Work Text:
Sicheng stares, for an indiscernible amount of time, at the big, red SOLD that’s stuck proudly to the realtor’s sign. He doesn’t know why he just stands out here, in the gray, biter cold, his wind-nipped knuckles shoved into his pockets and his ears left bright red and defenceless - but he just. Looks.
SOLD, this house is. Sold to him with his name on the deed and a mortgage made to sit on his shoulders for the rest of his life. SOLD because he decided he was going to move out here, and here is where he’ll stay.
He thinks he hears thunder somewhere in the distance. He figures it’s time to go back inside.
Being in-between places, like this, proves difficult for him. This house he bought, sitting proudly up on a hill, a century’s worth of life and wear, is pretty far out of the city and not a convenient trek by any means. He did this on purpose, getting out from the noise and the chaos and the bodies of a world he’s tired of living in, but he didn’t take into consideration all the mileage he’s putting on his car travelling to and from this place every day and bringing a piece of his life with him each time. There’s no furniture, yet, save for old, old furniture left in the den that sits covered in white sheets. Like everything Sicheng’s nightmares are made of.
They’re unusable, he’s decided. Too creepy to be sat upon.
He flicks on the light in the dining room. It struggles, flickers, makes an awful electric sound, before the modest chandelier bleeds dim, orange light with a dim, hollow buzz. Sicheng has decided he likes this room in the house the best - its big, ornately framed windows allow in so much sunlight during the day, moonlight during the night. He can watch the quiet, empty expanse of grass and trees from here, down the hill to his nearest neighbours that are too far away to even bother learning their names.
This room has already found itself occupied by drop sheets, oversized canvases and buckets upon buckets of paint. When Sicheng started taking his life to his new home, these were the first pieces to christen this place as his.
Still, with Sicheng’s art supplies scattered throughout the sunniest room in the house and his crystal wine glasses in the cupboard, he somehow feels as though he’s an intruder in this home. It’s a feeling he can’t quite shake.
“Hello!” Sicheng calls out, just to make some noise. He has to do that, sometimes, has to cry out so his voice bounces off the walls and ceilings and floors. Sicheng, sometimes, needs to be reminded that he’s here to take up space, as far as his voice will travel.
Another clap of thunder comes as a reply. He walks to the window, watches as the storm rolls in from the bottom of this hill to the big, red SOLD on the realtor’s sign.
One thing that will take some getting used to? The way the rain and the wind makes this whole, ancient house shake to its very bones.
“Nasty,” Sicheng whispers into the window, his breath fogging up the glass. The storm is nasty, and it got nasty very quickly. That’s something that doesn’t quite happen in the city, too protected by towering buildings to feel the brunt of many storms. Here on the countryside, this sad old house is exposed to the worst of it.
He’ll have to stay here and wait out the storm. He cannot drive in something this violent.
Sicheng digs his electric kettle out from one of the many boxes tucked into the corner of the kitchen. He hums to himself, along with the rhythm of the rain, as he unravels the cord and plugs it into the outlet on the stove. He’s still learning the layout of this house, where all the plugs and switches are. He hopes it doesn’t take him long to learn. His hands are busy, opening up a packet of instant ramen from the pantry, using only what little light spills in from the dining room into the kitchen. Everything is casted in such drastic shadows. It’s as unsettling as it is beautiful.
He stands in the arching doorway between the kitchen and dining room as he waits for the kettle to boil. The storm continues beyond the windows, turning the world beyond glass pitch black and shining wet.
His chest, for some strange reason, begins to feel like a 100kg weight is resting on it. Skin itchy. Trapped.
“Hello?” he calls out, like he always does, just to remember that he’s here in this house that he owns. It comes out unsure, like a question, and Sicheng realizes that he doesn’t feel trapped - he feels fear.
Fear of what? He does not know.
Behind him, the kettle inches closer to boiling, the sound of the heat and the water crescendoing, a mirror image of the storm in front of him. The chandelier in the living room begins to flicker, an erratic rhythm accompanied by a chilling electric squeal. Just the storm, he tells himself, it’s just the storm and this house is old.
“Hello.”
He says it again, quiet and pathetic. Like it scares him to take up the room in this house. That awful, unshakable feeling, that he’s an intruder in his own home.
The kettle pops.
And the light goes out.
