The Day Everyone Forgot Me — Except Him

The Day Everyone Forgot Me — Except Him

It started on a Tuesday. The kind of day that smells like burnt coffee and missed trains.

I woke up to silence, but not the peaceful kind — the heavy, eerie kind that presses against your chest. My phone had no notifications, no missed calls, not even the usual "Good morning" text from my best friend, Lila. I shrugged it off, assuming everyone was just running late.

Until I walked into work and no one looked up. No nods. No forced smiles. Not even the security guard, who usually made terrible jokes about my oversized scarf collection.

I stood in front of my manager’s desk. "Hey, I'm here. Did you need those edits on—"

He looked up, eyes blank, and said to the air, "Where’s Eva today?"

I laughed, nervously. "Very funny."

But no one laughed with me.

By lunch, panic had settled into my bones like cold rain. I tried calling my mother. Straight to voicemail. I messaged Lila. No reply. Even my cat didn’t seem to recognize me when I got home.

That night, I watched my old photos like a stranger would — detached, uncertain. My name was still on my ID, my bank cards, even on my mailbox. But in every human heart I had once touched, I no longer existed.

Except his.

I met him at the park the next morning, sitting on a damp bench, sketching in a notebook. He looked up when I walked by. His eyes locked on mine like magnets.

"You look like you’ve been forgotten," he said.

The words froze me.

I turned slowly. "You… see me?"

"Of course I do. I’ve always seen you."

I didn’t know whether to run or cry, so I sat beside him instead.

He handed me a sketch — it was me. Standing in the rain, wrapped in one of my ridiculous scarves, looking like a question mark in human form.

"How do you know me?" I whispered.

He shrugged, almost sadly. "I don’t. But I remember you from somewhere. From… dreams? From before?"

His name was Asher. A street artist who claimed he barely remembered his own past but had always dreamed of “the girl with lightning in her eyes.”

We met every morning after that.

In a world where no one saw me, he was my anchor.

He remembered how I liked my coffee — two sugars, no milk. He remembered my favorite songs, even before I said them out loud. Sometimes, I wondered if he was real at all — or just a beautiful madness my mind had created to save itself.

But then he’d say something so human, so flawed, so tender, that it couldn’t be imagined.

"I think the world is broken," he said one night. "Or maybe we’re the only ones still whole."

On the seventh day, the world got even quieter.

Streetlights flickered. Storefronts were empty. The city was slowly forgetting itself.

Asher took my hand. "I think this is happening to everyone. One by one. And we’re just… left behind."

"Why us?"

He smiled, eyes soft like dusk. "Maybe because we remembered each other."

We made a pact: to keep remembering. To speak our names out loud every hour. To draw our faces. To write down every detail we loved about each other before the world dissolved them.

One night, as we lay on the cold grass beneath a starless sky, he turned to me.

"If the world ever forgets me, will you remember?"

I touched his face. "I already do. Even before I met you."

He pulled something from his coat — a small notebook. On the first page was my name. Dozens of times. Eva. Eva. Eva. Like he was afraid the ink would vanish if he stopped writing it.

He gave it to me.

"In case I go first."

The next morning, he was gone.

The bench was empty. His sketches scattered on the ground like autumn leaves. His name was no longer in my phone. His scent no longer lingered on my coat.

But the notebook was still in my bag.

And in it — page after page — were stories of me. My laugh. My fears. My dreams. My face. The way I tap my fingers when I'm nervous. The way I cry during sad commercials but hide it behind my hair.

I read them all.

And then I wrote his name on the final page.

Asher. Asher. Asher.

And whispered it to the wind until I believed again that he had existed.

Until I believed again that I did, too.