Against the Clock That Erases Me

Chapter 1: The Background Character

Classroom noise was a tide I never stood against — I let it wash over me. Laughter swelled, chairs scraped, pens tapped. Silence was a myth here, a story we told ourselves.

“Mikazuki Itsuki?”

The teacher’s voice didn’t even glance my way. Just another name on a list.

“Here.”

Stone skipped. Box checked. The roll call went on.

I’m Itsuki Mikazuki, sixteen. Ordinary grades, forgettable face, life in the gray margins. The kind of person people remember only when they’re short one for group work.

But I did have one thing: memory. Every detail stuck, whether I wanted it or not. The second hand on the classroom clock lagged half a beat behind. The boy by the window had worn the same wrinkled shirt three days running. Aya Kisaragi’s pen always smudged ink onto the side of her hand.

I noticed, I remembered, and it all lived in me.

Aya.

She wasn’t loud, wasn’t dramatic. Light just gathered around her like it had nowhere else to be. She remembered birthdays, she helped people pick up dropped notes, she hummed when she thought nobody heard.

And walking beside her — always — was Ren Shigure. Taller than most, easy grin, the kind of guy teachers actually laughed at instead of scolding. Aya tilted toward him when he spoke. She smiled wider at him than anyone else. Even when his jokes were flat, she laughed like they mattered.

Everyone laughed with her.

Everyone except me.

I mouthed her name silently, a habit I could never stop. Aya. Too fragile to speak aloud.

And then, like clockwork, she noticed me.

“Morning, Mikazuki,” she said, a casual wave, a smile without weight.

To her, it was nothing. To me, oxygen.

The day blurred. I copied notes I wouldn’t read, nodded at conversations that didn’t include me. I tapped my pencil three times before writing — an old ritual I didn’t even think about anymore. The memory of her wave sat in my chest like fire and ice together.

After school, I bent to gather stray worksheets someone left behind. They didn’t thank me. That was fine. That was my role. I wasn’t the hero. I was the background character who cleaned up after the credits rolled.

Twilight painted the streets on my walk home. I cataloged everything: cracks in the pavement, flickering streetlights, the faint smell of asphalt warming after the day. Aya’s favorite snack from the convenience store, the titles of library books she liked, the way she tucked hair behind her ear when she laughed. All useless details. All etched into me.

She loved Ren. Everyone knew it. Even me.

That should have been the end.

But the world… hiccuped.

One step off the curb—

And screams. Aya’s screams.

She was kneeling on asphalt, hands trembling, palms red. A body lay beside her, blurred and broken, sirens wailing far off. My reflection flashed in a shop window: older, hollow-eyed, with jagged black lines carved across the back of my hand. Raised ridges, cold against skin. Like tally marks. Like someone had been counting me down.

Blink.

Gone.

The traffic light turned green. Cars rolled forward. The world carried on as if nothing had cracked.

I stood frozen, heart hammering, that image carved under my ribs. Aya’s sobs. Blood. The tally burning against my skin.

That night I lay staring at the ceiling until my eyes ached. I told myself it was nothing. A dream. A glitch in the brain.

But deep down, I knew better.

And for the first time in my life, I needed to do something. Anything.

Because if that future was real, Aya Kisaragi was already doomed.

And I was the only one cursed to know it.