Sicheng stands there in that threshold and in the dark for an amount of time he does not count, catching the breath he hadn’t realized ran ahead of him, watching the lightning through the victorian windows as if that’s some sort of reprieve. His body remains still, except for the expanding and contracting of his ribs as he fights breathlessness. Frozen in place like he’s been wrapped up with impalpable rope.
He doesn't say hello again.
With that bone-scraping hum of electricity, the light in the dining room turns back on, and the breath that escaped Sicheng’s lungs returns to him all at once. His knees nearly buckle as he sighs out in relief.
“Just the storm,” he whispers to himself, turning back into the kitchen. “No need to be afraid of the dark.”
Something tangible within him tells him he should be.
-----
The next time Sicheng returns with the last of his smaller items, manageable boxes he doesn’t need to hire a moving van for, something about the house seems very… off. He can’t put his finger on it at first, but it isn’t until he’s unloading the last of his dishes and silverware into the kitchen that he realizes it -
His things are not where he left them.
He has glasses put in a different cupboard, his silverware in the sink and not a drawer. Sicheng, with a confused furrow in his brow wanders out into the dining room. He doesn’t remember leaving his empty canvases along that wall.
“Hello?” he says, and this time not with the intent of taking up space, but in case he is not alone. Is there an intruder, besides himself?
He checks the locks on the front door, the locks on the back door, and everything is in order. No damage, no sign of forced entry. It makes his stomach twist up, confused and somewhat afraid.
A quick call to his mother confirms the only logic that makes sense to him, too. If someone had broken in, things would be taken - not moved.
With the Notes app open on his phone, he decides to walk around the house and list every item and where it is. For next time. His cutlery in the drawer next to the stove; a red X next to it to note that Sicheng’s sure they were moved this last time. He marks off where all his boxes are and what’s in them. Goes up to the bedroom to list off what clothes he has in the closet.
He makes it through every room in the house until he gets to the room he wishes he could avoid. The den is such an ominous, chilling place. Sicheng has not even been able to step foot all the way in, only making it as far as the bottom step that leads down to this sanctuary of disguised furniture and collecting dust.
One white-covered couch nearest the entrance, one white-covered table in front of the fireplace. His thumbs shake as he tries to type as fast as he can. Sicheng can’t explain what it is that makes him want to leave this room so bad.
There’s one more thing to note. One white-covered mirror, leaning against the wall across from the staircase. Sicheng doesn’t know how he knows it’s a mirror, under that sheet. He just does.
He stares at it, for a long moment, his phone sitting in his trembling hands. There’s this pull somewhere in his gut, urging him closer to the frame beneath the drop-sheet. It’s a struggle, but he fights it - determined to stay out of this room for not only his sanity’s sake, but his dust allergy, too.
Still, he stares. The room is so goddamn quiet. It’s so goddamn dark down here, out of the sunlight. He stares and he stares and he cannot find it within him to look away.
Somewhere, distantly, Sicheng hears the sound of a broken sob. A shattered sound from a woman’s voice - a sob that sounds more like an echo than a sound itself.
Frightened and frozen in place, all Sicheng can wonder is why she sounds so sad.
Suddenly, like a vase that falls to the ground and shatters, Sicheng’s autonomy comes back to him, his breath returns to his lungs and his hair stands on end and he can finally, finally, turn away from the cloaked mirror and run as fast as his legs can take him up the stairs, through the front door, and into the driver’s seat of his car.
It’s halfway through his drive home that he realizes, with no explicable reason, his heart feels like it’s broken. His cheeks are damp with tears.
-----
Despite the weirdness, the uneasiness in Sicheng’s gut, moving into his new home is inevitable. His lease comes to a close on his stuffy little apartment, and soon he’s living out of boxes in this quiet, lonely home, that still doesn’t feel quite like his.
Strangeness remains, however slight it may be. He rediscovers things in places he had not put them, he catches the lights flickering when he’s talking aloud to himself just to make the house feel less empty and lifeless. He sleeps with his back turned to the darkest corner in his room, always fitful and shallow, even in his surface-level dreams unable to shake this feeling of eyes boring into him.
The strangeness remains, and Sicheng forces himself to sit through it.
