Nameless
He walked for what felt like hours.
The library dissolved behind him, the shelves vanishing mid-step, the air thinning like someone had turned the world inside out. Now he was outside again, on a narrow path winding through low fog and trees without leaves.
The note was still in his pocket.
Don't follow her this time.
He hadn't seen her again.
Not yet.
The sky was the color of wet stone.
The trees above creaked softly, even though they didn't move. The path was too straight. The kind of straight that suggested it had been made recently. Or forgotten quickly.
He walked with his hands in his pockets, feeling the weight of the page.
And something else.
A weightlessness.
About twenty paces later, he stopped.
There was a sign by the path. Old wood, cracked and leaning.
It simply read:
"This way to you."
He stood still.
His breath clouded the air.
"What's my name?" he whispered.
It wasn't a big question.
Not at first.
It was the kind of thing you'd expect to know, like your favorite color or the face of someone you love.
But nothing came.
Not even a first letter.
Just silence.
He closed his eyes and tried to hear someone say it.
A parent. A teacher. The girl.
No voice said his name.
Not even his own.
He frowned.
Surely he'd introduced himself at some point.
Hadn't he?
He pulled out the note again, flipping it over.
There was no signature.
There never had been.
He tried saying it out loud—just his name. Any name. Any syllable that felt like home.
But the sound caught in his throat.
Like something was stopping it.
Not choking.
Just… absence.
A bench sat nearby. He hadn't seen it before. The metal was rusted. A newspaper lay folded on one side.
He sat down.
Opened it.
It wasn't a newspaper.
It was a flyer. For a missing person.
The photo was blurred.
The name was torn off.
The reward listed was:
"Everything you never got to be."
He dropped the paper.
A voice spoke behind him.
The girl.
"You keep forgetting to be someone," she said.
He turned, but she was already walking away.
"Wait—" he called. "Do you know my name?"
She didn't turn.
She only said:
"You gave it up. Before this started."
"You didn't want to be remembered."
He stood there a while after she disappeared.
The fog moved across the path like a curtain closing.
He looked at his hands.
They didn't feel like his.
He wasn't even sure what that meant.
He walked on.
And somewhere behind the clouds, the world kept trying to forget him.