The Erased Are Starting to Talk Back
Chapter 6: The Erased Are Starting to Talk Back
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🕳️ 1 — Echoes in the Hall
Ren returned to school the next morning.
The building felt heavier.
Not just emotionally—physically.
Like the walls carried the weight of memory now. Like they were straining under the pressure of something trying to return.
And then, as he walked past the trophy case by the stairwell, he heard it:
> "Don't forget me."
It wasn't Aika's voice.
It wasn't anyone's voice.
It came from the air. From the walls.
And suddenly—the mirror beside the case cracked.
A fine hairline fracture, right through the middle.
Ren stared at his warped reflection.
For a second, he saw someone else staring back.
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🪞 2 — Hall of Names
He ran to the old archive room. The school kept old yearbooks there, along with dusty awards and forgotten files.
He flipped through the third-year student lists.
In the 2014 edition, a single name had been scratched out with black ink.
The photo was smudged out too. But beside the blurred girl stood a boy with messy hair and a wide smile.
It was unmistakably him.
And beneath the photo:
> "Class 3-B, Window Seat — A—"
The rest was torn out.
And as Ren stared at the page…
> The scratched-out girl blinked.
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📷 3 — Visual Contamination
Later, Ren sat in the art room, alone.
He tried drawing Aika's face. Her eyes, her hair, her presence.
But every time he got close…
his pencil snapped.
His lines twisted.
The paper caught fire at the edges.
He gasped and dropped it.
From the blackened charcoal sketch, a whisper curled up like smoke:
> "I exist only as long as you believe I do."
Then the sketch faded to ash.
Ren backed away.
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🕯️ 4 — Late Night Broadcast
That night, the static on his TV turned itself on.
He hadn't touched the remote.
At exactly 3:03 AM, the screen flickered.
And there she was.
Aika.
Not in full detail. Just the outline of her sitting by a window. The image shook like an unstable broadcast.
She looked directly at the camera.
> "You're remembering too much.
Others are waking up too.
It's not safe."
Ren stared, frozen.
"What do you mean—others?"
But the broadcast cut to static.
And then, a deep voice whispered from the speaker:
> "She was never supposed to leave the in-between."
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🧍 5 — The Returned Ones
The next day, students began acting strangely.
Ren passed a classmate in the hall. They stopped, stared at him too long.
"You're that boy, right?" they said. "From that photo."
"…What photo?"
The student shook their head like waking from a trance.
"No. Never mind."
In class, someone asked, "Who's the girl by the window?"
But when Ren turned to look—no one was there.
Yet, the question had been asked.
More and more people began experiencing small "glitches":
Forgetting their own names for seconds
Hearing whispers in their notebooks
Seeing an empty seat that felt filled
It was happening.
The world's denial was weakening.
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💌 6 — Her Note (Again)
That night, Ren found a folded note on his window, pressed from the outside.
> "They're starting to remember.
That's dangerous.
Don't trust everyone who says they know me."
Signed:
> – Aika (This Time)
For the first time, she signed her name with clarity.
And that terrified him more than anything else.
Because it meant she was becoming real again.
And something else—something forgotten—was trying to drag her back.
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🕯️ End of Chapter 6
Next: Chapter 7 — "The Classmate Who Never Existed Is Back"