He doesn’t believe in ghosts, he thinks. He hasn’t ever been very religious or spiritual. He tries to blame this anxious stirring in his gut, this weight on his spine and chill on his skin, on nothing more than fear of the quiet and of the darkness. He’s alone, in a big, wide, century old house, when he’d grown up surrounded by family and then lived surrounded by neighbours, all too close to one another to tell their homes apart. Dark corners are unnerving to just about anyone in the world, sounds he may hear are all in his head or just the groaning of the old wood floors, and this unshakable feeling that he’s overstepping someone else’s boundaries will fade over time, as this place begins to feel more like his home.
Sicheng is sceptical, and he has to remind himself of this every time he finds his books or his shoes in strange places. He has to remind himself of this every time he lays in bed with the terrifying sense that there’s something behind him. He has to remind himself of this when he’s rinsing his hair out in the shower one day, and he swears he feels the phantom sensation of a hand landing on the small of his waist.
He turns on every light in the house and curses the poor electricity for doing such a terrible job of lighting his path. He keeps music playing on the speaker in the dining room or carries it with him wherever he goes. He wishes he could watch something to fill his time, but he hasn’t yet had the internet company come and set up internet or cable in his house. He stares out his big, Victorian windows and wonders if he should go and introduce himself to the neighbours at the bottom of the hill.
All these little things to get used to living in this home that’s still so empty, so unfurnished, so vacant… yet feels so full Sicheng feels like he can’t breathe through it.
-----
The sky is clear and silvery-blue, trees nearly bare of all browning leaves. Sicheng’s favourite room in the house is the dining room, where he wipes the sweat off his brow and narrowly misses his face with the paintbrush in hand, where he takes advantage of the proud and bright sunlight that pours in through the window panes to paint and paint and paint.
He’s working on a piece for a client, his first commission since he moved, and they have been nothing but pleasant. All they told him was they want a certain colour palette and trusted him to make the art he wants to make, and that’s what Sicheng does.
He pours buckets of paint over the large canvas that lays flat over the drop-sheet on the floor, swipes lines and shapes of different shades and hues with his brushes the way his body just does. The way the art pours out of him naturally.
Sicheng squints down at it. It needs more blue.
The sky is near silver and the trees are near bare, the chilly countryside autumn creeping closer to a freezing countryside winter, and Sicheng is starting to get used to living so far away from the rest of the world. Getting used to living alone - or at least, what he’s mostly sure is alone.
Colours and lines bleed from Sicheng’s hands as he works the canvas, losing himself in distant thought. He watches the paint fill the canvas, watches the colours pile up and soak together. His chest starts to flutter, is stomach too, and he can’t figure out what it is that’s tickling him with such anxiousness. Painting is so therapeutic to him - it usually does the opposite of this. This… brewing nervousness in his belly, this sudden shortness of breath.
Sicheng feels like he’s going to be sick.
He shoots up, standing straight and hovering over his canvas. His arms fall limp to his sides, the brush in his hand splattering over the leg of his coveralls.
And he studies, horrified, this image that came from somewhere deep within him. This miserable picture, a vague yet complex representation of a destitute, sobbing face.
He hears it again, that fragment of a sob, only this time it feels like it’s sounding from inside his skull and between his ears. More like he’s listening to a memory than an echo. It feels as though this sob could have come right from this painting.
The back of his neck warms with something damp and vacant, accompanied by a sound so close to his ear he can feel it. A breath, gentle and full, a release of air right into that space behind his ear.
He sprints.
Slamming the front door shut behind him, he’s immediately wracked with shivers. The wind is unforgiving against what little protection the coveralls provide, and he shudders and shakes as he whips his phone out from his pocket and struggles to type an email to his realtor.
The previous owners are still living, right? He says.
A nice old couple that moved into a nursing home, right?
He stares at the body of the email, his phone shaking in his hand. What has Sicheng gotten himself into? What is living in this house besides himself? He stares at that spot at the end of the driveway where the SOLD sign once stood and wonders if he’ll ever be safe to live in this house that sits like a mortgage on his shoulders for a very long time, inescapable. He presses send.
In through the nose, until his ribs expand with the size of his breath. Release through his mouth, into a cloud of fog in front of his face. Repeat. Repeat.
He feels his fingers going numb, so he clenches his fists and tells himself that ghosts are not real before he spins on his heels and marches back through the front door, around the corner, and into the dining room that’s become something of a studio.
Sicheng doesn’t even spare the sobbing blue lady a glance before he grabs an entire bucket of black paint, stands over the canvas, and upends it.
