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Bang Chan is an average 23-year-old with insomnia, a heart of gold, and a working college degree in music production. His constant need to get work done, write lyrics, and create tracks for his music took up much of his time, often seeping into his… subpar sleep schedule. On the rare nights when he would get a few precious hours of shut-eye, there would be nothing to disturb him, no leftover work, no new ideas, no alerts or messages from his friends. Except for this one night.
It was 2 AM, and the poor boy had only an hour of sleep before he heard sharp knocking on glass somewhere nearby. He rose slowly, rubbing his eyes and ruffling his fading peach blonde hair. He turned on the lights, and put on his slippers, thankful that it was warm inside and that he wouldn't have to change out of his matching black tank top and shorts.
He walked out of his room and wandered into the hall, mind hazed by sleep but edged on by the incessant knocking from god knows where. The noise got louder as he passed the bathroom, so he opened the door. If the knocking was loud before, now it was nearly thunderous in the small bathroom, and it stunned Chan right out of his half-consciousness.
He knew it was coming from the glass, and of course, it wasn’t the shower— he could see straight through it. That meant only one thing… the mirror? No, that seemed impossible, how could someone be knocking from the mirror? He had to check, just to make sure. Chan carefully approached the mirror, lights off still, and stood in front of it.
“Hello?” As if he was heard, the knocking stopped. Chan thought he was hearing things at that point, but then he heard someone whisper back.
“Hello..? Are you there? Really?”
Chan was beyond shocked, he just heard a voice come from his bathroom mirror at the ungodly hour of 2 a.m.
He answered back, stuttering, still processing this info.
“Uh, y-yeah... I’m real. Are you? Is this a dream..? That wouldn’t make sense though, I don’t sleep very much, I might be hallucinating... Can you hallucinate sounds though?” He went off rambling, staring into the mirror, only now realizing the mirror was black, save for a small hand against it, as if he was viewing an empty dark room. It seems his rant was funny because he heard soft chuckling from the other side of the mirror. He smiled, glad to have made the other person laugh.
“What’s your name..? Sorry for not having asked earlier. I’m Chantopher, but you can call me Chan if you want! Oh and I use he/him pronouns!” Before he could get an answer, he heard a crash from the other side, a gasp, and the hand disappeared.
“I’m sorry… I have to go. I hope I get to see you again... Chan.”
Chan was left confused and intrigued in front of his bathroom mirror at 2 in the morning.
A week went by before Chan heard the knocking again. He rushed to the bathroom and knocked back.
“Hi! It’s you right? The… well I don’t know what you are but... is it you?”
“Yeah, it’s me. I’m- uh, my name is Minho. Yeah, you can call me Minho.”
Chan said the name to himself, letting it roll off his tongue a few times.
“You have a pretty name, does it mean anything?” he wanted to talk to Minho more, he hadn’t seen the other’s face, didn’t know what happened, or how they were in the mirror. As weird as it was, the thought of speaking to this entity again kept Chan’ thoughts occupied longer than it needed to.
“Ah, it’s the name they gave me…” Minho’s voice wavered off towards the end, sounding unsure of themself. Chan didn’t push any further, although the ‘they’ part left him stumped. What did they mean, ‘they’? He would have to find out later, but for now, he wanted to spend whatever time he had left getting to know the other better.
“What’s your favorite color? Mine is black!”
“My favorite color… mint… and pink. Pink is always a pretty color,” Minho spoke softly, almost as if someone was listening in on them.
Chan nodded, leaning in closer.
“Are you okay?” he lowered his voice, running a hand through his curls, trying to avoid getting Minho in trouble, even if he didn’t know what from.
“Yeah, sorry, I’m just a little shaken up. Today wasn’t a very good morning.”
“Do you wanna talk about it?”
“If that’s okay with you, yes please,” Minho mumbled, and Chan imagined someone fiddling with their fingers and keeping their eyes glued to the floor. All he heard was a voice and concluded Minho was probably a very cute individual.
“Then, by all means, go ahead! I’m listening,” he assured, getting himself comfortable.
“Okay, well, I woke up like I usually do and what I do first is get to cleaning around the house. Oh! I forgot to mention, I live- er… work in a pretty big house,” Minho said sheepishly, and again Chan imagined a cute shy smile looking back at him. He giggled.
“You haven’t mentioned anything other than your name and that little tidbit, bud.”
“Sorry! Here, my name is Minho, I am a 21-year-old dance major, or I was. I don’t remember the last time I got to dance for fun actually, or the last time I went to college if that makes any sense. It’s been a long while, time kind of passes as a blur here.” There was an indescribable tone to Minho’s voice that Chan couldn’t quite put his finger on, but it didn’t seem like his place to bring it up.
“I like to cook and bake, I like makeup and fashion, although I haven’t gotten any opportunities to do any of that here, just dance. It’s not even dancing that I like, but it doesn't matter. Oh, and I use he/they pronouns.”
Ah, he just seemed to get better and better. Chan really wanted to see their face now, and put a face to a name, to a personality like that.
“I don’t know if this seems personal or rushing or anything but, can I see your face? I don’t know if you’ve seen mine but...” Chan leaned in really close as if it would help Minho see him better, but all he heard was giggling from the other side.
“I can see you just fine, Chan, you can back up now! You have pretty blonde curls that you always brush out of your face, craters in your cheeks when you smile or laugh, and your eyes are incredibly soft but attentive, I can see it when you listen to me… I like it. They’re like trained cameras, catching every little thing.”
