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【 Urban psychology 】 The person in the mirror
墨書 Inktalez
Zhuang Mu's life is pretty good. No, it's very good.
At a young age, he has a high income job, a large apartment in the city center, and over ten million internet followers. He has made a name for himself in the metropolis. Although his appearance is not outstanding, his extraordinary talent has earned him admirers. His long-standing habit of being alone makes people think he is reclusive, and those admirers are just like people observing him from afar in a museum. He never thought that there would be a thief walking a tightrope for him in his life. Perhaps he has also thought about it in the wee hours of a drunken night. He likes to direct and act, preferring period dramas. At that time, he was Qin Jiajing, waiting for the nearby the Jia mansion's Bao Yu to affectionately call him.
As a man, he lives more delicately than most women. Rumor has it that he has had plastic surgery, that he was the one being taken advantage of before entering the operating room, and that he became the one taking advantage of others after leaving the operating room. His appearance has changed, but the feminine quality in his bones cannot be shaken off. He doesn't care about these rumors, as they are just boring gossip from people who have given up on life and feel deceived by life. He doesn't think his life is particularly delicate. If buying a fresh bouquet of daffodils every day is considered delicate, if cooking with a balanced diet and changing the art pieces at home regularly is considered delicate, then the standard is too low. Since he can remember, his mother has lived like this, so in his eyes, this is how life is. It's clear that others have forgotten how to live seriously, especially women nowadays, who are too lazy.
His daily grooming routine is fixed. First, he brushes his teeth, dividing all his teeth into three parts and brushing each part in two modes for one minute each. Then he washes his face, soaking a paper mask in warm water and applying it to his face for five minutes, followed by using a facial cleanser rich in herbal essence. After rinsing his face with lukewarm water, he takes a shower, using only one brand of soap and a body scrub once a week. Finally, he applies body lotion in front of the dressing mirror and daydreams. This is a little secret - he likes to apply body lotion in front of the mirror, naked, to admire his own body lines. It reminds him of a Hong Kong movie he once watched, something about "gangs blossoming in full bloom."
This morning, as he turned around, his bath towel flung onto the mirror stand. He heard the mirror shatter with a "crash" and a scream, but it didn't sound very real. He walked over to look at the broken mirror, and some of the shards were pieced together to resemble a face.
"Never mind, I'll just have to buy a new mirror."
Because he was a regular customer, the mirror was quickly delivered. He hurried out for an afternoon meeting and returned in the evening at nine. He quickly unpacked and assembled the mirror frame. He hated dragging things out. The mirror was still the same style, and he didn't want to adapt to a new style. Everything in the room was designed, and a change in the mirror style meant a major change in the room layout. He didn't have time for that. He noticed a few butterfly engravings on the edge of the mirror. The delivery person seemed to have mentioned it.
His phone showed ten-thirty, and he was really tired today. He decided to brush his teeth and wash his face while taking a shower. This was his little rebellion. As he wiped his body in front of the mirror, his hand followed the line of his body, his abs, the V-line, chest muscles, collarbones, and jawline. He shyly smiled. He was adorable. He turned to get the body lotion from the shelf and suddenly caught sight of something. A kind of terrifying little bug quickly crawled into every pore, and his hair stood on end in terror.
The solitary house became even quieter, and a sound similar to the hiss of a carbonated drink being opened came to his ears. It was his throat moving, swallowing saliva. He slowly turned his head, his breathing becoming more and more rapid, the same frequency as when he made love, but making love was filled with the hormonal interest and adrenaline excitement, while at this moment there was only trembling fear. Finally turning his head, he saw in the mirror a person who looked just like him, also naked, but the difference was that the person in the mirror didn't move a muscle. His hand reached out towards the mirror, trembling uncontrollably, not knowing if it was fear, because he already had a tremor in his hands. Parkinson's was an old joke his friends made about him.
The person in the mirror seemed frozen, a pair of eyes staring at something, lacking the brightness that should come with that age. At the moment his fingertips touched the mirror, the person in the mirror suddenly moved. He took a big step back, straightened his body, and leaned on the marble sink, his fingernails digging into the edge, his small eyes staring like brass bells. He had always felt that in his past life, he was a lilac-colored stuffed cat. After calming his mind, fear was ultimately no match for curiosity. After all, he was a cat. He tentatively leaned forward to explore his left leg, lowered his head, squinted one-third of his eyes, and saw that the room on that side was much darker, and the person in the mirror was already lying naked, asleep.
His courage grew as he stopped one step away from the mirror, tilting his head from side to side to survey the room reflected in the mirror. There was a simple single bed, crowded with a thick double quilt, an ordinary double-door wardrobe, a table with a missing corner under the window, a wicker chair, and a small refrigerator next to it, intermittently emitting the sound of freon cooling, and nothing else. He forgot his previous fear, and what occupied him now was curiosity and excitement. Who was the person in the mirror? Why did they look exactly like him? Could it be that he had a twin brother hidden from him by his parents in this world? He asked many questions, but did not question the mirror, which contradicted science. He was really too tired, intending to stay up all night to keep watch, but when he woke up, he found that there was no one in the room.
