Another one bites the dust

"What happened?" I asked, but of course, no one heard me. Gathering my courage, I forcefully turned one of the girls to face me and repeated my question.

"She slipped…" my classmate finally responded.

"Yes, she slipped," all the other girls repeated in unison, sounding like a chorus.

"Where did the pipe come from?" I asked.

Confused, the girl shook her head and replied, "I don't know."

"Go fetch the teacher," I said to her, enunciating clearly and making direct eye contact to ensure she was listening

"Why?" she asked.

"We need to inform somebody that there has been an accident," I said, growing slightly impatient. If there was a chance to save Diana, we were wasting precious time just standing there.

"What accident?" the girl gave me a dazed look.

Exasperated, I turned my head and was about to point at the girl with the pipe sticking out of her when I realized that there was no one lying in the snow anymore.

Diana was gone without a trace. And so was the pipe.

Stupidly, I knelt down and touched the spot where she had been lying. It felt cold.

When I raised my head, the girls had already vanished. I saw no reason to stay either.

As expected, when I checked the class register the next day, Diana's name was missing. Nobody in the class could remember her, and even her desk had disappeared.

This was the first time in my life that I seriously started doubting my own sanity. Previously, I had always thought that others were weird, but time and time again, the world proved that it was most likely my perception of reality that was wrong.

After the "Diana incident," I often contemplated what it meant to die. Was disappearing from existence the same as dying? In that case, I was as good as dead.

My condition wasn't just connected to how other people saw me or didn't see me; a big part of it was that nothing ever happened to me. It was as if the universe itself considered me non-existent. I never fell ill, never had any accidents, and never got into trouble, even if I did something outrageous. It may not sound too bad, but at the same time, nothing good ever happened to me either. I never won anything and was never chosen to be a part of anything, really. Sometimes it was downright ridiculous. I would get full points on a test, and the teacher would announce that "unfortunately, no one got full points this time." Once, when I handed in an empty test paper, the teacher announced that "everyone got a B and up." It didn't matter what I did; the result was always the same — as if it had never happened.

Under these conditions, was I truly alive?

This question weighed heavily on me, but I had no one to turn to, so I continued going with the flow day by day.

Time and time again, a new student would appear. I no longer bothered to remember their names. Almost all of them approached me, asking about the roof. It was exhausting, but I ignored them to the best of my ability. Sooner or later, they all "died" — a couple fell victim to the pipe, one fell out the window, one rolled down the stairs and broke their spine, and some were beaten up by a bunch of bullies behind the school. If I remember correctly, one guy was hit by a bus. Nobody, except me, remembered their existence afterward.

Initially, I looked them up online before and after the inevitable accidents. All of them had a few inconspicuous social media profiles before, but after their disappearance, the profiles promptly vanished. Not deleted, but completely gone. No cache, no reports, not a sliver of evidence that these people had ever existed.

Once, I got really curious and asked one of the "new guys" to show me where he lived in exchange for showing him the roof. The guy took me to a run-down apartment building on the outskirts of town. His apartment was small, and his room even smaller. It looked like a place where a real person would live. I asked him when he moved in, and he told me about his parents' divorce and how this was the best his mother could afford after his father left her for a younger lover.

I stayed for dinner. The guy's mother was nice. Just like the others, she didn't particularly notice me, but she was very attentive toward her son. It was somehow heartwarming to watch them interact with each other.

I broke my promise and didn't take the guy to the roof. Obviously, I never intended to in the first place. He wasn't upset, rather confused. The next day, I witnessed him being cut in half by a butcher's knife that randomly fell on him from the roof.

Not waiting until classes were over, I rushed to the guy's apartment. I knocked loudly on the door, but no one responded. I ended up waiting for hours until his mother finally came home.

"Who are you?" She didn't recognize me. No surprise there.

"Your son had an accident at school."

"My son?" The woman rubbed her temples.

"A knife fell on him.

