Mirror World Administrator

Chapter 1 Countdown in the Mirror

In this increasingly magical age, perhaps few people would be shocked and scream when they encounter a little supernatural phenomenon.

At most, I feel at a loss.

Xingfu Community, Building 3, Room 602, in the bathroom.

Yang Xu bent down to pick up the teacup and toothbrush that had fallen to the ground, knocked his swollen head, and looked at the mirror in front of him again in disbelief.

In the mirror's reflection, he could clearly see the radiator, washing machine, water heater, and white tiled walls behind him... This was undoubtedly his bathroom. It was seven in the morning, and as usual, he had just been woken by his alarm clock. With his hair messy, he scrambled into the bathroom, ready to wash his face, brush his teeth, and rush to school.

However, when he stood in front of the sink, his reflection in the mirror did not show his figure. Instead, it showed a string of fist-sized red numbers: '10:54:42'.

No kidding! Yang Xu even moved further away, waving and swinging his arms in front of the mirror, changing the angles, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't see his reflection in the mirror.

On the contrary, the string of numbers was stably lingering in the center of the mirror, and the last digit was decreasing at a rate of one jump per second. In just two minutes, it became 10:52:35. The speed of decrease was consistent with the passage of real time. It was obviously a countdown.

mischief?
Yang Xu had seen some prank videos on YouTube about mirrors. The videos replaced the mirrors with display screens of the same size and played specific images to make the person being pranked think they had seen a ghost.

He examined the mirror. It was cool and smooth, of normal thickness, indicating it was indeed a real mirror. The scratches and bumps on the edges of the mirror matched his memory of bathroom mirrors, effectively ruling out the possibility of a prank.

Was it because he had mutated, a transparent man? Yang Xu thought of the old movie called "The Invisible Man" and hurriedly took out his phone, turned on the front camera, and pointed it at himself.

His own face appeared on the screen, clear and real.

Yang Xu breathed a sigh of relief. When he was about to put away his phone, he suddenly remembered something and switched the lens to the rear camera, pointing it at the mirror in front of him.

The result was strange. From the perspective of the camera, his figure in the mirror actually existed normally, and there was no number in the center of the mirror.

This discovery sent a chill down Yang Xu's spine.

The picture taken by the mobile phone is basically equivalent to the perspective of an outsider. In other words, the mirror should be normal in the eyes of an outsider, but he himself sees an abnormal picture.

What about other mirrors?
Yang Xu hurried out of the bathroom and came to the corner of the living room, in front of the only full-length mirror in the house.

The result was the same. There was still no reflection of him in the mirror, and the red countdown was still displayed in the center of the mirror.

Next, Yang Xu, unwilling to believe it, searched all the mirrors in his house, big and small. He also shamelessly borrowed a mirror from his neighbor's house. He even went to the fitting mirror in the clothing store downstairs and looked around as if nothing had happened.

The result was that all the mirrors nearby could not reflect his image, and the center of each mirror showed a countdown.

Judging from the calm reactions of the bystanders, the mirrors in their eyes should be normal, reflecting human figures and not any ghost countdown. Otherwise, there would have been chaos on the streets.

At this point, Yang Xu was certain that he had encountered a supernatural event.

If it were an ordinary person, he would probably be panicked by now, but Yang Xu is not an ordinary person, and he has to thank his divine grandmother.

Yang Xu's mother died before he could remember, and his father died in the line of duty when he was five years old. After that, he was raised by his grandmother.

His grandmother has a very magical ability: her presence is extremely thin.

How thin is it? Even if she bumps into someone face to face on the street, the person being hit will not be able to detect her presence and will eventually flee in panic as if they have encountered a ghost wall.

When he was a child, his grandmother often took him to the city football stadium to pick up bottles. She would pick them up in front of the players from both teams and thousands of spectators, as if no one was around. No one noticed her presence until she came out with a sack full of bottles.

There are many more examples like this.

So Yang Xu believed that his grandmother was a person with super powers since he was very young, although his grandmother would never admit it and would always scold him harshly, telling him not to let his imagination run wild and to believe in science.

Of course, my grandmother's ability is not all advantages, there are also many disadvantages. Not to mention that her family is always ignored in the payment of various insurances and pensions, the most troublesome thing is traffic accidents.

