Light.
Soft and wrong.
The apartment looked the same
but everything had changed shape.
The colors were faded, like someone had washed the world too many times.
The clock ticked backward again.
The plants by the window drooped toward the floor, like they were listening.
I tried to move, and the air moved with me.
Heavy. Slow.
Every breath came with the faint sound of water rushing through my ears.
"Ruan?"
My voice sounded like someone else's dream.
No answer.
Only the hum of electricity, a soft mechanical heartbeat running through the walls.
I turned slowly.
The picture frames were all wrong.
My face had been painted over..subtly, perfectly with hers.
Each smile was just a degree off.
Each laugh looked practiced.
A life I didn't remember living.
The couch was there,
the blanket folded neatly,
the coffee cup placed with the handle facing right..his habit, not mine.
He used to leave it sideways, crooked, careless.
He used to be messy.
He used to be real.
Now the apartment looked like a museum exhibit of our relationship.
Too clean.
Too still.
Something whispered from behind me.
Soft, rhythmic.
"Drip… drip… drip…"
Not water.
Words.
I turned and there it was again.
The mirror.
Cracked from before.
Still bleeding light through the fractures.
My reflection lagged a half-second behind me.
Then it smiled, even though I didn't.
"You shouldn't have come back," it said.
My throat locked. "I never left."
"Didn't you?"
The reflection tilted its head. "You left a lot of pieces behind."
"What do you want?"
"To finish what you started."
The mirror flickered.
Images flashed quick, broken:
me arguing with Ruan,
his hand slamming against the wall,
the empty pill bottle,
the rain hitting the balcony rail.
Then...black.
I stumbled back, shaking. "Stop. That's not....."
"Memory is soft," the reflection whispered. "Yours are bending."
"No."
I gritted my teeth. "I know what happened."
It smiled wider. "Do you?"
The apartment shifted around me
the walls breathing in slow pulses.
A calendar flipped by itself on the fridge door.
The dates blurred together until only one remained visible: Today.
I looked again
my handwriting across the page:
Dinner with Ruan.
I hadn't written that.
The air smelled like burnt sugar and old perfume.
A shadow passed by the kitchen door.
Someone was humming.
I turned and she was there.
Her.
The thing in my skin.
Except she didn't look solid now.
Half light, half smoke.
Half me.
She leaned against the doorway, watching me like she'd been waiting.
"You shouldn't be here," she said.
"You're going to ruin it."
"Ruin what?"
"The peace."
Her voice was soft, calm, motherly. "He's finally sleeping. Finally happy."
"You call that peace?" I laughed. It came out raw. "He's living with a lie!"
She smiled faintly. "He doesn't care. He never did. He just wanted the noise to stop."
Her words hit like cold water.
I wanted to deny it, but deep inside..
I remembered.
The nights he wouldn't look at me.
The way he'd say "you're exhausting."
The moments I tried to make him love me harder than he could.
Maybe she was right.
Maybe he didn't care which version of me he had.
As long as it stayed quiet.
I sank to the floor, my knees going through the carpet like mist.
"What are you doing to me?" I whispered.
She crouched, meeting my eyes.
Her irises glowed faintly like light trapped under ice.
"I'm fixing the story," she said. "You left it broken."
"You're not real."
She tilted her head. "Neither are you."
Her hand reached toward me, and for a moment..just a moment..our fingers touched.
The sensation was like static.
A heartbeat not mine.
A pulse echoing through me.
Then she leaned in, her breath cold against my ear.
"He won't remember you soon," she whispered.
And before I could move, she pressed her hand against my chest.
The world cracked.
---
I woke in the kitchen.
Or something like it.
The wallpaper was peeling in reverse—new patterns forming instead of fading.
My name on the refrigerator magnets had changed: MORANA → MAYA.
I reached out, tried to rearrange them.
My hand went through.
The letters slid into place by themselves, spelling:
FORGOTTEN.
The mirror above the sink caught my reflection.
I didn't have a face anymore.
Just light where my features should've been.
The sound came again.
Knock...Knock...Knock...
Bathroom door.
Always the same door.
I turned toward it.
"Don't open it," a voice whispered.
My voice.
Older.
Tired.
But the handle turned on its own.
The door creaked open.
Inside nothing.
Just water dripping from the sink.
Each drop hit the tile and echoed like a heartbeat.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
I leaned closer to the mirror above the sink.
My reflection smiled before I did.
"You'll understand soon," it said. "Everyone forgets eventually."
Then it blinked
and the reflection wasn't me anymore.
It was Ruan.
Standing behind my body.
Kissing her hair.
Whispering, "I love you, Maya."
The sound tore through me.
And when I looked down
the word MAYA was carved faintly into the floor tiles, like it had always been there.
The apartment fell silent.
No whispers.
No mirrors breathing.
Just him
laughing softly somewhere in my stolen memories.
He looked happy.
Finally.
Peaceful, even.
Peace.
The one thing I wanted for myself
and he found it using my face.
He called her Maya.
The same name that used to make my stomach twist.
And she smiled back, wearing my smile.
I stood there, weightless, unseen,
watching my body and my name belong to someone else.
Death wasn't freedom.
It was a mirror that refused to let me look away.
I thought I'd escaped him.
But peace doesn't exist for the forgotten.
The light flickered once soft, red, warning.
In its glow, I saw my reflection move on its own,
smiling like it knew what I was about to become.
"You wanted peace," it whispered.
"Then make it yourself."
The walls around me pulsed with that same heartbeat..slow, angry, alive.
And for the first time since I died,
I smiled back.
Not the kind of smile you give someone you love
but the one you wear when you finally decide to burn everything they built.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
The sound of something waking.
Something that used to be me...