-----
Sicheng,
Yes, they’re still alive. A lovely couple. I’m sure I mentioned some of the furniture they left behind, stuff that couldn’t make it into storage. I think some of it belonged to their poor, departed daughter.
Why do you ask?
-----
Sicheng isn’t sure what’s come over him.
It’s the middle of the afternoon, and for the past couple of days, Sicheng has just been sitting on a stool in the corner of the dining room, staring at the glob of black paint over the canvas. He knows he should toss it, grab the next blank sheet and start over, but instead he just watches that inky stain and fixates on the rounded edges, the little spots where it splattered. The puddle on the drop-sheet beneath it.
His brows furrow and his lips purse. Drop-sheet.
His feet navigate to the creaky floorboards, and before he knows it, his legs are taking him out of the studio, down the hall, and to the top of the small set of stairs that lead down to the den. Drop-sheet. Like the ones that hide what once resided here.
In his time sitting and staring, he’d done an awful lot of thinking. Processing. He’s almost convinced, at this point, that there is something else living in his sad old home, something that lingers over his shoulder and watches him at night. Something that doesn’t like the way he’s organized his things.
Something that, as far as he can tell, doesn’t intend to hurt him. Just something very, very sad.
The stairs cry out at every step. These steps are wood not often walked upon, at least not in the past little while since Sicheng bought the place. It feels like a countdown, to Sicheng’s ears, every creak and groan leading up to his destination of cold, damp air and dust on his tongue and in his lungs.
He steps off of the bottom step, both feet planted firmly on the floor of this dim, dark den.
This room is so painfully cold. It’s this sharp, wet coldness that seeps through Sicheng’s clothes, into his skin, and down to his bones. His breath has escaped from his lungs and his heart thunders in his chest. All sounds seal up around Sicheng’s head, a vacuum of tangible silence that clogs his ears and puts pressure on his jaw.
He takes a step forward, eyes ahead. It’s only a frame in a drop-sheet, leaning against the wall, a flat and nondescript pane - yet he knows without doubt that it’s a mirror that lies beneath the fabric.
Another step and then another. If the floors complain beneath him, he cannot hear it through the cotton in his ears, through the reverberating sound of his heart banging around in his ribs, as if pulling him forward, closer, closer.
Dust flies up in an elaborate cloud as he rips the sheet from over the mirror. He’s surprised to find he’s only met with an image of himself, framed by ornate gold details that seem to wrap around the glass like clinging vine. His scared and confused face, nearly swallowed up by the darkness in the room.
He looks himself in the eye.
“Hello?” He says aloud and watches the way his mouth moves around the word. “Are you here?”
A breath, audible through the thick silence, a puff of air against his skin. He keeps an unwavering gaze on his reflection, a determined set in his jaw and that crinkle between his brows.
“If- if you are here-”
With a sound as sudden and sharp as a shatter, his reflection flashes into one that is not his own - a woman, petrified, with nightmarish gashes where her eyes should be.
There’s a crack as Sicheng’s tailbone hits the hardwood, silence as his lungs can’t find the air to scream.
He’s never scrambled so quickly in his life, up on his knees and to his feet, sprinting as fast as his body can take him up the stairs and away from his reflection. Her reflection. He doesn’t even take the time to throw the sheet over the mirror in his haste and his panic, too focussed on his hiccuping heart and the terrified tears springing to his eyes.
His hands shake so violently he can barely get a grip on his phone on the kitchen island. He isn’t breathing, anymore - it’s something closer to sobs than breath. Sicheng squeezes his eyes shut and counts to ten, makes note of the ground against his feet and his phone against his palm. The air around him against his skin, as simultaneously freezing and feverish as his flesh may be.
In through the nose, until his ribs expand with his breath. It takes him a second to remember to let his breath out, but he does. And he does it again.
He doesn’t know what to do. Calling someone isn’t an option for multiple reasons - he’s so far away from his family, and no one would believe him, anyway. He stares down at his phone for a second before he unlocks it and opens his web browser.
Sicheng feels so ridiculous. He cannot believe he has made it to this point in his life where he’s typing Are ghosts real? into his search bar. He just doesn’t really know what else to do.
