The Other Me - Chapter 3

From that day on, my writing changed beyond recognition.

Yan became my “personal editor”—or rather, my “shadow writer.”

He could always pinpoint the holes in my plots, and whenever I was blocked, he supplied an endless stream of dark, exhilarating ideas.

Late at night, we would argue endlessly over whether a character should live or die.

He would take the villain’s side and defend the logic behind the character’s actions.

I would take the protagonist’s side and try to preserve a sliver of his humanity.

It was a strange sensation, as though for the first time I was dissecting my own heart so completely.

But little by little, something began to feel wrong.

I realized that his thoughts were eroding my own.

Sometimes I would type out a passage and find it unfamiliar when I read it back. It did not sound like my writing. It sounded more like something Yan had written, brimming with aggression and obsession.

I started suffering from insomnia, always feeling as though two voices were fighting inside my head.

One was mine. The other was Yan’s.

And Yan’s voice grew louder and clearer by the day.

One day, after writing until my head throbbed and my mind felt swollen, I got up to pour myself some water in the living room.

As I passed the full-length mirror, I glanced at it instinctively.

The person inside was me.

He wore the same clothes and had the same exhausted expression.

But he was not mirroring me as I held the glass.

He simply stood there, watching me in silence, the corner of his mouth curling into an eerie smile.

The glass fell from my hand with a crash and shattered across the floor.

I whipped around. Yan was sitting on the sofa reading. At the noise, he looked up.

“What happened?”

Pointing at the full-length mirror, I said in a trembling voice, “You… you were just inside the mirror!”

Yan looked innocent. “Haven’t I been sitting here the whole time?”

As he spoke, he rose and walked toward me.

I backed away in terror, my gaze locked on the mirror.

Inside it, Yan’s figure slowly materialized behind “me.” He placed a hand on the shoulder of the “me” in the glass, wearing exactly the same smile as before.

In the real world, Yan continued approaching me, step by step.

“Jiang Xun, what’s wrong? You look awful.”

My entire understanding of reality seemed to be collapsing.

“What exactly are you trying to do?” I shouted at him.

Yan stopped in front of me. The innocence vanished from his face, replaced by that familiar possessive gaze.

“You still don’t understand what I want?”

“I’m helping you.”

He leaned closer and lowered his voice, his words carrying a devilish temptation.

“You’re too weak, Jiang Xun. Your kindness and hesitation only hold your talent back.”

“Leave everything to me, and I’ll make you the greatest writer there is.”

“I’ll become you—a you who does everything better.”

His words poured over me like a bucket of ice water.

At last, I understood.

He did not want to help me. He wanted to replace me.

He wanted to devour me completely with his thoughts and his will.

“Get away from me!” I shoved him hard, turned, and bolted for the door.

I had to get out of here. I had to get away from this monster!

But just as I reached the door, every light in the house snapped off at once.

Darkness swallowed the room.

I groped for the doorknob and tried to turn it, but it would not move, as though someone had locked it from the outside.

“Don’t waste your strength.”

Yan’s voice drifted eerily from behind me.

“In this house, I’m the master.”

In the darkness, I could feel him drawing closer.

I pressed my back to the door, my whole body rigid.

“Jiang Xun, why are you always trying to run?”

There was a hint of hurt in his voice.

“We were meant to be one. Your body and my mind, joined together—that is perfection.”

“Why do you resist?”

He reached out, trailing cold fingertips across my cheek.

I was too frightened to move.

“Look at me,” he said.

The air before me began to warp in the darkness.

Then a pair of eyes—eyes identical to mine—lit up within it.

Next came the outline of his face, then his body.

He glowed like a ghost.

On the wall behind him, the scenery in the framed picture began to move.

The covers of the books on the shelves shifted and changed.

The entire house transformed into a bizarre, dazzling dreamscape.

“Do you see?”

Yan’s voice brimmed with pride.

“Anywhere there is a reflection is my domain.”

“Every pane of glass in this home, every piece of metal, even the reflections in your eyes—they all belong to me.”

“You can’t escape.”

In that moment, I fell into utter despair.