Other people on the road had to give way to cars, but grandma had to avoid cars because she had a low sense of presence. In addition, her legs and feet were not good due to her old age. In Yang Xu's limited memory, grandma was hit by cars three times and by pedestrians seventeen times. Fortunately, they were all minor bumps.

Yang Xu was really afraid that she would have a big baby one day and die on the street, so when he grew up a little, he took over all the chores at home and tried not to give his grandmother the chance to go out alone.

As a result, the car accident was avoided, but something even more annoying happened.

Three years ago, when Yang Xu had just started college, his grandmother suffered a sudden heart attack and was rushed to the hospital for emergency treatment. However, because she was too inconspicuous, the doctors and nurses ignored her and missed the best opportunity for rescue. She eventually passed away...

This incident caused quite a stir in the hospital involved and was a major medical accident. The hospital finally paid a large sum of compensation, and the director even brought all the medical staff to his home to apologize to him in person.

Yang Xu didn't feel comfortable blaming the hospital for this. He actually believed that the hospital was innocent. After all, even he, the grandson who lived with his grandmother day and night, would occasionally forget the existence of his grandmother, let alone outsiders.

Back to the topic.

Because of his grandmother's deeds as a foundation, Yang Xu did not find it incredible when he suddenly encountered supernatural phenomena. Instead, he immediately remembered an incident in the past.

That was three years ago, a month before his grandmother's accident. One night, he was half asleep when his grandmother slapped him awake. Contrary to her usual behavior, she whispered in his ear with a serious expression, "Son, if one day you really encounter something strange, go to the mailbox downstairs and open mailbox 602. I asked someone to put something in there for you..."

"What is it?" Yang Xu asked in a daze. His grandmother did not answer and never mentioned it again until she passed away.

As for the mailbox 602 that his grandmother mentioned, Yang Xu went to check it several times later, but the box was always empty, and gradually he forgot about it.

Who would have thought that three years later, he would actually encounter a "strange incident", which made Yang Xu instantly recall his grandmother's advice.

"Could it be that Grandma is referring to now?"

Thinking of this, Yang Xu took out the key from the desk drawer, went out, went downstairs, and ran to the mailbox on the first floor.

This mailbox is an antique designed when the community was first built. There is one mailbox for each household, and his house is No. 602.

Insert the key and the cabinet door pops open.

Amidst the dust, the box was still empty.

Yang Xu was a little dazed. He wondered if his grandmother was serious about what she said at that time. He had clearly encountered a strange incident, so why was there still nothing?

He remembered clearly that his grandmother had said that she had 'asked someone' to leave something for him. Could it be that the person his grandmother had asked to be left had not come yet?
Or, someone had already taken the things in the box without his knowledge...

"Buzz!"

My pocket vibrated. I pulled out my phone and checked it. It was a message from a friend at school, telling him that roll call had arrived for his advanced math class and asking where he was.

Yang Xu casually replied, asking the other party to help him answer the questions for the next few classes. He had no intention of going to school today. He hadn't figured out the abnormality in his body yet, so how could he be in the mood to attend class?

After replying to the message, Yang Xu calmed down and began to think carefully about the current situation.

The phenomenon of not being able to see one's own reflection in the mirror actually raises many questions worth exploring, including two crucial ones: What is the concept of a mirror? And, is it true that all mirrors in the world can no longer reflect one's own reflection?

Let’s put the first question aside for now. Yang Xu got a negative answer to the second question a few minutes later.

At 8:10 in the morning, Yang Xu rode his bike out of the community. Whenever he came across any shop with mirrors along the way, he would stop and take a look.

When he rode to another street one kilometer away, he finally saw his own image again in the mirror of a shop on the street.

In order to prove that this was not an illusion, Yang Xu continued to look for a mirror nearby to observe.

He soon discovered that all the mirrors on this street could reflect him normally, and the countdown in the center of the mirror no longer showed anything. He seemed to have suddenly become a normal person here.

But Yang Xu knew that what happened that morning couldn't be an illusion. He couldn't look in the mirror at home, but everything was normal a kilometer away. This could only mean that this supernatural phenomenon was regional and only occurred in a specific area.

Then there must be a dividing line between the normal area and the abnormal area.

In order to find the dividing line, Yang Xu bought a small mirror from a roadside shop and started riding back, observing the image in the mirror while riding along the road.

