Remember Who You Are

At 3:17 a.m., my reflection in the mirror spoke. “Remember who you are. Quickly.” But I’m standing right here. So who’s the one in the mirror? My cat is gone. Not missing. Everyone says I never had a cat. I searched my phone and couldn’t find a single photo of it. I asked all my friends, and no one remembered it ever existed. Only I remember: its name was Nian Gao. It was white, with odd-colored eyes, and every morning it would jump onto my bed and knead me. Then I realized it wasn’t just the cat. My coworkers started forgetting my name. HR said there was no one named “Lin Shen” in the social insurance system. I pulled out my ID card, and the photo on it was slowly fading. My mom called. In the middle of a sentence, she suddenly stopped: “You… what was your name again?” I’m disappearing from this world. Not dying, not going missing. I’m being forgotten. As if I had never existed.