The Mirror Among Men

[A collection of bizarre tales, slightly dark, with a slow build.]

[Blurb]

Whether real or imagined, neither you nor I can escape existence.

As I stand beside the abyss, the abyss gazes back at me.

[Story One: The Person in the Mirror]

Is the me in the mirror my true self?

This question suddenly came to Gu Yuan's mind recently.

Every night, standing in front of the mirror, Gu Yuan would feel dazed, thinking, That's not me. That's someone else.

By the time she truly uncovered the secret behind it, she had already become deeply captivated by the self in the mirror.

So illusory, and yet so real.

The person in the mirror, the me in the mirror, the world inside the mirror.

[Story Two: Blood Beneath the Bed]

Ji Xiao'an often went to beauty salons for treatments. She frequently had to lie face down while the staff massaged and treated her back.

As she lay on the bed, she would look through the breathing hole where her face was positioned so she could breathe. Yet she was always aware of strange footsteps nearby and the feeling that someone was standing beside her, watching.

Then, one day, drops of blood began dripping from near the bed legs, falling beneath her face.

The bright red blood spread and blurred, and a faint glint appeared before her eyes.

It was a face smeared with blood and flesh, right behind her bed.

Her scream rang through the skies, but no one came.

It was an endless battlefield, and her final, irreparable ruin.

[Story Three: Marks on the Wall]

Wu Lai was an ordinary laborer. When he got home from work one day, he found strange scratches on the wall, marks no person could have made.

He asked his wife and son about them. They looked shocked and asked where the scratches had come from, while the disdain on their faces was plain to see.

Anger? Grief?

He couldn't feel a thing.

His exhausting daily labor wasn't enough to make him feel those things.

But the scratches kept multiplying, and he began to grow restless.

He even called his best friend, who also wondered whether Wu Lai had gone mad.

Those words drove Wu Lai completely over the edge. The world had turned upside down, setting him against it.

The more they argued, the more the marks grew in number and size, until the ceiling collapsed and the damage became irreversible.

[Story Four: Thread Around Paper]

[Story Five: Infant's Crying Laughter]

[Story Six: Blood Playground]

[For why these aren't written out in detail, see the author's note in Chapter 16.]

[Reader's Guide]

1. A collection of all kinds of strange, bizarre tales. More stories will be added to the blurb as they come.

2. Slightly dark, slightly illogical, and packed with all sorts of elements. There should be paranormal beings and other nonhuman entities.

3. The stories won't necessarily be written in order. I'll start with whichever one inspires me most.

4. One installment is told from the female lead's perspective, and the next may be from the male lead's, so the point of view isn't fixed.

5. The story follows an episodic format centered on the male and female leads, though an episode may begin with a supporting character.

6. The story builds slowly and focuses on the main plot, with little romance.

Blurb written July 28, 2023, at 10:10.

Theme: The world holds more than one possibility.