Chapter Text
“Do you like it, young man? It’s a very well-made mirror.”
The sweet old lady’s voice startled Shen Yuan out of his quiet inspection of some random lonesome mirror hanging against the pale wall of the empty shop.
His fingers, which were gently pressing against the dark wooden frame, snapped back instinctively as he turned his head back to face who he assumes is the shop owner — a short yet welcoming-looking elder. Instantly, a small, embarrassed smile tugged at his lips and he readjusted his glasses. He was only going to look around the shop while he waited for his sister to finish shopping around the other stores, but he got a bit too distracted with this one.
“Ah, yes, I would say so,” He glances back at the mirror, well-made with seemingly the highest quality of materials. It’s definitely some kind of antique, Chippendale style with an elaborate design artfully carved onto the frame, smooth to the touch. It wasn’t of an intimidatingly large size, taking on more of a rectangular shape that showcased one’s entire upper half quite nicely.
The mirror sort of gave him the vibe that it belonged to that of an older period, but it looked practically as good as new!
“It is quite beautiful. I saw it while passing by and I just couldn’t help but take a look.”
There’s a delighted laugh that sounds from behind him, “Aiyah, so many other nice things here yet you choose this old mirror of all things? Are you into the vintage style, young man? This mirror is old — maybe even older than I am! It’s been here for a long time!”
Now that makes Shen Yuan whip his head over just to not-so-discreetly assess the elder’s appearance and, honestly? She did sort of look like she could be someone’s grandma or great-grandmother, yet you’re telling him this lady’s got nothing on the mirror? Shen Yuan felt a little bit like he was getting scammed.
He wisely kept that thought to himself, though his mouth did hang open before he managed to recover.
“That… I wouldn’t have ever guessed that,” He breathed, unable to help the growing fondness of the intricateness that came with the mirror, his own eyes staring back at himself once he looked back at his reflection.
Truthfully, Shen Yuan wasn't the antique-hunting guy. But the moment he laid eyes on this particular mirror, something snagged on him — like something just clicked and a thread caught on a nail. Before he knew it, his hands were already on the frame, tracing over the material like it meant something. That was weird, right? Whatever, he didn't care. He just wanted to get closer.
He wasted no time rushing over to get a curious look at it.
Looking around, there were a lot of better, newer things he could be getting. But… hm. His parents did just find him a nicer apartment to stay in, one better than his last one, and he is in need of some more decorations and furniture. Maybe this could be an exception. It looks nice and in good condition, so what could hurt?
Smiling, Shen Yuan tapped the frame of the mirror as he fully faced the elder this time.
If the back of his mind screaming at him that this was all some scam was right in the end, then that would only be his problem!
“Auntie, how much is this mirror?”
---
The hallway was too quiet. Standing before the newly hung up mirror at the end of the hallway, a finger was brought up to tap at his chin as Shen Yuan stared at his reflection. Contemplating.
It’s been a few hours now since he got home and got to work putting this thing up and unpacking the rest of the moving boxes he nearly forgot about. Standing at the end of his hallway with his arms crossed, and it’s only now that Shen Yuan asks himself: Why did I get this?
It's too ornate, too elegant for his apartment. His figures would most likely riot. But still, he can't help but to look...
When his sister finally found him after she was done with whatever session of retail therapy she was having, she poked into the rather heavy looking bag he was holding and looked up at him with a raised brow. What the hell did he do wrong? Shen Yuan took offense at that. Sure, sure, it’s a surprise he didn’t come home with several new boxes of limited-edition figurines of his favorites, but that doesn’t define him!
Initially, Shen Yuan was indecisive about where to place the new addition of his home, and he was stuck between putting it at the end of his short hall where it’d always be visible whenever he walked through, or inside his room. He was leaning more on the latter until he realized a little belatedly that such a classy looking mirror wouldn’t… quite match up well with anything else in his nerd ass room. The hall it is, then.
The mirror proved to be a lovely display, and while Shen Yuan appreciated the look, he couldn’t help but feel a little wrong about something. He can’t pinpoint exactly what was off about the mirror, but the longer he stared at his serious reflection, the more the telltale signs of a headache approached.
