Chapter 4.2 : The Mirror Cracks

Chapter 4.2 : The Mirror Cracks
“The most dangerous cage is the one you decorate yourself.” — Adam

The fluorescent light above Akane flickered like a heartbeat with arrhythmia. The classroom buzzed around her, but she heard none of it. Her gaze stayed fixed on her reflection in the windowpane, faint, warbled, like a ghost of herself staring back. 

Her fingertips brushed the side of her neck.

 The mark was still there.

Concealed beneath a thin veil of concealer, yes, but she felt it. Felt the moment reeling again and again behind her eyelids. The whisper. The heat. The soft claim of his lips before the bite

That single word: 
“Mine.”

Not said in jest. Not playful
Claimed.

 And the worst part wasn’t that he had said it
It was that something inside her hadn’t hated hearing it.

 Her grip on the pen tightened

What’s wrong with me?

She barely heard the teacher droning on about chemical reactions. Ellie was beside her, whispering something about club registration. The usual routine. The same old rhythm.

 But her world had tilted off its axis. She couldn’t walk straight anymore.

…

Lunch arrived, but not like a relief. More like a gasp between drowning

They sat under their usual tree in the courtyard. Students buzzed past, eating, laughing, tossing balls across the field. But Ellie was unusually quiet. She opened her bento, picked at her rice, and watched Akane like she was decoding a riddle that didn’t want solving. 

Finally, she slammed her chopsticks down

“Akane. I’m not stupid. What the hell’s going on between you and Adam?”.

Akane stiffened. Her grip faltered.

 “I… I don’t know,” she said, barely above a whisper. “It’s… complicated.”

Ellie leaned in, her voice sharp. “Complicated is when you forget someone’s birthday. This? This is something else. He bit you, Akane. Like some goddamn animal.”

 Akane looked down. Her rice felt like gravel in her mouth.

“I didn’t say I liked it,” she whispered

“But you didn’t stop him either,” Ellie said, not cruelly ,  just plainly

That silence between them spoke louder than anything. Birds chirped in the distance. The wind rustled the sakura blossoms

And Akane knew she couldn’t explain it. Not in words. Not even to herself.

 …

Meanwhile, Riku was unraveling in his own silence

He sat at the back corner of the cafeteria, alone, stirring his miso soup until it went cold. His friends noticed the shift, the way he stopped laughing at their jokes, how his jaw clenched every time someone mentioned Akane’s name. But none of them dared bring it up. 

That afternoon, after school, he walked out to the vending machines. The same spot where Adam had kissed her

The memory was carved into the ground. 

He stood there, staring at the concrete, fists balled in his pockets.
 “You hesitated,” a voice inside him sneered. “And he didn’t.”

Later, alone in his bedroom, the lights dimmed, Riku opened his phone. He had footage, accidental at first. Caught when he was recording the class’s spring banner for the student page. But the camera had panned too far, caught Adam leaning in toward Akane. 

He watched it again.

 Adam’s smirk.

Akane’s frozen expression.

 Adam’s lips moving

He turned the volume up, back, up again

“She’s already mine,” Adam whispered.

 Riku froze.

The words were toxic, but what chilled him more… was Akane’s expression. She didn’t recoil. She didn’t run

…

 Back in her bedroom, Akane sat cross-legged on the floor, the house dim and silent. The mirror in her lap wasn’t the ornate kind,  just a small hand mirror she’d kept tucked in a drawer for years. One edge was chipped. She remembered the crack, a sleepover at Ellie’s, too much soda and not enough balance.

She ran her fingers along the fracture.

 Her reflection blinked back at her, the same eyes, but not the same girl

“I don’t even know who I am anymore.”

The room was filled with the faint hum of her desk fan. Outside, cicadas screamed from the trees

She remembered Riku’s confession. How simple it had felt. Pure. Predictable. Like a soft blanket she could wrap around herself.

 And then she remembered him

Adam.

 The chaos. The fire behind his eyes. The bite. The possessiveness. The way he looked at the world like it had betrayed him and he’d decided to betray it back.

“I should hate him,” she whispered

But hate… hate was just love with knives

And obsession was already coiling inside her chest like smoke

She lifted the mirror, stared harder

“This isn’t who I was,” she said.

But she didn’t put the mirror down.

 She held it.

She looked.

 And in the silence that followed, the version of herself staring back didn’t look afraid.

She looked like someone who had begun to crack, and didn’t mind the breaking