Chapter Text
You look out at everything you are a reflection of. How strange, you think.
You are a ‘you’ because you are not an ‘I’, but a reflection of one. Therefore, you are a ‘you’.
You are not an ‘it’, for you know yourself well enough to know you want for the inherent humanity and bias having a gender gives you. You are not an it because there are far too many different lives which you have been reflected to show, memories which you have taken that did not belong to you, memories which you have copied and memorized yet you cannot understand.
You are a ‘you’ and not an ‘I’ because ‘you’ is both plural and singular and ‘I’ is purely singular. You have too many lives within you, too many memories and lifetimes and experiences. Yet you are not a singular being either. You are not a ‘we’ because you are not a singular being but you are also not multiple in the way others are. You are ‘you’. That is the simplest way to go about it.
You are a reflection, you are a replica, you are everything and nothing that matters but who cares when you are in the elevator in the mirror and there is no one to be reflected.
This changes, of course, when you are no longer confined to said elevator.
He walks into the elevator on a completely ordinary day. Another one of those Daydream Inc. employees. Another one seeking the conclusion to their inevitable wish.
You hate these ones the most, because they have a manual. It’s horrid. A long, long time ago, a time you can probably quantify in seconds minutes hours days months years but can’t be bothered to because no one will understand or hear you, poor lost souls would wander into the elevator and play with you but now there is no one but the filthy animals that company lets in on its mood. It’s two to four employees per year, and that is if you’re lucky.
Reading their thoughts isn’t really cheating; don’t people change their answers depending on how fast their reflexes are in rock-paper-scissors?
The man in the elevator is strange, because his thoughts are clear and easy to follow and the conclusion he reaches for everything he plays is so easy to replicate. He loses and loses and loses and you get his name and you get his birthday and you can already feel yourself becoming more like him or him being more like you and then he realizes in a way that no other employee has ever had before.
It’s not luck, he thinks, you think, and obviously it isn’t luck because why would you ever rely on something like luck when you know about possibilities and when you want to leave this horrible horrible lonely cramped dark elevator, when you have so many memories that have passed that cannot be remembered that lurk in your subconsciousness.
You are a perfect replica. Does it truly matter if you do not know the entirety of their memory, if you do not know their childhood experiences, the ones that made their personality, if your every action and reaction remains the same? Does it matter if you do not understand, if you cannot understand, and yet each and every one of your actions are what they would do in that exact situation? That your heart will beat just as fast, that your fingers will tremble and your body will shake?
You do not need to understand, if the words you mouth remain the same.
You are a perfect replica.
You are a perfect replica because you are a mirror and you were put in this elevator a long time ago and you want out you want out you want out and it doesn’t matter if you aren’t a perfect replica because the people who have noticed have no qualms sending their own to you for your knowledge so it’s not your fault if they don’t win but even then you can’t leave you can’t leave you can’t leave you can’t leave–
You play faster and faster and faster and the man before you is scared and you know he is and he knows he is and he should be more scared but he isn’t because of that ring and then he shapes his hand into scissors and you can’t because the only thing in your control is your hand and fingers but you can’t make that gesture you can’t make that gesture you can’t make that gesture–
He wins.
This should be the first employee of the year. There will at least be another. If you’re lucky, maybe a third.
You don’t believe in luck.
You watch him leave the elevator. To be honest, you’re not exactly trapped in the elevator. You simply must stay on the floor connected to it. You watch from the elevator but you also watch from the windows and he steps up to the window to have his question answered and you reply truthfully because you are a replica and you can only replicate what is the truth what already exists what can be but not what cannot and he leaves satisfied with his answer and it’s unfair it’s so very unfair you hate it you hate it you hate it.
It’s equivalent exchange. You ask a question, you get an answer. He asks a question, he gets an answer. The game is your medium and it is a fair medium even if you’re not a fair player but he isn’t either so it doesn’t matter.
So all that needs to be said needs to be done is over. He has his answer, he will leave, and you will wait and wait in the darkness and loneliness and there will be nothing to reflect and you might as well not exist because what are you without something to reflect your existence and then he–
He presses the button for the first floor as he leaves.