Finally shrugging it off, Shen Yuan sighed and turned around to go order some takeout, turning off the hallway light. He hadn’t eaten breakfast yet and seafood sounded real good right about now. Should he finally watch that series he started over three years ago and never finished?
Behind him, Shen Yuan missed the way a hand pressed against the other side of the glass.
---
Days later on one particular morning, Shen Yuan practically fell out of bed and ran into the shower, cursing out loud. How could he forget?!
Just a week ago, his older brother had informed him in passing that there would be yet another family brunch that everyone had to be at, because they’re a pretty close knit family that liked to come together often, but!!! But!!! But Shen Yuan had completely forgotten!!!
For what felt like a long time, Shen Yuan stayed snuggled up in bed, blissfully unaware of any pains and struggles life had to offer. It was only when his brother called and told him in a neutral voice that he’d be there in twenty minutes to pick him up that he hung up and continued to nearly fall face first in his hurry to rush out of his comforters.
How funny is it that, while everyone else in his family have made it very obvious that they were morning people who had no issues with getting up during the wee hours, Shen Yuan is the only one who just couldn’t live up to that family standard! Mornings were a form of psychological warfare, and Shen Yuan was losing. Again.
Amidst his inner chaos, Shen Yuan rolled his eyes. Already ten minutes before the family brunch and he was only half-dressed. Why couldn't his family do dinner like normal people? He was sick and tired of being pushed to socialize in the morning; all the effort to get ready and talk hurt his spirit.
Maybe he’s complaining too much over nothing?
Probably… not.
Even while standing before the mirror as he struggled to button up his top, Shen Yuan found it difficult to hold back on the tired yawns, his eyes starting to nearly water. He’d be able to leave soon, at least.
The mood stayed like this for a moment before something that’s been bothering him persistently for the past few days makes the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.
Shen Yuan’s movements come to a slow halt once he fully registers the sensation of eyes on him, watching him intently. He looks up where he feels it coming from the most, but he can only see his own worn self with nothing else around him.
He darts his eyes around himself just to be sure, but no matter where he looks, he’s still alone. Everything is where it should be. He owns no pets, and if an intruder broke in then he would have known instantly.
In the quiet of his apartment, Shen Yuan huffs, his brows scrunching together in mild irritation. This again?
Shen Yuan swears, ever since he’s bought this mirror, he’s been getting the same weird vibe whenever he’s close to it; the sensation of being watched is something that can only be ignored for so long.
It would have startled him had it been the first time — because holy shit — but this has happened enough times now that he’s started to grow less creeped out and more vexed. What kind of half-assed haunted shit was this? Were there cameras in the apartment he didn’t know of? He needed to be left alone.
Lately at night, when he’s safely tucked into the comfort of his room and his door is shut and locked (a habit he got from living with siblings who would never leave him alone as a kid), Shen Yuan swears he hears tapping, or even someone straight up banging their fists against a wall. He’s checked every time and even called Shang Qinghua over to help him, but there’s never any traces of anyone around, or any signs of things being dropped or broken. The last time Shen Yuan heard the tapping sounds was last night, and by that point, he's gotten so cosmically over the initial fear that he's started conjuring random beats in his head to match with it.
Christ, don't even get him started on the bathroom. When he’s brushing his teeth or checking himself out in the bathroom mirror, that sensation of someone being in the room with him makes him freeze up like he got caught in the act, the air growing eerily heavy. Great. He can't even piss in peace anymore. This is not part of the lease.
Picking up the pace, Shen Yuan buttons the last of his top up, all evidence of his previous struggle getting thrown straight off the window, he cautiously eyes the mirror as he does so, like he's waiting for it to speak to him. At least now he looks a lot less like an unwell cryptid and more like someone capable of brunch.
There’s a ding from his phone that rips his eyes away, and he nearly drops his phone as he fishes it out of his pocket to type out a hurried response to his brother, who’s currently already outside waiting for him. Is that even twenty minutes? Whatever, it made him forget about whatever weird situation he’s found himself in. He’ll take anything.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m on my way,” Shen Yuan mindlessly repeated his text aloud as he slipped on the shoes he put aside and grabbed his keys from his room.
One last time, Shen Yuan looked back up at the mirror to check himself before he left.
Big mistake.
