Threadless : A growing novel

"Some things collapse with sound.

Others just stop being mentioned."

Jun was excited.

Which was never a good sign.

He'd been somehow granted provisional access to the Ink-Mining Workshop, though the guide kept insisting it was "a clerical error that should be ignored, not corrected."

He came prepared:

A paper helmet.

A snack pouch labeled "Emergency Morale".

A pickaxe he carved out of classroom furniture.

Rin watched from the entrance as Jun wandered deep into the scripted veins of memory, humming tunelessly.

"I'm going to mine for emotional detours," Jun declared. "Memories that made people take longer routes in life."

Rin muttered, "That sounds... dangerous."

Jun winked. "That's the spirit."

It started small.

Jun tapped into a memory seam with mock-ceremony — expecting nonsense, emotional nonsense.

But what emerged wasn't mischief.

It was a name.

Spoken aloud.

A name neither of them recognized.

Except Rin flinched.

And the stone around the seam shivered — like reality didn't want the word spoken twice.

Jun stepped back.

"Okay... that's weird. I just said—"

The name was gone.

Cut.

Like it had been lifted from the air.

Even Jun's face flickered — like it was trying not to exist.

For one second, Rin saw his friend's outline blur, soften, and start to fade from the light around him.

No sound. No warning.

Just—

Erasure.

And then, it stopped.

Not because the system corrected itself.

But because something interrupted it.

On the wall behind Jun, a vertical line of thread appeared — stitched directly into the stone.

One strand.

Uncuttable.

And below it, a line of text carved itself slowly:

"This one is under observation."

Jun blinked.

"...Was that about me?"

The mine didn't answer.

But it didn't try to erase him again.

Later, in the courtyard, Mei sat cross-legged on the grass, unfolding a torn page she claimed she "found inside her own pocket, which she doesn't remember owning."

It was covered in strange calligraphy. Slanted, dark ink, slightly smudged — like it had been written in a hurry, by someone not used to writing while existing.

At the bottom, a signature:

"—written by the one who stayed behind."

She showed it to Aro, casually.

"Your authors are getting nervous."