Not the absence of it — that would’ve been too ordinary. It was the fact that when Arin opened his mailbox, every letter had no name on it. Just blank white envelopes, clean and clinical, like the city had swallowed his identity and spat out its bones.
He stared at them, three in total. One from a bank. One from the electricity department. And one with a smudge of red on its corner — maybe lipstick, maybe blood, maybe just the rust of old memory.
None had his name.
None had an address.
And somehow, they were still inside his mailbox.
He took them upstairs in silence.
The stairs moaned like they were tired of being climbed. The city’s buildings always sounded weary — like they were centuries older than they looked. His apartment door, 3C, had no number today. Just peeled paint in the shape of a "3", and a silent brass ghost where the “C” used to be.
When he entered, the room felt slightly different.
The clock was ticking, but an hour ahead.
The curtains were open, but he remembered them closed.
The mirror by the hallway didn’t show his reflection. Just the hallway behind him.
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Arin blinked.
Then he stepped forward, slowly. Raised a hand. Nothing moved.
He waved.
Still nothing.
It wasn’t a trick of light. The mirror was forgetting him.
He didn’t panic.
That was the strangest part.
He sat on the floor. Quietly. Like something inside him had expected this all along.
It wasn’t the first time the world had failed to recognize him.
Last week, his boss at the bookstore asked if he was a new hire.
Two days ago, a barista spelled his name “Aaron” — not wrong, but unfamiliar, as if her hand didn’t trust the word.
Yesterday, he called his mother. The voice that answered said, “I’m sorry, who is this?”
But today — this mirror — it made it real.
He was disappearing.
No… not disappearing. That would be dramatic.
He was being forgotten.
The city outside his window was always grey, always damp, like a photograph left out in the rain.
He’d moved here a year ago. Or maybe two. The dates were starting to blur. He had come searching for something — he didn’t remember what. Maybe peace. Maybe madness. Both were cousins in cities like this.
He had no friends here.
He hadn’t loved anyone in years.
No one had whispered his name in the dark.
Maybe the world forgets you the moment you stop being needed.
He opened the envelope with the red mark. No return address.
Inside, a single sheet.
“The city forgets those who go unnoticed.
But some of us remember.
Glasshouse. Midnight. Come.”
No signature.
His hands trembled.
Not with fear.
But with the faintest crack of hope.
Somewhere, in this city that had let go of him, someone still remembered.
And so Arin stood up, wiped the dust from his knees, and smiled into the blank mirror.
It didn’t smile back.