This time, unlike all those other times he’s checked, he’s not alone in the reflection.
From where he stood in his reflection is someone — a man — dressed in dark robes, seemingly floating in the air as they clung onto Shen Yuan with their arms wrapped around his neck, like a lover. Their head is facing him from the surface, a light smile on their lips.
Shen Yuan thinks he stopped breathing — screw that, he did stop breathing. His whole body is paralyzed once he meets eyes with glowing red ones staring straight back at him, as if they’ve already been on at him from the start.
Like any other normal person would in his position, Shen Yuan makes the most logical decision and robotically turns around before promptly making a run for it.
If he nearly falls on his ass and accidentally hits his elbow against the table on the way, then that’s no one else’s business but his.
———
“There’s nothing here,” Yue Qingyuan calmly assures him once he finishes his inspection of the apartment, meeting Shen Yuan in the open living room with a comforting smile that doesn’t really do much to help settle his nerves.
Taking a peek behind Yue Qingyuan, Shen Yuan takes notice of the dreaded mirror, but it’s only Yue Qingyuan’s steady back, nothing out of the ordinary.
Visibly, his shoulders slump. DId he really just imagine the whole thing?
Forcing himself to relax, Shen Yuan nods his head. “Oh, alright. Thank you, ge. You can… you can go now. I don’t think Jiu-ge would like having to wait downstairs.”
Shen Jiu and Yue Qingyuan have been his number one consistent Uber for who knows how long, and he already knows just how impatient his older brother can be. It’s best he wraps this up quickly lest he’s forced to face his brother’s wrath head on… A headache is already beginning to form at his temple just from the thought of it.
There’s a small furrow on Yue Qingyuan’s brows as he looks down at Shen Yuan’s tired state. He brings a broad hand down to pat at his shoulder like any kind, responsible ge would.
“Are you sure everything is fine? If you want, you can stay with us for the night. I don’t think your brother would mind.”
There’s a small moment where Shen Yuan almost considers the offer, but then he remembers the last time he stayed over and what he woke up… Sounds that he would happily rather forget pop to mind, and his face almost goes green. There was absolutely no need for him to know what his older, stoic brother’s moans of all things sounded like in the room across, good Lord.
Smiling awkwardly, Shen Yuan began walking Yue Qingyuan to the door, “Thanks, but I’m fine. I’m not a little kid anymore, anyway. I just gave myself a little scare, but it’s nothing I can’t handle on my own. I’ll call you if anything happens.”
When he looks up to get a look at Yue Qingyuan’s expression, he doesn’t seem convinced. He sighs anyway because out of everyone else in the Shen family, Shen Yuan has always been the most stubborn, even when compared to the insufferable Shen Jiu.
“I trust you, A-Yuan. Just give me and your brother a call if you need something. We’re worried about you.”
The door shuts, and Shen Yuan didn’t dare make a single move until the sound of Yue Qingyuan’s heavy footsteps sounded far away enough to be fully out of reach.
He bangs his head against the door and groans loudly, wanting to scream his fatigue away, and plops himself down over his couch. Changing be damned; it’s late and he didn’t have the energy to go to his room and properly change into bed.
“It’s all fake… I’m imagining shit.” He mumbled against his arm, curling in on himself, refusing to look back at the hallway.
It’s the only logical explanation. Ghosts aren’t real, after all. Whatever he saw was all in his head. He just hasn’t been sleeping early enough and eating as much as a normal person should be, which is admittedly something he still needs to work on.
Don’t people start hallucinating things when they’re just incredibly tired? He’s starting to fully believe that’s just his case.
Soft snores sound from the couch. He slept soundly, for the first time in days. And from the end of the hallway, something watched — red eyes glowing like coals from the darkness of his hallway.
---
The next day, Shen Yuan avoided the mirror like it was the plague, even going so far as to close his eyes every time he had to walk past it. God, it’s so stupid, but he felt like it was the best he could do at the moment. It wasn't until he kept catching smears of red in his peripheral vision when he kept walking by at night that he made the final decision to turn the mirror around.
