Haru was twelve years old.
Yet the world treated him as if he was already broken.
At home, the dinner table was never peaceful.
It was a place of comparison.
"Look at your brother."
"Why aren't you like him?"
"Don't you understand?"
His mother never shouted.
She didn't need to.
Her calm disappointment hurt far more than anger.
Haru smiled.
He always smiled.
But something inside him cracked a little more every day.
At school, he wasn't a failure.
But he wasn't a success either.
Sometimes he shocked his teachers with precise, almost unnatural answers.
Other times, he stared past the blackboard…
as if something stood behind it.
The truth was simple.
Haru wasn't stupid.
He noticed too much.
At night, when the house fell silent,
Haru stood in front of the mirror.
Not because he liked his reflection.
But because he didn't trust it.
The mirror responded a fraction of a second too late.
A delay so small no one else would notice.
But Haru did.
And one night…
the mirror didn't just reflect him.
It looked back.
Two green eyes appeared behind his own reflection.
Not hostile.
Not kind.
Just… aware.
Then came a voice.
Not from the mirror.
Not from his head.
From the space between them.
"You're not alone."
Haru froze.
He didn't scream.
He didn't run.
The strangest part?
The voice felt familiar.
As if it had always been there…
waiting for the right moment.
The next day, whispers followed him.
"That boy is strange."
"He's been like that since he was little."
"His mother is harsh, but maybe it's for his own good."
For his own good.
Haru didn't know it yet,
but when a mind is pressured long enough,
it doesn't break immediately.
It creates an exit.
A voice.
A shadow.
A world.
That night, Haru returned to the mirror.
This time…
his reflection smiled first.
And that was when the story truly began.