Last Echo

In Veridin, some people's presence is fainter than a shadow. Ewen Maughan was a second-rate investigative reporter, earning three silver dollars a week and living in a shabby apartment at No. 17 Crow Lane. His biggest trouble is not that the landlord presses for rent or that the editor-in-chief presses for manuscripts, but that he always gets cut in line when queuing, and is always missed when ordering food. When walking on the road, he is bumped into by someone, who even says in horror - "I didn't see you just now." He thought it was just bad luck. Until that night, in the archives of the Gilded District, he photographed something he shouldn't have photographed. The pursuit dog chased him three streets, flashlight flashing across his face—and then away. It's like he's not even there. From that night on, fragments of memories that did not belong to him began to flood into his mind. The white ceiling and white lights all seemed inconsistent, and maybe I didn't even belong to this world. He was told that this was no hallucination. He was told that he was being forgotten. First a stranger, then an acquaintance, and finally himself. Someone put a bead into his hand and said there was a clue inside. Someone lit the lamp at the end of the corridor for him, but his name was quickly forgotten. Someone pushed open his door, sat across from him, finished a bowl of noodles he made, and then said in a calm tone - "Your eggs are well done." And he is disappearing from everyone's memory. A story about protection and forgetting. When the world forgets you, will anyone still be willing to remember you?