Shadows Between the Lines
A Lingering Sense of Displacement
The room was quiet, save for the occasional tick of the wall clock.
Yuer sat at her desk, her fingers resting lightly on the cover of her journal.
She had always kept one—not for daily events, but for sorting through her thoughts, untangling the mess of emotions that sometimes felt too abstract to say out loud. Writing had a way of making things real. Concrete. Manageable.
She flipped to a fresh page, the paper smooth beneath her fingertips.
The pen felt familiar in her grip as she let the ink flow.
"Something strange happened today."
She stopped.
Her gaze lingered on the words.
They were hers. But at the same time… they weren't.
A Handwriting That Wasn't Quite Hers
Yuer frowned.
Her handwriting was usually neat, rounded—a habit from years of careful note-taking. But the letters on the page now were different. More fluid. Sharper at the edges.
She picked up her pen again and, in the corner of the page, rewrote the same sentence.
"Something strange happened today."
The difference was immediate.
The words she had just written—deliberately, consciously—looked exactly like her usual handwriting.
But the first line…
The first line had been written with her left hand.
A chill ran through her.
She wasn't left-handed.
She never had been.
And yet, the letters were just as steady. Just as natural.
Her grip on the pen tightened. This wasn't normal.
The Faint Stains That Shouldn't Exist
Pushing back from her desk, she stood up.
There was something else. A nagging unease that had settled deep in her bones since she got home. Something off.
Her body felt wrong.
She glanced down at herself, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Her school sports pants hung loosely around her legs, the familiar fabric suddenly foreign against her skin.
Then, as she moved, her eyes caught something near her ankle.
She froze.
A dark stain spread across her skin, faint but undeniable.
She blinked.
The stain blurred, unfocused—as if it wasn't fully there, as if her eyes couldn't decide whether to register it or not.
Yuer's breath hitched. Her fingers trembled as she reached down, brushing her fingertips over the spot.
Cold.
Her skin was warm beneath her touch, but the stain itself—it felt cold.
She rubbed at it, but it wouldn't come off.
Panic coiled in her chest. What is this?
Her gaze darted upward, her reflection in the mirror catching the edge of her vision.
And for a split second—just a flicker—she saw it.
The same dark markings, spreading across her face.
Her heart pounded against her ribs. She gasped, stumbling backward, her hands flying to her cheeks.
By the time she looked again—
They were gone.
Just like that.
Like they had never been there at all.
The Unseen Hand That Moved Without Her
Yuer forced herself to sit back down, her mind racing.
It had to be exhaustion. Stress. A trick of the light.
She reached for her pen again, willing herself to focus. Write it down. Make sense of it.
But as she gripped the pen in her right hand, preparing to write What is happening to me?, something went wrong.
Her fingers slackened.
The pen slipped from her grip.
And then—before she could even react—
Her left hand caught it.
Her breath hitched.
She hadn't moved it.
Not consciously.
Yet, her left hand had reached out, faster than she could process, gripping the pen with perfect ease.
Before she could let go—before she could even think to stop it—
The pen touched the paper.
And it began to write.
Her fingers curled around the journal's edge as she watched—heart pounding, breath shallow.
The letters formed slowly, deliberately.
"You finally noticed."
Yuer's pulse thundered in her ears.
She shoved the chair back, scrambling to her feet, eyes locked onto the words on the page.
Not hers.
Not hers.
But written with her own hand.
The silence in the room deepened, the air thick with something unseen.
A breeze ghosted through the open window, making the curtains sway. The shadows in the room felt heavier, pressing in.
For the first time in her life—
She wasn't sure if she was alone in her own body.