Episode 6. The Child in the Mirror
I feel bad when I see a child with such a skinny face.
The young lover lost interest in the mirror, turned away and began to play.
He scratched his head after playing alone for a while.
For some reason, I felt strange.
It felt like someone was looking at me.
I’ve never felt this way before.
Yeonjeok absentmindedly turned his gaze to the mirror behind him. Then, his eyes met with those of himself in the mirror.
Yeonjeok, who was feeling embarrassed for no reason, raised his right hand and shook it vigorously.
Huh? What is it?
I thought something was strange, and then I saw that the child in the mirror was also raising his right hand.
Since it’s a mirror, shouldn’t it be on the same side, that is, the left hand?
Suddenly, I felt a strange sense of intimacy. I don’t think it was like this before.
‘Why are the hand shapes different?’
Suddenly I got goosebumps and chills.
When I looked in the mirror again, there was a strange smile on the child’s mouth and eyes.
He himself isn’t laughing.
“Ahh!”
He rolled backwards with a single scream.
From then on, the child in the mirror started laughing openly.
There was a knock on the door accompanied by a scream.
“Ghost, ghost! Oh, grandma! Mom! Dad! Save me!”
I was so surprised that I almost peed my pants.
But even though I said it so clearly, no one came.
“Save me… … Please… … Save me… … Give me… … Se… … I… … .”
The voice became as small as an ant crawling again.
I knocked on the locked door with my palm until I fell asleep from exhaustion.
Dull.
The next morning, I woke up to the sound of food being put through the hole in the sink.
Yesterday’s events seemed like a dream.
Even though I thought it was a dream, I tried hard not to look in the mirror.
I was so scared that I didn’t even go near the mirror.
But you can’t avoid mirrors forever in a cramped warehouse.
On the one hand, I was curious about the relationship.
Is what I saw real?
So how did a child who resembles me get into the mirror?
What is the world inside the mirror like?
Is it narrower or wider than a warehouse?
One day, when curiosity overtook fear, I mustered up the courage to approach the mirror quietly.
Fortunately, the child has not been seen yet.
I had made up my mind, but when I actually stood in front of the mirror, I was terrified. So I quickly flipped the mirror over before the child appeared.
On the back of the mirror is a picture of a beautiful fairy standing on a cloud.
I didn’t feel anything special before, but now that I look at it, it really feels like I’m flying in the sky.
I liked the picture of the fairy better than the mirror with the skinny, weird child in it.
I thought I would have to keep the mirror upside down for a while.
But that resolution didn’t last long.
Has it been three days?
I wondered what the child in the mirror was doing.
The only things moving inside the warehouse were the ‘rat’, ‘himself’, and ‘the child in the mirror’.
As her curiosity grew and she couldn’t hold it in anymore, Yeon-jeok slowly turned the mirror.
The child’s face suddenly appeared as if it had been waiting.
“evil!”
The surprised Yeon-jeok fell on his butt in shock.
The child in the mirror covered my mouth and giggled.
“What… … . Don’t laugh… … .”
Yeonjeokha protested with a crawling sound.
The child rolled around holding his stomach, thinking that the sight was funny.
I promised myself that I wouldn’t care what the angry rival boy did.
I deliberately hummed a tune as I rummaged through the junk.
One summer day, I was sweating profusely even when I was still.
The child in the mirror who had been moving busily suddenly jumped up from his seat.
The lover tried hard to ignore him and pretended not to notice.
But he also secretly glanced at me from the corner of his eye.
The child was holding a short stick and making strange movements on the warehouse floor.
‘huh?’
I’ve seen this movement somewhere.
When I think about it carefully, it’s a movement that my dad used to teach my older brothers.
He himself was not able to learn when he was young and only watched his father teach his older brothers.
Was it called ‘the nine thousand tax laws’?
The child in the mirror swung the stick all day long, seemingly never getting tired.
I pretended to rummage through the clutter and watched the child’s movements.
It’s winter again.
No matter how strange something may be, people eventually adapt. At some point, Yeon-jeok stopped being afraid of mirrors.
I sat in front of the mirror all day looking at my child.
He also held a stick and imitated the child’s movements.
Not to learn. It was too cold to just squat down and sit still.
As I moved along with the child, a strange heat rose up from all over my body.
Thanks to that, I didn’t feel the cold, which was nice.
I swung the stick after the child, sweat dripping down my body.
If you repeat the Nine Thousand Years Law nine times, half a day will pass by in no time.
The child in the mirror performed the Nine Thousand Years Law nine times in the morning and nine times in the afternoon.
Yeonjeok-ha, who had nothing else to do, also followed the child.
***
By the end of the third winter, I was able to use the ‘Nine Thousand Laws’ just like the child I was in love with.
The child who had been glancing at the lovey-dovey sight in the mirror stopped moving with a displeased expression on his face.
