“Let’s go.”
His father stood at the school infirmary door.
His tone was no different from usual.
Jiang Yu turned around.
The space beside the hospital bed was empty.
The girl was gone again.
As if everything that had just happened had been nothing more than a hallucination.
But Jiang Yu knew it wasn’t.
The curtain beside the bed was still swaying faintly.
Someone had just been standing there.
All the way home.
Father and son didn’t say a word.
The black sedan moved quietly along the afternoon streets.
Red light.
The car stopped.
Green light.
It continued forward.
The only sound inside the car was the faint rush of air from the vents.
Jiang Yu sat in the passenger seat, staring out the window.
Suddenly, he couldn’t remember when his father had last come to pick him up on his own.
Elementary school?
Or middle school?
It had been too long.
Long enough that he had no memory of it.
“Your teacher said…”
His father suddenly spoke.
“You saw a nonexistent person in class today.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you believe what you saw?”
Jiang Yu didn’t answer.
Instead, he asked a question.
“Dad.”
“Hmm?”
“If one day, the entire world forgot someone…”
“Would that person still count as existing?”
His father’s hand on the steering wheel paused for an instant.
A very short instant.
Less than half a second.
“They’d exist.”
He spoke without changing expression.
“As long as someone still remembered them.”
Jiang Yu whipped his head around.
His father kept his eyes on the road.
As if he had only answered an ordinary question.
“But what if…”
Jiang Yu continued.
“What if the last person who remembered them forgot, too?”
His father fell silent.
The car entered a tree-lined boulevard.
Shadows from the trees flashed past on either side.
After a long while,
he finally spoke.
“Then they’d really disappear.”
When they got home, Mom was cutting fruit in the kitchen.
“You’re back?”
She poked her head out with a smile.
“What did your teacher say?”
“It’s nothing.”
Jiang Yu answered.
Mom let out a sigh of relief.
“You scared me half to death. Your teacher suddenly called, and I thought you’d passed out.”
She walked over and naturally ran a hand over Jiang Yu’s head.
“Are you hungry?”
Jiang Yu paused.
Then nodded.
“A little.”
Mom smiled.
“We have your favorite braised ribs tonight.”
Jiang Yu suddenly felt a stinging in his nose.
He didn’t know why.
It was such an ordinary sentence.
Yet it made him think of Lin Zi'an.
If Lin Zi'an had really disappeared from the world,
was his mother also at home right now,
making his favorite dishes,
without knowing
who she was waiting for?
Dinner was quiet.
His younger sister kept sharing funny things that had happened at school that day.
Mom laughed now and then.
His father barely spoke.
Everything was just as usual.
Until Mom suddenly asked:
“Oh, right, Xiao Yu.”
“Hmm?”
“Isn’t there one fewer person in your class?”
Jiang Yu’s chopsticks stopped.
His father stopped, too.
But Mom looked confused.
“Your teacher called today, and I kept feeling like something was off.”
“What was off?”
“I don’t know.”
Mom frowned.
“I just have this feeling that your class used to have forty-one students, right?”
“How did it become forty now?”
Jiang Yu’s heart gave a violent jump.
“Mom.”
“You remember?”
Mom froze.
“Remember what?”
“The person who’s missing.”
Mom stared at him blankly.
A few seconds passed.
Then she slowly shook her head.
“That’s strange.”
“I suddenly can’t remember.”
“Maybe I was mistaken.”
She smiled faintly.
Then continued eating.
As if nothing had happened.
But Jiang Yu didn’t move.
Just now.
For three brief seconds.
Mom had almost remembered.
At eleven that night, Jiang Yu couldn’t sleep.
He opened his bedroom door.
The living room was pitch-black.
Only the study light was still on.
His father hadn’t gone to bed yet.
Jiang Yu walked over quietly.
The door wasn’t fully closed.
A narrow gap remained.
His father had his back to the door,
sitting in front of the computer.
The screen was bright.
He seemed to be looking over some files.
Jiang Yu had intended to leave,
but then he suddenly saw it.
On his father’s desk
lay a photograph.
A family portrait.
Dad.
Mom.
His younger sister.
And himself.
Everything looked normal.
But…
in the lower-right corner of the photo,
a small section had been cut away.
As if, originally,
someone had been standing there.
Just then, his father suddenly spoke.
He didn’t turn around.
“How long have you been standing at the door?”
Jiang Yu’s whole body went rigid.
“…I just got here.”
“Come in.”
His father slowly turned the photograph facedown.
“Did you need something?”
“No.”
“Then why aren’t you asleep?”
Jiang Yu didn’t answer.
His gaze
remained fixed on the photograph lying facedown.
His father noticed.
“Curious?”
“Yeah.”
“Just an old photo.”
“Can I see it?”
His father looked at him for a long time.
So long that the only sound left in the room was the ticking of the clock.
Finally,
he pushed the photograph over.
“Sure.”
Jiang Yu reached out and picked it up.
Then turned it over.
There were only four people in the photo.
No gap.
No fifth person.
As if everything he had just seen
had been a hallucination.
Jiang Yu lowered his head.
Then suddenly noticed
that the back of the photograph
had a line of very faint pencil writing.
As if someone had written it on purpose,
then deliberately tried to erase it.
Only a few barely legible words remained.
…Don’t forget her.
Jiang Yu’s pupils contracted sharply.
He was just about to look closer
when his father had already snatched the photograph back.
“It’s late.”
“Go to sleep.”
Jiang Yu left the study.
The door closed softly behind him.
He stood in the hallway,
motionless for a long time.
Because in the final second before the door closed,
he had seen his father put the photograph back in the drawer.
And inside that drawer
were dozens of identical family portraits,
arranged in neat rows.
Every single one
had been torn to a different degree.
Erased to a different degree.
Missing pieces to a different degree.
As if…
someone had kept trying to preserve a certain person,
only to fail
every time.