Chapter Text
There were certain sounds Mikaela had come to love more than he’d expected:
the creak of the wooden stairs, the kettle just before it boiled, the whisper of pages turning upstairs in the hands of customers he never saw.
It was a quiet life.
He lived above the bookshop he managed. Not owned—he didn’t own anything so romantic. It belonged to a retired couple who now lived by the sea, but left the shop in his care. He watered the plants, dusted the spines, and opened the windows whenever it rained.
There was comfort in the repetition.
Open at nine. Close at six.
Sweep the leaves from the front step. Feed the cat who wasn’t his.
Most days passed like that: warm tea, worn books, soft music playing from an old radio by the register. Sometimes customers would linger and talk to him about poetry or the weather. Sometimes they wouldn’t.
Mikaela didn’t mind either way.
His apartment upstairs was small and sunlit, with lace curtains that fluttered when the windows were open. He kept everything tidy but not fussy. A little clutter made a room feel lived-in.
There were plants, mostly herbs and ivy, growing in teacups and chipped ceramic pots. A wooden bookshelf he’d built himself. A lamp shaped like a mushroom. A bed that always smelled faintly of lavender.
And, in the far corner near the window, a tall mirror.
It leaned against the wall, slightly crooked, as if it had never been fully settled. The frame was worn white wood, softened by time. Its surface wasn’t perfectly clear—fogged a little in the center, like a dream that refused to come into focus.
He didn’t remember buying it.
Maybe it had been left by the previous tenant. Maybe it had come with the building. Either way, it had never struck him as strange until lately.
Lately, he caught himself looking at it more often than necessary.
Sometimes when he passed by with a cup of tea, or when the sky turned the windows gold in the late afternoon, or when the rain began to fall and the world seemed to grow quieter than usual.
It wasn’t that anything moved. Or changed. Or called his name.
But every so often, it felt like the mirror was holding its breath.
It was the kind of feeling you couldn’t name without sounding foolish.
But still—he started noticing things.
That the mirror seemed warmer in the morning light, like it remembered something he didn’t. That he sometimes dreamt of places he’d never been—gardens, rooftops, trains sliding through starlit tunnels—and when he woke, he always felt the need to check the glass. As if it might show him something else. Someone else.
He told himself it was just the weather. Or loneliness. Or too much tea before bed.
But even so, he left the mirror untouched.
One day in late autumn, when the air smelled like cinnamon and distant woodsmoke, Mikaela found himself watching the rain.
It tapped against the windowpane like it had something to say but couldn’t quite say it. The kind of rain that blurs streetlights and makes everything seem softer. Sadder. More beautiful.
He sat on the floor with a book in his lap and a wool blanket draped over his shoulders. The book had been read before—creases along the spine, corners worn like petals. But that was the way he liked stories. A little loved. A little known.
The mirror was just to his left. Quiet as always.
But when he glanced at it—just a glance, just in passing—he thought he saw something shift.
A trick of the light. A flicker. Nothing more.
Still, he looked again.
The mirror reflected the room, of course. The window. The soft amber glow of the lamp. His own face, faint and a little tired. But the blur at the center—where the glass never quite cleared—seemed deeper than usual. Not darker. Just... distant. Like it was no longer reflecting this room at all, but someplace else.
He leaned forward, almost without meaning to.
His breath left a soft fog on the surface. He reached out and touched it with his fingertips.
It was cool. Solid. Ordinary.
And yet.
He stayed there a moment longer, listening to the hush of the rain and the soft ticking of the clock downstairs. It was so quiet, he could almost hear the silence beneath the silence. That strange stillness just before something begins.
Then he smiled, a little embarrassed at himself, and sat back.
The mirror was just a mirror.
And yet.
That night, he dreamt of a boy.
He didn’t see his face clearly. Only glimpses—a hand reaching through mist, a voice like wind through leaves, laughter echoing from somewhere he couldn’t follow. But he remembered the feeling.
As if someone was waiting for him.
As if someone had always been waiting.
When he woke, the rain had stopped.
The world was washed clean. Pale morning light spilled across the floor. The apartment smelled faintly of rosemary and ink.
And for just a moment, as he passed the mirror on his way to make tea, Mikaela paused.
There—at the base of the frame—was something he hadn’t seen before.
A slip of folded paper. Unmarked. Cream-colored. Just resting against the wood, like it had been placed there gently. Intentionally.
He stared at it.
And then he left it untouched.
For now.