Summary:
There was someone missing from the class—or so it seemed. The empty seat surrounded by them felt like proof.
It was another ordinary weekday for eleven-year-old children like them. They went to school, attended lessons, played during breaks, and returned home when the day was over. The routine repeated itself, simple and familiar.
Everything felt normal—until one Monday morning.
That was when they noticed the seat.
It sat in the middle row, positioned between them all, unmistakably empty. Kagura’s seat was to the left. Mio’s was to the right. In front of it sat Tokatti, and directly behind it was Hikari. The arrangement felt deliberate, as though the seat had always been meant to belong there.
Yet no one was sitting in it.
Had it always been empty?
They asked their classmates, one by one. The answers were the same every time: the seat had never had an owner, not since the start of the term. No one remembered anyone ever sitting there.
That should have settled it.
And yet, none of the four could stop glancing towards the centre of the room.
There was a strange unease about that empty space, a sense that something—no, someone—was missing. It was not a clear memory, nor a thought they could put into words. Just a faint discomfort, like a name on the tip of the tongue that refused to surface.
Why was that seat empty?
To the rest of the class, it was nothing more than an unused chair. But to the four of them, it felt wrong. They were quietly, stubbornly convinced that the seat should have been occupied.
That someone should have been there.
Days passed. Lessons continued. The feeling dulled, softened by time. Eventually, they stopped thinking about it altogether.
Perhaps the seat really had been meant to stay empty.
And yet, every now and then, their eyes still drifted to the centre—
to the space where something had once existed, and been forgotten.
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