Echoes of the Past

Something had changed in recent days.

That very morning, Isao had caught Lucille staring at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, brow furrowed, as if trying to decipher a mystery. When she noticed his presence, she startled violently, knocking over a perfume bottle that shattered on the tiled floor. The scent of jasmine spread through the room like a ghost.

"It's nothing," she murmured with a forced smile. "Just a moment of distraction."

But Isao recognized that look — the same one she had worn inside the Victorian mirror, when she was still imprisoned. She was hiding something. And not wanting to deepen her discomfort, he let her answer stand.

Rain whispered against the workshop windows, forming a liquid curtain over the outside world. Isao watched Lucille, lying on the fainting couch , gazing pensively at the downpour through one of the tall windows. She seemed to have adapted to her new life with surprising grace.

"You saw it too, didn’t you?" she asked, barely above a whisper.

She broke the melancholy silence and pulled him from his thoughts. She was standing in front of him, trembling hands holding a photograph she had taken the day before — a sunset shot of Kiyomizu-dera temple. The image was stunning, with warm tones and a perfect angle on the pagoda. But in the shadow of the large pine on the right, a silhouette was clearly visible — the tall figure of a man in a frock coat.

"This morning, in the bathroom... I wasn’t looking at my reflection, but his. For a moment, I saw his face instead of mine."

Isao took the photograph and examined it more closely. Despite his impaired vision, he didn’t need his former skills to recognize the silhouette.

"Adrien..." he murmured.

Lucille approached the window, her midnight-blue dress rustling softly. The rain on the glass looked like tears on an invisible face.

"Last night, I had a nightmare. I was back in the mirror, but this time it was in Kyoto, in his studio. He was painting my portrait over and over, each one darker than the last. And when he turned around... his face was yours, Isao."

She placed a hand on his forearm, her pearlescent fingers leaving a trace of warmth on his skin.

Lucille nodded slowly, eyes misted with tears, and gently pulled up the sleeve of her dress, revealing a long reddish mark on her forearm, like a fresh burn.

"In the dream, he grabbed me and squeezed here, exactly at this spot."

Isao remained silent, staring at the mark that seemed to throb under the dim light. The rain intensified, drumming against the glass like a heavy warning.

That night, the rain did not stop.

While Lucille finally drifted into restless sleep, Isao called Kagura-sama, who had extended her stay in Kyoto. The old woman listened in silence, then sighed deeply.

She had feared this. The curse had been too powerful, too complex to be broken all at once. A fragment remained, like a thorn lodged between worlds.

The next morning, the downpour had given way to a clear sky.

Lucille, the first to wake, found Isao asleep in the workshop armchair. She watched him for a moment, noticing the new wrinkles etched at the corners of his eyes since his sacrifice. Gently, she pulled the blanket up around him.

Silently, she got ready to go out. For days now, she had been exploring Kyoto on her own, camera in hand, capturing her new world with a sensitivity that even professional photographers had begun to notice.

Today, she wanted to photograph the Kamo River. The sky had cleared after yesterday’s rain, promising perfect light.

As she opened the door, a shiver ran through her. In the entryway mirror — a simple modern one, with no history — she briefly glimpsed a silhouette behind her. She spun around, but the hallway was empty.

Ignoring her fear, she stepped outside. The crisp morning air revived her, briefly pushing away the unease.

A few hours later, she was walking along the Kamo River, camera in hand.

Lucille carefully framed a shot of the weeping willows leaning over the clear water. In the viewfinder, she noticed something strange: the reflections in the river didn’t match the scene before her. Instead of Kyoto’s trees and sky, the water mirrored the banks of the Seine, the Haussmannian facades of Paris.

A wave of vertigo overtook her. She lowered the camera, throat tight and hands trembling. The water returned to normal, reflecting the Japanese sky. Was it her imagination? A simple memory from her past life?

She returned to position and framed again. This time, it was worse. In the river’s reflection appeared Adrien Rousseau’s studio, with unfinished canvases and veiled mirrors. At its center stood the painter himself, looking directly at the lens, as if he could see her through time and space.

Instinctively, she pressed the shutter. The faint click of the camera echoed like thunder in her mind.

Back at the workshop, Lucille, pale as a ghost, feverishly transferred the images to the computer. Isao watched her in silence, worried by her agitation.

The photo appeared on the monitor. There, perfectly sharp at the center of the image, was Adrien’s studio embedded in the Kyoto landscape, like a tear in reality. And the painter stood there, brush in hand, smiling with unsettling satisfaction.

"That’s impossible," murmured Isao as he stepped closer.

A sharp crash of glass startled them. In the bathroom, the large wall mirror had just shattered spontaneously, scattering shards across the room. The hole in the center of the mirror was shaped like a heart with jagged edges — as if Lucille’s very image was once again ready to fragment.

And in the shards on the floor, she thought she saw her own eyes — but they no longer quite belonged to her.

Before they could clean up the broken glass, the intercom buzzed. The itako arrived, accompanied by a hunched old man she introduced as a colleague, a specialist in hauntings. In silence, he examined the mirror fragments, Lucille’s photograph, and the mark on her arm.

"The curse wasn’t broken. It was transformed," the old man finally declared. "That Adrien’s soul was too deeply bound to his obsession to be simply banished. You see, in both Western and Eastern occultism, some emotions are so powerful they leave an imprint on the material world."

Ume nodded solemnly.

"His obsession with you, child, was the foundation of his magic. In freeing you, we destroyed not his presence, but his vessel. And now, like liquid spilled from a shattered vase, his essence seeks new containers. Mirrors, reflective surfaces, water... and your photographs."

"He chases you through reflections," added the old man. "Every photograph you take creates a new window he can use. Every mirror you look into offers him a passage."

Horrified at the thought of abandoning photography — the slender thread that still connected her to the real world — Lucille collapsed to her knees, head tilted upward toward the workshop ceiling, her eyes clouded as if pleading silently with an executioner to spare her.

"You must face him," Ume said, placing her hands over Lucille’s to reassure her. "Just like the first time. But this time, understanding what you are truly fighting."

Then she turned to Isao.

"It was never truly the mirror... It was his gaze. The way he saw her, the way you both see her."

Silence fell upon the room. Outside, dusk was wrapping Kyoto in its embrace, and in the growing shadows, every surface suddenly seemed capable of hiding an eye, a face, a presence.

That night, while Lucille finally slept under the effect of medication, Isao gathered all the mirrors in the apartment and covered them with cloths. The old man had left ofuda, protective talismans, which Isao placed on every reflective surface he couldn’t cover.

Isao looked at Lucille’s peaceful, sleeping face. He hesitated to place a hand on her forehead, as if to shield her from an oncoming nightmare. But he held back and smiled sadly, questioning the true nature of his feelings.

"I’m learning," he murmured. "Every day, I’m learning to see you with new eyes. Wasn’t my artist’s gaze the very thing that blinded me?"

A faint tinkling interrupted him — the sound of a piece of glass falling to the floor. In the darkness of the next room, something — or someone — seemed to stir.