I arrived in Hangzhou on a rainy Thursday.
It was the kind of rain that doesn't fall; it just hangs there, like mist suspended by invisible threads.
The research institute was smaller than I remembered from my mother's old photos. It was a narrow building, hidden behind rows of plane trees and covered in stains that looked like fingerprints. I had asked for the smallest available room, somewhere quiet enough for my thoughts to stay still. However, I would soon learn that silence has a weight of its own.
I have been seeing reflections that don't belong to me.
Sometimes, when I wash my hands, the water ripples, but the image in the mirror doesn't move.
Sometimes, when I blink, the reflection hesitates — a heartbeat too late; a frame that refuses to align.
Dr Shen, the institute director, told me to "rest" before joining the pathology division. He said that my 'hallucinations' were probably caused by stress after Beijing. He doesn't know about Vision Sense. He doesn't know what it's like to look at a corpse and see its final memory replaying in your mind like a broken film reel.
But I didn't come here to rest. I came to understand why the mirror started breathing again.
1. The Apartment Without Light
The institute offered me a staff apartment on the top floor.
There were no shadows inside — literally.
No matter how the light hit the walls, my silhouette never appeared on the floor. The bulbs buzzed faintly, as if the electricity itself were holding its breath.
Every night at around 2 a.m., the bathroom mirror fogged up, despite there being no heat or steam.
And the reflection always lingered a little too long, staring straight at me after I turned away.
I began keeping notes. Times: Temperature. Angles of light.
It didn't matter. The reflection followed no pattern.
2. The Stranger on the Street
On my third day, I went out to buy some groceries.
Hangzhou felt different — softer and slower — but there was something unreal about it.
People's faces flickered.
It was as if they were being streamed from another world. A woman walking towards me disappeared for a moment, her expression morphing into someone else's.
A child's laughter echoed without any apparent source.
When I looked into a shop window, I saw dozens of versions of myself, each one slightly out of sync and moving a fraction of a second too late.
Then, in one reflection, I wasn't alone.
Behind me stood a blurred, tall, motionless figure.
When I turned around, the street was empty.
3. The Package
That evening, I found a parcel at my door.
There was no return address. It was addressed only to me, in handwriting I hadn't seen in years — my mother's.
Inside was a piece of glass wrapped in black paper. A shard of mirror, with uneven, burned edges.
Beneath it was a note written in fading ink:
'Welcome home, Evelyn.'
The shard was cold to the touch — unnaturally cold, as if it had been kept underwater for days.
When I held it up to the light, faint patterns of condensation appeared on its surface, like breath.
I whispered, 'Who sent you?'
For a moment, my reflection smiled in the glass.
I didn't.
4. The Static
That night, the power flickered.
The sound of static filled the air, crawling from the walls like insects.
Every reflective surface in the apartment began to hum: the bathroom mirror, the window and even the black screen of my phone.
I could almost make out words inside the interference:
Fragments.
'Come back... reflection... error in alignment...'
Then the shard on my desk pulsed once — a heartbeat of light — and went dark.
When I woke at dawn, the mirrors had calmed down again and the fog on the bathroom mirror had written something in condensed breath:
'We're waiting.'
5. The Threshold
I reported the incident to Dr Shen. He told me to stop reading into 'visual noise'.
But I know what I saw.
I know who used to leave notes like that: my mother, who disappeared during the Refraction Project.
That night, unable to sleep, I put the mirror shard under my pillow.
My dreams came in fragments:
A city without shadows.
A sky that had turned inside out.
And a reflection that whispered my name in my own voice.
When I woke up, the shard had disappeared.
But on the wall opposite the bed, written in fog that hadn't yet faded, were three words:
'Welcome back, Evelyn.'