The school bell didn't just ring; it screamed.
Tong! Tong! Tong!
For most students at the high school, that sound was a victory lap—the start of karaoke sessions, convenience store snacks, and loud laughter. But for Fuen, it was just the start of the "Quiet Hours."
He sat at his desk, staring at the scarred wood until the last of his classmates had filtered out. He didn't have a club to go to or a group of friends waiting by the gate.
"I don't want to go back to that place," Fuen muttered, slinging his bag over his shoulder.
"That place" was the house his parents had left behind. It was a shell of a home. Every time he stepped inside, the silence was so thick it felt like the walls were trying to bite him, reminding him with every creak of the floorboard that he was completely, utterly alone.
"If I stay here, they look at me like a ghost," he huffed, walking out of the school gates. "If I go home, I am a ghost. Great options,
Fuen. Truly top-tier life choices."
Instead of turning toward the suburbs, Fuen headed toward the river. He wanted to drown out the sound of the city. He found his favorite spot—a patch of tall, unkempt grass under the Shinden Bridge, right near the edge of a stagnant pond-lake.
He sat down and watched his reflection in the murky water. His hair was a mess, and his eyes looked like he hadn't slept since the middle school era.
"Look at you," he whispered to the water. "I am nothing. If I were a character in a game, I'd be the NPC that doesn't even have a dialogue box." He let out a tired, self-deprecating laugh. "Only if I could become something... maybe then people would actually see me. Or maybe I'd just settle for a decent meal that isn't instant ramen."
The afternoon sun was surprisingly warm. It felt like a heavy, golden blanket. Fuen's eyelids grew heavy. Just a ten-minute nap, he thought. No one is looking for me anyway. The world won't stop spinning if I close my eyes.
He drifted off to sleep, tucked away in the grass where the world couldn't find him.
When Fuen opened his eyes, the gold was gone. The world was blue and silver. Night had fallen, and the temperature had dropped enough to make his breath hitch.
"Great. Now I'm cold and late for dinner with myself," he grumbled, sitting up.
He was about to stand when he heard a sound—the rhythmic thud of heavy boots on the gravel path under the bridge.
Fuen froze. In the tall grass, he was invisible. He watched as a man in a tall, dark duster coat walked toward the edge of the pond. The man didn't look like a local. He moved with a strange, stiff grace, and even in the dark, he seemed to radiate a faint, pulsing pressure.
The man stopped, looked around, and reached into his coat. He pulled out a silver-rimmed mirror and held it up to the moonlight.
Fuen's heart hammered against his ribs. Is he... taking a selfie with a mirror in the middle of the night? Fuen thought, his natural sarcasm bubbling up despite the tension. No, wait. That's not a normal mirror.
The man looked frustrated. He muttered something in a language that sounded like clicking glass, then set the mirror down on a flat rock to adjust his glove.
Maybe I should follow him, Fuen thought. It was the first spark of genuine curiosity he'd felt in years. Anything is better than going back to that biting house.
But as the man turned his back to inspect a strange device on his wrist, the mirror began to slide. The moss on the rock was slick from the night dew.
Plop.
The mirror slid right into the pond, sinking into the mud just a few feet from where Fuen was hiding.
The man froze. He didn't swear. He didn't shout. He turned around, his face pale with a terror so deep it made Fuen shiver. The man looked at the water as if he had just dropped his soul into a volcano.
Fuen watched from the tall weeds, his breath held tight. The pond wasn't just murky; it was deep. But the man in the dark attire didn't even try to reach for it. He stood at the muddy edge, shaking.
Is he… afraid of the water? Fuen wondered. Who has a phobia of a city park pond?
Fuen crept closer, moving like a shadow. He could hear the man murmuring now—a desperate, repetitive chant.
"Oh god, what should I do? If I don't go back, I'll lose my place. I'll lose my Status..."
Before Fuen could process what "Status" meant, a shout pierced the night.
"There he is! Catch him!"
Heavy footsteps echoed from the top of the bridge. A group of men in sharp, tactical gear—looking more like high-tech bounty hunters than police—swarmed the area.
The man in the dark coat bolted. He looked back at the spot where the mirror had sunk one last time, his eyes wide with agony. "I will come back somehow!" he cried out, his voice cracking. Then, in a blur of motion and shadows, the man and his pursuers vanished into the darkness of the city streets.
Silence returned to the pond, but the air felt charged, like the static before a lightning strike.
"What could be so special about a mirror?" Fuen muttered.
Curiosity, for the first time in his life, outweighed his fear. He waded into the freezing water. The silt at the bottom sucked at his shoes, and the light from a distant streetlamp made it hard to see beneath the surface. He felt around with his hands, his fingers numbing until they hit something hard and cold.
He pulled it out, dripping and covered in weeds.
"A broken mirror?" Fuen stared at it. A jagged crack ran down the center of the glass. "That guy was crying over a piece of trash?"
But as he looked at his own reflection in the cracked glass, the "nothing" feeling in his chest was suddenly replaced by a violent vibration. The clouds above parted, and a flash of lightning illuminated the park.
In that split second, the water in the center of the pond began to swirl. A dark, cloudy portal—swirling with violet smoke and humming with a terrifying, airy sound—erupted from the surface.
"Whoa—hey!"
Fuen scrambled to get back to the shore, but the suction was immense. It wasn't just pulling his body; it felt like it was pulling his very soul. He dug his fingers into the mud, but the portal was a vacuum that didn't care about his resistance.
With one final, lung-bursting tug, the boy who no one noticed was ripped out of his world. The pond went still. The grass stopped swaying.
Fuen was gone, and for the first time, his "lonely house" truly had a reason to be empty.