He didn't dream that night.
Not because he was tired — though he was — but because his mind had finally stopped searching. There was no white room. No ticking watch. No voice whispering remember. Just sleep. Deep, unbroken, ordinary sleep.
He woke at six again.
No alarm. No thought. Just his body rising like it had done this a thousand times before — because it had.
In the bathroom, he stared at his reflection longer than usual. His eyes were tired, but clear. His hair was a mess. The pimple on his chin had gotten redder. He didn't touch it. Didn't care.
He brushed his teeth. The toothpaste still tasted too sweet. He didn't mind.
Mom was already in the kitchen. Porridge again. Salted egg. Pickled vegetables. She didn't look up when he walked in. Just poured him water. "Eat before it gets cold."
He sat. Ate. The porridge was warm. Soft. Exactly what he needed.
Outside, the neighborhood was waking up — roosters crowing, vendors setting up carts, the distant sound of a jeepney starting its engine. Normal. Real. Unremarkable.
Red Backpack was at the stop again. So was Gap Teeth. So were the others. They greeted him like he'd always been there. Like he'd never left.
"Did you watch the game last night?" Red Backpack asked.
"No," Lumayon said. "I went to bed early."
"You missed it. They lost by one point. Coach was furious."
"Coach is always furious," Gap Teeth said.
Lumayon laughed. It came easy. Not forced. Not practiced. Just… there.
The jeepney arrived. They climbed in. The ride was the same — the same jokes, the same rhythm, the same way Red Backpack leaned too far out the window and Gap Teeth yelled at him to sit down. But this time, Lumayon didn't feel like an observer. He was part of the noise. Part of the chaos. Part of the life.
At school, the flag ceremony happened again. The anthem played. The students stood in rows. Lumayon's hand pressed against his chest. He sang the words because he knew them. Because his voice belonged here. Because the sun was hot and the flag was real and the moment was exactly what it appeared to be.
Nothing more.
Nothing less.
In Math class, he got two problems wrong on purpose. In English, he gave an answer that was safe. During lunch, he sat with Red Backpack and the others, and they talked about a movie that was coming out, and he pretended he cared about which actor was in it.
He was good at pretending now.
But it didn't feel like pretending anymore.
It felt like living.
After school, he walked home alone.
The vendor with the tricycle was there — but this time, it wasn't selling pancakes. It's was selling taho. Her teenager kid stood beside her, ladling the soft, sweet tofu into small plastic cups. She smiled when she saw Lumayon.
//Note: Different vendor.
"Lumayon!" she called. "You want taho?"
He didn't remember liking taho. But his stomach growled anyway.
"Yeah," he said. "One cup."
She handed it to him. "On the house. You've been coming here since you were five."
He didn't remember that either. But he took the cup. The taho was warm. Sweet. Exactly what he needed.
He walked home slowly, sipping it as he went. The sun was warm. The birds sang. The streets were alive with the sound of vendors and traffic and children playing. He didn't remember any of it. But his body did. His feet knew the way. His lungs knew how to breathe this air. His skin knew how to feel this heat.
At the gate, Mom was waiting. Apron tied. Something cooking on the porch. She smiled when she saw him. Not a big smile. Just a small one. The kind a mother gives her son when he comes home from school.
"How was your day?" she asked.
"Good," he said. And he meant it.
They went inside together.
The house smelled like home.
For the first time, he understood what that meant.
---
That night, he didn't write in his notebook. He didn't stare at the ceiling. He didn't think about the water stain or the scar on Mom's hand or the way the jeepney driver always smoked his cigarette with his left hand.
He just went to bed.
And when he closed his eyes, he didn't dream.
He slept.
And for the first time in a long time — maybe ever — he felt like he belonged.
/Note: Don't leave us! Trust it's changing.
Lumayon noticed the numbers first.
Not in Math class. In the margins of things.
His notebook had 247 pages when he bought it. He counted them yesterday — he didn't know why, just did. Today, it had 243. Four pages gone. Not torn out. Not missing. Erased. The binding was still intact. The paper still there. But the ink was gone, leaving only faint ghost-marks where words used to be. He didn't remember writing on those pages. He didn't remember erasing them either. He just stared at the blank spaces like they were wounds.
At breakfast, He poured three cups of water. One for him. One for her. One for the empty chair. "Who's that for?" She asked. He didn't look up. "My sister." Lumayon had no sister. She opened her mouth. Closed it. Poured the water back into the pitcher. Mom didn't stop him. Didn't correct him. Just kept eating her porridge like the cup had never been there. The spoon clinked against the bowl. Too loud. Too rhythmic. Like it was counting.
Red Backpack was different today.
Not acting different. Actually different. His laugh was higher. His jokes landed wrong. When he leaned out the jeepney window, he leaned toofar — like he was testing gravity. Gap Teeth pulled him back, but there was no anger in it. Just habit. "You're quiet today," Red Backpack said to Lumayon. "I'm always quiet," Lumayon said. "No. You're different quiet." Lumayon didn't answer. He was counting the other passengers. Seven. He counted again. Still seven. But he could have sworn there were eight when they got on. The jeepney driver was smoking with his left hand. Lumayon watched the cigarette. It never got shorter. Just stayed there, burning the same length, ash never falling. The smoke curled upward, then stopped. Hung in the air like it was waiting for permission to dissipate.