A day after that, he left the mirror turned away and for a good while, that feeling of being watched disappeared. The tension he felt in the air dissipated the slightest bit, and he felt like he could relax for once in his life. It was only when he’d use the bathroom mirror that the creepy sensation came back, crawling on his skin, but it came off a lot less strong. He contemplated calling the cops or some kind of exorcist at some point, but that was too much of a hassle. Shen Yuan would call the lady who sold him the mirror, but he doesn’t even know her name or remember the name of her business! Luck is truly on his side.
The freedom he got from turning the mirror over lasted him only for so long, and after a day of it being turned over, the weird tapping or banging sounds he heard before, almost like that of an angry child throwing and hitting things, came back twice as strong. Sleep was already an issue, and now Shen Yuan was gonna start throwing a fit himself.
Why don’t you just throw it away? Shen Yuan constantly asked himself, and truly, why hasn’t he thrown it out? Well!!! He spent a heck of a lotta money on this thing (he might have gotten scammed), so there’s no way he’s throwing a perfectly in pristine condition mirror out over something like this! It’s a bad excuse, but so what if it’s a little haunted… He’s determined to get this over with on his own terms.
Well, he could also pass this over for someone else to deal with and make money off of it, but he doesn’t want to risk being blamed or sued over random shit. It’s too much.
Gosh, what if he really does just make awful life decisions?
The memory of that smile keeps flashing back into his head, and Shen Yuan… tries to ignore it.
He shouldn’t have bought the mirror in the first place.
---
It takes four whole days for Shen Yuan to finally grow the balls to face his mirror again. It's not even for a real reason; he just... wants to for some reason.
Sucking it up, Shen Yuan flipped it back over and stood before it, bringing a hesitant hand up to touch the frame, simply to appreciate it, before he pressed his hand against the glass. Secretly, he hopes his fingers don’t end up getting sweaty in the process. It would suck to stain the mirror after keeping it this clean this entire time.
“Are you there?” He asks like an idiot, his heart rate picking up its pace.
It’s all a figment of his imagination, a hallucination, it wasn’t real, it wasn’t real. But what if? What the fuck is wrong with him?
Nothing happens for what feels like several minutes. It’s eerily silent, and Shen Yuan waits with bated breath for any sign of, of something. Anything.
He stays still and stares so hard his eyes are starting to strain, and still, nothing happens.
Shen Yuan closes his eyes with a sigh, and he’s about to pull away when—
His eyes snap open at the sound of a soft thud, an awfully faint warmth radiating from the glass that he couldn’t explain in words shocking him still.
Eyes wide, Shen Yuan watched in real time as something began to materialize, gaining substance in the reflection. His own appearance warped beyond recognition until only the figure on the other side of the glass remained clear. The background faded into obscurity, and — hilariously enough — it was as if Shen Yuan were peering through a window into another realm.
A much broader hand was mirroring his. Black, long robes shimmered faintly with movement.
Gradually, a face formed in the glass, sharp edges softened by shadows. The apartment grew deathly silent with the air around the mirror feeling oddly thicker. Not unpleasant, just wrong. Too soon, Shen Yuan's eyes widened.
The same face that smiled at him last time reappeared and, and—
And they were… rather good-looking?
Haha, What the fuck?
The insane attractive man from a few days ago makes an appearance once again and oh, God.
Shen Yuan wasn’t gay, but he was starting to question some very specific things just from this very moment alone. He couldn’t take his eyes off that smooth skin!
Crimson eyes peered curiously at his hand still pressed against the surface, the staring almost piercing a hole through his skin. Then, the man looked up to meet Shen yuan’s gaze with an unreadable expression. Shen Yuan can’t even begin to fathom any of this right now. Is he seeing things right???
Their lips were slightly parted, and between their brows sat a red seal that pulsed faintly like a heartbeat. It had a glow of its own, familiar and purposeful.
Thinking back, it was a lot scarier the first time, and he may have scrambled as a result, but now…
Now he’s not so sure.
Throat dry, Shen Yuan gulped. For a good moment, he was speechless; his brain had fully blue-screened trying to make sense of the situation, but the more he stared, the less sense it made.
Shen Yuan’s voice trembled as he pushed himself to vocalize his confusion,
“You…?”
A pause.
“Who… No, what even are you?” He asked, voice barely above a whisper, too caught between disbelief and awe to sound anything a quarter close to demanding.