A Corpes's Walk

“Mirrors are doors. Quiet ones. They only open inward.” – Hiiro 

They say third time’s the charm. 

That’s a lie.

By the third time, the joke’s already worn thin. The setup’s old, the punchline predictable, and the laugh track in my head glitches like a broken record.  

 I stood there waiting in line. Same form. Same silence. Same “Please write in capital letters.”.

The paper’s creased like it aged with me—or maybe it just got tired of being hopeful.

The girl next to me wears a hoodie that says Chase Your Dreams. She chews gum like it owes her money. 

The AC rattles. Chairs squeak. A guy behind me mutters, “Wait, this was today?” No one replies. Even the fluorescent lights look like they’ve given up.

 I turn my head. A mother nudges her son with her elbow. He acts embarrassed, but a faint smile escapes his mouth. 

That kind of smile used to mean something.

Behind the receptionist’s counter, there’s a photo: a woman and her mother, arms wrapped tight, smiling like they’ve never lied. 

I look away. 

It’s Mother’s Day.

I wouldn’t have known if not for the giant poster at the entrance screaming Happy Mother’s Day. If I had, I wouldn’t have come here today.

 I paused for a moment. Then circled Psychology. Or Literature. Or Murder. Anything to fill the blank, as long as no one noticed the holes beneath.

They call it a future.
To me, it feels like surrender—disguised under the pretense of “the logical choice.”

---
The receptionist doesn’t look up when she says my name.

Her nails tap the keyboard like water torture.

“Birthdate?”

I answer. Her phone rings—shrill. She flinches.

“It’s my mom. Do you mind?” she asks, puppy-eyed.

“Go ahead,” I say, flat. I could’ve sounded nicer, but past experience taught me that only backfires. Let’s just say I don’t have the face for faking kindness.

She’s smiling before she even lifts the phone.

I fold the paper again. Neater this time—like I’m trying to turn it into something else. Something quieter.

Behind her, the monitor loops a slideshow of graduates, beaming under hats. From Form to Future! it declares.

I don’t bother waiting for her call to end. I leave.
Outside, sunlight hits like it forgot to ask permission.
A family poses by the campus sign. The daughter yells, “Say cheese!”
They smile.
I don’t.
I keep walking.

Not toward the exit. Not toward anything.

Just… inward.
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch it—my reflection split on the glass door.
Half me.
Half who I should’ve been.

Folded.

Still unfolding.

---
I walked.

The pavement cracked like veins—like a map pretending it remembered where to go.

I followed it. Not because I believed it. Just because it was there.

I’d memorized the campus layout last night. North gate. Fountain. Philosophy past that.

Memorization’s always been easy.
Comprehension? Not so much.

You can list things. Understand them. Analyze them. Deconstruct them.

Doesn’t mean you belong to them.
Around me: laughter, flowers, families.
Joy that sounded rehearsed—like a commercial for moving on.

“I’m lost.”

The words escaped my mouth like a condemning sentence.

A few people glanced over. Not with concern—just that flick people give when static interrupts the station.

Third time this week I’ve been lost without being lost.

I passed a mirrored panel. Tinted glass. I didn’t look.

I took the long way.
I hate mirrors.
Not because they lie—though they do.
But because they show the version of you that agreed to live.

---

Mirrors lie with perfect posture.

The reflection always looks like me—
But it feels like someone who studied me and wore it too well.

Sometimes I wonder if it deserves to exist more than I do.

A mirror doesn’t care what you’ve done.

Only how you looked doing it.

Which one’s the crime?

I’ve imagined it before: waking up to see my reflection smiling first.

A half-second ahead.
The horror isn’t the face.

It’s the timing.

I cut across the sculpture garden.
Shapes bent like apologies.
The glass wall beside it caught the sun—not quite right, not quite wrong.

A warped shape stretched across it.

Me. Maybe.

Or maybe just loneliness in my outline.

Mirrors are doors. Quiet ones.
They only open inward.

