Your Reflection

My body sank deeper into the water, disoriented. I could no longer tell what was up or down, left or right. All I could sense was the faint, lingering awareness that I was still alive.

Was this some kind of air vacuum? Pulling me down…having water surround every inch of my body.

The water shifted between warm and cold, almost as if it couldn’t decide. Or maybe my mind was just too confused to make sense of it. The heat from above was unbearable, making the cool water feel all the more noticeable against my skin. Her grip was still there, yet the weight of it was gone. The situation I’ve been led to believe was most definitely created by my mind.

Then why is it almost warm right now?

Strangely, my thoughts were consumed by the water, not by the thought of my life possibly ending. I had lost all feeling over my body, but her grip was unmistakingly gone. I was surely alone.

I hoped she was okay… maybe she had managed to escape whatever was pulling us down.

My eyes could no longer focus on what was in front of me. Everything grew fuzzy, and I no longer had the strength to keep them open.

Is this really the end of me?

“...”

I’m sorry, Emi…I couldn’t even get the ball you asked for.

With that, I felt my eyes begin to close for the last time. The weight of the water pulled me down, or maybe it was pushing me at this point. It didn’t matter anymore. All I could think about was that I wished I had done a bit more with my life.

Seconds, minutes, hours, days…all sense of time became meaningless as I felt my body remain completely still.

I felt my body remain still?

I can feel something?

My eyes struggled to open, revealing my body resting on the surface of the pond. Instinctively, my body shot upwards, but my feet failed to find any ground beneath me. Instead, my arms reached out and grabbed onto the ground near the edge of the pond.

“Just…how deep…is this pond?”

My mouth felt dry, and I was gasping for air, but at least I was alive.

I gathered whatever energy I had left and made my way back to solid ground. I’d hate to be the kind of person known for dying in a pond. Kneeling there, I couldn’t help but notice the air was fresh and cool.

“It’s…nice.”

Like in the spring, the air feels nice.

Hold on!

I instantly looked towards the sky and noticed that it was already night.

But it couldn’t have been later than 17:00.

The moon was clearly visible in the sky, so I knew I wasn’t dreaming. But it struck me, if I had truly been underwater for over seven hours or so, I should be dead by now.

I felt my face grow tired, along with my body and mind, both echoing the same sentiment. Yet, my eyes seemed to be carrying me forward, especially when they locked onto a patch of grass a few feet away. A patch of grass with a possibly concerning imprint.

Someone had clearly been here recently, soaked just like me.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

Did he notice me?!

I pressed my hands over my face, trying to steady my breathing as the situation grew more intense.

I go out just once in a while to clear my head, and there's some boy in the pond!

I couldn’t help but keep an eye on the reflection. Could you really blame me? My reflection showed a light-skinned boy when I was nowhere close to that. I even stretched my hand out to see if it was truly a reflection, but it mirrored me perfectly. Finally, I did one last test and reached out for him myself. To my surprise, I actually grabbed his wrist.

It was so scary! I panicked so hard that I ended up being pulled into the pond.

My body felt completely disoriented, and I swear I couldn’t make sense of anything happening. The pond had felt warm when I first fell in, but then it grew unnervingly cold. The weather had been nice, so why would the water be that chilly?

Before I knew it, I reemerged and quickly hid behind the first tree I saw. That boy clearly wasn’t under the water, but why was he there? Who was he?

As long as I wait for him, maybe things will go back to normal.

As long as I don’t see him, maybe things will go back to normal.

“What a cruel joke. Throwing a ghost boy at me.”

I heard the slightest noise coming from the pond, but it quickly fell silent not long after.

I slowly peeked out from behind the tree. My eyes scanned the pond, no sign of the ghost boy. It was too dark to make out much, but at least no one was moving.

“Oh, thank god.”

I stepped away from my spot and slowly edged my way towards the pond, trying to catch a quick glimpse of my reflection to see if he was still there.

There, I saw my normal reflection. Nothing out of the ordinary, just me. Maybe I’d been under some sort of stress, causing my mind to play tricks on me.

"Guess this calls for sleeping early from now on."

Letting out one last exhausted breath, I turned around…only to see the very same boy who had been in my reflection.

“...”

“...”

“...”

“Uhm…excuse me.”

A loud yelping shriek escaped my mouth as I flung a kick directly towards the boy's head. My arms shot out in the opposite direction of my legs as I found myself throwing a kick that was way too high for my current stance. It wasn’t long before I realized that not only had I missed, but my balance was so off that I started to fall backward into the pond.

“Watch out!”

The boy reached out for my hand, stopping me from falling directly into the pond. I was now hovering a few feet above it, caught in his grip. The boy was clearly struggling to hold me up, but he began slowly pulling me toward him, his grip tightening as he did.

“...you’re heavy.”

He muttered between a few grunts as he struggled, while my gaze had hard focused on him.

“Who are you calling heavy?!”

“I meant it more like you’re clearly taller than me by a few inches! Plus, you’re clearly athletic, so I just assume that there’s some muscle on you.”

“Let’s stop talking about my weight, okay?!

I could feel my face flushing as the conversation continued, so I tried nervously pushing past it. Thankfully, the boy pulled me back onto solid ground, and we sat there in silence, facing each other.

“...”

“...”

He was clearly in a school uniform, but it wasn’t one from around here. As for me, I wasn’t exactly dressed for the occasion, wearing nothing but some unfortunate cotton pajamas.

“So…”

I began to break the silence as his attention focused on me.

“Are you going to haunt me, ghost boy?”

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

What is she talking about?

Her face seemed more anxious as her eyes darted every which way, as if searching for something or someone. Her amber eyes reflected the moon's light, glowing softly in the quiet night.

“I should be asking you that. Why did you appear in my reflection?”

She then looked me directly in the eyes and pointed straight at me.

“I’m in your reflection?! You’re in my reflection!”

“...”

“Don’t give me that look!”

She puffed her cheeks in annoyance as I was lost in thought.

So we saw one another in our reflection and were equally confused...

“What time is it?”

She put her index finger on her lips before she spoke.

“I left my phone behind, but it was around 24:00.”

“And I wasn’t on the water when you arrived?”

“I definitely would have noticed if someone was in the water even in this darkness.”

Wouldn’t that mean I was floating on the water from 17:00 to 24:00? That would mean I was submerged under cold water for seven whole hours, which is humanly impossible, even under the best circumstances.

“Listen, I know we just met, but I need you to take everything I say as the truth.”

She appeared slightly dumbfounded, yet nodded in agreement.

I gave her a detailed rundown of everything that had happened. From helping Emi with the boys’ soccer team to standing by the pond. She seemed to take it all with a bit of skepticism, yet still listened intently to every word.

“With that said and done, you see the issue at hand?”

"I do. Either you're lying for some strange reason, or everything you've said is true. Honestly, you don’t seem like the type to lie about something like this so that only leaves a ton of questions." She gestured toward the direction I had originally come from. "My school is near this pond, and my house is just to the right of it, so it's not too far from here."

“Add on the impossible time difference and the mystery only grows.”

“Two completely different schools with two students who’ve never met.”

“And a seemingly seven hour gap between the two of us.”

We both seemed to arrive at the same conclusion, each of us asking, “Are you from a parallel universe/world?”