Episode 14: The Voice Beneath the Pag
967 Words
Three days had passed since the photo of Linh arrived.
Nguyen An hadn’t responded. He couldn’t. How do you reply to someone who had become a memory and a message all at once?
He had printed the photo and pinned it above his desk. Not for nostalgia—but to remind himself that somewhere, someone still believed in lost voices.
That afternoon, while he was sorting through the audio files in the clubroom, a knock echoed at the door.
It was the school librarian, carrying a plain envelope.
“This came for the Writing Club,” she said. “No return address.”
An took it. It was unmarked, except for a wax seal in the corner—an emblem he didn’t recognize.
He opened it.
Inside was a single sheet of paper.
“You are not the first to listen.
But you may be the last to record.”
“Midnight. Rooftop. Come alone.”
And beneath that, scribbled hastily:
“Tell no one—not even her.”
Her?
Did they mean Linh?
The air was colder than usual.
Nguyen An stood at the edge of the rooftop, the envelope in his coat pocket. He scanned the darkness. No footsteps. No voices.
Then, a flicker of light behind him.
A figure stepped from the shadows—a girl. Slight, wearing a black hoodie, her face half-hidden beneath a cap.
She handed him a flash drive.
“Linh trusted you. That was dangerous.”
An froze.
“Who are you?”
She didn’t answer. Instead, she stepped closer.
“What you’ve heard so far… it’s just the first layer.
Linh was the bridge. But there are others. Always have been.”
“This”—she held up the flash drive—“is a voice we buried.”
She stepped back.
“You’re not ready for all of them. Not yet. But if you want the truth, listen to this one.”
“And if you want to stop... now’s the time.”
Before he could ask anything more, she turned and disappeared down the stairwell.
Back in his room, An plugged in the flash drive. Only one file.
"09-Live_Beneath_Erasures.m4a"
He clicked play.
A boy’s voice.
“I wrote because I couldn’t speak.
Every time I opened my mouth, people filled in my silences with what they thought I meant.”
“So I stopped talking. And I started writing in the margins.”
“But even then… the teacher erased them.
Said: ‘Don’t clutter the page.’
And then one day, I just stopped showing up.”
The voice trembled.
“But Linh found the notebook. She called it ‘pure’ and said:
You’ve been writing in silence your whole life.”
“She left me this flash drive before she disappeared.”
The last few seconds were quiet.
Then a whisper:
“If you’re hearing this… maybe silence won’t be the last thing I leave behind.”
The audio ended.
An sat still for a long time, feeling as though he had just spoken to a ghost who had finally found someone willing to hear him.
That weekend, An returned to the hidden room behind the bookshelf. This time, he brought a notebook—his own. Not Linh’s. Not anyone else’s.
He started mapping the files: names, dates, voices, patterns. Some had trembles. Some spoke clearly but without emotion. A few were in different languages.
He realized Linh had created more than an archive.
She had created a catalog of forgotten lives.
And they were all interconnected—some names mentioned others. Some voices responded to earlier ones. Some left questions. Others—answers.
It wasn’t just a collection.
It was a conversation.
One the world had ignored.
Until now.
That night, An received a second envelope.
This one had no note.
Just a torn piece of a diary page.
The writing was familiar.
It was his.
“No one ever listens. Not really.
Sometimes I wonder if disappearing would make them pay attention.”
He stared at it.
That was from a journal he’d thrown away three years ago.
How did someone have it?
Who was reading him before he even became a writer?
Was he… being archived too?
The next day, the Writing Club received a strange submission in their inbox.
No name. No title. Just a line:
“What if we’re not the storytellers? What if we’re just characters someone else is trying to remember?”
Underneath: a voice recording.
Linh’s voice.
“I think about him a lot.
Not just because he listened—but because he never interrupted.
He lets words land where they want.
Even if they hurt.
Even if they leave.”
Then silence.
Then another voice.
Not hers. Not his.
Someone else.
“There are more.
An entire shelf of people you’ve forgotten.
And they’re waiting.
Not for justice. Not even for attention.
Just for someone to read them… without flinching.”
An finally did what he had been avoiding.
He recorded his own voice.
“My name is Nguyen An.
I never thought I mattered as a voice. I was always the one writing about others.
But now I wonder… if I’d ever stopped, would someone have recorded me too?
Would I have been filed in silence?
Would I have ended up in Linh’s archive—not as a keeper, but as a whisper?”
He paused.
Then added:
“I don’t know if Linh is coming back.
But I’m not just holding her voice anymore.
I’m holding all of them.
And if I stop now… they disappear again.”
He saved the file under the same format as the others:
"14-Writer_Record_Zero.m4a"
And for the first time, the archive had a voice… from the one who had been collecting them all.
To be continued...
- Writer
