[Novel] If You Close Your Eyes, The World

Prologue
What do you think you are looking at right now? Is it paper? Is it a screen? No. What you are looking at is me. And the moment you stop those fingers that are turning the page—my dear reader, I will vanish from your world without a trace.
Please listen. Please do not misunderstand. This is not a record of madness. This is—if I may be so bold—a record of the gospel.
My name, well, it doesn't matter. Tanaka, Sato, or Suzuki would do just fine. Think of me as one grain in that anonymous collective of four million people in this country who wear gray suits, are swayed by gray trains, and report that their gray lives are "going well." Thirty-four years old. Single. Just shy of being a section chief. A man whose stomach condition is always in that exquisite position of being "just about to go bad."
That man, at 3:17 PM on a certain Tuesday, in front of the pantry, with a paper cup of coffee in one hand, suddenly arrived at a single truth that humanity had overlooked for two hundred thousand years.
That truth is this.
The world exists only insofar as I perceive it.
If this were a philosophy textbook, it would be dismissed in a single footnote. Something about Descartes, something about Berkeley, something about solipsism. But my dear reader, I want you to know. There is a chasm wider than the Pacific Ocean between knowing something and believing it. And I—at 3:17 PM on that Tuesday—leaped across that chasm. No, I realized that the chasm itself was a phantom to begin with.
What I am about to tell you is a record of how, starting from that day, my life transformed from gray into a vivid, eye-popping spectrum of color.
You may laugh. In fact, I want you to laugh. I myself have laughed many times while writing this. But please, I ask you to listen until the end. This is not the monologue of a madman—at least, as far as I know—but the final page of a user's manual for life.

Chapter 1: How to Erase a Boss
To tell the beginning of the story accurately, I must first talk about my boss, Department Manager Ebihara.
Department Manager Ebihara is fifty-two years old, has high blood pressure, a high volume of voice, and his consideration for human dignity is—immeasurably low. His morning begins with yelling at someone. This is not a metaphor. Literally, before he even gets to his desk and puts down his bag, he yells someone's name. That is, so to speak, his morning calisthenics.
That Tuesday, the target was me.
"Hey!"
Department Manager Ebihara's voice has the property of freezing the air in the entire floor for just a split second. I don't think it can be explained physically, but since it is a fact, it cannot be helped.
"What is the meaning of these numbers you submitted? Explain yourself."
He stood tall in front of my desk, brandishing the printed materials as if they were my very personality. His spit caught the light of the fluorescent lamp, flying through the air while shining faintly. One, then another. Indiscreetly, I thought it was beautiful.
And that was the moment.
I suddenly thought: This sound, this spit, this flushed face. Are these not all being assembled inside me as "Department Manager Ebihara" only after passing through the two weak organs of my retina and eardrum?
If I were not looking. If I were not listening.
Where is he?
It's ridiculous. You might think that is a sophistry that even a three-year-old would understand. I thought so too, until that moment on that day. But—how many people on this earth have ever thought to try it?
I closed my eyes.
Not in a meeting room, but right at my own desk, boldly.
"What are you—"
Department Manager Ebihara's voice wavered slightly. But it no longer mattered to me. Because that voice was no longer emitted from an entity called "Department Manager Ebihara," but had devolved into mere air vibration, mere acoustic data, a string of meaningless signals that I could selectively refuse to process.
Next, I gently covered my ears with my index fingers.
It wasn't complete silence. The sound of my own heart and blood flow sounded strangely loud. But Department Manager Ebihara's voice—that yelling, that preaching, that seven-colored transformation of personality negation—was certainly moving away. Like the tide receding from the shore.
And then, it vanished.
No, let me be more precise. Department Manager Ebihara himself was probably still standing there physically, opening and closing his mouth. From what I heard later, he was speechless for about ten seconds, and then left after spitting out something like a parting shot.
But in my world, Department Manager Ebihara vanished at that moment.
Completely. Cleanly. As if he had never existed in the first place.
When I opened my eyes, there was no one across from my desk. To be precise, someone was probably there. But to me, it was no longer "Department Manager Ebihara." It was just background for the floor. A collection of trivial information belonging to the same layer as the houseplants, the copier, and the power lines outside the window.
My dear reader, can you imagine how much of a liberation this was?
For nearly twenty years—no, for the thirty-four years I have been alive—I have lived in constant fear of something outside myself. The evaluation of teachers, the expectations of parents, the mood of bosses, the gaze of a faceless, giant judge called society. Deep down in my heart, I had believed that all of these were constantly grading my life from the outside.
But at 3:18 PM on that Tuesday—just one minute after the disappearance of Department Manager Ebihara—I understood.
There is no grader.
I had simply believed that there was a grader.
And if I stop believing, they vanish.
Is this escapism? Some of you might conclude that. Fine. You are welcome to call it that as much as you like. But I want you to judge after hearing how my life changed from that day on.
Because—and this is the truly strange part—ever since I began the act of "erasing" my boss, which at first glance seems like the ultimate escapism, I have actually become bolder toward the world than ever before.

