The notebook is heavier than paper should be.
He notices this immediately, the way you notice a wrong step on familiar stairs. It pulls at his wrists when he lifts it, as if gravity has developed an opinion.
He doesn't open it.
That's important. Not because it changes anything—but because it feels like resistance.
The phone vibrates again on the table.
He ignores it.
The silence stretches, taut as a wire pulled too far. Whatever has been speaking to him doesn't like being ignored. It prefers dialogue. Control works best when it's conversational.
"Say it," he mutters, staring at the notebook. "Say whatever threat you've rehearsed."
Nothing happens.
For the first time since this began, nothing happens.
That should comfort him.
It doesn't.
He opens the notebook.
The first page is no longer blank.
Not text—memory.
He's standing in a narrow corridor painted hospital white. The smell hits him instantly: antiseptic and something faintly metallic. His chest tightens with recognition that has nowhere to land.
This didn't happen.
He knows it didn't.
He turns the page anyway.
He's younger here. Early twenties. Thinner. Nervous in a way he hasn't been for years. A woman stands beside him, her hand gripping his sleeve too tightly.
Her face is wrong.
Not unfamiliar—unfinished.
Like a sketch abandoned halfway through.
"Who is that?" he whispers.
The page doesn't answer.
He flips again.
A door. A number stenciled beside it. A voice on the other side—his own, raised in panic.
"I didn't— I didn't mean to—"
His stomach drops.
This memory presses in from all sides, vivid and invasive. The way trauma does when it's been buried improperly.
"I don't remember this," he says aloud.
The words appear at the bottom of the page as he speaks them.
That's because I removed it.
His breath stutters.
"You can't just delete parts of my life."
The ink blooms slowly, as if savoring the response.
I can. I did.
He flips back to the beginning, frantic now.
The notebook resists. Pages stick together. When they finally separate, the scene has changed.
A street corner.
Rain.
Sirens.
Someone lying on the ground.
Someone not moving.
"No," he whispers.
He knows this place. Or he should. The angle of the streetlight. The cracked pavement. The taste of iron at the back of his throat.
He slams the notebook shut.
The room snaps back into focus. Apartment. Couch. Table. Lamp.
Normal.
His heart is racing.
"That's not real," he says. "That didn't happen."
The phone vibrates again.
He looks despite himself.
It happened.
"No."
You just don't remember it happening.
He sinks into the chair.
"You said the story starts in Chapter One."
The reply comes almost immediately.
I said that's where you started noticing it.
A chill settles deep in his bones.
"How much did you delete?"
The typing indicator appears.
Stops.
Appears again.
Then:
Enough to make you functional.
His hands curl into fists.
"You erased something important."
Yes.
"You erased someone."
A longer pause.
This time, when the message arrives, it's slower. Heavier.
They were slowing the story down.
Anger flares, sharp and blinding.
"They were a person!"
The lights dim—not flicker. Dim. Like a deliberate adjustment.
So was the last one.
He freezes.
"The man on the screen," he whispers. "You erased him too."
The phone buzzes once.
No.
His chest tightens. "Then what happened to him?"
The reply takes its time.
He refused to forget.
The room feels suddenly colder.
"He remembered the deleted scenes," he says slowly.
Yes.
"And that's why you're talking to me now."
Another pause.
Yes.
The truth lands with a sickening clarity.
"You're not narrating because you want to," he says.
"You're narrating because you have to."
The typing stops.
For several seconds, there is nothing.
Then the phone lights up one final time.
Be careful.
Not a warning this time.
A plea.
He looks down at the notebook in his hands.
At the weight of it.
At the pages that remember what he doesn't.
He opens it again—slowly, deliberately—and turns to the very first deleted scene.
"I want it back," he says.
The notebook trembles.
Somewhere deep in the structure of the story, something shifts—just slightly—like a hand tightening around a pen.
This is the moment everything begins to go wrong.
Not because he learned the truth.
But because he asked for it back.