The city didn't forget me all at once.
It started with the barista at the corner café - the one who used to draw stars in my coffee foam. She handed me a cup with no name scribbled on it. I smiled, said something about her music taste. She looked at me like I was a stranger. The stars were gone too.
I thought she was just tired. Maybe I was.
Then my landlord forgot I lived in the building. My key didn't fit the lock anymore.
Then my name vanished from the university's system. My ID blinked red. No records. No files. Nothing.
I stopped existing in fragments.
The city is called Veritus, though no one ever really says it out loud. It's the kind of name that feels borrowed— like it belonged to a different place in a different time. The buildings here still carry weight, still cast shadows that don't always match the light. The air hums, low and tired, like a record that keeps spinning even after the music's stopped.
There's noise everywhere— sirens, footsteps, whispers— but none of it ever reaches me. I walk through streets lined with lives I used to know. Places I might've loved once. Faces that almost remember mine.
Almost.
I live in a flat no one remembers renting out. It's tucked above an old repair shop, three floors up a staircase that creaks like it's trying to warn me away. There's no number on the door. Just a crack in the wall that leaks in moonlight and the scent of rust.
Inside, I keep my journals. One for each day.
They're not for poetry or ideas. They're for survival.
Names. Dates. Dreams.
Who I am. What I felt. Who I used to be.
Because the more I use this power— this curse, this thing inside me— the more pieces I lose.
The more remnants I carry, the less of myself I keep.
They call it wraithbinding, I think. I didn't choose it. I never learned it. It just… happened.
One day, I touched a photograph someone left on a park bench. My fingers brushed the surface and I felt something.
A rush of pain. Love. Loneliness so deep it hollowed out my lungs.
It wasn't mine. But it burned like it could've been.
Ever since then, I see them.
Flickers. Shadows. Ghosts that aren't ghosts.
Emotional residue. Fragments of people who once felt something real.
And they're everywhere.
Some are quiet.
Some scream.
Some beg to be remembered.
I don't know if I'm the only one like this.
But I know I'm the only one who remembers what's gone.
At least until… her.
The girl at the train station.
The one who looked at me like she'd seen a ghost.
Or maybe — like she remembered one.