Chapter 2: A Workbook for Erasure
Perhaps that is how discoveries usually go. The first time is nothing more than a product of chance. But from the second time on, it becomes a technique.
From that night on, I decided to systematically verify my ability. My dear reader, you may laugh. But I was dead serious. I even prepared a notebook. I named the first college notebook "Erasure Record" and wrote down the day's achievements in neat handwriting. Looking back now, it was almost like a confession of faith. It was close to the training diary of a seeker.
The first target was the crowded train.
At 7:52 AM, the train heading from my town to the city center was a mobile hell where human beings were transported while pressing their body heat, breath, and irritation against each other. The corner of someone's bag would dig into my side, someone's breath would hit my neck, and someone's clicking of the tongue would explode near my ear. Until now, I had accepted that hell every morning without resistance. I had even believed that accepting it was a virtue as a working adult.
But that morning, I tried it.
There was no need to close my eyes. If you close your eyes on a crowded train, you are just a suspicious person. Instead, I learned to shift the focus of my gaze by just a few centimeters. Beyond the shoulder of someone in front of me, even further back, to my own reflection in the window glass. The technique of not letting the focus settle.
And then, what do you know?
The shoulder being pressed against me, the clicking of the tongue leaking into my ears—they were probably still there physically. But within me, they lost their outlines and were reduced to mere pressure, mere sound. Anger and irritation did not well up. Because the object of my anger no longer existed there.
This was my second discovery.
Erasure is not just the deletion from the field of vision. It is the deprivation of meaning.
The reason the crowded train was hell was not the crowded train itself, but the meaning of "hell" that I had assigned to it. If you strip away the meaning, it turns into a mere inorganic layout of people and space.
By the time I arrived at the office, I felt strangely cheerful.

The next thing I targeted—this is a matter that requires a bit of care in explanation—was the gaze of strangers passing by.
We, or at least I, have lived for many years giving excessive weight to the gaze of strangers. A convenience store clerk looks at me for a second. A salaryman I pass by looks at my shoes and seems to frown slightly. Someone yawns on the train—I would interpret it as if it were an evaluation of me.
It's ridiculous. I can say that now. But for me at the time, it was a pain as natural as breathing.
One day, after exiting the station ticket gate, I passed a young woman who glanced at me. If it were the usual me, I would have shrunk a little here. I would have held a trial in my head endlessly, asking, "What was that? Is my hairstyle weird, or is it the way I walk?"
But that day, I just thought:
—That gaze is just a physiological phenomenon that was formed on her retina for about 0.3 seconds. By the time she gets home, she herself won't even remember my face. In other words, that gaze is already fading even within her. If so, what inconvenience is there if I erase it first within myself?
I did not look at her. To be precise, I did look, but I decided not to have seen it. I did not assign meaning.
Then, she vanished.
Cleanly, from my world.
As I repeated this, I realized. Almost all of the weight of "other people's eyes" that I had felt in my life until now was a phantom without substance that I had assembled myself.