What he’s been experiencing, what he’s been repressing… it’s all accumulated to this moment, this realization that no matter how much Sicheng tries to deny it, he is not alone in this house. Every breath down his neck and gaze against his back is not something he’s imagined or fabricated. Nor is it an attack.
The lady in the mirror - the lady that Sicheng looked like in that glass for that split second - was terrifying in a way. Her sallow skin, her matted hair, and most importantly the wounds over her eyes. But beyond the deformity and the shock of her appearance, she seemed nothing but sad. Not violent or threatening or territorial.
Sicheng wonders if she has been reaching out.
After about a minute of scrolling through search results on his phone, that annoying little notification pops up on his phone telling him he’s used up his cellular data for the month, and then nothing else loads.
“Fuck,” he curses himself for changing his plan to the one that shuts off cellular data once it’s all used up. His bills had just been getting so high.
“Fuck,” he says again, because he’s still anxious and upset and his heart still hurts from beating so fast. He rocks up on his toes, looks over his shoulder, down the hall, to where the stairs that lead to the den begin.
Grabbing his wallet and his keys, Sicheng locks his door behind him and gets into his car. He knows there is a library with internet access about twenty minutes away. He thinks he can gather his thoughts and his nerves just in time to arrive.
The drive from his middle-of-nowhere house to the quaint little downtown of this quaint little city-side town is pleasant and peaceful. It’s all rolling hills winding roads, blanketed by a dull, gray sky. It gives Sicheng the time he needs to will his heart rate to slow, to process his situation and the way he feels.
He’s confused, and he’s scared, but mostly he just wants to figure out how he can live in his house without being wary of every corner.
The library is near empty when he arrives. Few bodies are scattered about, searching aisles or digging their noses into books, and they all pay him no mind as he storms his way over to the computers and plops himself down in a faded chair that’s probably seen years of use. Sicheng cracks his knuckles, looks over his shoulders, and then stares at the blinking cursor in the search bar as he tries to figure out what exactly it is he wants to know.
He starts with the basics. Ghosts and spirits, he searches, and then reads up on the lore and the studies.
He reads about demonic entities that take the shape of what might seem like ghosts. That makes Sicheng nervous, and he backs out of that article as fast as the shitty public internet can take him. He’d rather not think about a demon living in his house - if demons even exist, that is. Where can he find an article that will tell him he has a sad, friendly ghost residing within his home, that there’s a simple solution to purging its spirit?
Eventually, he finds an archive of paranormal studies and theses. He reads up on every article, every source he can find, in the hopes that he’ll find something with a situation close to his.
Haunted places and haunted people. Unfinished business trapping departed souls in this space between the living and the dead. Signs of peaceful souls and those with intention to harm.
Sicheng reads for so long his eyes start to hurt from staring at tiny words on a vibrant computer screen. He notices the librarians eyeing him curiously as they wander by. He’s sure it isn’t often that someone wanders in with obvious panic in the set of their shoulders, vigorously typing away on a public computer for information that only sours their expression as time goes on. Surrounded by walls of books and a few curious glances, Sicheng’s anxiety begins to creep back up his throat.
He feels a need to look over his shoulder, and he feels this fear of what may be behind him.
Into the search bar, he types, Can spirits follow you wherever you go?
The answer he receives is not one he’s fond of. He’d hoped, truly, that his home was haunted and all he needed was to light some sage and wish it gone. But now, as he reads and reads and studies the answers given to him, he understands fully that this ghost of his has clung to him.
Again, he wonders, has she been reaching out?
Struggling to push the chair back over the carpet, Sicheng pushes out of his seat so fast a few heads whip around to look at him. He pays them no mind, as he gathers his things and makes to head out. And he actively avoids looking behind him as he turns to head to the door.
He’s afraid he’s got himself a ghost, one that probably has some sort of vendetta or cause to keep her here, with him, and he has no idea what he’s going to do about it.
-----
Now that Sicheng is mostly sure that the lady in the mirror means no harm, he finds it easier to share his home with her. Just because he’s less afraid of what she can do does not make him less afraid of seeing her, however, and when he finally wills himself back down to the den to cover the mirror, he makes an active effort to look anywhere but his reflection until it’s tucked safely under the sheets.
He knows she is always watching, a shadow he can’t quite see, and he talks to her sometimes, just in case she can listen. While making dinner or mixing paint or folding his laundry, he’ll chatter on about his day and whatever it is that’s on his mind. It fills the empty space, but something about the sound feels swallowed up, like someone is there to absorb and observe.
