Chapter 1
At 3 A.M., Someone Is Missing
2:57 A.M.
Shen Yuchuan sat in the seat closest to the window in the convenience store, staring at the digital clock on the wall.
The store held only the low hum of the refrigerator compressors and the constant sound of rain striking the glass.
Half the city outside was already asleep.
The traffic lights still changed at their fixed intervals. Every so often, a taxi drove past, its tires rolling through puddles and kicking up a blur of mist.
Shen Yuchuan glanced down at his phone.
02:57.
He hadn't slept well for three days straight.
It wasn't insomnia.
It was because every night, he woke up at 3 A.M.
With terrifying precision.
The first day, he thought it was a coincidence.
The second day, he started to find it strange.
By the third day, he had even gone to the convenience store ahead of time to wait.
He didn't know what exactly he was waiting for.
He just had an inexplicable feeling that if he missed tonight, something would be too late forever.
A cup of coffee that had already gone cold sat on the table.
Beside it was a black notebook.
The notebook's cover had been splattered with rain, and its corners had curled slightly.
Shen Yuchuan reached out and touched the cover.
There was only one sentence written on it.
He had written it himself.
—At 3 A.M., the world loses someone.
He stared at the sentence for a long time.
Then he let out a bitter laugh.
“What the hell am I doing...?”
Three minutes.
He opened his phone and tapped into his contacts.
The first name.
Dad.
The second.
Mom.
The third.
Zhou Zihao.
The fourth.
Xu Qing.
The fifth...
One after another.
A ridiculous thought suddenly crossed his mind: if someone really disappeared, he should know, right?
At the very least, a name couldn't just vanish into thin air.
At the very least, a photo couldn't just vanish into thin air.
At the very least...
Someone would remember.
02:58.
The convenience-store door opened.
The doorbell rang brightly.
Ding—
Shen Yuchuan looked up.
A girl in a gray hooded jacket walked in.
She held a transparent umbrella, and her shoes and pant cuffs were completely soaked.
The girl didn't look at the clerk. She walked straight to the drink cooler.
Shen Yuchuan glanced at her once, then lowered his head.
But a few seconds later, he looked up again.
He didn't know why.
He just felt that the girl looked familiar.
Like he had seen her somewhere before.
The girl took a bottle of mineral water. When she turned around, their eyes happened to meet.
She froze.
So did Shen Yuchuan.
The girl looked at him.
“...Are you Shen Yuchuan?”
Shen Yuchuan frowned.
“You know me?”
The girl didn't answer.
She just stood there, the expression on her face slowly turning strange.
Like she was struggling to remember something.
A few seconds later, she said quietly:
“I don't know.”
“What?”
“I don't know why I know your name.”
Shen Yuchuan smiled faintly.
“Did you mistake me for someone else?”
The girl shook her head.
“No.”
She walked over to his table.
“Shen Yuchuan, twenty-two years old, lives in Southside, attends—”
She suddenly stopped.
Her expression turned awful.
Shen Yuchuan looked at her.
“What happened?”
The girl stared at him.
“I... can't remember.”
“Can't remember what?”
“Your school.”
Shen Yuchuan said nothing.
“I definitely knew it just now.”
The girl lowered her head and looked at her hands.
“But now I suddenly can't remember.”
For the first time, Shen Yuchuan felt uneasy.
Not because of the girl.
Because of the look on her face as she spoke.
She wasn't pretending.
She had really forgotten.
02:59.
The digital clock on the wall jumped forward.
Shen Yuchuan looked down at his phone.
02:59.
The girl suddenly asked, “What are you waiting for?”
Shen Yuchuan was silent for a moment.
“I don't know.”
“You don't know?”
“Yeah.”
He pointed at the notebook on the table.
“Maybe I'm waiting for this.”
The girl picked up the notebook.
She opened to the first page.
It was filled with dates.
August 11.
August 12.
August 13.
There was only one sentence on each page.
—At 3 A.M., the world loses someone.
The girl flipped to the last page.
Then stopped.
“What date is it today?”
“August 15.”
The girl looked up.
“Then why does this page say August 16?”
Shen Yuchuan froze.
He reached out and took the notebook back.
Sure enough.
The last page.
Date:
August 16.
Beneath it was a line of writing.
—Shen Yuchuan.
He stared at those three characters.
His mind went blank.
“I didn't write this.”
The girl asked, “Are you sure?”