And the toughest target remained at the end.
It was the other me inside myself.
You must have one too. The moment you get into bed at night, a voice that appears from nowhere and meticulously, persistently reads out the failures of the day. "That remark was shallow," "I should have kept quiet at that time," "You are not much of a person after all"—that voice had been sitting inside me as an unpaid critic for over ten years.
One night, in bed, I waited for that voice to start talking.
And the moment it started talking, I—using the same method as before—set out to strip away the meaning.
—Wait. Whose voice is this? It's not my father's voice, not my mother's voice, not Department Manager Ebihara's voice. Isn't this just the self-discharge of electrical signals in my own brain? If so, why am I bothering to give it the weight of "truth"?
The voice tried to continue. "You are still—"
I did not listen to the rest.
This was the most difficult erasure yet. Because the opponent was not outside me, but inside. Covering my ears was useless. Closing my eyes was useless. I could only quietly declare in my heart to that voice, "I will no longer give you the right to grade me."
Still, it worked.
Not perfectly. The voice showed its face from time to time after that. But it had lost its absolute authority like before. It had been demoted from the Supreme Court that judges my life to mere noisy neighbor life sounds.

Through these practices, my notebook called "Erasure Record" was filled with thirty-two achievements in just two weeks. And above all, what is worth mentioning was the byproduct.
The more I erased, the lighter I became.
As I became lighter, I became able to move. I started to voice opinions in meetings that I had been too afraid to say before. I started to raise my hand for negotiations with business partners that I had avoided before. Department Manager Ebihara was still yelling, but I had come to feel it as nothing more than "weather." If it rains, you open an umbrella. If you are yelled at, you pretend not to hear. That was all.
Two weeks later, the project proposal I submitted was unexpectedly evaluated at the department manager meeting. Department Manager Ebihara himself—the man who should have been erased and was nothing more than background—ironically poked my head lightly and said:
"You've been like a different person lately."
Yes. I had become a different person. Because the world had been re-edited to my convenience.
Hearing this far, you might be thinking this. This is arrogance, this is a dangerous ideology. I do not completely deny that possibility. But please listen to the rest. Because the time I was truly intoxicated by this power was exactly this period—and the fact that this intoxication would be shaken to its core by one person is a story for a little later.
I met that person on a sunny Sunday, on an observation deck overlooking the town.

Chapter 3: The Observation Deck
I will clarify that I did not go to the observation deck to meet someone that day. I just went to inspect my kingdom.
Yes, a kingdom. My dear reader, you may laugh if you want to. But to me, who had undergone two weeks of training, this metaphor was no longer an exaggeration, but the most accurate description. The town spreading out below—the buildings, the roads, the traffic lights, the cars moving like dots, all of them exist only on this side of the thin door that is my eyelids. Because I am opening my eyes, they are allowed to exist. That is all. What a generous ruler I am.
It was a facility with an admission fee of 300 yen, which was somewhat unworthy of the scale of the kingdom, but well, that's fine.
I stood in the corner of the glass-walled observation space, folded my arms behind my back, and looked down at the town. I think the posture was somewhat becoming, if I do say so myself. At least, as far as I could steal a glance at my own outline reflected in the glass.
"This town is now inside my eyelids."
It was a mistake to say it out loud. I admit it. But my dear reader, I want to plead that this was an act closer to a ritual than talking to myself. A king reciting his country's borders for confirmation—that was the kind of utterance it was.
"Huh. So if you blink, the world disappears for a moment."
The voice came from diagonally behind me to the right.
The sub-second before I turned around. What ran through my mind was not shame or embarrassment, but—pitifully—an extremely impure curiosity: "What kind of face does the owner of this voice have?" Perhaps the essence of me as a human being is exposed in places like this, unexpectedly.
When I turned around, there was a woman of indeterminate age—no, that's a misnomer, probably around my age or a little younger.
Here, you will expect me to describe her appearance. But I will warn you. I am about to describe her in a somewhat poetic, somewhat excessive style, but that is not desire, it is observation. It is philosophical interest. It is a professional duty as a recorder. At least, that is what I told myself.
Her eyes were not smiling. To be precise, while her mouth was smiling, only her eyes held a strange stillness, as if they were appraising the contents of my internal organs. This was a serious situation. Because the people I had "erased" until now—bosses, passersby, inner voices—had all silently accepted my interpretation. But this woman's eyes seemed to not believe in the correctness of my interpretation even a little bit from the start.
"I meant it as a joke, but you just went silent very seriously."
"I was thinking."
"About what?"
"Because your question hit the essence more than I expected."
It was a difficult comeback, if I do say so myself. But she didn't laugh at it, but rather stood next to me—leaving a distance of about one meter—as if interested. I noticed myself already trying to find some meaning in this way of taking a one-meter distance. My dear reader, I couldn't tell at the time whether this was the beginning of love or just self-consciousness. Even now, honestly, I can't tell.
"I'll take the blinking story seriously," she said. "So, does the world really disappear if you blink?"
"No. It doesn't disappear with a blink."
I started to explain, as if this were the time. The theory of deprivation of meaning. The erasure of Department Manager Ebihara. The focus technique on the crowded train. The declaration to the inner voice. My dear reader, I was surprisingly eloquent at this time. The usual me is not a man who can be this talkative to someone I just met. But in front of her appraising eyes, for some reason, words overflowed like a dam breaking. This too, looking back, might have been a dangerous sign.
When the explanation was over, she looked down at the town in silence for a while.
And then, she said this.
"Interesting. So, the people walking down there right now, they all exist because you permit it."
"Theoretically, that is how it becomes."
"Then I am also here right now because you permit it."
"...That is what it comes to, yes."
For the first time, she smiled using her eyes. It was a completely different kind of smile from the appraising eyes until now.
"I'm honored. For permitting me."
My dear reader, I will admit it. At this moment, something inside me collapsed with a sound. No, the expression "collapsed" is not accurate. Rather, I should say that something was newly assembled. She didn't make fun of my theory, nor did she believe it seriously, but just found it interesting and slipped inside it. Everyone I had "erased" until now was just an existence wandering outside my theory. But she was different. She was standing inside the theory from the beginning.
This was my first conversation with her.
I asked her name fifteen minutes later, after treating her to a second can of coffee. As she told me her name, she added this.
"By the way, I don't think you can erase me easily."
"Why do you think so?"
"It's an intuition."
At that time, I brushed off that remark as just a provocative quip. I laughed through my nose, and inwardly, I even held an arrogant determination to prove the correctness of my theory to her eventually.
But my dear reader, looking back now, I will confess honestly.
Her intuition was correct.