I’ve never knocked.

So tell me—what do you call a corpse that refuses to acknowledge its own grave?

What kind of joke is that?

Not even one worth laughing at.

---

I sat on a low ledge. Sunlight crawled through the leaves like it was trying not to be noticed.

“If I’m fake,” I whispered, “and the reflection’s fake too… Do two lies cancel out?”

My shadow stretched in front of me—flickering back and forth.

The shadow didn’t answer. Of course it wouldn’t.

Truth doesn’t answer hypotheticals.

Some silences hum louder than speech.
I lived in that kind. Not because I liked it—but because it didn’t ask questions.

Third time I’ve gotten lost.

Not geographically.

Existentially.

I’m not afraid of the mirror.
I’m afraid it’ll agree with me.

The light blinded me for a moment.

A second.
A frame.
And I thought I saw a familiar silhouette.
Then:

“Should I get you a map, or would that crush your fragile pride?”

The voice smiled before I looked up.
She stood at the edge of the path, earrings catching sunlight like exclamation points. Her hair tied back with a casual neatness I could never imitate, her posture upright where mine always bent forward.

My neighbor.

She’d dragged me into this whole “fresh start” mess. Enrolled me, pushed me, filled the silence I refused to break.

“You do know most people figure out the campus by day two?” She gave me a sideways glance—half teasing, half measuring.

“Memory and direction are different skills.” I answered while looking past her, as though searching the air for a witness that would validate me.

She laughed. Not at me—just loud enough to carry something else with it.

“You’re lucky you’re good at at least one.”

We started walking.

More accurate to say she walked, and I orbited.
She filled the space with chatter—classes, rumors, dorm ghosts, rumors of people disappearing lately, stale coffee.

Your casual everyday life of a college student’s chatter, I thought.

I nodded when it felt right.
Spoke when the world demanded it.

I’m not bad at talking.

I’m bad at light talking—again, from past experience.

My jokes land like glass: sharp, lifeless, and full of cracks.
But she kept going.
Maybe she didn’t mind the cracks.

---

“You should be happier, you know,” she said, tilting her head, eyes curious but gentle, arms loosely crossed.

“You got out of that house.”

That house.

She said it like she’d heard it breathing. 

Like she’d walked past the rust, felt the silence inside the walls.

I never told her much.
Just enough…
Just enough for the silence to tell a story—even if its rhythm fractured.

“You even got your own place. That’s huge.”

She gestured broadly, as if painting the achievement in the air.

“It’s rent,” I replied, flat, letting my voice drop where her excitement bounced. “Not a medal.”

She nudged me. “Still. You did it.”

I didn’t answer.

Because it wasn’t courage.
Or ambition.
It was gravity.

Escaping orbit before it crushed me.

She was someone who could laugh in a crowd and not lose herself.

She had friends. Plans. Keys that opened places with names.

Me?

I was a shadow learning to walk in daylight.

An echo pretending to be a student.
A corpse that forgot to be buried.

She kept talking.

I kept listening.
Her voice moved ahead like it already knew where to go.
Her feet found paths without asking.
I stayed half a step behind—not shy, just still spinning.

Maybe she liked that I didn’t talk much.

Maybe silence made space for her to keep going.
In her world, you didn’t have to explain to be understood.

In mine, silence was the only language anyone bothered to learn.

_____________________________________

Kagame Jin's commentary:

“Chapter 1 walks slowly. There’s no sudden explosion, no immediate drama.
It moves quietly, step by step, through cracks, reflections, and shadows.
Each small detail hums with tension.
The rhythm is patient—because in a world like this, fractures echo louder than shouts.
If our dear corpse reflected a crack that sounds too familiar… share the fracture with us in the comments.
Watch closely, and you may notice: the quietest steps sometimes leave the deepest impressions.”

> “Our corpse moves quietly… but don’t be fooled. Even the faintest footsteps leave scars in mirrors.”