“I write in it every day. This isn't my handwriting.”
The girl lowered her head and examined it carefully.
“Then do you recognize this name?”
Shen Yuchuan looked up.
“...It's my name.”
The girl fell silent.
The rain outside suddenly grew heavier.
It sounded like countless tiny fingers tapping against the glass.
02:59.
Thirty seconds left.
Shen Yuchuan suddenly felt his heart pounding.
He didn't know what he was afraid of.
But his instincts told him—
Something was going to happen tonight.
And it would have something to do with him.
The girl suddenly grabbed his wrist.
“What will happen when it turns three?”
Shen Yuchuan shook his head.
“I don't know.”
“Have you seen it happen before?”
“No.”
“Then why do you keep writing this?”
Shen Yuchuan looked at her.
“Because three days ago, I discovered someone.”
“Who?”
“A former classmate.”
The girl frowned.
“What happened?”
Shen Yuchuan didn't answer right away.
He pulled a photo from the notebook.
It had yellowed a little.
A group of young people stood on the school athletic field.
Every one of them wore a natural smile.
Shen Yuchuan pointed at a boy in the very back.
“His name is Chen Boyu.”
The girl looked at the photo.
“And?”
“Three days ago, I showed this photo to my friends.”
“What did they say?”
Shen Yuchuan swallowed.
“They said...”
“There are only five people in the photo.”
The girl looked at the photo.
It was true.
There were five people in the photo.
Shen Yuchuan.
Zhou Zihao.
Xu Qing.
And two other girls.
But Shen Yuchuan remembered.
There had originally been six people in the photo.
Right beside him.
Chen Boyu had been standing there.
Someone he had known since high school.
They had attended class together.
Played ball together.
Skipped school together.
They had even once made plans to travel together after graduating from college.
But three days ago.
Everyone told him:
“Shen Yuchuan, where did you get this friend?”
They even thought he was crazy.
So Shen Yuchuan started searching.
Social media.
Chat logs.
Cloud albums.
School records.
Even his high school yearbook.
Nothing.
Chen Boyu was as if he had never existed.
Only Shen Yuchuan remembered him.
So he started taking notes.
He was afraid that one day, he would forget too.
The girl said nothing after hearing this.
She kept staring at the photo.
After a while, she suddenly pointed at it.
“Wait.”
Shen Yuchuan looked up.
The girl pointed at the spot beside Shen Yuchuan.
“Here.”
“What about it?”
“Just now...”
Her finger trembled slightly.
“I think I saw someone.”
Shen Yuchuan shot to his feet.
“Who?”
The girl didn't answer.
Because at that exact moment—
Every light in the convenience store went out at once.
Click.
The entire store plunged into darkness.
Shen Yuchuan's breath caught for a beat.
The clerk shouted from behind the counter.
“Power outage?”
The refrigerators stopped running.
The air conditioner stopped.
Every sound vanished in an instant.
Only the rain remained.
Shen Yuchuan pulled out his phone.
02:59.
Five seconds left.
Five.
Four.
Three.
The girl gripped his hand tightly.
Two.
One.
The phone screen suddenly flickered.
03:00.
At the same instant.
The convenience-store lights came back on.
The refrigerators started running.
Cold air blew from the air conditioner again.
The rain outside continued as if nothing had happened.
The girl slowly released his hand.
Shen Yuchuan looked down at his phone.
Time:
03:00.
He waited several seconds.
Nothing happened.
He couldn't help letting out a small laugh.
“Nothing happened.”
But the girl didn't laugh.
She looked toward the counter.
“Where's the clerk?”
Shen Yuchuan looked up.
Behind the counter—
No one.
The middle-aged man who had been standing there just moments ago was gone.
The cash register was still lit.
The scanner was still lit.
Even the coffee on the table, the one he had just taken a sip of, was still steaming.
But the man was gone.
Shen Yuchuan went rigid.
“Where is he?”
The girl didn't answer.
She looked down at her phone.
“My phone...”
“What about it?”
“The time changed to 03:01.”
Shen Yuchuan glanced at his own phone.
03:01.
“So?”
The girl raised her head.
Her face was pale.
“In my phone...”
“One of my contacts is missing.”
Shen Yuchuan's heart sank.
“Who?”
The girl handed him her phone.
There had originally been thirty-seven people in her contacts.
Now there were only thirty-six.
The missing name—
The moment Shen Yuchuan saw it, his pupils contracted.
Mom.
