I held my breath.
The voice still felt so close.
Right behind me.
And yet, strangely, I felt no breath against the back of my neck. There was no sound of movement. No footsteps moving away.
Only silence.
I stood rigidly with my eyes closed.
One second.
Two seconds.
Three seconds.
Then I heard something fall in the distance.
I flinched.
Reflexively, I opened my eyes and turned around.
There was no one there.
The hallway behind me was empty.
The lights that had gone out earlier were on again, though some of them were flickering erratically.
I swallowed.
“An hallucination?”
I tried to convince myself.
Maybe I was just too tired.
Maybe everything that had happened over the past few days had left me unable to tell reality from memory.
I rubbed my face.
But when I lowered my hand, my gaze stopped on something on the floor.
A piece of paper.
A small white sheet folded in half.
I didn’t remember ever seeing it before.
Hesitantly, I bent down and picked it up.
There was handwriting on the front.
Handwriting I knew all too well.
My own handwriting.
My heart began to beat faster.
I unfolded it.
There was only one sentence.
If you’re reading this, it means I failed to make you forget everything.
My hand went still.
I read the sentence again.
Then again.
Impossible.
I had never felt like I’d written a letter like this.
But the handwriting really was mine.
The shape of the letters.
The way some of the words slanted slightly.
Even the pressure marks from the pen in certain places.
Everything was the same.
I turned the paper over.
There was more writing.
Don’t look for that girl.
I furrowed my brow.
“Why?”
There was no answer.
I read the words at the bottom.
This time, the writing was smaller.
Because if you find her, you’ll find your true self.
My chest felt tight.
I quickly slipped the paper into my pocket.
I didn’t know what to believe.
But one thing was becoming clear.
Someone had been trying to erase my memories all this time.
And what was even more frightening...
that person might be me.
I walked down the hallway.
Every step felt heavy.
I no longer knew whether I was looking for answers or walking toward something that was supposed to remain buried.
At the end of the hallway stood a door.
A door I had never seen before.
It was a dull white.
There was no sign.
No room number.
Only a small symbol in the center.
A circle split by a vertical line.
I approached it.
For some reason, the symbol felt familiar.
I raised my hand.
But before I could touch the doorknob, I heard footsteps behind me.
This time, they were real.
I was sure of it.
Someone was walking toward me.
I turned around.
A woman stood about thirty feet away.
Her hair was long.
I couldn’t make out her face clearly because the light above her kept flickering.
I took a step back.
“Who are you?”
The woman didn’t answer.
She only stared at me.
Then she slowly raised her hand.
Pointing at the door behind me.
I followed the direction of her finger.
Then I looked back at her.
“Inside?”
She nodded.
“What’s in there?”
For the first time, the woman spoke.
“The answer.”
Her voice was different from the voice that had whispered behind my ear earlier.
Softer.
More human.
I studied her carefully.
“Have I known you before?”
She was silent for a long time.
Then she answered,
“More than you remember.”
The words made my head start throbbing again.
A memory surfaced.
I was sitting at a school desk.
The same woman was sitting in front of me.
She laughed as she held out a book.
“If you ever forget everything, read this.”
I took the book.
“What’s in it?”
She smiled.
“Yourself.”
The memory vanished.
I clutched my head.
The woman in front of me was still standing there.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
She lowered her head.
“I’m not allowed to tell you.”
“Why?”
“Because you were the one who asked for my name to be erased from your memory.”
I fell silent.
“Me?”
She nodded.
“You asked me to make a promise.”
“What promise?”
She lifted her face.
This time, I could see her eyes.
There was sadness in them.
“You asked me never to let you remember that night.”
I felt something inside me collapse.
“What night?”
She didn’t answer right away.
Her gaze shifted to the door.
“The night everything changed.”
I approached the door.
My hand touched the doorknob.
“Then I have to remember it.”
“No.”
The woman’s voice was firm.
I turned around.
“Why?”
“Because your memory wasn’t the only thing that changed that night.”
I fell silent.
“What do you mean?”
She stepped closer.
“The people around you changed too.”
“Who?”
“Everyone you’ve trusted all this time.”
A chill ran through me.
“Including you?”
The woman gave a faint smile.
“Especially me.”
I didn’t know why, but that answer only made me more certain that I had to open the door.
I turned the doorknob.
The door opened slowly.
The room beyond it was dark.
There were no windows.
No lights.
Only a table in the middle of the room.
Dozens of photographs lay on top of it.
I went inside.
The woman didn’t follow me.
I picked up the first photograph.
Myself.
The second photograph.
Me with several friends.
The third photograph made my hand tremble.
The girl whose face had been scratched out of every photograph was standing beside me.
But what shocked me wasn’t her presence.
It was the writing on the back of the photograph.
I turned it over.
The last day before I disappeared.
I stared at the sentence for a long time.
Then I picked up the next photograph.
This time, it showed only the girl.
She was smiling at the camera.
A school sign stood behind her.
I looked at the date written in the corner of the photograph.
The date made me stop breathing.
Because it was the same day I began losing part of my memory.
I dropped the photograph.
“Impossible...”
Then I heard a voice behind me.
The woman stood in the doorway.
“Now you’re starting to understand.”
I stared at her.
“Who is she?”
The woman didn’t answer.
I picked up the last photograph.
It was much older than the others.
There was only me and that girl in it.
No one else.
I turned the photograph over.
My hands trembled.
There was the same handwriting as on the letter earlier.
We promised we would remember each other.
I closed my eyes.
And suddenly, everything came back.
The school hallway.
The rain.
Crying.
The sound of someone shouting.
Then the girl took my hand.
“If you ever forget me... don’t blame yourself.”
I opened my eyes.
Tears flowed down my cheeks before I even realized it.
At last, I knew who the woman was.
She wasn’t a stranger.
She wasn’t someone who had come to frighten me.
She was someone who had once been the biggest part of my life.
And I...
was the one who had chosen to forget her.
But before I could say her name, every door in the room opened at once.
Many footsteps echoed from the hallway.
Not one person.
Not two.
Many.
The woman in the doorway stared at me, her face pale.
“We have to go.”
“Why?”
She looked behind her.
“They know you remember.”
I stood up.
“Who are they?”
The woman grabbed my arm.
And for the first time, her voice sounded truly frightened.
“The people who made you forget everything.”