The whiteness assaulted my eyes. This infinite space wasn't empty. Standing across from me was Haruka, the one and only person responsible for dragging me into this nightmare. She threw words at me like a challenge:

"Where is she? The girl?"

I pulled myself up with difficulty to face her, my brain feeling like mush.

"What girl?" I asked, completely incredulous.

Her gaze turned electric. A savage frustration mixed with anger distorted her features.

"What are you talking about?! The girl! The one who triggered the PVDS!"

"Who?! Why are you screaming, and where the hell are we?!"

Suddenly, her fury vanished. She froze, struck by a horrific realization. Fear was written all over her face.

"Salkony... don't tell me you've forgotten her?"

"For the second time: who are you talking about?!"

She let out a heavy sigh, turning away. "You really don't remember anything... This world is going to collapse if this continues. I think it might already be too late."

I didn't understand a word of her delusions, but following her gaze, I went petrified. Behind her stretched billions of graves as far as the eye could see. The cups were all identical, small white cups with no designs. The red books were the same, too. As if every forgotten person were entitled to the same ritual. The same indifference. An endless cemetery beneath a sterile white sky.

"What you see," she whispered without turning around,

"is the place where I suffer for eternity. This is where everything forgotten ends up."

"What do you mean... suffer?"

She turned slowly toward me. Her gaze was no longer angry; it was heavy with a suffocating pity.

"I'm going to explain everything to you before this world perishes."

"Tell me what's going on, damn it!"

"What's going on is that you've forgotten your only mission: to stop the PVDS of a girl who wanted to disappear. If she continues to want it, she will cease to exist. You were the last rampart, the only link holding her here before your memory gave out."

"That's impossible... How could I forget an entire person?!"

"It's a supernatural phenomenon, Salkony. Your past with her is being gnawed away, cell by cell."

"And how do you know so much if I don't know anything anymore?"

"Because before I forgot her in turn, I wrote a memo. But apparently, even that isn't enough anymore."

A memo. That word echoed in my skull. I looked down at the ground. The paper I had dropped when I fell was glowing with a whiteness more brilliant than the rest.

I picked up the memo. As I unfolded it, my heart skipped a beat: the paper seemed to be literally "erasing" itself before my eyes. Some letters had become indecipherable blots of ink, but I clung to the fragments that remained.

I read line by line, filling the gaps by instinct:

"Dear Salkony ### ### ## future, if you've forgotten ##### note and you're reading it right now, it means Yu## no longer really exists in your memory. #### letter will have writt## everything I remembered..."

I looked up at Haruka, the paper trembling between my fingers. "I think I have my own memo..."

"Read it! Right now!" she barked. "Before the words disappear for good!"

I dived back into the text. My brain fought against the void:

"The world began to ##### #######... a girl with white or grey hair ### blue eyes named Yu####. I found her at the Mall..."

A flash struck my crâne. The classroom. A silhouette moving without anyone seeing her. Yes! I remember! She was invisible, but I could see her! The memory was blurred, like a photo burned at the edges, but it was there.

Yet, her name stayed stuck. Yu... Yu... Yu... I repeated it in my head like a broken prayer.

"Haruka, get me out of here!" I screamed, panic twisting my gut.

"How could I forget her?!"

"Wait—" She checked herself, her gaze becoming more urgent.

"No, leave! The door is behind you. Remember, Salkony: find what she really wants. You must discover her true desire before you try to stop it, otherwise she'll vanish along with it!"

I didn't stick around to ask more. I spun around and bolted for the door, leaving Haruka alone in her purgatory of white graves. I crossed the threshold as if my life depended on it.

I burst through the door with a crash that made the hallway walls vibrate.

I opened my eyes again. The school’s neon lights stung my retinas. The noise of the students, the laughter, the conversations, it was all still going on, as if I’d never left.

My eyes frantically scanned the space, left, then right. And there, in the middle of the indifferent flow of students, I finally saw her.

She was standing there, motionless. Her face was plunged into the shadow of her own thoughts, her head slightly lowered, fists clenched at her sides. Around her, people walked right through her without noticing, as if she were nothing but a faulty hologram, invisible smoke in the middle of the crowd.

Suddenly, the dam in my head broke. Images of her exploded in my mind: her mocking smile at the bald teacher, her silhouette on my couch, the scent of shampoo in the bathroom...

A smile of pure relief lit up my face. I moved toward her, royally ignoring the students bumping into me. Nothing else existed except this small patch of grey and blue in this monotone hallway. Her name burned my throat, ready to be released.

"YUNI!" I shouted. "You're here!"

She remained pinned to the spot, without making the slightest gesture. But as I got closer, the memories returned, one by one.

She finally lifted her face to mine. What I saw pierced me far more violently than any insult could. Her gaze was an ocean of sadness and anxiety, a toxic mix of disappointment and pure pain. She was there, on the verge of tears, trembling under the weight of a solitude that I had just betrayed.

I stopped dead, my breath catching. The joy of having found her name was extinguished instantly in my throat.

It was as if, by forgetting her for even a few minutes, I had finished the job. The damage was done. It wasn't just an absence of memory; it was a wound she now wore on her face.

I stood frozen, a few steps away from her, realizing with horror that my forgiveness might not be enough to bring her back.