The room was silent, but Rina's heart pounded in her chest. Her reflection in the backward mirror was no longer her own—no, it had become something monstrous, something that wore her skin like a second layer, something that mocked her very existence. The smile never wavered.
The figure—her figure—moved closer, each step dragging like a thousand years. "You've always been here, Rina," it whispered, its voice dripping with venom. "You just didn't know it."
She tried to scream again, but the sound was suffocated in her throat, as if her very being had been erased from the world. Her limbs grew heavy, lifeless, as if the very air was suffocating her, stripping away the last remnants of her humanity.
"Stop… no… please… don't—"
Her own voice seemed distant, as if it didn't belong to her. The figure reached out, its hands cold, as though death itself had touched them. It cupped her face, its fingers digging into her cheeks with an unnatural force, twisting her features into an expression that wasn't her own. The pain was sharp, but it wasn't the pain of flesh—it was the pain of losing herself.
"It's too late for you," the figure said, its grin widening with an impossible stretch. "You're no longer Rina. You're something else now. Something empty. Something that no longer remembers."
Rina's breath caught in her throat. Her eyes blurred as the figure's face melted, shifting into something unrecognizable—like the faces of everyone she had ever known, morphing into grotesque mockeries of themselves. Her classmates. Her parents. The town. All smiling, all staring with hollow eyes, their lips never stopping their silent, eerie grins.
The room spun. The walls closed in around her, pushing her against the mirror. It was suffocating—no space to breathe, no space to think. Just the dark weight of endless faces and endless smiles, closing in on her from every angle. Every step she took, the room seemed to shrink. She pressed against the mirror, but it gave way—nothing solid. She was trapped in an endless void, a prison made of her own fear.
The whispers grew louder, until they became deafening. They screamed her name, but it wasn't the name she remembered. They screamed it in a thousand voices, each one more desperate than the last. Rina. Rina. Rina.
Her hands shook as she clawed at her throat, trying to force out a scream—any sound at all. But there was nothing. No sound. Her mouth moved, but no words came. Her voice was gone, stolen by something far worse than death.
The mirror fractured beneath her touch, and for a brief moment, she saw it—her reflection. But not the one she knew. Not the one that had come to this town with hope. No. This was a reflection that never was. Her eyes were black holes, empty and endless, swallowing all light, all hope, all memory. Her face was a mask, and in it, she saw only darkness.
She fell to her knees, her body shaking, her soul unraveling. The floor beneath her cracked open, revealing a pit of shadows—a never-ending abyss that called to her, promising an escape she knew would never come.
The figure loomed over her, its shadow growing, swallowing her whole. She tried to move, but her body was stiff—frozen in place, as if she were already part of the wall, part of the mirror, part of the endless void.
"You should've screamed," the figure hissed. "But you forgot, didn't you? You thought you could escape, thought you could be real. But there is no real here. There's only us. And you... you're just a name now. Just a smile."
Tears rolled down Rina's face, but they froze before they could fall. She had become part of the reflection, part of the horror, part of the town. And the worst part? She knew that no one would ever remember her.
Not her parents. Not her friends. Not the world. All that would remain was the smile. The smile that would haunt this place forever.
And then, in a final breath of realization, she knew: she was no longer Rina. She was the face, the mask, the smile.
Forever.
---
End