It had been three days since I returned.
Three days since the book disappeared — not vanished, not burned, just… dissolved, like fog in sunlight. Like it had never existed.
But I knew better.
The silence in the PG was louder now. The air carried something different. Still. Hollow.
I kept staring at my hands. The ink was gone. Not a mark. Not a line.
But the words… they were still inside me.
Everything around me felt a little too sharp now — too real, too alive. The world outside the book was familiar, but I could no longer live in it the same way.
I would sit at the edge of my bed and hear nothing… until I started to hear the faintest footsteps, like memory walking backward.
The library avoided my gaze when I passed it on the way to class.
And yet, the locked room — the one that had once held the book — was now sealed shut with a thick iron chain. I asked the librarian about it once. She simply said:
"That section was never meant to be opened."
And smiled too long after saying it.
My friends thought I was just tired.
One even joked, "Maybe you're writing a horror novel in your sleep."
I laughed, but inside, I remembered how it felt — the voice of the book urging me to finish. The girl's empty eyes. The countdown in the pages.
But I had finished it.
Right?
Then, one night, just as I was falling asleep, I heard a whisper. Soft. Familiar.
"You can never truly leave a story you wrote yourself."
I bolted upright.
The room was empty.
But there, lying on my desk — a page.
Just one.
The ink was fresh.
It read:
"Pansy blinked. The story was not over."
I stared at it for a long time, heart pounding.
Then I smiled. Not because I was afraid.
But because I understood.
Some stories don't end.
They just… wait.
For the next writer.
For the next reader.
For the next secret to be told.
And mine?
Mine is still unfolding.
[THE END]