I always thought "being brave" meant doing heroic stuff—jumping off rooftops, chasing criminals, announcing dramatic lines like "Stop right there!"
Turns out, real bravery is following a tiny twelve-year-old girl into a creepy underground hallway you didn't even know existed.
"Are you sure your grandfather came down here?" I whispered.
She nodded, her eyes big and serious. "He used to say the truth lives under the floor, not above it."
"Great," I muttered. "Because nothing says 'truth' like a cold dungeon that smells like expired ghosts."
We walked deeper. The only light came from her little flashlight, which barely lit anything except my fear. The air felt heavy, as if the darkness itself had weight. And the walls? Covered with old symbols—circles, arrows, names scratched like warnings or… regrets.
"Your grandpa really had hobbies," I whispered.
"He wasn't crazy," she said softly. "He was protecting something."
Yeah, well, whatever he protected was definitely protecting itself now, because the hallway suddenly split into three different tunnels.
I stared. "Okay, why does every mysterious place have to come with a maze? Can't villains just build straight hallways like normal evil people?"
Before she could answer, a faint metallic sound echoed behind us.
Clank.
We froze.
Another sound. Footsteps. Slow. Heavy. Coming closer.
The girl grabbed my sleeve. "Is that the killer…?"
I swallowed. Hard. "No. No, no. The killer's upstairs… probably murdering the last sandwich in the fridge. This must be—uh—a rat. A big rat. A… dinosaur rat."
The footsteps got louder.
Nope. Not a rat.
I grabbed her hand. "Run!"
We sprinted down the middle tunnel because statistically, the middle is either death or destiny—and I really hoped for the second one. The footsteps followed us, faster now, echoing like something dragging metal across stone.
"Don't look back!" I yelled.
"I wasn't going to!" she yelled back.
We burst into a huge underground chamber. And I mean huge—like someone hid an entire abandoned library under the house. Towers of books everywhere. Old desks. Maps. Glass containers filled with strange objects.
But the thing that caught our attention wasn't the books.
It was the mirror.
A massive, ancient mirror standing in the center of the room, framed with carvings of ravens and spirals. The glass shimmered—not normally. Like water trying to reflect a dream instead of reality.
"That's… not a normal mirror," I whispered, stepping closer.
The girl squeezed my arm. "My grandfather told me never to look into it."
"Which," I said, "obviously means we're going to look into it."
Before either of us could breathe, a blurry shape appeared inside the glass.
Then a voice—my voice—whispered:
"He's behind you."
I did the one thing you should never do in a horror situation.
I turned around.
A tall figure in a black coat stood in the doorway. The same coat I saw the assistant wearing earlier that day. The same boots. The same shadowed face.
Except now… he wasn't hiding his knife.
The girl gasped. "It's him!"
He stepped forward, blade gleaming. "You two should've stayed out of this."
"Hey," I said, raising my hands, "in my defense, she dragged me here—"
"Liar!" the girl whispered.
"Okay fine, maybe I dragged you a little, but we can discuss the blame later!"
The man lunged.
I pulled the girl behind a table as the knife slammed into wood. Books fell everywhere. Papers flew like panicked birds.
The mirror behind him flickered again—this time showing a different image: the writer standing in her room, typing, unaware that her assistant wasn't just a quiet guy who liked tea… but a murderer.
I shouted at the mirror like an absolute maniac: "HEY! LADY! YOUR ASSISTANT IS A PSYCHO!"
Shockingly, she did not respond. Because—yes, obviously—she couldn't hear me through magical glass.
The assistant raised his knife again.
"Tell me," he growled, "what did you see in the mirror?"
Before I could answer, a loud cracking sound came from behind us—the mirror's surface rippling like waves.
The assistant froze, staring.
The girl whispered, "Grandpa said the mirror reacts to lies."
Fantastic.
Because nothing says "we're doomed" like a liar detector shaped like a cursed antique.
The assistant stepped closer to it.
"Don't—!" I yelled.
Too late.
The mirror's surface burst into a storm of white light.
A scream echoed—his scream—mixed with something deeper, older, like the mirror had been waiting centuries for someone foolish enough to lie in front of it.
Then… silence.
When the light faded…
the assistant was gone.
Disappeared.
Vanished.
Swallowed whole.
The girl trembled. "Wh-Where did he go?"
I stared at the mirror, feeling my heart pound like drums announcing doom.
"I… think," I whispered, "we just opened a much bigger case."
Behind us, faint footsteps echoed again—not the assistant this time.
Something else was in the tunnels.
Coming closer.
We both turned toward the dark hallway.
The shadows whispered.
---
続く.