-"No… That's not true! All of these memories are definitely an illusion created by you!" I frantically clutched my head, growling in a loud voice. My bloodshot eyes snapped up, staring straight into the antique mirror in front of me:
-"You are not my future self! Get the hell out of here! Stop playing your wicked tricks!"
The surface of the antique mirror remained flat and still, like a dead lake. The space plunged into a suffocating, drawn-out silence. It wasn't until a few minutes later that the glass surface began to slowly ripple. My reflection gradually blurred, replaced instead by a twisted, grotesque smiling face that sent shivers down my spine.
-"You created this pile of fake memories to deceive me… didn't you?!" - I glared at it with eyes full of hatred, the veins in my eyes twitching repeatedly, waiting for a nod of denial from it.
But completely contrary to what I had hoped for, the entity in the mirror looked back at me with utter astonishment. It was the gaze of someone who had just witnessed something so horrifying that they had never seen it before in their life.
Through its eerie perception, each of my chaotic, shattered memory fragments automatically pieced themselves back together, exposing the entire naked truth. The mirror silently scanned through that tragedy steeped in mourning, and then suddenly, it burst into a fit of raucous laughter, tearing through the quiet space:
-"Haha… Hahaha! How ridiculous! You truly are a madman! Even yourself… you managed to deceive?!"
Looking at its expression of extreme shock and that mocking tone… it was clearly not acting. Could that cruel reality be the absolute truth? My mother… is she really gone? - No way… All of this must be fake! It's all fake! - I roared, trying to cling to the last shred of hope.
The antique mirror curled its grotesque, smiling mouth, letting out a self-deprecating remark:
-"In all the years I've lived, I have never encountered anyone as insane as you."
I collapsed onto my knees in the middle of the void, my chest heaving violently. It took a long time before I could force myself to calm down. My soulless eyes stared blankly into the vast white expanse, and my mind began to connect the dots of everything.
Before traveling to this world, I was constantly tortured by unexplained headaches. The endless nightmares, the frequent visits to the psychiatric hospital for checkups, and the moments I woke up with a jolt, realizing I couldn't clearly remember my mother's face…
Furthermore, my friends and relatives around me had tried many times to convince me to accept a reality. A reality that I always tried to brush aside completely: Mom is passed away.
Every clue fit together like gears. The entity in the mirror wasn't acting, nor did it have the leisure to create such a complex web of fake memories. All of it… was the naked truth that I had intentionally buried.
The headache throbbed violently once again, as if to punish the one who dared to touch the forbidden zone. But right in that moment of agony, a flash of reason sparked. I suddenly realized a fatal loophole: This mirror has the ability to read memories, but why was it completely blind to my mother's death from two years ago?
I slowly raised my head, the hatred in my eyes from earlier now replaced by coldness and sharpness. I locked my gaze straight onto the eerie entity opposite me, curling my lips:
-"It seems… you aren't as omnipotent as you thought, are you? Let me guess. You can only read the type of memory that the host stubbornly believes in the most, isn't that right?"
The antique mirror fixed its bizarre gaze intently on me. The space fell into a thick, heavy silence for a few seconds, and then suddenly, it burst out into bone-chilling, raspy cackles:
-"Hahaha! Interesting… Very interesting!"
-"So, you aren't any future version of me either, right?" - I lowered my head, letting out a soft, cold laugh - "From the very beginning, you set up this play just to lure me into touching the mirror's surface. Let me guess further what your true purpose is? Is it to borrow my strength to break the seal… or did you want to possess this body all along?"
The antique mirror didn't answer my words. Its twisted, smiling face suddenly twitched violently, and pitch-black veins began to crawl and spread from the corners of the mirror, overtaking the entire glass surface. It glared at me, leaving behind a cryptic statement in a hoarse, raspy voice:
-"We… will meet again soon."
Shatter!
A piercing sound rang out, ripping through the void. The antique mirror suddenly shattered into countless fragments. The glittering, cracked shards of glass trickled down onto the snow-white floor, dragging this entire anomalous space down into collapse along with it.