The night Shen Yuan disappeared, Shen Zuiyang found broken mirrors all over the floor in his brother's study. When the moonlight swept over the fragments, different reflections appeared on each mirror surface:
An old woman wearing a shroud kneels in front of a bronze mirror in a lonely house on a snowy night, and in the makeup mirror of a theater in the Republic of China, Tsing Yi flutters her blood-red sleeves - and in all the mirror images, Shen Yuan has his back to the camera, and the old scar on the back of his neck is seeping with ink mucus.
Heavy rain on the seventh day
Shen Zuiyang broke into the basement holding the last half of the cracked mirror.
Countless fragments of the world floated on both sides of the mirror corridor. The rouge box on the stage of the Republic of China suddenly rolled down. In the mirror, Shen Yuan suddenly turned his head, and his pupils reflected another version of himself behind Shen Zuiyang, raising a hammer.
Amidst the sound of glass crackling, reality and the mirror image trembled at the same time. The sinking abyss of all copy worlds began to climb toward the outside of the mirror, and the sound of knuckle tapping merged into a tidal wave.
When the police broke in, they saw only blood stains on the ground that snaked into the shape of an ouroboros.
Shen Zuiyang's pocket watch stopped at 00:07, with half a blood-stained lens embedded on the inside of the watch cover - it reflected Shen Yuan pushing open a bronze door, and the withered hand stretched out from the crack of the door had the same birthmark as his.
Concept: Love is the most efficient way of survival.
