Chapter 7: When Mirrors Shatter

They didn't just leak my journal.

They ripped open a part of me that I had barely stitched together.

I sat frozen, staring at the screen as the post racked up likes and cruel comments. Pages of raw emotion — the kind you never share, not even with the people closest to you — exposed like a corpse under a spotlight.

"Look at this try-hard philosopher."

"He thinks he's deep? LOL."

"Someone hand this dude a tissue."

Each line they laughed at was a battle I'd bled for.

I threw my phone across the room. It hit the wall and clattered to the floor, screen intact — unlike me.

My chest felt tight, like I was drowning in the air. Every wall in my room pressed inward. I hadn't realized how loud silence could be until then.

I wanted to disappear. I wanted to burn everything I ever wrote.

And then the door knocked.

"Kai," Kaiya's voice.

I didn't answer. I couldn't. I didn't want her to see me like this — stripped, weak, humiliated.

But the door creaked open anyway. She stepped in slowly, holding her own phone in her hand.

"I saw it," she whispered.

I turned my face away. "You shouldn't have."

She sat beside me on the floor, close but not touching. "It's ugly, yeah. What they did. But not what you wrote."

"I sound pathetic."

"You sound real."

I swallowed hard. "Everyone knows now. Every dark corner I ever scribbled into that book…"

She didn't flinch. "You're afraid they've seen the part of you that's still healing. But maybe that's the part people need to see."

I looked at her for the first time since she entered. Her eyes weren't filled with pity. They were steady. Fierce.

"You remember when I gave you my journal?" she said.

I nodded.

"I wasn't brave. I was terrified. But you never laughed. You never ran."

She placed something in my hand. A folded piece of paper.

I opened it.

It was a sketch — her drawing this time. A mirror. Cracked, jagged. And inside it? A boy, fractured into pieces. But in the reflection, behind the cracks… he was smiling.

"I drew this after I saw your art that day," she said. "We're all cracked mirrors. But maybe that's how light gets through."

I didn't know whether to cry or scream or just fall into her arms. But I did neither. I just stared at that drawing, breathing in silence that didn't hurt as much anymore.

Then came the ping.

Another message.

But this one wasn't from the shadows.

It was a private message from someone named Yun. A previous scholarship recipient. He wrote:

"I saw your journal post. I've been there. Don't run. Let it fuel you. That's how I got mine. Apply anyway."

Kaiya grinned as she read over my shoulder. "The universe isn't done with you yet."

And for the first time that night, I smiled.

But that didn't mean everything was fine.

The next morning at school, whispers followed me like shadows. The laughter was quieter now, more uncertain — like they didn't know whether to mock me or admire me.

I kept walking. Head high. Not because I felt confident, but because Kaiya told me, "If you keep your chin up, your courage catches up to it."

The scholarship exam was still on.

But something else changed too.

That day, a teacher I barely spoke to pulled me aside. "Kai," he said, "I read your journal post. I don't know how it got out there, but… it moved me."

I blinked. "Moved you?"

He nodded. "There's truth in your words. That's rare. I teach literature, and half the essays I read feel dead inside. Yours… was alive."

I left that hallway with my heart pounding.

Not everyone saw weakness.

Some saw fire.

And as I sat in the library that evening, preparing for the scholarship test, Kaiya slid into the seat across from me with a smirk. "Let's rewrite your ending," she said, "one chapter at a time."

I looked at her — not just the girl who helped me survive — but the one helping me live.

But before I could speak, her phone buzzed.

Her face paled.

"What is it?" I asked.

She hesitated.

And then whispered: "You're not the only one they're targeting now…"

[End of Chapter 7]