Chan blushed, chuckling, and backed up a bit more, sheepishly rubbing at his neck.
“Ah, sorry about that, I couldn’t tell since I can’t see you. Does that mean I can though...?”
“Oh right, yeah!” It took a few seconds, but soon a figure materialized in the mirror, and Chan’ breath was blown away. It was a boy with midnight black hair cascading down his head, ending just below his eyes. On that note, the boy’s eyes held the universe in pieces, stars twinkling across them. A sharp nose and soft lips with bunny-like teeth hiding behind them, Minho laughed, covering his mouth.
“You look like you saw a ghost!”
“I didn’t, I saw you! You’re beautiful. Why are you stuck behind a mirror of all things?” They winced a bit at that, looking away.
“Sorry… I spoke without thinking,” Chan hated the way the boy tried hiding away, cursed himself for saying such a thing.
“It’s okay, you didn’t know. It was my fault, I thought it was going to be an audition for dance or something. I don’t even know how long I’ve been gone or how this whole mirror talk thing is working, but I’m glad it is. It’s been like.. 2 meetings,” he giggled, “ but I like your company already.”
Chan was glad Minho didn’t hate him, especially after that question. He just nodded.
“Actually, I wanted to ask you a question. I think I can trust you enough… Do you know anything about serums that… make you grow animal parts? It sounds incredibly weird, I know but I keep getting poked and prodded by needles and things… I’ve seen other people pass by and they come in fine, but leave knocked out and with some sort of animal features.”
Chan was shocked at the change in topic and pace but he wanted to be of help. He went through all his current knowledge of the news and media recently but came up short.
“Sorry, but I don’t think that’s a thing yet… If anything, it sounds like you might be one of the test subjects… I’m so sorry Minho.”
“Oh… No, that's okay. I think I have to go now, talk later, yeah?”
“Yeah… talk later.” There was a bad feeling in Chan’ stomach, one that he couldn’t shake off for the entire day, or the next few meetings he had with Minho. The more they talked, the worse the feeling got, until one particularly bad day when Chan wanted nothing more than to just address it with Minho.
He went up to his mirror and knocked, a new habit of his whenever he’d show up before the other. Instead of Minho though, he was met with a very dim overhead light and a hair underneath it. He didn’t like the feeling of this, spoke no words as he waited for something to happen. At first, nothing. It didn’t seem like anything was going to happen and the time seemed to drag on even though it was just a few minutes. Just when he was about to speak, he heard a terrible noise, one of a rusted carton wheeler approaching the chair. He saw the lower half of it and recognized that a person was on it, and could hear their ragged, almost bloodied breathing.
Oh no.
Oh, no was right. Someone came and sat the person in the chair, and it was none other than Minho, looking half beaten to death, left eye black and no longer shining as the stars had rested in them, lips busted and bruised, their expressions pained and embarrassed like they didn’t want Chan to see them like that. That meant he knew Chan was watching. Someone else must have, too.
He heard a voice, one that was not Minho’s, speaking from the left.
“Well, what do we have here? My little bunny boy and his quivering newfound friend?” The voice laughed, sounding so vile it was as if Chan threw up in his mouth. Maybe he had.
“The name’s Han. What business do you have with my bunny?” The voice had now walked into frame, bringing a lean but muscular body with it, and a face with a burn scar large enough to cover half his face. He carried himself with poise, wicked blue framing his head too well, puffy cheeks and a mole adorning his cheek. He looked too nice to be evil, but there he was, standing in all his glory, a beat-up Minho in the back, and a broken Chan in front of them.
“They’re my friend, and I don’t understand why you’re doing any of this- testing on people, keeping them locked up, restraining them even? Can you even call yourself human?” He was shaking just saying that, from both fear and anger, not knowing what to do with himself.
“Oh, so he talked? You’re telling me all I had to do was be a nice goody two shoes and I’d have his whole life story, just like that? How amusing.” Han chuckled, turned away from Chan, and walked towards Minho.
“Honey, why didn’t you just tell me? I wouldn’t have had to hurt you if you just told me what I wanted.” He reached up to touch Minho, the other jerking away. Han tsked and rose again.
“So that’s how it is, I see. How well will you fare when I up your dosage, hm? Assigned you more performances maybe? Oh, wait I know! What if,” Han turned back to Chan, his grin sending chills down his spine, “I fucked you up right here, all for your precious friend to see? Don’t you think he’d like to see you like that? Ready to tear anyone close to you limb from limb?”
“Leave him alone. You can come after me if you want but leave him alone, he did nothing to you, stop hurting him!” Chan pleaded, hoping to distract Han enough to buy Minho some time. Han raised an eyebrow as if challenging him.
“N-No! Don’t touch Chan or I’ll- I’ll rip you to shreds…” Minho all but rasped, trembling with every word. He could barely look up, and it hurt Chan terribly.
“Listen, I promise, you can take me, but please let him free. He has so much to live for, so much to experience, he has a future. Let him go, take me instead,” he whispered low enough for only Han to hear.
The smirk that rested upon Han’s face after he spoke did worse than chill his spine. In fact, he felt like he couldn’t move. He saw Han wink and disappear, Minho too, the mirror going back to normal. It was a few seconds before he could move like normal again, he sighed heavily and went to stretch, shutting his eyes to try and calm down. Just as he went to twist back and forth, he felt cold hands on his shoulders. His eyes snapped open and didn’t see anything right away, but he heard it well enough.
“Peek-a-boo.”