At three o'clock in the morning, Chen Mo, the auditor of the Shark Live Platform, saw a push in the background that should not exist.
The ID of the live broadcast room was a string of garbled characters, and the screen was completely black except for a blood-red countdown floating in the center. A system message popped up in the barrage: "Welcome to the live broadcast room, you are the first viewer." The number of viewers was displayed as 0.
Then the lights came on. A young man was tied to a chair with Scotch tape, his mouth gagged, tears pouring from his wide eyes. He was shaking his head desperately. He's saying - it's not an act, help, it's not an act.
The masked man appears on the screen. A white mask with no facial features and a black word "Tao" written on the forehead. His voice didn't come from the headphones - it appeared directly in Chen Mo's mind. He said: "Every time you send a barrage, the person in the chair will be one step closer to death."
Chen Mo thought it was a script. Until he discovered that this live broadcast room used the IP address of the company's internal server, and that group of servers was not turned on at all. He looked down at the palm of his left hand, and a word appeared there. Blood red, as if it had just been carved with a knife..
When people die, they become ghosts, and when ghosts die, they become ghosts. The word is beating. Synchronized with his heartbeat, synchronized with the countdown on the screen, synchronized with something awakening in the mirror. The reflection in the mirror moves. Not his movement—its own movement. It was smiling at him. It is alive. All mirrors are alive. They are always watching.
