Every Morning, My Mirror Saves the World - Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Ruiyin held up the built-in flashlight on her knockoff phone with one hand and fished around in her bag for her keys with the other, trembling like she had Parkinson’s. One careless overcorrection later, the keys slipped from her fingers and dropped straight into the vast ocean beneath the steps.

Ruiyin took a deep breath, forced down the urge to curse someone’s mother, and reached into the water. By some miracle, she found the keys before they were washed away, unlocked the door, and stepped inside. With the reflexes of a ten-agility substitute player, she slammed the door in time to shut out the raging storm, thunder, and lightning. Then she tugged the light cord. As expected, the power was out again.

A woman with long hair dripping water stood alone in a pitch-black room. Lightning split the sky outside now and then, making her face look deathly pale and her lips blue. The entire scene had the atmosphere of a horror movie designed to give every person in the city a heart attack.

This miserable world where getting off work meant overtime, overtime meant rain, rain meant no umbrella, no umbrella meant coming home, and coming home meant no electricity… why couldn’t some little booklet fall from the sky and write the whole thing dead already…

Ruiyin spent a moment radiating murderous darkness from the far side of hell at her shabby, lightless room. Then she silently wiped her face, turned on the flashlight, and prepared to rinse off and sleep.

She aimed the flashlight at the mirror and adjusted the focus with extreme precision so the reflected light would illuminate as much of the room as possible. This was the crystallization of years of survival wisdom as a broke person. The side effect was that whenever she looked up while washing her face, she often had the illusion of thinking, “What kind of demon did the Monkey King call in as backup?”

Now, with a head of long hair soaked in big-city cement acid rain hanging loose around her face, that illusion was even stronger.

Ruiyin stared blankly at the female ghost in the mirror for a while. Outside, a bright white bolt of lightning flashed, instantly overpowering the glow of the flashlight. She narrowed her eyes. When she opened them again, the female ghost opposite her was gone.

Ah, at last she could escape the harassment of horror movies and get a good night’s sleep. How wonderful…

Wait! That was not wonderful at all, okay?!

Ruiyin, who had been about to turn around and collapse into bed, rushed back. She stared wide-eyed at the mirror in front of her, then turned and changed the angle of the flashlight to rule out any trick of light and shadow. When she rushed back to the mirror again, the situation had not improved. The old mirror, covered in water stains and speckles, was a solid, murky black. It no longer reflected her image at all.

Outside the window, the wind and rain continued to lash harder and harder, mixed with the mournful shrieks of all kinds of innocent flowers and plants being ravaged…

She reached out instinctively and wiped the pitch-black surface of the mirror, then jerked her hand back as if she had been electrocuted.

The cold, smooth feel of glass was still there. It was not that some inner personality had possessed her because she disliked seeing a female ghost and smashed the mirror. But the temperature of the liquid on her finger was clearly not tap water warmed by the sweltering heat of midsummer. She lowered her head and shone the flashlight on it. A dizzying smear of red liquid stained her fingertip.

Immediately after, accompanied by a crack of thunder exploding across the sky, a sound of something breaking came from the mirror that had turned completely black. Along with it came a sigh, very soft but perfectly audible.

A mirror that could not reflect her image… red liquid seeping out… a sigh from inside the mirror…

Without another word, Ruiyin took one step back, reflexively grabbed the thing in her hand, and hurled it at the mirror. With a crisp sound, the glass cracked into several pieces. Because of the tape holding it from behind, it clung shakily to the wall instead of falling.

Ruiyin froze in a discus-throwing pose, still watching the strange mirror warily. After a long while, the mirror gave a somewhat gloomy sigh. “You broke my favorite mirror.”

Ruiyin was silent for a moment. Then she said, “This was my only mirror.”

“…”

“Which means tomorrow morning I’ll have to face a mosaic version of myself and try my best to make it look human before I go out.”

“…”

“Also, I think I just smashed my flashlight while I was at it. There won’t be power for the next few days. What the hell are you, hiding in my mirror and forcing me to destroy my own property?”

“…”

She suspected she saw a whole wholesale shipment of black stress lines appear across the pitch-black mirror.

Only after a very long time did a voice come from the mirror again. It was a rich male voice, very calm. “My apologies, madam. It seems I have made a mistake. Due to a failed magic circle, this mirror has connected to your world. I am Holy Archmage Lars. If there is anything I can do, I am willing to do my utmost to compensate you for your losses.”

Although she had no idea what he was talking about, it sounded seriously impressive… Ruiyin froze for a moment, then said, “Then can you get the hell out of my house and fix the mirror on your way?”

The mirror fell silent for a while. When he spoke again, there seemed to be less calm in his voice and more shame. “My apologies… perhaps because of your location, my magic has encountered an irresistible obstruction at the mirror’s boundary. This truly is a wondrous thing, is it not?”

Ruiyin: “…”

Wondrous, your heart, liver, spleen, lungs, and kidneys! You can’t even fix a mirror. Are you actually one of those virgins who automatically class-changed into a mage after turning twenty-five?!

