
They turned and left, taking no one with them.
But Li knew very well that
Something had been 'reclaimed'.
That evening, Mio stood at the corner of the corridor, watching the departing figures of the student council members, her fingers tightly gripping the hem of her clothes.
She had just tried to 'see' the dream of that empty seat.
The dream was empty.
It wasn't just an empty room; it was a place where the entrance to the dream didn't exist.
"... So that's how it is."
She finally understood.
These weren't absences, transfers or accidents.
They were students who, in the eyes of the world, no longer needed to be remembered.
They had a unified name:
Blank Students.
Li stood not far away, overhearing the student council members whispering:
'The number of Blank Students has increased.'
'The error is starting to spread.' 'If this continues—'
His words were interrupted by the sound of the door closing.
Li looked down at his hands.
He suddenly realised something even more terrifying.
He hadn't become blank yet.
This meant that the world was still hesitating about whether to erase him completely.
Hesitation usually means deletion is imminent.