The Erased Observer

When he was six, he saw a gray thread wrapped around his neighbor. He said so out loud. Seven days later, the neighbor died. The villagers called him a freak. After that, he learned to keep quiet. For seventeen years, he watched, seeing all those people in the city consumed by their obsessions. He was just a food-delivery rider. Nobody knew what he could see. Until today, when he got an order for a building with no fourth floor. A woman with flames engulfing her sat in Room 404. She asked him, “You can see the fire on me, can't you?” He didn't save her. He turned and walked away. That night, a lamp he'd never seen before appeared beside his pillow. A line of text was engraved on it: “Bureau of Fate Observation · Subject No. 4471 File · Status: Decommissioned.” The words “Decommissioned” were red, like blood. He wanted to find out who he was. But he didn't know that every time he traced someone's karma, he would gain another fragment of memory belonging to the Upper Realm. And the day he gathered all thirteen fragments, the Upper Realm would know he had awakened.