He approached the mirror and saw a cup of steaming tea on the table, with the tea bag wrapped around the handle three times, tied with a knot on the third loop. He was stunned. In addition to his surprise, his gaze swept across the furnishings in the room: a half-bundle of narcissus in the vase on the right side of the table, the quilt neatly folded into thirds and placed on the left side of the bed, the pillow pressed under the blanket, the wardrobe door only partially open, clothes inside arranged by color in the compartments, and shoes lined up in a row from high to low against the wall. He had the same living habits. A terrible thought crawled into his mind like a spider. He felt a sharp pain, like dominoes, passing through his joints to his brain. His palm, resting on the ground, had been pierced by something. It was the glass shards from yesterday that hadn't been cleaned up. Strangely, his palm wasn't bleeding, just a new cut.
The door opened, and a figure wrapped in a light blue towel appeared in the mirror, looking like he had just finished showering. He watched as the person in front of him, identical to himself, stood there and began to dry off. The figure had a good physique, and out of male instinct, he glanced at the person's genitals in the mirror, then lowered his own pants to compare. They were about the same length. He felt a sense of relief, like a draw in a match. His gaze suddenly stopped at a black mole on the left side of the figure's collarbone in the mirror. He subconsciously touched his own left collarbone, where there was also a mole, but it was red. His mole had originally been black, but it had been scratched and bled, turning it the color of cinnabar. A spider had made a home in his ear. He no longer found it frightening, but rather felt moved, as if a wave of warmth was being blown out by the boisterous heat of a café in winter.
After that, he added a new routine to his daily life - looking in the mirror. He deliberately did the same things as the figure in the mirror, putting on freshly bought narcissus flowers, brewing a cup of green tea, turning on the stereo and singing and dancing along with the music, laying out a mat on the floor for aerobics. Previously, when doing these things, he felt like a medieval knight, but now, he never expected that he could also be a commoner, even wanting to go out and loudly declare that his life was not refined. He felt more confident, and even at work, his face showed a hint of joy and anticipation. There was a new rumor that he was in love. He still paid no attention to it, but he did buy more half-bunches of narcissus at the flower shop. He cared about the figure in the mirror. Of course, he was not always happy. When the figure in the mirror had instant noodles for dinner for a whole week, he was very disappointed, as if he himself was eating instant noodles. When the figure in the mirror bought a bunch of cheap and average-quality toiletries, he felt annoyed, as if there were places on his own body that were not clean. When the figure in the mirror bought a pile of cheap and average-looking clothes online, he was very angry and immediately went to the closet to check each item to avoid feeling embarrassed. At these times, his shame and pride were condemning the figure in the mirror. He would never allow such a down-and-out side to appear in his life. If possible, he really wanted to give the figure in the mirror some money. He was afraid that if anyone saw it, they would mistakenly attribute such a disgraceful aspect to him.
At the end of the day, as usual, he looked in the mirror, but the reflection was absent. After dinner, he brewed a cup of tea and sat in front of the mirror, waiting for his roommate to return. He didn't know what time it was when he woke up, but the night was so dark it seemed to shine. In the mirror, he sat still on the edge of the bed, his face glistening with tears from the light outside the window. He didn't know why he was silently crying in the middle of the night. His face felt itchy, the sensation of salty tears clinging to his skin for a long time. He reached up to touch his face, but couldn't wipe them away. A long time ago, he seemed to have cried like this, but he couldn't remember. Finally, he concluded that it was his compassionate heart releasing kindness, but he didn't want kindness to be released now. He often released this kind of kindness, and each time it ended, there was a sense of numbness, followed by a deep sleep. His eyelids turned from pitch black to bright red, and as he opened his eyes, he found an empty room. Where was everyone? Thinking of the scene from last night, he worried that something bad might happen. The next minute, the man in the mirror walked into the room wrapped in a towel, standing in front of him. He just quietly watched a naked man as he ran his hand up the meridian line, from the abs, to the V-line, chest muscles, collarbone, jawline, and finally shyly smiled. He breathed a sigh of relief, self-entertaining.
Just as he turned around to prepare for washing up, a loud noise echoed through the entire room. What happened next was beyond his expectations: the room began to crack, a vertical crack from the ceiling to the middle of the room, a diagonal crack from the bed to the floor, and a crack from the outside window to the inside, splitting his beloved bookshelf. The fine cracks came one after another, reflecting a dazzling light that made it impossible for him to open his eyes. The most terrifying thing happened; his body had many cracks, the distinct abs and V-line were broken, the proud collarbone collapsed, and several cracks ran along the muscle lines he had touched countless times, all the way to his forehead. He was so scared that he screamed loudly. He had never known he could make such a high-pitched sound. In fact, the whole process lasted only a second before it ended. He couldn't see, but he was sure that everything had shattered. He was shattered too. He was so scared that he couldn't even feel his own existence. He wanted to cry, to speak, to call for help, but he couldn't make a sound.
In a moment of horror, he saw the figure in the mirror walking towards him naked, casting a glance in his direction. It was the first time he had heard the voice of the figure in the mirror, a voice that was both familiar and unfamiliar, with a somewhat charming tone.
"Well, I guess I'll have to buy a new mirror."
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