Chapter 1:

Prologue/Reflection

Face Me Online


Have you ever heard of a "yandere"? A complete psycho who will never let their object of affection go?

I'm not that type of person, I swear...
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I stared at a mirror in my room, clawing at the pale foreign face on my head until it went raw. In my sleep, I'd been gifted a face with thin line eyebrows, a tall nose and a smile that had been retrofitted to my head, making it look like it needed to sag around my jaws to fit. When I commanded it to grin, it would freak me out by how straight and symmetrical it was.

Normally, my eyes would have been darker and wider. My facial features were more petite than this and the skin of the face a tanner shade, to match the rest of me.

"An," I told myself, subconsciously stroking my dark hair, "calm down. Where does this face come from?"

My now-hazel eyes followed a crack in the mirror up to my right cheek. In the background, a dresser the same colour as my eyes sat like a sleeping giant. A new pearl-white phone waited for attention on top, a social media app open on its glowing interface. The display picture - a mediocre attempt of a brunette guy's selfie against sunlit branches of a still-green deciduous tree - was stark white where the face should have been, with a black broken line to show where it had been removed.

I wore the face that was missing from the picture and I couldn't get it off.

This face belonged to a friend of a friend, Harrison. Whatever I'd done to him, or whatever he'd done to me, I'd have to discover for myself...