Loneliness is on his mind. She must have been so lonely for a very long time. He asks her, one day, where she came from. Silence lingers in the air instead of a response.
Does the house feel less lonely, now that Sicheng knows he is not the only one here? He hasn’t yet decided. When he bought this house he did it to get away and be alone, so while he’s growing accustomed to his invisible company, he wouldn’t have minded being here by himself, either. That, ultimately, was his goal.
What bothers him the most, in more ways that one, is the few times where the deepest shadows of the farthest corners produce an echo of a noise that sounds like a shattered, agonized sob.
Eventually, the sound no longer scares or shocks him. Eventually, every time he hears it, his heart breaks for her.
He wants, with all his being, to help her, even if he hasn’t any idea how.
-----
Sicheng wakes up one morning thinking about the mirror.
He assumes he must have been dreaming about it, that gold frame and filthy glass lingering somewhere in his mind, sitting heavy on his skull. He sits up in bed and he rubs his hand down his face and he looks at the corner of his bedroom, between the closet and the door.
“Morning,” he says to the air.
He tries his hardest to go about his day normally. He puts on his slippers and he stares at the boxes of clothing he still has not unpacked and then stretches his back out before heading down the stairs. As winter approaches the mornings take longer to arrive, so the house is dark and dim and no amount of light switches flicked on can fix it. Not with this shitty wiring, at least. He writes call electrician on the to-do list on his fridge. He fills the coffee pot with water.
He thinks about that fucking mirror.
It’s driving him insane. Every time he blinks he sees that tall, dusty frame on the backs of his eyelids. He sees it covered in its sheet. He sees it bare, staring straight into the glass, reflectionless. It feels, almost, as though it’s calling to him, this low hum that has settled under his skin and pulls him forward.
Sicheng stares at a blank canvas and doesn’t get any work done. He watches the way the rising sun casts pink, silver, then white light over the blank page as time goes on. His stomach churns with nervousness, that call to the mirror making him itch to move closer, but the fear in his gut keeping him where he stands.
Tenderly, gently, almost like a tentative whisper, Sicheng feels the phantom weight of a hand resting on his shoulder. He stiffens, but his heart does not quicken.
His ghost means him no harm and he knows it. This time, though, his ghost is asking him a favour.
This hand on his shoulder feels almost like a plea.
Sicheng sighs. “If- if you want to show me something,” he says to the walls, turning around to face the direction of the den, “please don’t scare me too much.”
His shoulder is freed from her touch and that pull toward the mirror gets stronger. More pronounced.
Sicheng wanted to help - has wanted to help - and perhaps she’s finally giving him a way to do just that.
The floors creak and the lights flicker and Sicheng walks down the hallway on timid feet. He tries to steady his breathing, wide, deep breaths and fidgeting fingers. That hum under his skin and gnawing between his ears has become way too strong, finally drawing him under and tugging him closer to the den.
Closer, closer, closer.
Closer, until he’s standing on the cold, cold floors and shaking in the cold, cold air and staring at the sheet that hangs hastily draped over that mirror propped against the wall. There is very little light pouring in from the small window in the far corner of the den, the dust floating around the air in little sparkles that catch the light, the white sheets bathed in gray. Sicheng’s hand twitches at his side, urging him to reach out, and so he grabs the sheet and rips it off without a moment to second guess himself.
He stands with his eyes squeezed shut and his shoulders squeezed up to his ears. A beat passes, and Sicheng decides he can’t hold back any longer.
When Sicheng opens his eyes, he is met with a reflection not of his own. It knocks the air out of him, as he looks at this version of himself. Smaller, fainter, with no eyes to even see with.
Sadness floods him. Horror. And he realizes it’s a sadness and horror not his own.
He doubles over, falls to his knees, and cries out in pain. The emotion washes over him, like the emotions have been assigned to him, and he stares at the disfigured reflection and cries and shakes, as if he’s staring at the horrifying version of a body that was once his own.
It is then that he realizes - she is using him as an outlet to see herself.
He cries alongside her.
Sicheng watches the woman in the mirror reflect his motions and his expressions, and it becomes clear that it’s rather him who is mirroring the emotions and the actions, a puppet on strings that are held by the wailing lady in the glass. He wonders if he should be afraid. All he feels, beneath the superficial layers of grief and anger that radiate from her, is sorry.
