CHAPTER-5 THE SILENCE BETWEEN US

He first saw her in a mirror.

Not in a scream.

Not in thunder.

In silence.

A silence so heavy, so still, it could've been mistaken for peace—

—but Soren had long stopped confusing silence with safety.

The dormitory had long since fallen asleep, its halls humming with boiler heat and ghost-breath wind. Pipes rattled like bones. The radiator hissed. And yet, beneath all of that, there was something deeper. Something quieter. Something… waiting.

Soren lay awake. Not just awake—listening. His arms were behind his head, body stiff like he didn't trust the bed beneath him. His eyes didn't flutter or wander. They were locked on the ceiling, watching the moonlight crawl across it like a silver ghost. It painted long, thin streaks across the cracks, turning every inch of plaster into a scar.

He hadn't dreamed in days.

Not since the night in the garden when he'd buried the bird.

Not since the moment the earth took it from his hands, like even death was too afraid to keep things close anymore.

Not since he whispered, "Don't leave me too," into a sky that didn't answer.

And then—

The mirror across the room… fogged.

No heat. No breath. Just the cold.

A creeping, unnatural frost that began at the corners of the glass and spread inward like something exhaling from inside the mirror itself. Like breath from the other side.

Soren didn't move at first.

He stared.

The frost deepened, crystallized.

And through it… a silhouette formed.

It was faint at first. Just a smudge. A blur. But as the room quieted even more—if that was even possible—she became clearer.

Delicate.

Girlish.

Still.

He sat up. Slowly. No startle. No gasp. His reaction wasn't fear.

It was recognition.

As if part of him had been waiting for her.

As if something inside him already knew.

His chest didn't rise with alarm. It hardly rose at all.

The numbness had claimed him long ago, and this? This was almost comfort. Cold comfort, but comfort nonetheless.

The girl in the mirror wore a long dress. It moved slightly, but there was no wind. Her hair fell down in dark ropes past her shoulders, curled and twisted like ivy vines wrapping around the throat of an abandoned house. Her eyes were huge—too huge for her face—but they weren't afraid. They weren't angry.

They were hollow.

Completely.

Like someone had scooped the light out and left the shell behind.

She didn't speak.

She didn't blink.

She just… watched.

Soren stood slowly. His legs weren't sure, but something else in him was—something like a thread, like fate pulling from his chest, guiding him across the room.

He stepped closer.

He whispered, "Who are you?"

No answer.

Just silence… and then, the sound of something cracking.

The mirror fractured. Not shattering—but splitting. A single sharp line down the center. It wasn't glass breaking. It was something else.

Written in the frost, faint but real, were the words:

"Don't trust the ones who smile with their eyes."

He blinked.

The message vanished.

The fog cleared.

The girl was gone.

But the chill stayed.

It stayed for a long, long time.

The next few nights were all echoes of the first.

Frosted mirrors. Flickering lights. That same girl—The Girl, as he started calling her, though the name felt wrong. She wasn't a girl. She wasn't even just a ghost. She was something older. Like grief carved into memory. Like pain left in a hallway too long.

She came in dreams, sometimes.

Not loud dreams. Not bloody ones.

Quiet. Empty. Endless.

He'd be walking the halls of the school, and there she'd be—just ahead of him. Never speaking. Never turning. Her dress always dragging behind her like she was floating, her bare feet never quite touching the floor.

One night, he couldn't take it anymore.

He sat before the mirror like it was an altar.

He whispered: "What happened to you?"

She didn't speak. But her pale hand pressed against the other side of the glass.

He pressed his own to it.

And though they didn't touch… the cold surged through him like a warning. Like a goodbye.

Then…

Yena arrived.

Not the ghost. The real one.

She transferred in the middle of the term, when the wind was sharp and the trees had already given up.

The teachers said she was "from the city." That her parents traveled for work. That she was ordinary.

But she wasn't. She glowed.

She sat beside Soren in English class, without hesitation. She offered him her extra chocolate milk at lunch like they'd been friends forever. She laughed at the teacher's dumb jokes, and made even silence feel less lonely.

Soren didn't trust her smile at first. It was too… full. Too bright.

It reminded him of people who made promises they couldn't keep.

But then one day, when they were alone, she leaned in and whispered:

"This school's full of shadows, huh? But you don't seem afraid."

His breath caught.

He hadn't told her anything.

But he started to sit a little closer after that.

The more he spoke to Yena… the less he saw her.

The mirror stopped fogging.

The girl stopped coming.

No more dreams. No more frost. No more cracked glass.

Just stillness. Warmth. Normalcy.

He should've felt guilty. But he didn't.

Not yet.

He and Yena walked the halls together. Ate together. Found a hidden hallway behind the library filled with old paintings and forgotten sunlight. She called it their "hideout." He let her.

She made him laugh one day. Really laugh. It shook him. It broke something open inside his chest that he didn't even realize was sealed shut.

That night… he forgot The Girl.

Until the humming came.

He was walking past the forbidden corridor near the west wing—locked, chained, off-limits for "repairs"—when he heard it.

A soft, sad melody.

So familiar it made his skin crawl.

It was the tune The Girl once hummed in a dream. A lullaby that never ended. One that always stopped just before the final note.

He stood frozen in front of the locked door.

Something inside that hallway… knew him.

Then—

Yena appeared behind him.

"Did you hear something?" she asked, voice gentle, curious.

He turned slowly.

She smiled.

He didn't answer.

He just stepped away.

That night, the mirror was veiled again.

Not by dust. Not by time.

By shadow.

Thick, curling smoke, blacker than black, hugging the glass like a bruise. He wiped it with trembling fingers—

And there she was.

But her eyes weren't hollow anymore.

They were hurt.

And behind her—

a shadow.

A second figure.

Faint. Watching.

Fading.

Soren stepped closer to the mirror.

"Why did you leave me?" he whispered.

"Why did you stop coming?"

She didn't answer. But in the lower corner of the mirror, scratched like a curse into the frost, was one final message:

"If you choose warmth, don't cry when it burns."

The next day, Yena braided his hair as a joke.

He rolled his eyes and said no.

They laughed.

But that night… he couldn't stop seeing the second shadow. The one behind The Girl. The one that watched him.

Later, he woke with a start.

Not from a nightmare.

But from the lack of one.

The mirror was shattered.

Not a web of cracks—just one clean, perfect break. Straight down the middle, like a judgment.

At his feet…

a single white feather.

He picked it up.

It smelled like cold.

And from the shadows behind him…

someone whispered his name.