Chapter 4: Accomplice
Her name was Sumi.
When I first heard it, I thought it was a name that even saw through my state of mind, down to the characters. To clear (sumu). Clear. A sound that could see straight through to the bottom of the murky water of my theory. My dear reader, you may laugh at this as retroactive sentimentality. But when a human being falls in love, they are a creature that paints over even the other person's name with a convenient meaning called fate.
—No, wait. I used the word "love" carelessly just now. Let me correct it. This was not love. This was an encounter with the only "control group" for my theory. It is scientific interest. This too is part of philosophical inquiry. No matter what you think, I truly believed that at the time.
We exchanged contact information that same day.
This itself was a revolution in my life. If it were the old me, asking for contact information from a stranger I met at an observation deck would be an act that would make my stomach do three rotations just imagining it. But for me at that time, the fear itself of "what if I get rejected" no longer existed. Because I knew that I didn't have to see, hear, or could erase as much as I wanted the future version of me that was rejected.
This was the most practical application of my theory. Fear arises from "seeing" a future that hasn't happened yet on its own. Then, you just shouldn't see it. That was all.

The rendezvous with Sumi took on a strange aspect after that.
What we did was not much different on the surface from the acts that general lovers would do, like movies or meals. But the quality of the conversation sandwiched between them was decisively different.
One night, in a crowded izakaya, when a group of salarymen at the next table kept raising vulgar laughter. The moment I was about to start the work of shifting my focus and reducing them to the background, as usual.
Sumi looked into my eyes and said quietly:
"Are you erasing them now?"
"Yes."
"Please teach me too."
That night, for the first time in my life, I had the experience of teaching my technique to someone else. I do not have the vocabulary to accurately convey to you how much intoxication this brought. The feeling when a founder gains their first believer is probably something like this.
Sumi was a quick learner. Within thirty minutes, she looked toward the group of salarymen next to us and said calmly:
"Oh, they're gone already. There's just a lump of air."
"That is an accurate expression."
"Fun. This might become a habit."
From that night on, we started to erase various things we passed by while walking through town like a game. The persistent, demand-letter-like flyers stuck to utility poles. The lovers' quarrel of a strange couple yelling in front of the station. Young people who don't know manners watching videos at high volume on the train. One by one, the two of us carefully stripped them away from our field of vision and from meaning.
I think now that this was a terribly selfish game from the outside. But at the time, I called this "the world's purification work" and puffed out my chest proudly.