He shoved the phone back at her.
“Impossible.”
The girl looked at him.
“You know her?”
“Impossible.”
Shen Yuchuan pulled out his own phone.
He opened his contacts.
First.
Dad.
Second.
Mom.
No.
Mom was still there.
He let out a breath of relief.
The next second.
He froze.
Because he suddenly realized—
He didn't know his mother's phone number.
He had used it for more than twenty years.
He should have been able to recite it with his eyes closed.
But now, all that remained in his mind was a string of blurry digits.
He immediately opened his messaging app.
His conversation with Mom was still there.
He tapped it open.
Blank.
There were no messages.
No photos.
No voice messages.
No transfer records.
As if he had never chatted with this person before.
Shen Yuchuan began to tremble.
“No... this isn't right...”
He opened his photo album.
Searched for “Mom.”
Zero photos.
Searched for “Mother.”
Zero photos.
He searched for his family group chat.
The group was still there.
But only two members remained.
Dad.
Shen Yuchuan.
The group name had changed from “The Three of Us” to—
“Family.”
He stared at the screen.
Suddenly, he didn't know what to say.
The girl stood beside him.
She didn't comfort him.
She only said softly:
“Do you believe me now?”
Shen Yuchuan looked up.
“Believe what?”
“Every night at 3 A.M.”
She looked out at the pitch-black street.
“The world really does lose someone.”
Shen Yuchuan didn't answer.
Because he suddenly thought of something.
Something even more terrifying than his mother disappearing.
He turned toward the notebook on the table.
It was still open to the last page.
There had originally been only three characters on it.
—Shen Yuchuan.
But now.
A line of red writing had appeared beneath those three characters.
As if it had just been written.
The ink wasn't even dry.
“The first is your mother.”
Shen Yuchuan stared fixedly at the line.
His hand began to tremble.
And the next line of writing was appearing before his eyes, stroke by stroke.
As if an invisible hand were slowly writing:
“The second is her.”
Shen Yuchuan looked up.
The girl had seen it too.
The color drained from her face.
“Shen Yuchuan...”
“Yeah?”
She pointed at the notebook.
“Who is ‘her’?”
Shen Yuchuan didn't answer.
Because he suddenly realized—
He couldn't remember the girl's name anymore.
She had clearly told him herself five minutes ago.
But now.
No matter how hard he tried.
His mind held nothing but a blank.
The girl looked into his eyes.
She seemed to understand too.
“You forgot?”
Shen Yuchuan said nothing.
The girl took a step back.
“You really forgot?”
“...I'm sorry.”
Her eyes slowly reddened.
But she didn't cry.
She only smiled.
The smile was heartbreaking.
“So that's how it is.”
“What?”
“I always thought...”
She lowered her head and looked at her hands.
“At least one person would remember me.”
Shen Yuchuan's heart clenched.
“Wait.”
The girl looked up.
“What is your name?”
She didn't answer.
Because she seemed to be starting to forget too.
She opened her mouth, trying to say her name.
But the sound caught in her throat.
She couldn't remember it.
Shen Yuchuan suddenly rushed over and grabbed her hand.
“Don't!”
The girl froze.
Shen Yuchuan stared at her.
“I'll remember you.”
“No matter who you are.”
“I'll remember you. I swear.”
The girl looked at him.
At last, tears slipped down her cheeks.
“But...”
She spoke softly.
“You've already forgotten my name.”
Shen Yuchuan lowered his head.
Their hands were still clasped together.
Just then.
The notebook on the table flipped another page.
The next page.
It had been blank.
Now, a date slowly appeared.
August 16.
Beneath it was a list of names.
The first name:
Shen Yuchuan's mother.
The second name:
Unknown.
The third name:
Shen Yuchuan.
Shen Yuchuan stared at his own name.
For a long time, he said nothing.
He finally understood.
What disappeared at 3 A.M. had never been a particular “person.”
It was—
A piece of existence.
Once the world forgot someone, it was as if that person had never lived.
And now.
It was his turn.
The rain continued falling outside.
The city lights still glowed.
No one knew.
At 3:07 A.M.
A mother had already disappeared from the world.
A girl was gradually losing her name.
And a young man who was about to be forgotten by everyone was realizing for the first time—
If he really disappeared at 3 A.M. tomorrow.
Then in this world.
No one would ever know.
That there had once been a man named Shen Yuchuan.
Who existed.
End of Chapter 1