It seemed to say, ‘How dare you follow me?’
He glared at the child, shouting in his mind, ‘So! What? What do you want me to do?’
The child who had been farting in the mirror changed his movements. From then on, he began to show movements that were completely different from the ‘nine thousand years of law’ he had been using up until then.
Looking at the proud expression, it seems like he’s saying, ‘I can’t do this, can I?’
Yeonjeokha’s face was distorted.
Certainly, it seemed much more difficult than the ‘Nine Thousand Years’ Law.
I imitated the movements of the child in the mirror that I was staring at intently.
But soon my hands and feet started to feel dizzy.
The child in the mirror laughed, shaking his shoulders.
Her face turned red, but she gritted her teeth and moved her body again.
The child in the mirror quickly moved on to another movement as if he was getting used to a new movement.
The new herbivore also had nine, like the ‘Nine Thousand Laws’.
It took two winters for Yeonjeokha to learn to mimic the nine types of grass.
By then, the child in the mirror had become a boy.
***
When spring came, the boy in the mirror threw away the stick.
And then I took something out of the pile of books reflected in the mirror and read it.
I found the exact same book in the storage room.
The scenery in the mirror was the same as inside the warehouse, so it wasn’t as difficult as I thought.
The words written on the book cover were Elementary Education.
This is the very same book I studied with my brothers until I was six years old.
I lost it when I was forced to learn the Analects of Confucius by following my older brothers, but it seems to have been here.
As if it were a habit, he imitated the boy in the mirror.
The boy stopped reading the book and sat cross-legged, just breathing.
Then he opened the book again and touched various parts of his body.
The man tilted his head in confusion.
I’ve read the Elementary Learning several times, but I’ve never heard or seen anything like that.
But the boy laughed, tapped my head, and sat cross-legged again.
This happened again and again for months.
Yeonjeok, who was imitating the boy, threw down the small book he was holding in his hand.
Because there was nothing like that in the elementary school he had.
One day, the boy in the mirror sat still and didn’t open his eyes all day.
The elementary school was also left where it had been abandoned.
Just looking at it, it was clear that the mirror reflected the warehouse.
The boy in the mirror is exactly like him, except that he does things differently.
It may be a bit of a mystery, but my experience over the past five years has proven it to be true.
Sometimes I think about that too.
That what you see in the mirror might be your imagination.
That thought became stronger as time went by.
Naturally, the fear and wariness towards the boy in the mirror gradually disappeared.
Who is afraid of their own imagination!
***
When summer came, the boy in the mirror went back to reading Elementary Learning, which he had not read for a while.
He opened it halfway, checked something, and then closed his eyes.
And like before, it didn’t move at all.
I squatted down in front of the mirror and looked at the boy.
This is an illusion created by my desire to be like my father. I couldn’t help but think that way.
Suddenly, a small book spread out on the boy’s lap was seen.
Everything else seemed like my own imagination, but I couldn’t understand that one.
Because I’ve never seen my father read a book with such admiration.
What does that little book say?
Why did the boy nod while feeling his body?
I wanted to see the small crane spread out on the lap of the boy who was in love.
If you get close enough, it seems like you can see the letters.
Based on past experience, the boy will be sitting like that all day today.
The lover approached cautiously.
And he pressed his face close to the boy’s lap to look at the book spread out on it.
The price of carelessness was terrible.
Suddenly, the boy’s hand shot out of the mirror and grabbed Yeonjeokha’s hair.
“evil!”
A shriek burst from Yeonjeokha’s mouth.
My head got grabbed by a ghost in the mirror!
The boy in the mirror was not a creation of his imagination.
The boy pulled Yeonjeokha with terrifying force.
“Ahhh! Let go of me!”
I struggled and screamed in agony, but was eventually sucked into the mirror.
Strangely enough, the boy’s body came out of the mirror as much as the mirror went in.
In the span of just one breath, the positions of the boy and Yeon-jeok-ha were switched.
“Poohahaha!”
The boy who came out of the mirror laughed loudly and jumped around inside the warehouse.
I knocked on the mirror like a madman.
Bang bang bang.
But the bronze mirror did not break.
He looked around with a bewildered expression. It was the scenery inside the warehouse that he had been looking at through the mirror. To his absurdity, he was inside the mirror.
Yeonjeok, who had been standing blankly in the mirrored world, looked straight ahead with blank eyes.
A boy who looked just like him was eating a flower roll (flower bread) that he had been saving with a cheerful expression.
“That, that’s mine.”
Yeonjeokha mustered up her strength to speak, but the boy didn’t even look at her.
“It’s mine… … .”
But after the boy finished eating the rice cake, he just rubbed his stomach and smiled brightly. His face was full of mischief and not a single trace of worry.
Wuxia,
