Chapter 51 The Person in the Mirror

Ma En glanced at the time. Twenty minutes had passed already. His position at the school required him to arrive by nine, though he made a habit of showing up half an hour early.

The new school was called the Academy of Peaceful Learning, and it was close enough to the apartment that the bicycle ride took only fifteen to twenty minutes. With no trips out of town on the horizon, he still hadn't decided whether to buy a car despite having his license. For the daily commute, at least, a private car was unnecessary.

"Are you going into the office today?" he asked Hirota Masami.

Lately, both her life and her work seemed to be gravitating toward the apartment. She was technically employed, but her work gave the impression of considerable freedom; for the past two weeks she'd been handling everything from home, going into the office only once every three or four days.

"I don't need to. More importantly — you lost your black umbrella, didn't you? I'll go pick up a new one for you."

Lost it?

Ma En looked up, startled. But after a moment, the sharp edge of the thought dulled, and he wasn't sure what had bothered him. He hadn't lost the umbrella — he'd thrown it away. But why would he throw it away? It had still been usable. No — it wasn't that simple. There had been a reason not to throw it away, he was sure of it, but no matter how long he turned it over, the reason wouldn't surface. And if the reason had truly been important, he wouldn't have thrown it away in the first place.

Yet he felt it, too: the umbrella's absence bothered him, but not in a way that demanded answers. The sensation was vague, a nagging discomfort he couldn't articulate — not urgent enough to pursue, just wrong enough to feel. Whatever the case, the fact remained: the umbrella was gone, and whatever he'd been thinking at the time, there was no getting it back.

He wasn't someone who looked backward. What was done was done. Better to think about what came next.

Maybe I felt it was time to let go of the baggage — to commit to living here properly.

The thought appeared in his mind, and immediately it felt like the right answer. Not just the umbrella: he'd gotten rid of a number of things he'd brought from the mainland. If it wasn't about starting a new life, why else would he have cut ties with his past so thoroughly? He'd come to Japan precisely to draw a clear line between himself and the people back home — to keep them safe from whatever the bizarre things he chased might bring down on those close to him.

Given that he'd wanted the break to be complete, throwing away the umbrella and the rest of it was only natural.

The details were a bit hazy, but the logic was clear enough. He exhaled quietly, relieved.

"All right. I don't have a single umbrella left — I'd be stuck if it rained." He stood up.

He was about to go change into his work clothes when Hirota Masami was already on her feet, a step ahead of him, ducking into the bedroom with the ease of someone who'd done this many times. She retrieved his clothes from the wardrobe, brought them back to the living room, and helped him dress. Ma En watched the full-length mirror as she worked: the man in the glass wore a dark suit; Hirota-san was busy fastening his deep-red necktie. And as always, looking at himself in the mirror, he had the feeling that the person inside it was not him.

It was only a flicker of a thought, but the figure in the mirror struck him as the protagonist of a ghost-story novel — a character with a particular quality, as though born to walk through darkness and shadow. The deep-red tie, perfectly ordinary in real life, glowed in the reflection like a low, quiet flame.

But when he looked down at himself — at the actual hands, the actual fabric, at Hirota-san tying the knot — he couldn't find a single element that matched the figure in the glass. Compared to that reflection, he was plainly ordinary, no different from any other person working earnestly at an honest life. Even his interest in pursuing the bizarre wasn't unique; plenty of people liked ghost stories, liked chasing things beyond the reach of their mundane existence.

He stared at his reflection, then at himself, and couldn't help thinking: what had ever made him believe that pursuing the bizarre would bring harm to himself and those around him? Those things were closer to adolescent fantasy than genuine danger — insubstantial, imaginary. Granted, the room he'd moved into had its ghost story, and he'd encountered a few coincidences that seemed a bit too neatly arranged, a bit too conveniently strange. But in reality, had he actually encountered anything genuinely inexplicable? Anything truly beyond the bounds of reason?

Perhaps all those "suspicious details" had simply been products of his own overthinking. The nightmares were probably just the logical consequence of daily obsession feeding back into his subconscious and generating a vicious cycle. What was the point of picking at those threads? They were just... psychological issues. His own.

Ma En felt slightly dazed. Everything he was thinking right now felt correct. It was his past self that had been the problem — the abnormal one. All those self-administered psychological assessments he'd done in private had been his own invention. He wasn't a trained professional; what had ever made him think his amateur analysis was more penetrating, more targeted, more systematic than what actual experts could provide?

Maybe the whole time he'd been doing it, he'd been laying down a kind of self-hypnosis without realizing it.

Sweat appeared on his forehead. He felt a creeping dread, a revulsion toward his own past. Because now, standing in the position of an ordinary person and thinking it through honestly, every thread of logic told him the same thing: his former self had not been entirely sane.

"What's wrong? You're sweating." Hirota Masami produced a handkerchief and wiped his brow. "Is it the heat? It's June already — July and August will be even worse. You really can't keep wearing these same outfits every day, you know. Look how heavy this material is — it absorbs heat. Since we're going out for an umbrella anyway, let me pick up some new clothes for you too? The students are going to laugh."

A wave of nausea surged through Ma En. Not because of what she'd said — because of the dark, uncanny presence staring back at him from the glass.

He was an ordinary person. Why did the mirror make him look like that?

What part of my brain went wrong?

He wanted to feel glad — glad that he'd finally returned to a normal track, that he was confronting his past self's instability honestly. But he couldn't. Something in the back of his mind — dense, deep, intense, and utterly formless — had seized his brain and was churning through it, refusing to let him escape his past, refusing to let him become an ordinary person.

