The ghost wearing your face
605 Words
The silence was the kind that hurt.
Rin sat against the scorched locker, hands trembling, blood dried at the corner of her lip, and the faint pulse of the third mark slowing like a heartbeat retreating underground.
Akira was gone.
The monster too.
But their presence hadn’t left. The hallway still stank of ozone and old blood, like the aftermath of a thunderstorm that killed something sacred.
She forced herself to stand.
Every part of her body protested, but she had to know. Had to move. Had to find him.
She dragged herself past the broken glass, the charred lockers, and the torn banners still dangling from the ceiling. Her foot kicked something soft.
His jacket.
She bent down and picked it up—his black uniform blazer. Still warm. Still holding the shape of him.
She clutched it to her chest and kept walking.
The school looked abandoned. Like it hadn’t been lived in for years. Yet somewhere inside, a faint humming vibrated through the walls, like wires singing secrets.
At the stairwell, she paused.
There was a mirror.
It hadn’t been there yesterday.
Just an old full-length panel wedged between two pillars. Cracked along the edge, dust settled on its corners.
But in the reflection—
She didn’t look like herself.
Her body was hers. Same uniform. Same bruises. Same bleeding mark on her collarbone.
But her eyes were—
—not rainbow.
They were black.
Black as oil. Black as drowning.
And the girl in the mirror was smiling.
Rin stumbled back, heart racing.
The girl didn’t.
She tilted her head.
And whispered:
“So slow to remember.”
Rin stared at the mirror, breath caught halfway.
“Who are you?” she rasped.
The girl’s hand pressed against the glass.
Yours.
Rin shook her head. “No. No, I don’t know you.”
“You did,” the reflection said.
“I was the one who begged to stay dead.”
The lights above flickered. The air dropped in temperature.
“Where’s Akira?” Rin asked.
The reflection laughed. Cold. Like wind through a locked casket.
“He’s where he always goes. Chasing you through time. Bleeding for you. Dying for you.”
She stepped forward, her mirrored hand still pressed to the glass, but her real fingers trembling at her sides.
“What do you want?”
“To be let in,” the girl said.
“To come back.”
“I’m not gone. Just sleeping in the parts of you that hurt too much to touch.”
The mirror cracked again.
And for a second, Rin saw it.
A memory.
Not from this life.
Not from this world.
A circle of fire.
A dagger between her ribs.
Akira screaming her name.
And her laughing as she fell—because she thought if she died first, maybe he’d be free.
Rin gasped.
The reflection leaned in closer.
“You sealed me away,” the voice said. “And him too.”
“But now it’s all breaking.”
Rin backed away.
The reflection mimicked her—but with a smile still wide and knowing.
“You are the ghost wearing my face.”
The mirror shattered.
Glass sprayed the hallway like frozen tears.
And Rin was alone again.
Except… not.
She turned slowly.
Akira stood at the far end of the hall.
Bloody.
Breathing hard.
Eyes wide with something he never showed her before.
Fear.
“You saw her, didn’t you?” he said.
Rin nodded, tears clinging to her lashes.
“Who is she?”
Akira’s jaw clenched.
“She’s the version of you that remembers everything.”
- Writer
