Chapter 2: The Mirror

The Mirror

After graduation, I came to this strange city to make a living. To save money, I rented a single room in an old apartment compound. The location was good and the rent was cheap. The only drawback was that the room was too small. The dressing table could only be placed against the wall at the head of the bed, which meant the mirror faced the mattress directly.

On the day I moved in, my mother specially called to warn me.

“A mirror facing the bed is unlucky,” she said. “The old people say that combing your hair in front of a mirror in the middle of the night will attract unclean things. Move it away as soon as you can.”

At the time, I was busy unpacking and only gave her a few perfunctory replies. In a big city, having a place to settle down was already good enough. How could I still care about old rules like that? Besides, I had been an atheist since childhood. I always thought stories about ghosts and gods were only meant to frighten people.

The room had been converted from an old apartment. The walls were somewhat mottled, and the ceiling lamp was old too. When turned on, it gave off only a dim, murky light. The dressing table had been left behind by the landlord. The paint around the mirror’s edge had flaked off a little, but the mirror surface had been wiped shining clean, reflecting people with unusual clarity.

I set out my cosmetics one by one. Looking at myself in the mirror, I even felt fairly satisfied. I did not take my mother’s words to heart at all.

For the first few days after I moved in, everything was normal.

Then, one night after work, I had done three hours of overtime. By the time I got home, it was almost midnight. After washing up, I lay in bed, tossing and turning, unable to sleep. My mind was full of trivial matters from work.

I do not know how long it had been when I suddenly remembered the new comb I had bought during the day. On a sudden impulse, I sat up and began combing my hair in front of the mirror.

The night was very quiet. The only sound was the soft sha-sha of the comb passing through my hair.

I looked at myself in the mirror. My eyes were tired, and my hair was a little messy.

As I combed, I suddenly felt that something was not right.

The “me” in the mirror seemed to be moving half a beat too slowly.

When I raised my hand to comb the left side of my hair, the “me” in the mirror was still combing the right side. When I combed the right side, it only then slowly turned toward the left.

I must be too tired and hallucinating, I thought.

I rubbed my eyes, thinking that staying up late had left me dazed.

But when I picked up the comb again, that eerie feeling became even stronger. I deliberately sped up the pace of my combing, but the “me” in the mirror remained slow and unhurried. It seemed to be imitating my movements, yet also deliberately going against me.

My heart began to prickle with fear, and I stopped moving without thinking.

Just then, the “me” in the mirror also stopped.

But the corners of its mouth slowly stretched upward, revealing an extremely strange smile.

That smile was cold and sinister, completely unlike my usual expression.

Even more frightening was that its eyes slowly turned entirely black, without the slightest trace of white, like two bottomless black holes staring straight at me.

“Ah!”

I screamed in terror and threw the comb onto the floor. Then I turned and tried to press the light switch by the bed.

But no matter how I pressed it, the light would not turn on. The room remained pitch-black. Only the mirror reflected the faint moonlight, looking especially eerie.

Stiff with fear, I turned my head and looked toward the mirror.

I saw the “me” in the mirror slowly poking its head out from inside the glass. Its hair was messy and kept dripping water, as if it had just been pulled out of the water. Its body also moved outward bit by bit, stiff and twisted. From its mouth came a strange ge-ge laugh, sharp and piercing, making every hair on my body stand on end.

I was so frightened that I curled up on the bed, wrapping the quilt tightly around myself. My whole body trembled, and I did not even dare breathe loudly.

I watched with my own eyes as it crawled out of the mirror.

Its feet did not touch the floor. It simply floated in the air, approaching me step by step.

The cold air around it grew heavier and heavier. I could even smell a faint odor of mildew and stagnant water.

Just as its icy hand was about to touch my face, a loud rooster crow suddenly came from outside the window.

“Cock-a-doodle-doo—”

That rooster’s crow cut through the silence of the deep night like a protective charm.

I watched the black shadow in front of me become transparent in an instant. Then, with a sudden whoosh, it shrank back into the mirror and disappeared without a trace.

Immediately afterward, the bedside lamp snapped on by itself with a pop.

Still badly shaken, I gasped for breath, my whole body soaked in cold sweat.

Early the next morning, with dark circles under my eyes, I hurried to find the landlord and discuss moving out. Seeing that something was wrong with my expression, the landlord kept asking what had happened. Only then did I tell him everything I had experienced the night before.

After hearing it, the landlord’s face became very complicated. He hesitated for a long time before sighing and saying, “Miss, this is my fault. I should have told you in advance. The person who lived here before was a girl in her early twenties. She didn’t believe in these things either, and she often combed her hair in front of that mirror in the middle of the night. Later, for some reason, she went mad. All day long, she kept saying there was another version of herself inside the mirror. Not long after that, she jumped from the building. I was afraid no one would dare rent the room, so I hid the matter. I even pasted a yellow paper talisman on the back of the mirror. I never expected that it had long since been torn away, leaving only a few scraps at the edges.”

Listening to him, I felt a chill run down my back.

That same day, I packed my things and moved out. I did not even dare ask for my deposit back.

Later, when I changed to a new place, I deliberately put the dressing table far away from the head of the bed.

From then on, I never again dared to comb my hair in front of a mirror in the middle of the night.