And above all, what is worth mentioning is the fact that during this period, my life began to ride an updraft at a speed like never before.
My work performance under Department Manager Ebihara showed a change that was obvious to everyone's eyes. The project proposals I submitted began to harbor a boldness that wasn't there before. Because I already knew the technique to erase the fear of being rejected. If you strip away the possibility of failure from the future in advance, people can become bold anywhere. I think this is a kind of truth, my dear reader. At least, for me at that time.
I volunteered for a new project within the section. An action I would never have taken before. Even in the presentation, my voice didn't tremble. Because I no longer had a reason to fear the countless gazes filling the venue—the gazes of those "graders" that had shrunk me until now. If I don't look at them, they don't exist. That was all.
Three months later, I was promoted to section chief.
Department Manager Ebihara handed me the official notice and said with a face that was half-dumbfounded and half-impressed:
"Did you eat something bad lately?"
My dear reader, I know no other evaluation as accurate as this.
I had indeed eaten something. Something huge, heavy, and something that had kept binding me, called the world. And I was chewing, digesting, selecting, and swallowing it little by little to my own convenience.
Sumi was watching all of that from the side, finding it interesting.
My dear reader, can you imagine how happy I was at the time? I had a theory, I had a technique, I had results, and above all, there was the only person with whom I could share it all. What more could I wish for?
But—I must write honestly now because it is now.
During this period at the height of happiness, I had already begun to commit a decisive mistake.
It was that I had begun to erase even things that should not be erased.

Chapter 5: The Man Who Erased Too Much
The first sign was a call from my mother.
My dear reader, I will state this first because it is a fact that cannot be defended. At that time, my mother was calling me about twice a week. It was just a confirmation call, with no particular business to call business, about my father's blood pressure, about someone in the neighborhood being hospitalized, about how the pickles turned out. Just asking if I was doing well. That was all.
But by then, I had become completely intoxicated by the technique of processing "troublesome things."
Every time the word "Mother" floated on the smartphone screen, I processed it using the exact same procedure I had used for my boss and the gazes of others until now. Shift the focus. Do not assign meaning. Reduce the continuing vibration to a mere physical phenomenon—the regular convulsion of an inorganic rectangular object dancing on the desk.
The phone eventually stopped ringing.
I thought of it as a victory. My dear reader, can you believe it? At the time, I was genuinely happy that I could ignore my mother's call, as further proof of my own theory. While carefully applying makeup to my cold-heartedness with beautiful words like "freedom from annoyance."
This was the first sign. But if it were only this, perhaps I could have turned back.

The second sign was a little more serious.
I was entrusted as the leader of a new project, as mentioned earlier. But behind that, I was holding one other job that was plain, troublesome, and brought no honor. One of my juniors—I will hide her name—came crying to me to handle a complaint from a business partner that she couldn't handle herself, as a cleanup for a mistake I had made in the past.
"Senior, I'm really sorry, could you handle this with me?"
I looked at the face of my junior pleading. I looked, and then—my dear reader, I think now that this is the heaviest sin I committed—I decided not to assign meaning.
Because that work seemed too plain, too troublesome, and had no reward compared to my brilliant new project. I pushed her existence out of focus, just like a stranger's shoulder on a crowded train. I declared on my own that I had the right to pretend I didn't hear her voice, just like the voice of the inner critic.
"Sorry, I'm a bit tied up right now. Maybe next time."
I said that and passed by her as if she didn't exist there.
My dear reader, where is the "selection of meaning" in this? This was just cold-heartedness. I had just been carefully wrapping it in my own lofty theory.

