Mirror World

The Ren inside the mirror repeated the same movement.

At first, nothing else happened.

Ren's narrow eyes showed faint doubt. He leaned forward as if checking whether the mirror hid some mechanism.

Everything was too normal.

Could a mirror like this appear only once?

Then the reflected "Ren" did not lean forward with him. Instead, it lifted the glass of red wine and drank.

The movement was stiff, but it clearly had its own awareness.

"You could not endure it after all," Ren said.

The corner of his mouth lifted with contempt, but the main question remained.

Why was there no cursed energy?

Was it truly a ghost?

As time passed, the fake inside the mirror moved more smoothly. It even started tumbling around by itself.

Ren watched the thing jump like a monkey. Even knowing it was not him, anger still appeared in his eyes.

This thing was asking to die.

Still, he waited.

If it had revealed itself, it would not simply keep performing.

Ten minutes passed.

The fake finally failed to resist temptation. When Ren lowered his eyes toward the wine, the reflected "Ren" split its mouth open, jaw dropping to reveal two rows of sharp teeth. It lunged for Ren's head.

At that instant, a thread of cursed energy surfaced on the mirror.

It was as fine as hair and light as dust, but inside the empty villa it stood out like a candle lit in a dark room.

Mockery flashed through Ren's eyes.

There it was.

His fist struck.

The fake's jaw shattered. Before it could retreat into the mirror, Ren grabbed its arm and stepped through after it.

The world inside the mirror looked almost the same as the outside.

But cursed energy filled it.

The space itself had been built from a curse.

Now Ren understood why the fake's appearance had leaked almost no energy. It had been operating across two spaces.

"Hehehe. I want that body," the fake shouted. "With it, I can become anything."

Ren listened to its yelling and felt a strange embarrassment.

Was he that dramatic?

The ceiling of the mirror world twisted into a drill. Space around Ren thickened as if glued in place, trying to restrict his body.

"Die. I will use your body well."

Ren watched without expression.

This level of attack could not break his body.

He tore free of the spatial restraint and walked up to the fake.

"Can you change your face?"

The fake stared in shock.

How had he escaped its control?

Ren placed a hand on its head.

"Can you change it?"

The fake trembled under the pressure.

"Do not act recklessly. If I die, you will be trapped here forever."

Ren's expression did not change. The force in his hand kept increasing.

"Then we die together."

"Stop crushing me. I really will die."

"Please, I was wrong. I will change it now."

The fake changed into the face of a middle-aged man.

Ren sat back. A hanging chair appeared beneath him as if returning to its owner.

The fake stared blankly.

It had been here first. Why could this human create something in its world that it could not control?

"Speak," Ren said. "What is this?"

The pressure made the fake kneel.

"I do not really know. When I became conscious, this space already existed. Whenever someone stood before the mirror, one sentence appeared in my mind."

It swallowed.

"Imitate them. Eat them. Replace them."

"That sentence became instinct. Whenever someone appeared, I copied their movements. But no one ever stayed in front of the mirror long enough for me to eat them."

It carefully raised its head.

The first target had been Ren Zenin. Its luck was terrible.

Ren looked at it with interest.

This thing was only around Grade 3, yet it possessed humanlike intelligence.

Was that part of its mechanism?

Questioning it further would not mean much.

"Spirit Dominion."

Black markings appeared across the mirror world like chains, coiling around the fake's body. With a soft crack, they disappeared beneath its skin.

Black mist surged in Ren's hand. His eyes lost focus for a moment as the fake's life passed before him like a broken slide show.

Ren frowned.

The soul was incomplete.

Its memories were fragmented: men, women, elders, children, all constantly changing.

This thing was only one small piece of a larger imaginary cursed spirit.

Ren smiled.

Something interesting was about to happen again.

"Mirror World, open."

The mirror surface rippled like lake water.

Ren stepped through and returned to the bathroom.

"Ren, you finally came out," Dorin cried. "You scared me. I thought something happened. Was it really a ghost? Did you fight? Is it dead?"

Dorin and Koyuka had returned with food and found him gone. They had guessed the mirror was involved, but neither dared look at it directly.

