The boy sat beside the open window, watching fog curl around the old iron fence outside.
In his hands: the list.
• Lanie ✓
• Maria Tan ✓
• Caloy ✓
• ————
The last line stared back at him, its ink faded into a soft, smudged bruise on the page.
The other names held shape. Weight. He could trace their stories now, their regrets folded neatly into the corners of his memory.
But the last one…
Still nothing.
He turned the page sideways. Held it to the pale morning light.
No trick revealed anything.
Just the vague impression of a name that no longer wanted to be read.
"You're going to wear a hole in that," Calix said, appearing at the kitchen table with two mugs of tea. "Same page, same frown, three mornings in a row."
The boy didn't respond.
Calix slid one mug toward him. "You thinking it might've been a fake name?"
"No," the boy said quietly. "It was real."
"Then why smudge it out?"
"I don't know."
But he had a feeling he was close to something.
He just didn't know what.
That afternoon, he visited his grandmother's room again.
The drawer beneath the altar held nothing new, only familiar scraps: a pressed flower wrapped in a paper napkin, a rusted key, a square of dried lavender tucked in an envelope without writing.
He took his time, laying the items out carefully.
The candlelight flickered.
There, between the oil-stained pages of an old notepad, he found a single folded square—neatly creased, fragile at the corners. It looked like a grocery list.
He opened it gently.
matches
cloth
thread
bread
lantern polish
At the bottom, almost like an afterthought, something had been scribbled and half-erased.
Ca—
The letters had been penciled lightly and smudged. No context. No note.
It could've been the start of a name.
Or just an unfinished word.
Still, it pulled at something in him.
Familiar, but faint—like hearing the echo of a song without knowing the tune.
He didn't tell Calix what he found.
Not yet.
Instead, he carried the list in his pocket and walked the long way into town. Past the bakery. Past the crumbling post office with the green shutters. Past the alley behind the old school.
There, he stopped.
The brick wall stood exactly as he remembered it. Rough. Uneven. Weatherworn.
He ran his fingers along the grooves between bricks. The chalk drawings were gone, but something else remained—faint and carved low to the ground.
Scratches.
He crouched.
There it was.
Ca—
Etched shallowly into the brick. The lines were crude. Done by a child, maybe.
He touched the name.
Didn't say it.
Didn't finish it.
Just let the cold stone rest beneath his fingertips.
Back home, he took out both pages: the name list and the grocery slip.
He didn't line them up. Didn't try to connect the smudge to the carving.
He just placed them side by side.
A name half-lost.
A word half-written.
Neither told him what he was looking for.
But they were pointing somewhere.
And that, for now, was enough.
Later, as he prepared to light the altar candle, he noticed a faint bulge beneath the drawer lining. The paper base was slightly lifted in the corner.
He peeled it back carefully.
Underneath—another scrap of notepaper. Folded small. Dusty.
There was nothing on the front. But when he flipped it over, he saw pressure marks—no ink, just grooves pressed into the paper by a pen that had stopped working.
He tilted it toward the candlelight.
Letters began to emerge in shadow.
Five of them.
But only the first two were clear:
C
A
_
_
_
He stared at it.
Waited for a memory to follow.
None came.
So he folded it again.
Slipped it back where he found it.
And whispered into the quiet:
"I'll come back when I'm ready."
That night, he sat at his window again.
The lantern flickered once on the windowsill. Not urgent. Not glowing for a soul.
Just… warm.
Present.
Waiting.
The boy wrapped the smudged list in soft cloth and placed it beside the lantern.
Then leaned back in his chair and looked at the stars.
There were no ghosts that night.
No visitors from beyond.
Only silence.
And the soft, growing weight of something just out of reach.