Camille Yu woke to the sound of crying.
Not a scream. Not a moan. Just quiet, muffled sobs, as if someone was curled inside the walls, weeping softly through the drywall.
She sat up slowly in bed, blinking at the dark. The dorm was silent. Her roommate was gone for the weekend, the common hall dim under emergency lights. Only her phone glowed on the nightstand — dark screen, battery dead.
The sobbing stopped.
She shook her head. Just a dream.
Just exhaustion.
But as she reached for her charger, the phone flickered on by itself. The screen lit up with a static burst, then... a noise.
Breathing.
Wet, shallow, panicked.
Then a voice: "Please… I didn't want this. I just wanted to disappear."
Camille froze.
The voice was familiar. Not from a TV show. Not from TikTok.
From memory.
From that hallway. That day.
She yanked the charger from the socket and hurled the phone across the bed. The sound cut off instantly.
The silence that followed was worse.
—
At lunch, the following day, Camille took the long way to the east stairwell, avoiding the second-floor bathroom. She hadn't stepped foot in it since the funeral. Since Lyra.
But the door was ajar.
And something was dripping.
She paused outside. Her heart stammered.
From inside: soft, sniffling gasps. The sound of someone trying not to cry and failing.
Camille's stomach turned. She reached for the door, hesitated, then let her hand drop.
She turned away.
As she walked down the stairs, the crying faded — replaced by a whisper in her own head:
Do nothing, Camille. Just walk away.
Just like before.
—
In Philosophy class, she opened her notebook and immediately snapped it shut.
At the top of the page, written in light graphite, was a sentence she hadn't written:
You let her drown.
The handwriting wasn't hers.
She flipped back through the notebook — all blank. Flipped forward — empty.
When she returned to the same page, the sentence was gone.
She told herself she imagined it.
That night, she received a voice memo.
No sender.
Two seconds long.
She played it.
It was her own voice, whispering:
"Not my problem."
She dropped her phone.
Across the dining hall, someone turned to glance at her. A girl. The new transfer — Mira something. Quiet. Pale. Eyes like glass.
They locked eyes for less than a second.
And then the girl looked away.
But Camille couldn't shake the feeling she had been… recognized.
Not for who she was now, but for something she had done.
—
The next morning, Camille opened her bathroom cabinet.
A scream caught in her throat.
Taped to the mirror was a drawing.
Pencil. Water-stained. Smudged.
It showed a girl curled on the bathroom floor, crying. Her face was obscured by her hair.
In the hallway reflection behind her, a second girl stood, frozen. Watching.
Camille.
She ripped it down, tore it into pieces, flushed it. Turned on the tap to drown her thoughts.
But as steam fogged the glass, a new message appeared in the condensation.
Backwards. As if written from the other side.
She looked at you.
She backed away.
The sink kept running.
—
By Friday, Camille had stopped sleeping.
The sobbing returned every night — soft, mechanical, looped like a broken memory.
She began to see shadows move in her reflection. Hear echoes of her own footsteps following her.
Her phone buzzed one last time.
An Airdrop request.
📎 LYRA-FINAL.wav
Accept?
She declined.
The file sent anyway.
She threw her phone into the trash.
—
Saturday, she found herself outside the abandoned art wing. She didn't remember walking there.
The doors creaked. Dust clung to the windows like breath.
Inside a glass case meant for student exhibitions was something old, cracked, torn at the edges:
A sketch. Black ink on cream paper.
Lyra. Pressed against the glass, mouth open in a silent scream.
Behind her, in faint shadow, stood another figure.
Camille's hand rose to her throat.
She knew this sketch. Not from school.
From memory.
She'd seen Lyra that day in the hallway.
She'd seen the panic.
She'd heard the muffled crying behind the door.
And she had walked away.
Now the mirror was watching her back.