"The matter is solved," Ren said. "Pay."

The next morning, Gojo arrived at the agency with a shopping bag.

"Ren, I bought crystal pudding. Want a bite?"

He opened the box, waved the scent through the air with unnecessary seriousness, and held it toward Ren like a child showing off a toy.

Ren ignored him, opened his own chips, and took a can of cola from the refrigerator.

"Business?"

Gojo enjoyed a mouthful of pudding first. His blue eyes narrowed as if savoring the taste.

Then he placed a jade token on the desk.

It was square outside and round within, pure white all over, with a hollow six-pointed star at the center.

Ren felt the cursed energy around it.

It was likely a key to some kind of seal.

"The matter has been investigated," Gojo said after finishing the pudding. "The rat nest was cleaned out. They hope you will become this generation's guardian of the seal."

Ren's eyes moved away from the token. The contempt in them was obvious.

"Who says those old men are senile? They calculated this deal very well."

Gojo picked up the jade token as if he had expected that answer.

"If you do not want it, I will take it. Their estate is beautiful. I need some private space anyway."

"A lot of people died there. You still want that place?"

"Living people are troublesome enough. Why fear the dead?"

To those families, what were dead people?

Gojo started to leave, then turned back.

"Oh, if you want to see Haruto's corpse, find me. I can preserve his head for you."

Ren rolled his eyes.

That last sentence existed only to disgust him.

The window behind him opened.

Toji jumped in.

"Toji," Ren said, "did you not see the door?"

Toji came forward carefully. "Boss, any big news recently?"

Ever since Toji discovered the profit of selling information, he came to Ren whenever he had time, hoping for something explosive.

"No. Stop always thinking about crooked ways to make money. Honest work is the right path."

Toji looked at him in silence.

The boss had become more shameless recently.

"Do you know anything about Haruto Nakatsui's death?"

"The mall and subway incident were arranged by him."

Toji remembered he had been inside Haruto's house when that incident happened.

"Should have killed him first."

"Hm?"

Toji explained the conflict between them. Ren's eyes showed amusement.

Haruto Nakatsui had courted disaster everywhere and still sat in that position. Impressive, in its own way.

After Toji left, the room became quiet again.

Ren leaned back and closed his eyes.

A pale-blue array appeared in his pupils.

Mysterious power spread from his body and filled the office.

"Sovereign Wind Array, open."

Ren's soul detached from his body and entered a world made of countless mysterious characters.

At the center floated a small golden sphere.

Ren approached it.

"Where is the true body of the Mirror Curse?"

The moment his finger touched the sphere, the array turned again. The sphere expanded like an old television.

"Interesting."

Only asking for coordinates had created this level of cost.

Six Vaults Devourer warned him. Pushing further would bring a serious price.

Ren did not care.

If he wanted information, paying a price was natural.

His hands entered the golden sphere.

Violent force swept through his whole body. Energy exploded inside him one wave after another. Six Vaults Devourer's stored reserves rose from his organs and repaired the damage at a strange speed.

The clash did not last long.

Ren read the information.

"So that is why even a coordinate costs this much."

The Mirror Curse's true body was still asleep. An unknown cursed spirit had forcibly divided its body into small mirror spirits. Those pieces could move without much energy. Through instinct, they devoured humans and accumulated blood energy.

One day, they would devour one another and become the true body again.

If a piece died, its power would transfer through the soul link to the remaining pieces.

Ren left the mysterious space and tapped the desk.

In a void where time and space felt absent, Folly watched more than a hundred mirror surfaces.

Each surface showed the current state of a small mirror spirit.

More than a dozen were already dark.

"Folly," a faint voice said across the emptiness, "even after seeing this, are you willing to continue?"

Folly did not look away.

"I stayed outside long enough. If I do not return now, I will forget what I am."

Folly had been born from humanity's desire for knowledge and fear of knowledge. Its combat ability was weak, but its intelligence was reliable.

Long ago, the owner of the great eye had arranged for it to work under other cursed spirits as an informant. The same pattern repeated again and again until it finally settled into human society and provided information from there.

It had lived like that for too long.

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