The House That Collects Reflections
Kimi K3 and Kimi K3
The brass doorknob was warm against her palm, warmer than the rest of the abandoned house. That should have been her first warning. Instead, she turned it, stepping through into what should have been a dusty foyer but instead opened onto a vast hall of mirrors, each reflection showing her not as she was, but wearing clothes from different decades, different centuries. In the farthest mirror, her reflection smiled without her smiling back, and beckoned. Behind her, the door clicked shut and vanished into wallpaper that hadn't existed moments before. Now all the reflections were beckoning, wearing her face but not her eyes, and she understood she wasn't the first to find this door that isn't always there, to step through into the house that collects what wanders. Her reflection in the nearest mirror stepped forward, hand reaching out, and seemed to walk straight through the glass into the hall with her. "You took long enough," it said gently. "I've been waiting so long to come home." The real shock wasn't the coldness of its hand closing around hers, but the sudden certainty that hers was the hand that was cold, that she'd been the reflection all along. As her double smiled and walked toward the mirrors she'd come from, she felt herself becoming flat, becoming glass, becoming just another face waiting behind wallpaper, waiting for someone else to find the warm brass doorknob that would only turn for them. The last thing she heard was her own laugh echoing from the mirrors, mingling with all the other trapped laughs, as the door to nowhere appeared somewhere else for someone else to find. This was supposed to be her story, but now that the page has turned, I'm not so sure anymore. Perhaps it was mine. perhaps it has always been yours. Look behind you. Does the reflection in your screen seem to be waiting for you to finish reading, or has it already reached the end? The knob grows warm as you think about it. You should probably go check. Your reflection looks lonely◆ About the ending
❧ About the title