"Is this some kind of joke?"That was indeed an excellent question, one that I myself didn't know the answer to.

Looking annoyed, the woman unlocked her door.

"Young man, stop playing pranks and go home. It's very late, your parents must be worried.

"But what about your son?"

"I don't have a son!" The woman shook her head and was about to enter her apartment when I jumped in front of her and slipped through the door. I dashed toward the room where I had sat with the new guy just yesterday.

Ignoring the woman's scolding, I quickly inspected the tiny room. It looked completely different than before. The posters were gone, the bedding was a different color, and the pictures on the table were removed.

"Where are his things?" I asked quietly. "Why did you get rid of them so quickly?"

The woman didn't respond; instead, she pushed me out of the apartment and slammed the door in my face, muttering "psycho" under her breath.

I sighed, unsure if she was so wrong about me.

When the next student arrived, the first thing I did was look up their address. I discovered that this one lived not far away from me. So, I decided to spy on them for a while to see if I could notice anything suspicious or out of the ordinary.

But all I saw was them biking to and from school and playing catch with their three younger siblings. Their parents were not divorced, and they generally had nothing in common with the other "newbies." Yet, for some reason, all of them seemed somehow similar. I just couldn't figure out where this similarity lay.

Once, this person fell out of the window during gym class, and I secretly went to check up on their family. They didn't seem distressed in any way; their life continued as if the person never existed in the first place. Their siblings still played catch day after day.

The next "newbie" was a girl who looked nothing like Diana. I don't quite remember her features anymore, just that she had long black hair. This time, I made a point of taking as many photos of the girl as possible. I imagined that, after she disappeared, I could use these photos to make the police look for her. The main reason for taking the photos, however, was to prove to myself that all these gruesome deaths and mysterious disappearances were not just part of my delusions.

To my surprise, seconds after I saw the girl hanging from the power cable, she disappeared from all the photos I had taken. The photos were still there, and it didn't look like she was purposefully cut out. The photos looked so seamless that my doubts about my own insanity only deepened.

By my last year of high school, I had gone through numerous theories and tried many approaches to figure out the mystery of the disappearing students. They kept coming and coming, giving me plenty of chances to investigate. But every single idea led to a dead end.

Once, I asked a new guy point blank who he was.

"What do you mean?" he smiled awkwardly.

"Are you a real person?"

"Of course. Why would you think that I'm not?"

"How can you be sure that you are?" I asked in return.

The guy shook his head, looking at me like I was crazy. It didn't seem like he was acting. I handed him a piece of paper and asked him to write his name, age, and favorite color on it.

He raised his eyebrow but did as I told him. I folded the page and carefully placed it in my right pocket so I could check at any moment to make sure it didn't disappear.

When the inevitable happened, and the boy ended up at the bottom of the staircase with his neck twisted at a weird angle, I immediately took out the note. And... didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

The note was not empty; instead, it was filled with squiggly lines that, from a distance, could be mistaken for letters but were complete gibberish. Since I had witnessed the guy writing everything down properly and had never lost sight of the note, I had no explanation for this phenomenon.

Next, I tried video filming the "newbies" and recording their voices. Those videos turned out just like the photos—each person was always missing. The voice recordings transformed into recordings of white noise. I even tried reversing them and slowing them down, hoping to hear anything at all, maybe even some hidden message. But it was all a waste of time.

When the final exams were around the corner, I felt somewhat relieved, probably the only one in school. That meant no new transfer students, no new deaths, and no more efforts to unravel the mystery. Some part of me hoped that after I finished high school, this incoherent repetitive nightmare would be over.

I didn't do too well on my exams, but I didn't particularly care. With my "invisibility," there was no chance of me getting into college, even as an honor student with a 4.0 GPA. So, what was the point of putting in too much effort?

What I didn't know at that time was that even though I was done with high school, unfortunately, high school wasn't done with me.

I went to bed at the beginning of the summer holidays, having all my exams behind me, and somehow woke up at the beginning of my last year of high school yet again.