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CHAPTER 1 — THE FRACTURED REFLECTION
The bar hummed with warm noise—laughter, clinking glasses, the low murmur of music—a hum of voices Seong-woo once found comforting. Tonight, the warmth felt manufactured, leaving him hollow.
He sat among his colleagues, smiling when they smiled, laughing when they laughed—every expression carefully placed, like fragile ornaments arranged on a shelf. He'd spent years perfecting the version of himself that didn't tremble, didn't break, didn't feel too much.
Min-jae, a friend from years back—the one person who could see through him—leaned closer with a grin that didn't quite reach his eyes.
"Come on, Seong-woo," he said. "Relax. You don't have to fake it with me."
A muscle in Seong-woo's jaw tightened—a reflex, not annoyance, a sting from being seen.
"I'm not faking anything," he said, voice light, practiced.
Min-jae scoffed. "There it is again. That mask."
Seong-woo's chest tightened.
"I don't—"
"You do." Min-jae cut him off. His words hit like a slap, and Seong-woo felt the muscles in his chest seize. "You always have. Perfect student, perfect son, perfect friend—except none of it was real, right? Just you pretending so no one sees what's underneath."
A single old sentence pushed in, uninvited—Stop pretending, Seong-woo.
Seong-woo's breath hitched. A tremor ran down his spine.
Min-jae's hand landed on his shoulder. His shoulder still burned where the touch had been.
"Seong-woo—?" Min-jae's voice cracked, startled.
Something inside him—not the mask, but the thing holding the mask in place—snapped.
Heat spread, snapping through his veins like wildfire.
His jaw locked tight.
Vision tunneled.
A flash of movement.
Glass burst against the floor like a gunshot—cold shards biting his hands as he staggered back.
A shout tore through the air.
Darkness took him.
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And then—silence. A different silence.
When he opened his eyes, he stood alone in a corridor made of mirrors stretching endlessly in both directions. Each mirror held his reflection—hundreds of him—each one wrong in a different way.
Subtle distortions: eyes glowing faintly in one; an arm elongated beyond reason in another; a smile too sharp, too thin. Each reflection revealed a piece of himself he never wanted to look at.
His knees buckled. The floor beneath him was solid, cold—wrong. His heart thudded harder, breath turning shallow. A faint echo of the shattering glass still rang in his ears, impossibly distant. The air smelled faintly of burnt alcohol and cold metal, though no bar was here.
Then he saw it.
One reflection wasn't distorted.
It was him—maybe sixteen. The age when he still believed he could be anything.
The boy in the mirror stood perfectly still, shoulders relaxed, head tilted at an unnatural angle. When he smiled, it was a smile that vanished the moment it registered, replaced by an expression of paralyzing recognition, like a secret buried between them.
For the first time, the boy's smug expression faltered—flicking toward a shadow behind Seong-woo, a flash of recognition—no, dread.
Seong-woo stepped back. The cold clenched around him, tightening his breath.
Then—
A whisper. Soft. Too close.
"You killed me."
His breath froze.
Another whisper, from another mirror.
"Why did you do it?"
Then another, overlapping, climbing into a chorus.
"You know what you did…"
"Why are you pretending? — Why are you running?"
"He's waiting for you to tell the truth."
"You left me there."
"You killed me."
A cold ripple crawled up his arms. His pulse spiked. Sweat prickled the back of his neck.
He stumbled backward, bumping into cold glass.
"No," he whispered. "No—I didn't… I didn't kill anyone. Stop."
The whispers fell silent. All at once.
Because something else had appeared in the mirror directly ahead.
Not a reflection.
A figure.
A human-shaped shadow—featureless except for faintly glowing eyes tracing him with unnatural stillness. Its head jerked twice—two different directions, as if two intentions fought inside one body. A faint, unnatural red glow traced the edges of its face. Its limbs lagged a half beat behind every step.
It didn't speak. It didn't mirror him.
It simply lifted its foot—and the glass around the shadow's foot fractured into sharp, silent lines.
Seong-woo's throat closed. His legs refused to move. His pulse stuttered.
It stepped out of the mirror—
and the corridor swallowed his scream.
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