Chapter 2: The Mirror

After graduation, I moved to a strange city and tried to make a living. Money was tight, so I rented a single room in an old residential compound. The location was decent, the rent was cheap, and the only real problem was that the place was tiny. There was nowhere to put the dressing table except against the wall at the head of the bed, which meant the mirror faced the mattress directly.

The day I moved in, my mother called to warn me.

“A mirror facing the bed is unlucky,” she said. “The old people always said you must never comb your hair in front of a mirror at midnight. It draws unclean things. Move it if you can.”

I was unpacking at the time and gave her a few distracted replies. In a city like that, having a roof over my head already felt like a blessing. Who had room to care about old superstitions? Besides, I had never believed in ghosts. I had always thought those stories were invented to frighten children.

The room had been carved out of an older apartment. The walls were stained and peeling in places, and the ceiling lamp cast a weak, yellowish light even at its brightest. The dressing table had been left by the landlord. The paint around the mirror frame had flaked off here and there, but the glass itself was spotless, polished so cleanly that it reflected every detail with almost uncomfortable sharpness.

I set out my cosmetics one by one, then studied myself in the mirror. Tired, yes, but standing in my own rented room at last. I even felt a small rush of satisfaction. My mother’s words were already gone from my mind.

For the first few days, nothing happened.

Then one night I worked three hours of overtime and got home close to midnight. After washing up, I lay in bed, turning over and over, unable to sleep. Work kept circling in my head: unfinished forms, messages I had forgotten to answer, small problems waiting for morning.

At some point, I remembered the new comb I had bought that afternoon. On a whim, I sat up, reached for it, and began combing my hair in front of the mirror.

The room was very still. The only sound was the soft scrape of the comb through my hair.

I looked at myself in the glass. My eyes were heavy. My hair was a little tangled from the long day. I combed slowly at first, half-dreaming, until a strange unease began to gather under my skin.

Something was wrong.

The reflection was moving just a little too late.

When I raised my hand to comb the left side of my hair, the woman in the mirror was still combing the right. When I switched to the right, she only then drifted toward the left, slowly, as if reluctant to follow.

I rubbed my eyes.

I’m exhausted, I told myself. That’s all. I’m seeing things.

But when I picked up the comb again, the feeling grew stronger. I deliberately moved faster, dragging the comb through my hair in quick strokes. The woman in the mirror did not hurry. She remained slow and languid, copying me and defying me at the same time, as though she were amusing herself.

Cold prickled along my spine.

I stopped.

The reflection stopped too.

Then her mouth began to change.

The corners lifted, inch by inch, into a smile I had never worn. It was stiff, cold, horribly wide. At the same time, her eyes darkened. The whites disappeared first, swallowed by black, until both eyes became two empty holes staring straight into mine.

I screamed.

The comb fell from my hand and struck the floor. I twisted toward the bedside switch and slapped it again and again, but the lamp would not turn on. The room stayed black. Only the mirror caught a thin sheet of moonlight from the window, pale and unnatural.

Slowly, stiff with terror, I looked back.

The woman in the mirror was leaning out.

Her head came first, pushing through the glass inch by inch. Her hair hung in wet, matted ropes, dripping as if she had just crawled out of deep water. Then her body began to follow, bending and jerking in ways no living body should. A clicking laugh came from her throat, thin and sharp, raising every hair on my arms.

I scrambled backward and curled up on the bed, clutching the quilt around myself. I was shaking so badly I could hardly breathe.

I watched her climb all the way out.

Her feet never touched the floor. She hovered there, drifting toward me step by step. The closer she came, the colder the air became. I smelled damp cloth, mildew, and the faint sour reek of stagnant water.

Her hand reached for my face.

Just before those icy fingers touched me, a rooster crowed outside the window.

The sound split the night open.

The shadow before me turned transparent in an instant. Then, with a sudden rush, it was dragged backward into the mirror and vanished.

A moment later, the bedside lamp snapped on by itself.

I sat there gasping, drenched in cold sweat.

At dawn, with dark circles under my eyes, I went straight to the landlord and told him I wanted to move out. He noticed my expression and kept asking what had happened. At last, I told him everything.

His face changed as he listened. For a long while he said nothing. Then he sighed.

“Miss, this is my fault,” he said. “I should have told you. The girl who lived here before was only in her early twenties. She didn’t believe in these things either. She often combed her hair in front of that mirror in the middle of the night. Later, somehow, she lost her mind. She kept saying there was another version of herself inside the mirror. Not long after that, she jumped from the building.”

He lowered his voice.

“I was afraid no one would rent the room if they knew, so I kept quiet. I even pasted a yellow talisman on the back of the mirror. I didn’t realize it had been torn away. Only a few scraps were left.”

A chill ran over my back.

That same day, I packed my things and left. I did not even ask for my deposit.

Later, when I found a new place, I made sure the dressing table was nowhere near the head of the bed.

And since that night, I have never again combed my hair in front of a mirror after midnight.