EPISODE 6 – THE LAST WRITER
982 Words
After the night he wrote about U., An started to notice something strange: some of the old manuscripts on the fifth floor were disappearing.
Not like they were being cleaned up or torn away.
They were fading—literally. As if they had never been written.
One day, he came back to find the piece titled “Nobody’s Fault” missing its first page.
Another story—about a student who once got lost searching for a fieldwork class—was reduced to three lines. The rest of the pages were blank, as if the story had never existed.
An held the paper in his hand, his fingers trembling slightly.
He didn’t know who those people in the stories were. He wasn’t even sure they’d existed.
But deep inside, he knew: if he forgot them, they would truly vanish.
He told Linh part of it.
Linh was still the best listener—maybe the only one who still believed he wasn’t just imagining things.
“Have you ever,” An asked, “felt like someone was being erased from the world—not because they died, but because no one remembered them anymore?”
Linh stayed quiet for a long moment.
Then she said softly, “I’ve felt like that myself.”
The way she said it made An’s chest tighten.
Linh didn’t explain. She just looked out the window at the drizzle outside, fingers unconsciously brushing the frayed cuff of her sweater.
That night, An returned to the fifth floor with a new notebook.
No name. No title.
He was going to use it to record the ones who were being forgotten—by others, or maybe even by himself.
The first name he wrote was U.
Then Lam.
Then a student named Huy from the year below, who once submitted a poem but got rejected for being “off-topic.”
Names of people who didn’t stand out. Who didn’t cause a stir. But who had existed.
Who had once written.
And now, unless someone wrote them back—they would disappear for real.
Three days later, the manuscript about U. vanished from the fifth floor desk.
No trace.
But in An’s notebook—the one where he recorded “the forgotten”—a new line appeared.
He hadn’t written it.
“I’m not here anymore. But if you’re still writing, I still exist—in the ink you use.”
The handwriting was familiar. Not his.
He froze.
Then picked up his pen and wrote below it:
“I will write. For all of you. For every one of you.”
From that day on, An gave the notebook a name:
“The Journal of Those Never Published.”
He wrote in it every night.
Not just names—but small memories: how U. used to tilt her head when reading; how Lam edited drafts with three different colors; how Huy typed with only two fingers—slowly, but full of care.
Every entry felt like a thread holding them back from vanishing completely.
Writing became resurrection.
Then, one evening, the fifth floor door disappeared.
Not locked. Not closed.
Gone.
Where it should’ve been—a solid wooden door with chipped paint—was now just a cracked, faded wall.
An stood there, stunned. Heart racing.
That space—once the only place that felt like home—was no longer there.
He pressed his hand to the wall.
Cold. Real. Silent.
No spinning ceiling fan. No smell of old ink. No ghost of crumpled paper.
Just the chill of absence.
He whispered, as if to someone he had lost:
“Is anyone in there…?”
Silence.
Only the distant hum of motorcycles and dormitory chatter below.
And the question pulsing in his mind:
“If the place that remembers the forgotten disappears, what’s left?”
That night, An posted something on his personal account—for the first time in six months.
No pen name. No aliases.
Just: Nguyen An.
His post began:
“I used to believe that some levels in life were unreachable.
But the truth is, some floors only exist if we write them.
And when no one writes anymore, they collapse—taking everyone who once lived there down with them.”
He didn’t know why he posted it.
He just knew that if he didn’t, no one else would remember the fifth floor.
No one else would remember Lam, U., Huy, or the countless ghosts inside his drafts.
The ones who had once been written.
For the first time in months, his post went viral.
Not because it was flashy.
But because it rang true.
Hundreds of shares. Dozens of quiet comments.
“I knew someone like this.”
“Thanks for saying it for me.”
“I thought I was the only one who saw these floors.”
An read them all.
He didn’t reply.
He just held his little notebook to his chest, heart beating like a typewriter.
And for the first time, he realized—
he wasn’t writing alone anymore.
One afternoon, walking past the abandoned C building, An spotted new chalk marks on the crumbling wall:
“Uninvited Writers’ Room – Ground Floor.”
The letters were tilted, barely visible.
But something in him stirred.
That night, he returned—bringing his notebook, his pen, and a single blank page.
The room was buried deep within the corridor, next to the defunct storage room. No light. No number on the door.
But inside—
A wooden desk.
A flashlight.
A black-bound notebook lying at the center.
On the first page, a message:
“If the fifth floor is gone, write the sixth.”
An laughed.
Not from amusement.
But because his heart was beating like someone who had just found something they never thought they’d see again.
He sat down. Unfolded the blank page.
And began to write.
- Writer