“I think this is what’s normal.” Ruiyin rubbed her temples. “If I’m not mistaken, that failed magic circle of yours seems to have connected to another world. In our world, the most magical thing is precisely the least magical kind of magic. We usually call that magic… science.”

“Oh?” The male voice continued with intense interest. “What kind of magic is this? What effects can it create? It connected to a new space-time? This truly is a wondrous event! I have tried summoning magical beasts from other space-times to fight, but I never imagined I could summon a human. Can you demonstrate science for me?”
“Your whole family are summoned beasts.” Ruiyin cut off the rambling man in an icy voice. “In the name of science, get out of my house. Now. This instant.”

The mirror seemed to choke. Then a rather aggrieved voice came from the other side. “I’m sorry, I’ll leave right… uh, wait. There seems to be a small problem. Madam, please give me a moment, I’ll just… I’m sorry, please wait a little longer…”

Ruiyin waited for quite a few moments. From the other side came the occasional clear ding-dong. About twenty minutes later, the man’s slightly muffled voice sounded again. “My apologies. There appears to have been a minor accident. Before the materials are exhausted, I can’t close this magic circle. And I’ve placed a spell on my magic workshop, so until the magic circle ends, I temporarily can’t leave either.”

Ruiyin raised an eyebrow. “Meaning you intend to keep peeping into a lady’s room until those damned materials of yours run out?”

“…No. In fact, all I can see is a pitch-black mirror surface. So if you could just wait another quarter hour…”

“Then hurry up and use them up and get lost. I’m going to bed.” Ruiyin decisively turned around and climbed into bed. “Remember to close the door when you leave. If you’re still not gone before six tomorrow morning, I don’t mind replacing the mirror.”

The mirror said, “…Ahem. Although I can’t see anything, I can still hear the sounds on your side. Sleeping in front of a gentleman is perhaps a little too…”

The damp towel she had just used to dry her hair smacked onto the mirror. “Shut up!”

The mysterious Holy Archmage inside the mirror obediently fell silent.

The next morning, when rain-washed sunlight spilled over the mirror that had shattered into a mosaic, Ruiyin almost thought she had simply had an absurd dream. There had been no storm, no female ghost, and certainly no stupid Holy Archmage who could not even repair a mirror. The days went on like an hourglass being flipped back and forth, peaceful enough to leave no ripples.

Until one day, when Ruiyin was standing in front of the mirror brushing her teeth, half-asleep and barely dressed, the mirror that had shattered into a mosaic and that she had kept forgetting to replace abruptly went black. Immediately afterward, a slightly awkward male voice came from the other side. “Sorry… I seem to have made another mistake. Madam, you…”

Ruiyin sprayed a mouthful of toothpaste-foamed rinse water all over the mirror and the man on the other side.

The mirror in Ruiyin’s home housed a Holy Archmage summoned beast named Lars.

This summoned beast would not come when called and would not leave when waved away. It could not act cute, could not catch mice, and could not even fetch its master’s newspaper or slippers. It was a useless thing through and through. As a member of the opposite sex, it spent all day peeping on a lady’s life, and it always chose moments like when she was boldly drying her underwear in front of the fan to suddenly drop in with an embarrassed, “Uh… sorry…” The most depressing part was that by now, Lars had already witnessed every part of her daily life, from getting out of the bath to waking up, rolling around, and going berserk, while Ruiyin still had no idea whether this Lars was round or flat.

“This is only an accident. I would never casually peep into a lady’s room. Please believe me,” Lars weakly defended himself, then continued, “It’s just, madam, your bed and cabinet really ought to be tidied. I have a small spell here that can…”

“…” Ruiyin silently and swiftly pasted newspaper over what remained of the mirror while testing the placement of the newly bought mirror against the wall beside it.

“…Changing to another mirror won’t help either. I said this was only an accident. The magic circle seems to have accidentally connected to this fixed point in space-time. For example, right now, I can see the rehydrated food remains on your table through this mirror…”

Ruiyin strode to the door, pulled it open, and hurled the new mirror in her hands outside. With the crisp sound of shattering, she slammed the door shut, leaned against it, and gasped for air.

The pitch-black mirror hesitated for a moment before continuing. “Madam, in truth, you needn’t be so sensitive. Generally speaking, a Holy Archmage’s magic circles rarely have problems, so I won’t appear very often…”

“Generally speaking?” Ruiyin sneered. “Sorry, but I seem to have run into a reverse-aging, anti-magic, scientific magician who has smashed the reputation of every mage under heaven.”

Lars fell silent for a moment, then apologized again. “I am truly sorry. But there is no need for you to doubt my abilities to this extent. These accidents are happening because my mood has been rather unstable lately.”

“Oh? Do you have a few days every month when blood flows like rivers?”

“…No. It’s only a slight fluctuation in my mood.”

All the various emotions in that voice seemed to fade away in an instant. Even though Ruiyin could not see anything, she felt as if she could sense the person on the other side of the mirror suddenly going cold.

“I keep thinking, with a world like this, why not simply destroy it?”

“…” Ruiyin, who had once fantasized about that but had limited it strictly to fantasy, felt as though that one sentence had instantly broken her.