I used to think silence was a rare thing.
Something you only got late at night or when your parents fell asleep before you.
But in the summer of 2020, silence became the whole world.
It was everywhere.
In the streets.
In the schools that shut their doors.
In the unfinished homework assignments I pretended to care about.
Even in the air itself, it felt like the world was holding its breath forever.
I spent most of those days on my bed, the same worn out blanket under me, the same cracked PS4 controller in my hands. My friends and I lived in party chat now. We never saw each other in person anymore, but every night I heard their voices echo through my headset like they were sitting beside me.
It felt normal in a way.
Not good, not bad. Just life in a box.
Outside my window, the neighborhood was so still it looked fake. Cars stayed parked in the same exact spot for weeks. The old couple down the street stopped gardening. Even the stray cat that used to knock over our trash cans disappeared. Sometimes I would stare through the blinds long enough for my eyes to blur and wonder if the whole city was sleeping.
My mom tried to keep me on my online school schedule. She would knock on my door every morning and call my name with that tired, polite smile she always wore when she was stressed. My dad worked from home now. He set up his laptop at the dining table and muttered at spreadsheets like they personally offended him. My little sister colored pictures on the floor and asked me if I liked them even if I was busy in a game.
We were a normal family stuck inside the same spinning routine.
Breakfast.
School.
Gaming.
Dinner.
Sleep.
Repeat until you forget what the days used to feel like.
But even back then, something felt wrong. Something hidden.
I could not explain it at the time. It was like the world was too quiet. A forced quiet. Someone holding a pillow over the earth.
It started showing in weird ways.
Sometimes the lights in the hallway flickered for a second.
Sometimes the sky looked just a bit too pale, like the color was draining out of it.
Sometimes I would wake up at night with a feeling that something was watching me from the corner of my room, and when I turned on my lamp nothing was there.
I brushed all of it off. Everyone was anxious during lockdown. It felt normal to feel weird.
One night, I sat on my bed with the controller in my hand, waiting for my friends to get online. The fan spun above me, pushing warm air around the room. My sister was humming in the living room. My dad was arguing with the internet router again.
Everything was the same as always.
Until the notifications started.
Not from my PS4.
From my phone.
Headlines.
Livestream clips.
Panicked posts from people in different countries.
I clicked the first one without thinking. The screen showed a man standing in the middle of a street somewhere that looked nothing like Japan. It was crowded, but everyone was staring only at him. The man stood perfectly still. His clothes were plain. His expression never changed.
What caught my breath was his eyes.
They had no pupils.
Just blank white circles like someone erased the center.
He held up a sign.
A simple one.
No logo.
No design.
Three words scribbled on it in black marker.
It is near.
I blinked at the screen. I thought it was some edited prank video. But another notification came, then another. Different countries, different angles, same man. The same exact man. Same height. Same hair. Same clothes. Same face.
Same eyes.
Every one of them holding the same sign.
I lowered my phone and sat there in the quiet of my room. The fan hummed. The game menu music played softly. My mom laughed at something on TV. My sister ran across the hall.
Everything in the house seemed normal.
But the world outside that tiny room was not normal at all anymore.
Something had arrived.
Something that did not belong here.
I could feel it in the air, sitting on my skin like cold water.