The complaint, as expected, became complicated.
Two weeks later, the case exceeded the level that my junior could handle alone and developed into a bit of a commotion involving the entire section. Department Manager Ebihara yelled my name for the first time in a while.
"Did you know about this and leave it alone!?"
My dear reader, here, I committed the most shameful act.
I tried to erase that yelling, as usual.
But—I couldn't.
Why couldn't I? I didn't know at the time. Even if I shifted my focus, Department Manager Ebihara's face didn't vanish. Even if I covered my ears, his voice was vivid, as if it were ringing from inside my skull.
If it were now, I would understand. This was guilt. Guilt is not a meaning given from the outside. It is something unerasable that wells up from inside yourself on its own.
That night, I told Sumi about this series of events, half-boastfully and half-excusingly.
Sumi didn't find it interesting as usual.
She stayed silent for a while, wrapping the can of coffee with both hands, and said this:
"That, from the junior's perspective, is quite a terrible story, isn't it?"
"I just didn't assign meaning to her voice."
"You didn't not assign meaning, you just ignored her because it was troublesome."
I tried to strongly refute that word. But I couldn't. Because Sumi's words hit the essence of my actions more accurately than any of my flowery words until now.
"Besides," Sumi continued. "You ignored your mother's call too, right? Was that also because it had no meaning?"
"...That is"
"Are you going to explain that with the erasure theory too?"
I couldn't say anything.
My dear reader, I understand now that this silence was the moment my theory was shaken to its core for the first time. But at the time, I was still telling myself that the shaking was just a temporary agitation.
Tomorrow, a cheerful morning will come again. If I erase, I can become light again. Yes, I believed it without doubt.
But—that conviction was the biggest mistake I had never noticed until the end.

Chapter 6: The Erased Side
For about two weeks after that, there was no visible change between Sumi and me. At least, that's what I believed.
When we met, we walked through town as usual. We erased troublesome things together as usual. But—I notice now while writing this—Sumi no longer proposed new targets. She just stayed by my side and watched silently as I erased something.
I didn't notice that change. No, let me be honest. I noticed, but I erased even that.
"It's quiet lately," I said one night, feeling lighthearted. I tried to cover even her silence with a quip. What a foolish man I was.
Sumi didn't answer anything for a while. And when she finally opened her mouth, her voice had a flat resonance I had never heard before.
"Hey. Can I try it?"
"Try what?"
"Your theory."
At that time, I didn't yet understand what she was trying to say. If I had understood—no, this is pointless. My dear reader, let's continue.
Sumi looked straight into my eyes. And slowly, she closed her eyes.
At first, I thought it was just a blink. But her eyelids didn't open. One second, two seconds, three seconds.
"Sumi?"
There was no answer.
She kept her eyes closed and slowly raised both hands. And with her fingertips, she gently covered both her ears.
My dear reader.
Here, I feel some difficulty in continuing the sentence. Until now, I had intended to write this record with a certain amount of leeway—sometimes comically, sometimes proudly. But when I recall this scene, my hands still tremble slightly even now.
Because at that moment, for the first time, I understood.
The true nature of what I had done until now to Department Manager Ebihara, to passersby, to my junior, to my mother.
That being closed off. That having ears covered.
—How much of a violence it was.
"Sumi, wait."
I called her name. But she shouldn't have been able to hear me. Because she was in the middle of erasing me right now.
I tried to touch her shoulder. But just before touching, my hand stopped. This is also a shameful fact that I must confess to you. I was scared. I was scared that the moment I touched her, I would truly vanish.
Until now, I had believed without doubt that erasure was liberation, victory, and gospel for the eraser. But now, having moved to the side being erased, I understood for the first time.
Erasure was, for the side being erased, just—annihilation.
To have your existence completely treated as if it never happened. Your voice, your expression, your appeal, everything is reduced to meaningless noise within the other person. There is no way to resist this. Because the act of trying to resist is already turned into an unheard sound, an invisible shadow, within the other person.
I stood there, frozen.
How much time had passed? It might have been ten seconds, or it might have been three minutes. Within me, the sense of time had already lost its meaning.
Eventually, Sumi opened her eyes.
And as if nothing had happened, she said this:
"—How was it? The feeling of being erased."
There was no anger or mockery in that voice. It was just the voice of a quiet observer. That, more than anything, struck me down.
"...I understand."
My voice was hoarse, surprising even myself.
"Understand what?"
"This is—"
I couldn't find the following words. Until now, I had been eloquent in any situation. I was good at painting over sophistry with flowery words. But at this moment, all my vocabulary had been stripped away. As if—ironically—I myself had been deprived of meaning by my own theory.
Sumi was looking at me quietly. And she said:
"What you have been erasing is not the world. It is your responsibility toward the world."
Those words pierced into me deeper than any yelling until now.
"When you erased Department Manager Ebihara, you thought you were free from the unreasonableness of your boss, didn't you? But in reality, you might have just escaped from the responsibility of refuting him. When you erased your junior, you thought you were free from annoyance, didn't you? But in reality, you just escaped from the responsibility of helping her. Your mother's call too—"
"...Enough."
I interrupted her words for the first time. But it was not an erasure like before. Rather, it was the opposite. I was scared to hear the rest of those words. If I heard them, I wouldn't be able to turn back. I intuited that.
Sumi didn't say anything more.
After looking at me for a while, she quietly turned on her heel.
"Sumi."
I called out to her back.
She didn't look back.
I could only watch her back as she walked away. Ironically, the option to "erase" her didn't even cross my mind at that time. Because I had already learned to the bone how much violence the act of erasure was.
That night, for the first time in my life, I became scared of closing my eyes.

