In the full-length mirror in Chen Mo's rented apartment, someone is always combing his hair for him.
It's a woman in red, with black hair trailing to the floor. The peachwood comb in her hand is missing half a tooth, and a peach-blossom curse he can't understand is tangled between its teeth. Whenever the midnight bell tolls, the woman in the mirror smiles at him and says, "It's been ten years. Time to give back what you owe me."
Chen Mo thinks it's an illusion, until a text from his landlord announcing a rent increase jolts him awake. This month's rent happens to equal the total compensation paid to the seven victims of the "Scarlet Rain Night" ten years ago. And the peach-blossom mark that suddenly appears on the back of his hand matches the pattern between the teeth of the woman in the mirror's comb perfectly.
A broken peachwood comb he picked up by chance leads to a conspiracy spanning ten years:
Brother Li from the Anomaly Management Bureau always tells him to "watch out for mirrors" while offering him a cigarette, then turns around and writes in his file, "Chen Mo: 98% vessel compatibility";
Kind and gentle Sister Lin helps him fend off the black hands reaching out of the mirror, but the half peach-blossom mark on the back of her hand comes from the same source as the scar on Zhao Kun, the culprit behind Scarlet Rain Night;
Even Su Wan, the woman in the mirror, is hiding a secret: she doesn't want his life. She wants Chen Mo to remember the truth. Of the seven "sacrifices" who died in Theater Alley, the seventh was his grandfather, and Chen Mo is the only "gatekeeper descendant" capable of stitching the cracks between mirrored worlds shut.
As a scarlet rift splits open above the city, and every reflection in every mirror raises a peachwood comb, Chen Mo finally grips the broken comb and looks at the faceless version of himself in the mirror.
"What I have to reclaim isn't a life. It's the ten years that were stolen, and the rules that were rewritten."
This is a gamble with memories as the stakes. Win, and the two worlds will each return to their proper place...
