3Ep.. The First Reader

It took ten minutes to write a reply. He typed, deleted, typed again. His fingers hesitated over the keys, again and again.

…How did you know?

The reply was instant. As if she had been waiting on the other side of the screen.

Author, do you remember your episode-1 afterword? You wrote at length about the ramen your mother used to make. How it comes to mind on rainy days.

Siu frowned. An afterword? Ramen? …What was she talking about. He had no memory of writing any such thing.

Last night it was definitely there. But when I looked again before dawn, that whole paragraph was gone. Not a letter left. Let me show you the screenshot I kept.

A photo appeared. A screenshot of the afterword from last night. And there it was—a paragraph about ramen, sitting intact. In Siu's own words. With trembling hands he opened his own afterword. The paragraph was—gone. As if it had never been written at all.

…What is this.

And it wasn't only the writing. No matter how he tried, he could not recall his mother making ramen. A kitchen on a rainy day, a fogged window—where such things should surely have been, there was nothing. And the moment he reached for it, even his mother's face blurred, then returned.

…Who on earth are you.

I screenshot everything—your episodes, the comments, the afterwords—and copy them into a diary. On paper, by hand. Because I hate it when things disappear. That's why I can see it: in your writing, something keeps being erased, one line at a time. …And here's the strange part. The only thing being erased is what you wrote yourself. What I copied out by hand is perfectly fine.

His fingertips went cold. The way his head lightened each time he drew. He had thought the alley's price was last night's dinner. It wasn't. It was his mother's kitchen. One warm coffee for one person he'd spoken to. One ramen paragraph for his mother's kitchen. None of it was coincidence. Something was peeling his memories away, one piece at a time, without a sound—each time he finished a drawing.

That alley—after you drew it… didn't you lose something?

Siu could not answer. Not because he didn't know, but because he was afraid to say it aloud. As if admitting it would make it real. Instead he slowly turned to the desk. The tablet still glowed with the alley. And beside it, a new blank canvas—untouched by anyone—was blinking on its own. As if waiting for the next drawing.

Siu could not take his eyes off the blinking for a long time. His hand—began to itch again.