Chapter 7: Who Was the Grader?
For a while after that—I can no longer remember exactly how many days—I had fallen into a kind of dysfunction.
I went to the company. I did my work. But the boldness I once had was nowhere to be found. When I tried to speak in a meeting, before opening my mouth, I would suddenly think. If I say this, won't I make someone invisible again? That was similar to, but different from, the "erasure of fear" that had supported the old me. Rather, it was a new kind of caution.
Department Manager Ebihara was still yelling at someone. But I no longer tried to erase that yelling.
This was a strange discovery. Because it wasn't that I couldn't erase it, but that I myself had come to choose not to erase it.
One afternoon, I was accidentally alone with Department Manager Ebihara in the pantry.
It was the place where everything began.
The manager, while brewing coffee, said without looking at me:
"You've returned again lately."
"Returned, meaning?"
"To the previous, timid feeling. That strangely gutsy feeling you had when you became section chief has disappeared."
My dear reader, this was an ironic point. Because that very "strangely gutsy feeling" was the proudest achievement of my theory. But now, being told that I seemed to have lost it, strangely, I wasn't hurt.
"Manager."
I spoke to him on my own for the first time. Not because I was yelled at, not as a business report, but just as a dialogue.
"Why do you always yell, Manager?"
The manager stopped his hand sipping coffee. And after staying silent for a while, he muttered:
"Probably because I think you guys are watching. I think if I yell, I'll be heard. It's a pathetic story, though."
I was caught off guard by that answer.
Until now, I had treated Department Manager Ebihara as just a tyrant, as just an "object to be erased." But perhaps he too was just desperate to be "watched" or "heard" by someone in his own way. In a way that was too clumsy, called yelling.
This is not a story of forgiving him. My dear reader, please do not misunderstand. Yelling is still an act that should not be forgiven. But—the fact that he too was just another frightened human being like me quietly rearranged something inside me.
Until now, I had loudly declared, "There is no grader." But now, I think.
It is not that there is no grader. Everyone is a grader, and at the same time, just a frightened defendant.
Department Manager Ebihara too. Mother too. That junior too. Sumi too. And I myself too.
No one is judging anyone with absolute authority. Everyone is just living while throwing their own anxiety at someone or pulling it back from someone.

That night, I opened that college notebook named "Erasure Record" for the first time in a while.
Thirty-two achievements. A record of victory written in neat handwriting.
I added a new sentence to the last page of that notebook.
—Erasure is not power. It is a choice. And choice always comes with responsibility.
My dear reader, this is my final conclusion. The world indeed exists within me insofar as I perceive it. I think that is still the truth. But the conclusion that should be derived from that truth was not "therefore I can do anything," but "therefore, I am responsible for what I choose."
I did not erase Department Manager Ebihara.
I had only finally allowed myself the choice to face Department Manager Ebihara without fear.
And when I ignored the junior's complaint, when I rejected my mother's call—I did not erase them.
I had only allowed myself the choice to escape from the responsibility of facing them.
The same act of "closing my eyes" becomes courage on one side and cowardice on the other. The only thing that divides that difference is one thing.
—Whether there is someone's pain beyond that.
I closed the notebook.
And I picked up my smartphone and called my mother.
After a few rings, I heard my mother's voice.
"Oh, that's rare, coming from you."
I didn't know what to talk about first. But that was fine. Because at this time, what I really should have done was not to speak eloquently, but just to listen to her voice.

