We had tried everything.
Every corridor, every professor, every casual friend Wilburt once laughed with over lunch. Nothing. Not even his own classmates remembered the last time they'd seen him. It was like he'd vanished overnight—like he'd been plucked from the map of university life and erased without a trace.
And yet, no one seemed particularly surprised.
Hana and I had spent the morning back in the central block of the Graphic Design department. We poked around studios, checked lecture rosters, and even spoke to Professor Park under the guise of asking about a shared group project. He'd blinked at the name "Wilburt" as if it were unfamiliar. Said he hadn't taught a student by that name this semester.
That was when things started to feel… off.
Back at the dormitory, we navigated the maze of hallways in silence, the kind of silence that hangs heavy with unspoken thoughts. Wilburt's room was in East Wing Block B—Room 423. We hadn't been back since the night before the anniversary party. The air in the corridor felt thicker this time, as though the walls were pressing closer.
"I checked with housing," Hana said as we reached the door. "They still have Wilburt listed in the system. No check-out record. No disciplinary hold. Nothing."
I tried the door again.
Unlocked.
The room looked exactly the same. Not a sock out of place. No signs of a struggle. No scribbled post-it notes clinging to the wall begging to be deciphered. If you didn't know better, you'd think Wilburt had just stepped out for coffee.
I stepped inside, scanning the space more slowly this time. Hana stayed near the doorway, letting me move first.
There were a few new things I hadn't noticed before. A stack of books on Eastern philosophy Wilburt had never mentioned. A black sketchbook peeking out from under the mattress—blank, all but one page near the end.
Coordinates.
Or something like it. The numbers were strange, too long to be phone numbers but too short to be GPS points. At first glance, meaningless.
But the moment I showed them to Hana, her face changed. Just barely.
"They could be ciphered," she murmured, taking the sketchbook. "Encoded locations or timestamps. Military systems sometimes use similar obfuscation."
"So... something worth looking into?"
"Maybe. But it's odd he'd leave this just lying here."
Odd was an understatement. After everything we'd seen, it felt too… convenient. The kind of thing you find when someone wants you to find it.
A slow suspicion crept in. Not enough to form words. Just a sense.
This isn't evidence. This is bait.
Hana didn't say it, but I saw it flicker across her eyes, the subtle tightening of her jaw as she tucked the sketchbook away.
Still, we needed answers. And Wilburt was still missing.
Later that night, we took the sketchbook and sat in the commons lounge in the east courtyard—dimly lit, near empty. The hum of vending machines and the occasional clatter of footsteps in the distance kept us tethered to reality.
I opened the sketchbook again.
Beneath the code-like numbers was a hastily scribbled sentence, etched so deeply into the paper the indentation bled through several pages.
"They're not who they say they are. But you have to trust me. I'm trying to fix it."
My blood went cold.
I looked up at Hana, who had gone very still.
"You think it's real?" I asked.
"I don't know," she said after a moment. "That's the problem."
We sat in silence, the weight of the words hanging between us like a curtain.
From anyone else, it might've been a cry for help.
But from Wilburt… it felt calculated. He knew us too well. He knew how to draw sympathy. He knew how to manipulate fear.
And worst of all—we couldn't prove it either way.
Still, we followed the trail.
We had to.