Show me, he wants to say, but he’s powerless to. Tell me your story. Tell me how to fix this.
Suddenly, in a whoosh of breathlessness that he feels in his gut, memories flash behind his eyes and down his spine. Memories that are not his. Memories he knows belong to her.
A reflection in clear daylight, a version of this woman who is young and breathtaking. Her cheeks are full and her skin is rosy, not this grayish, rotting colour that Sicheng has come to know.
She’s happy. She laughs and she dances. Images of sunlight and wedding rings and strawberries. She’s happy.
And then she is not.
Anger and arguments and belittlement. Sicheng wretches, a sickness curling in his stomach at the way he’s feeling through her eyes and through her soul. He aches, the thought that she could be trapped with a man who loathes her so deeply and claims it to be love.
She’s too vain, she’s too self absorbed, she hasn’t any room in her heart for this beast of a man - all things he hears and feels thrown at him. Hard surfaces against his back and grips that bruise on his arms and his throat. He feels handprints blossoming on his flesh as he heaves where he kneels, looking into the mirror to meet her gaze and show just how sorry he really is.
What he sees is her - her prior to this monstrous version. She gazes back, wide-eyed and petrified, her thin chest heaving in tandem with his own.
She is murdered, before his very eyes. A scream of agony and fright breaches from the both of their chests and he feels it, in the sockets of his eyes, when that monster of a man makes sure she is never to see herself again, not in life, not even in death.
Sicheng doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to move again, he aches so terribly , his eyes bleed invisible bloody tears, his chest hurts from the way he grasps desperately at breath.
“I’m so sorry!” he pushes through the cloud she draped over him, regaining control of his body and his voice as he cries out to her. “I’m- I’m so sorry!”
His head whips up, out of his control. He’s met with the saddened, somehow relieved expression of that young and vibrant woman. Sicheng takes the time to see her, really look at her, and he realizes that it isn’t himself who’s looking.
She stares at herself, one final, retrospective look.
Sicheng’s mouth moves, but he sees the sound come from her: “Thank you.”
The mirror shatters.
With a sharp, painful gasp, Sicheng’s breath returns to his heaving lungs. His face feels crusty with tears and his body aches from - whatever that is he just went through. He shakes, shivers, realizing that cold sweat has clung to him and the cold, unheated den is unforgiving.
It takes a minute for Sicheng to gather his bearings, to process it all. He makes count of the most tender spots on his body, he counts the seconds between his breaths. He squeezes the last of his tears out of his eyelashes.
He stands on quivering legs. When he looks down at the shards of glass scattered on the floor, he sees fragments of only his own reflection.
“Hello?” he calls out to the air, and nothing swallows the sound.
Rubbing his fists into his eyes, Sicheng sighs. Just when he was getting used to having a housemate.
Before he leaves the den, he kneels to gather as many shards of the shattered mirror as he can manage.
-----
Sicheng struggles to flick the lights on in the den, his hands full and unavailable. He bumps his shoulder against the wall over and over, until, finally, the lights flicker on with this house’s personal flare of noisy wiring and obnoxious clicks.
It’s warmer down here, with the heat finally turned on, but the air still tastes like dust on Sicheng’s tongue. It’s a work in progress, he’ll admit. But it’s progress that he’s making, with a hefty canvas tucked under one arm and a bundle of tools in his free hand, wandering over to where a certain mirror once stood.
He gets to work, hammering some nails into the walls and making sure everything is aligned correctly, before he struggles to hang the heavy canvas on his own. Once he’s confident everything is secure, he steps back to admire his work.
This painting is something of a celebratory piece, all joyous colours blurring together in whimsical lines and swirls and shapes. The colour of sunlight, the colour of rosy cheeks, the colour of strawberries, unifying in one happy image. And affixed to the canvas, curving against lines that feel natural and simple, are reflective pieces of a shattered mirror. Sicheng catches glimpses of his proud expression in them.
He smiles.
Reaching out, Sicheng allows his fingers to trace along some writing scrawled along the bottom corner of the canvas. It’s relatively small, a colour that barely stands out among every other hue that occupies the space. Like a secret.
For Hualing, it reads.
It’s a name he was never given, but a name he came to know, living briefly in her shoes.