Final Chapter: Behind the Eyelids
I haven't met Sumi since then.
Her contact information still remains in my phone. But I haven't called that number even once. How would you judge this, my dear reader? Is it lingering attachment? Or is it the moderation I finally learned? Honestly, I don't know myself.
There is only one thing that is certain.
I am no longer "erasing" her.
This was a modest, yet the small sincerity I finally arrived at. Not meeting and erasing are different. Not meeting is just distance. But erasing was a declaration against existence itself. I had decided not to make that declaration lightly to anyone anymore.
Rumor has it that she still appears at that observation deck from time to time. Since this is just hearsay from my junior—the one I once almost abandoned—I cannot guarantee the truth of it. But if it is true, she might still be there, looking down at the town, finding someone's theory interesting and listening to it.
Or perhaps even that is just a convenient fantasy created by my own desire.

No—my dear reader, there is one more thing I must write honestly.
It was not a rumor.
It was about a month ago. Without any intention, just as my feet led me, I went to that observation deck. It was a weekday evening. There were almost no customers.
And she was there.
In the place where we first met. In that posture. As if time had stopped only in that corner.
I hesitated whether I should call out to her. But before I could hesitate, she turned around to look at me. She didn't look surprised. As if she had known from the beginning that I would come.
"Long time no see."
I said just that.
Sumi didn't answer anything, and instead, handed me an old notebook she was holding.
"Do you want to see this?"
I accepted it. Nothing was written on the cover. But the moment I opened it, I gasped.
There—even now as I write this, I want to doubt my own sanity—my life was recorded orderly like a chronology. The day I was born. The day I first cried. That Tuesday, 3:17 PM, when I was yelled at by Department Manager Ebihara. That moment at the observation deck when I met Sumi. The last call to my mother. And—
And beyond that, dates that shouldn't have happened yet continued for many lines.
I couldn't stop my hand from turning the pages.
"This is..."
My voice trembled.
"This is a record of things you have been seeing and not seeing all along," Sumi said quietly. "Interesting, isn't it? Even while you were closing your eyes, someone was watching properly."
"Who?"
"Well."
She smiled. It was the same way of smiling as the day we first met.
"It might be me, or it might be you yourself. Or it might just be—the world."
The very moment I tried to chew on the meaning of those words—it was truly a blink-like moment—she was gone.
The notebook had also vanished.
There was nothing in my hands. As if there had been nothing from the beginning.
I stood there for a long time. The town was spreading out below as usual. But only on that day, it looked to me as if the town was certainly there, just as it was, without getting anyone's permission.
How should I explain this to you, my dear reader?
If I say it was a hallucination, it's easy. But then, I cannot explain why my palms still remember the weight of that notebook.
I will probably never know forever who she was. Was she the incarnation of my conscience? Was she a fleeting manifestation of the world itself? Or was she just one human being I met and lost?
My dear reader, thank you for accompanying my record for so long.
Finally, there is one thing I must confess.
I am writing this manuscript at my desk at night. Outside the window, it is already dark. The room light is still on.
I suddenly think.
Does this room, this desk, this manuscript—no, even you who are reading this—really exist independently outside my eyelids? Or, after all, is everything barely tethered to this world only insofar as I perceive it?
The truth I realized in the pantry that day has not wavered even now. The world is within me. That does not change.
But there is one more thing I should add.
Being within me also means—that I am responsible for the world.
Was this a gospel? Or was it just a heavy punishment?
My dear reader, I will be honest. I don't know anymore.
But, I think I will try it one more time, right here.
Just like the first day.
I put down the pen.
And—
I close my eyes.