His past self was becoming something frightening, as if chasing him from the far side of time.

He had to break free. Think about it: there were no bizarre things. There never had been. All he needed was to live his life honestly, and he would find everything he needed in a quiet, full, simple existence. Look at what he had right now — a stable job with a good salary, a considerate girlfriend who loved him deeply.

The present version of himself had a future. A visible, complete one.

Why go back? What was so good about the past? The past-me had nothing. The present-me has everything.

"...Don't follow me," Ma En said softly to the figure in the mirror. "The me of now and the you of then — we're nothing alike anymore."

Then — he told himself it was just an illusion — the figure in the mirror seemed to smile. A smile with meaning behind it, as though it could see straight through him. Less like looking at his own reflection and more like meeting the gaze of another person entirely. The figure was calm, untroubled, without complaint or anger — composed and still. But every inch of it radiated danger.

No. No. No. That was not him. Cold sweat had soaked through to his spine. He wanted to look away, but the figure held him — it possessed a strange, uncanny gravity, as though it might pull him into the glass.

"What is it, dear? Are you too warm?" Hirota-san's concerned voice broke through. Ma En fought against the pull and wrenched himself free.

He didn't believe he'd experienced anything supernatural. Almost the instant he broke loose, the explanation assembled itself: the obsessive self-restriction of his past, the compulsive pursuit of the bizarre, the pressure he'd accumulated without realizing — it had all come crashing out today. Before, he'd treated those things as natural and hadn't felt the weight; now that he was questioning everything, trying to reject his former self, the backlash had arrived.

The person in the mirror was him. And the visions he'd just experienced were the early signs of a genuine breakdown.

Ma En lowered his eyes and refused to look at the mirror again. He was grateful Hirota-san was beside him. Without her voice, that psychological fracture might have swallowed him whole. He might have become truly, irreversibly ill.

There was still time. Stop thinking about the bizarre. Stop doing that research. Stop using those homemade psychological questionnaires to test himself.

Better to book an appointment with an actual therapist.

"Masami..."

"Mm? What is it?"

"Throw out all my old clothes. I think it's time to say goodbye to the past for good." He pressed his forehead gently against hers. "I probably couldn't bring myself to do it alone. But with you helping me, I know I can start fresh."

Hirota Masami's eyes widened. She hadn't expected to hear something like that today — not from him, not yet. She didn't know what had happened inside him, but saying goodbye to the past, accepting a new life — wasn't that exactly the kind of commitment she'd been working toward? Beneath the surprise, a deep sense of fullness settled through her.

"Leave it all to me."

She gathered the breakfast tray and left, smiling. Ma En watched her go through Room 4's door, then returned to the desk and stacked every file, every loose page of research on top of the pile, shoved the entire mass into the bookshelf — hard — and didn't leave a single sheet behind. He looked at the empty desk surface, looked around the room, and his gaze settled on the wood carving in the corner.

He'd bought it from the building's manager. It had a distinctive shape — not quite animal, not quite plant, not quite human — something abstract, an art piece that used exaggerated forms to express veiled ideas. He remembered his initial impression had been much stronger than that; but that was probably because he'd been deep in his obsession with the bizarre at the time, and his emotional state had colored everything. Looking at it now, it was just an art piece. Unusual, certainly. But just an art piece.

He picked up a napkin, dusted it off, and placed it on the desk.

He stepped back a few paces to admire the new arrangement and gave himself a satisfied nod. The desk had a sense of composition now — livelier, with some depth to it.

Just then the clock chimed eight. He realized immediately that he'd wasted too much time this morning. He hurried toward the door and heard something topple and roll by his foot — he looked down: the wastebasket, knocked over. He hadn't felt himself bump it.

As he crouched to right it, the crumpled paper ball rolled out again. The one with the twenty-four inexplicable symbols.

Forget it. Just take it out to the bin.

He scooped it up and stuffed it in his trouser pocket.

At the door, he reached instinctively for the umbrella — then remembered he didn't have one anymore. That was the whole conversation from earlier. Then he reached for his hat, and stopped again: the deep-red hat was gone too. He remembered now — he'd given it away. Hirota-san had been there; she'd agreed on the spot.

The girl was the daughter of the ramen shop owner — Asuka, if he remembered right. They weren't particularly close. They'd met because he'd told her some things about the Room 4 Ghost Story; she wanted to become a manga artist and was gathering material for a new series. As for why she'd taken a liking to the hat — personal taste, presumably. He'd given it to her as thanks for the information she'd shared about Room 4.

If he was being honest, the girl probably had a bit of a crush on him. He remembered Asuka's expression the time he'd brought Hirota-san along to meet her — something had been slightly off.

He hadn't been in contact with Asuka since.

The thought produced a brief pang of something like loss, which he shook off quickly. He'd just told Hirota-san to get rid of all his old clothes — the umbrella and the hat were part of the same gesture, whether discarded or given away. A clean break.

He took a deep breath and pushed the door open.

And right on cue — as though timed to the second — a crack appeared in the door of Room 3 across the hall. Ma En knew the occupant wouldn't come out. The way this person peered through the gap was always faintly unsettling. Hirota-san actively disliked the neighbor, though she dealt with it by pretending he didn't exist.

Ma En felt no particular aversion. The man wasn't anyone he knew; there was nothing between them that could be called a relationship.

So this, too, was just coincidence.

But from behind the crack, a voice — nervy, half-giggling — said:

"You... really don't remember anything?"