Volume 3 – Chapter 4: The City with No Mirrors

July 20 – 7:12 AM

It was quiet on the way into the city.

Not the kind of quiet that soothes: pure, minimalistic; as if something sacred had been vacuumed from the air. The tall, sun-bleached buildings, their windows shattered or boarded, bore graffiti curling on the sides like old wounds. A few leaves rustled in the wind, but there were no birds, engines, or laughter. Just the slow crunch of gravel underneath boots.

Kaito tightened the straps of his bag as they crossed the broken overpass, Rika walking a step behind him. She hadn’t spoken much since they left the outskirts. It wasn’t just caution—it was something else. A distance that came from contemplation, not fear. Had been looking at the city as if it were to be solved and not feared.

"This was once the capital," she finally said. "Before everything started to unravel.”

"Doesn't look much like it now," Kaito came back with.

"No," she said quietly. "But look closer."

They stood at the top of a slope where the road split into three. From that angle, the city stretched below them like a skeleton—half-finished buildings, cranes frozen mid-construction, glass towers staring blankly at a sun they no longer reflected.

But, as Kaito scoured the horizon, he noted what she meant. It wasn't only neglect; it was purposeful.

"Oh, and no mirrors, as it were."

"Not on cars, not in windows, not even in the broken pieces of hand-held glass scattered on the ground. Anything reflective had been removed, smashed, or blackened. It wasn't random destruction-it was deliberate erasure."

"Why...?" he muttered, stepping closer to a rusted sedan. Even the rearview mirror had been torn out, as if the car had been gutted of something poisonous.

"I heard rumors," Rika said, eyes still fixed ahead. "Back when the city first fell, people talked about a sickness. Not like the kind that infects the body-but one that lives in the mind. They said people started seeing things. In reflections. Versions of themselves that didn't match. That whispered to them."

Kaito frowned. "You mean hallucinations?"

"Maybe. Or maybe something worse. Something real but not from here."

He didn't know what to make of that. It was myth or madness or metaphor, and in this world, that didn't really matter. All three had teeth.

They moved quietly through the street, passing hollow shops and sealed apartments. The city seemed to have witnessed something horrifying, then pretended it had never happened. Not by cleaning but by denying. Anything that showed people dangerous hybrids of what they used to be.

"Ever felt like we've lost something pretty major?" Rika suddenly asked as they haltered beside the clinic's door.

Kaito tilted his head. "What do you mean?"

"Not just lost things. Forgotten them. Like... some part of who we are was pulled away while we weren't looking. And now we can't even remember what it was."

He stared at the door. A smudge, faintly visible but still a handprint, had been smudged on the glass, though in truth, someone had sweepingly scrubbed its surface, evidencing some effort to erase the very existence of a being who approached that door.

"Yeah," he spoke in a whisper. "Sometimes I think we are ghosts of a world that is yet to die."

The clinic doors opened, and they stepped inside. The stale air was dry and dense, caught with that antiseptic scent of age. Empty cabinets gazed out dispassionately, while in the restrooms, mirrors had been unscrewed, leaving in their place crude outlines of where they had been.

Rika traced the outline with her fingers. "They were afraid of what they saw."

Kaito leaned against the counter. "Or what they couldn't unsee."

Suddenly, faintly, they heard a sound from upstairs: a creak. Not from the wind. Not from time. Footsteps.

They froze.

Kaito grabbed his blade with sudden urgency.

Another creak. Silence fell heavily.

He beckoned Rika to stay behind him before creeping up the stairs, slow and hushed. The dark second floor had cloth shades fastened across broken windows. Turning around a corner, he caught a glimmer of motion—a figure disappearing through a hallway door.

"Hey-Wait!" he called after it, but his voice was met with stony silence.

He charged into the room, but it was empty: just a table, some papers lying scattered, and on the floor—something positively chilling.

A mirror, unbroken.

It rested at an odd angle against the wall, as if just a moment ago a soul stood contemplating its reflection. Yet the reflection did not reveal the state of its occupant, who instead saw him, all alone. But in the mirror stood Rika: still, expressionless, with wide eyes.

Kaito spun in panic—she wasn't there.

He stumbled back, gasping for breath.

Then the reflection moved. Rika smiled in the glass.

Except that smile didn't belong to her.

It pointed somewhere beyond him.

And then, the mirror imploded inwardly, as though something from within erupted with tremendous force.

Kaito fell backward, tumbled forward, and narrowly avoided slashing his palm on the many violent shards as he escaped.

Footfalls echoed yet again. This time, they could be heard with utter distinctness.

He snatched up a sizable shard of glass from the mirror and ran.

Back on the ground floor, Rika waited, eyes wide. "What happened?"

"We're not alone," he said breathlessly. "And I don't think we're supposed to see what lives here."

"What happened to your hand?" Rika asked, glancing at the blood staining it.

He raised the shard.

For an instant, he saw the gaze of someone else.

Someone wearing his own face.

But smiling with a stranger's mouth.