In Math class, Mr. Ñino wrote an equation on the board.
x + 5 = 12
He asked for volunteers.
Lumayon raised his hand without thinking.
"The answer is seven," he said.
Mr. Ñino wrote it down. Circled it. Then he looked at Lumayon — really looked at him — and erased it.
Not the answer. The entire equation.
"Let's try something different," he said.
But he didn't write a new equation. He just stared at the blank board.
The class was silent.
No one seemed to notice.
Lumayon didn't raise his hand again.
At lunch, Lumayon sat alone.
Red Backpack and Gap Teeth were there, but they were eating with other people now. People he didn't recognize. People who looked almost like the students he knew, but their faces were slightly wrong. Like someone had tried to draw them from memory and gotten the proportions off by millimeters. One of them — a girl with a crooked smile — looked directly at him and didn't blink. Not for the entire lunch period. Just stared. Eating. Not blinking. When the bell rang, she finally looked away. But as she stood up, she whispered something to the boy next to her. He nodded. Then both of them looked at Lumayon. Not with recognition. With inventory. Like they were counting something about him. He didn't look back. He looked at his tray. The food was gone. He didn't remember eating it.
The vendor's kid wasn't at the taho stand.
The vendor was there — older now, her hair grayer than yesterday — but the kid was gone. Lumayon asked where they were. "Who?" the vendor said. "Your... kid. The teenager." The vendor smiled. But it was wrong. Too wide. Too long. "I don't have a kid, Lumayon." She said his name like she was tasting it. Testing it. Seeing if it was still the right name. He didn't buy taho. He just walked. The street was louder than usual. The vendors shouted louder. The jeepneys honked longer. The children's laughter stretched too far. Like the world was trying to fill the silence he was leaving behind.
At home, Mom was cooking something that smelled like nothing. Not bad. Not good. Just absent. Like the smell had been removed from the food. "How was school?" she asked. "Fine," he said. "Did you learn anything?" "No." She nodded. Like this was the correct answer. "Good," she said. "You shouldn't learn too much. Learning makes you remember things." Lumayon stopped. "Remember what?" She didn't answer. She ignores it. Just kept stirring the pot that contained nothing. The spoon clinked against the bowl. Again. Again. Again. Like it was counting.
That night, he opened his notebook.
The four missing pages had come back.
But they weren't blank. They were filled with handwriting — not his, not anyone's he recognized — and it was written backwards. He held it up to the mirror.
The words read:
Stop counting. You're making it worse.
Below that, a list:
Things that were here yesterday:
Your sister's cup
Eight passengers on the jeepney
The vendor's kid
The equation Mr. Ñino wrote
The taste of taho
Your mother's voice (the real one)
And at the bottom, in letters so small he had to squint:
Every time you notice something missing, something else has to disappear to keep the balance.
He slammed the notebook shut.
His hands were shaking.
Not from fear.
From understanding.
He didn't sleep.
He sat in the dark and did the math.
He'd noticed four things today. Four pages were missing. Four things had vanished or changed.
If he kept noticing, kept counting, kept remembering — what would disappear next?
His name?
His face?
The fact that he existed at all?
The silence pressed against his ears.
He didn't move.
He didn't breathe too loud.
He didn't think.
He just sat.
And waited for the next number to vanish.
—
The next morning, he woke at six.
No alarm. No thought. Just his body rising.
In the bathroom, he stared at his reflection.
His eyes were tired. His hair was a mess. The pimple on his chin was redder.
He didn't touch it.
He didn't care.
He didn't notice.
That was the trick, he realized.
Not to live.
To un-live.
To stop counting. Stop noticing. Stop remembering.
To let the world erase him one detail at a time, and smile while it happened.
At school, Red Backpack asked him a question.
Lumayon didn't hear it.
He was too busy *not listening*.
Gap Teeth laughed at a joke.
Lumayon didn't hear that either.
He was too busy not laughing.
The girl with the crooked smile stared at him again.
This time, he stared back.
And for just a moment — so brief it might have been nothing — he saw her flicker.
Like a light bulb about to burn out.
Like she was disappearing too.
He didn't look away.
He didn't blink.
He just watched.
And as she faded, he felt something inside him shift.
Not fear.
Not sadness.
Relief.
Because if she was disappearing…
Maybe he wasn't the only one.
Maybe he wasn't the problem.
Maybe he was just… part of the math.
—
He didn't write in his notebook.
He didn't dream.
He just existed.
Quietly.
Carefully.
Counting nothing.
Noticing nothing.
Remembering nothing.
And with every moment he succeeded, he felt something leave him.
Not pain.
Not sadness.
Presence.
The thing that made him sane.