He soon found the first dividing point.

That was the zebra crossing about 50 meters away from the gate of his community. As long as he crossed the zebra crossing, his image in the mirror would disappear, and if he took a step back, the image would reappear.

After confirming this phenomenon, Yang Xu continued riding along the road, looking for other dividing points through the changes in the mirror.

An hour later, Yang Xu rode around his neighborhood and returned to the zebra crossing from the other direction.

At this moment, on the mobile phone map, his movement trajectory has naturally formed a closed loop.

What surprised Yang Xu a little was that the area finally circled was not the circle he had imagined, but an extremely regular square area with a side length of about 600 meters, which included half of the community including his building and some surrounding shops.

As long as he is in this area, no mirror can reflect his figure. Once he steps out of this area, everything will return to normal.

Next, Yang Xu began to focus on studying the circled area.

After searching the area for several hours, they found nothing. No treasures were found, nor were there any unusual-looking creatures.

However, through sporadic experiments during this period, Yang Xu figured out the concept of "mirror": a mirror that cannot reflect his image must be a "mirror" that is clear enough and well-defined.

Reflections from other glass or LCD screens, metal walls, water surfaces, etc., as well as the recording functions of mobile phones and cameras, are not considered mirrors.

These are the only clues that can be confirmed for now. No matter how Yang Xu studies, it will be difficult to make any new discoveries.

Overall, apart from preventing him from looking in the mirror near his home, the whole incident did not cause any other abnormalities and had almost no impact on his life.

But Yang Xu would not be relieved. He had a vague feeling that not being able to look in the mirror was just the beginning. The real change would probably only appear when the countdown on the mirror returned to zero.

眼下是下午2点40分，杨旭看了眼镜子，倒计时显示：03:19:42。

According to calculations, the countdown will return to zero at exactly 6:00 p.m.

What happens at 6 p.m.?
Yang Xu had no idea. He spent the next three hours busy, going to the hardware store downstairs and buying tools like an axe, a helmet, and a rope. He then went back home and dug out an old box from under the bed in the storage room. It was filled with belongings from his father's time as a police officer. After searching through it for a while, he finally pulled out a stab-proof suit.

After finishing all this, Yang Xu hurriedly had dinner at the restaurant downstairs.

At 5:50 in the afternoon, Yang Xu, who had eaten and drunk his fill, returned home, put on stab-proof clothing, a helmet, and carried an axe. He walked to the full-length mirror in the living room in a fully armed posture.

There are only six minutes left in the countdown.

Yang Xu found a chair, sat down opposite the mirror, and set the emergency call number on his mobile phone to 110.

He didn't want anyone to know about his abnormality, but if something happened that he couldn't handle, he would have no choice but to call the police for help.

In the silent waiting, the last six minutes passed by in a flash.

The red countdown on the mirror has reached the last few seconds.

Yang Xu stood up, grabbed the axe tightly, stared at the changes in the mirror, and was always alert to any possible changes around him.

00:00:00
Finally, the countdown in the mirror returned to zero.

The imagined change did not come. After a pause of about one second, the original six digits jumped together and became 11:59:59, and the color also changed from red to green.

Then it began to decrease at a rate of one jump per second.

11:59:58
11:59:57
11:59:56
……

Yang Xu was surprised. Is that the end?
At this moment, there was no change in the room, except that the countdown on all the mirrors turned from red to green, there was no other abnormality around.

He thought something would happen when the number returned to zero, but it just restarted from 12 hours.

Twelve hours from now, it would be six o'clock tomorrow morning. What would happen after that? Would the clock turn red again and start all over again? Was this supposedly supernatural phenomenon just two countdowns, one red and one green, cycling through the mirror?
Yang Xu felt that it was not that simple. Although there seemed to be nothing unusual in the room at the moment, he could still vaguely sense that something was different from during the day.

After thinking for a while, Yang Xu walked to the full-length mirror with the axe in hand, stretched out his right hand, and carefully reached towards the mirror.

The bizarre thing really happened!
The moment the finger touched the mirror, the mirror surface was like a layer of water, with ripples appearing.

At the same time, his fingers did not feel any obstruction and directly penetrated the mirror.

Behind the mirror, there is emptiness...

(End of this chapter)