Chapter 8: The Other Side of the Glass

That day at school. At first glance, everything seemed normal. But then you noticed the mirrors, each one covered with thick black lines. The teachers walked through the halls as if nothing had changed, but... the students, they felt it.

Rina's voice trembled as she looked around.

—"Why can they feel it now…?"

Kureha didn't look away.

—"Because the Pulse has begun."

—"The Threshold doesn't need cracks anymore… it's already inside us. Through shared resonance."

Aoi pressed his hand against his chest. His stethoscope began to vibrate, but it wasn't his own heartbeat.

—"What if we are… what's on the other side?"

In the school infirmary, a student was unconscious, but his reflection in the glass cabinet beside him was awake, moving and smiling.

The nurse ran out in panic just as Aoi and Kureha entered. Kureha leaned in, activating her stethoscope. Two brainwaves appeared on the screen—inverted, but synchronized.

—"…He's living through the reflection," Aoi murmured.

Kureha's voice was low. Unyielding.

—"And the reflection… is living better without him."

A flicker of the past surged through Aoi's mind.

He, much younger, sick and weak. Lying on a cot in the same infirmary. Outside the glass, his mother stood, watching from a distance, but inside, his reflection approached and gently stroked his hair.

—"If you let me out," it whispered,

—"I could take care of you… better than she ever did."

The boy reached out, placing his hand against the glass. The reflection smiled proudly.

Inside the Threshold, in a distorted zone: The Inversion Room.

Kureha and Aoi walked through an upside-down realm. Gravity inverted, time folded over itself.

In the center was a dark, dripping mirror. Memories leaked from its surface like liquid silver, forming bubbles that floated around it.

One bubble glowed. Inside it, Aoi was running scared—but it wasn't him. It was his reflection running from him.

At night, Aoi lay in his bed, looking at his mirror. It showed an entire city on the other side of the glass. People moved without faces, without voices.

Aoi whispered to himself.

—"Has it always been like this… or am I just now seeing it?"

The reflection in the glass smiled.

—"Soon…" it said,

—"we'll be the same."

It shattered the mirror with its own hands. Blood spilled, and the glass fell in pieces. But in one of the broken shards, his reflection still stared at him—unharmed, smiling.

Aoi screamed.

—"You're not me!"

The reflection laughed. Then their voices synchronized for the first time.

Together:

—"Or maybe… I'm just what you left behind?"

Above them, the sky cracked like glass.

And the world began to fold in on itself.

A mirrored copy of everything.

---

Preview of Next Chapter:

Aoi disappears from the real world. Kureha and Rina must enter an incomplete reflection to find him. But inside the Perfect Echo… there are parts of Aoi that never wanted to be saved.