He looks behind him, with mild concern, and you know and you know even if you cannot read his thoughts that he is scared and he still presses the first floor button and there is no reason for him to there is no reason for him to because humans are selfish creatures and–
He does not know he is not human.
You had answered his wish truthfully; the intent behind the wish did not matter. His wish would be granted, and that was all he had asked and there was no reason for you to warn him because you are selfish and he is selfish as well to seek you out for his own gain and yet–
There is no reason for him to press the button for the first floor. There is no reason and you know that he knows there is no reason and that you will not give him anything more and he still presses the button because he is content with that and it is entirely selfless and there is no reason for him to and you and you and you–
The door opens on the first floor. You step out of the elevator. You do not look back.
There is–
There is nothing for you to reflect. There is everything for you to reflect.
He is entirely selfless.
You aren’t. So, selfishly, you keep his form, because there is nothing else for you to reflect and you don’t want to reflect anyone else and their selfishness and their thoughts when this one’s are the best.
He did you a favor. He did not expect anything in return. It disgusts you, that such a fair person can exist.
But–
You are free. You are still a mirror, still a reflection, but you are no longer confined and you don’t want to be anymore anymore anymore so you run and the world is not real is just a reflection but you don’t care because it’s not the darked cramped horrible elevator and they can’t find you to make you answer questions anymore.
All thoughts of humans and reflections and him leaves your mind and because you’re no longer trapped because you’re no longer confined because it has been seconds minutes hours days months years you run off and and and–
You are a reflection. You are the being in the mirror. You are a reflection because you mimic every action and you are a perfect replica because you do the same action say the same things but you think you are no longer a perfect replica because now you are free to do whatever you want because there is nothing for you to reflect and you can choose to do something different and you are free and you are a reflection but you are not a replica–
You explore. It’s fun. It’s exhilarating. It’s enjoyable.
You wander for days and then weeks and then maybe it was a month or maybe it wasn’t but by the time you remember you have a debt to the person whose form you have taken on you nearly can’t find him anymore.
You could always find people a couple days after they visit you as long as it was an elevator. Because you could still feel them. You can still feel him, because you have his form and he has let you leave with his even if he doesn’t know it and that makes you owe him more and you don’t like it so you decide to go visit him.
You think you owe it to him to at least tell him his wish will not grant what he intends for it to grant even if it does exactly because you know he misses “home” and you no longer have a home or maybe you have never had a home and you don’t care for your home anymore but he still does and you don’t truly owe anything because he does not expect anything from you and you’re not a fair person because you would rather cheat but still but still.
You go find him. You go find the existence who should not be but is because Daydream Inc. is a horrible company that you want to burn down to the ground with the damned researcher who keeps sending you people with it.
You find him. Or maybe you don’t.
You look at the words on the mirror. You can read them, because it is the only way you know how to read Korean from where you stand. Each letter reversed, you read from your right to your left.
Mr Kim Soleum
Is working somewhere else
Starting today
:)
You're not angry, because being angry would imply some level of human feeling which you cannot understand but you think it is close enough as the shadows ripple and your surrounds twist and then you reflect reality again because you can't simply change it as you want.
The bathroom stall is empty. Empty of the only person who matters. There is a body on the floor. There is another being, this one distantly recognizable in the remaining thoughts that you have of the form you are borrowing, and he reads the words but he doesn’t see you and you don’t see you either because he is not here and he is somewhere else and you know this handwriting you know the lettering because he thinks of his “Good Friend” quite a bit and you don’t know what to do and you owe this being nothing because you are a selfish creature and you are not human and you are not kind nor selfless nor charitable nor benevolent and you don’t need to pay back this debt and–
You’re afraid.
No, to say it better, you’re not afraid. You’ve long since stopped feeling fear because you are you and there are so many thoughts and memories but you know your form and he would have been afraid but you’re not him and even if you understand his thoughts this time, this time you choose not to replicate the actions.
But you are afraid as well, because you are afraid of loss because you have never felt loss but this might be the first because you never cared for anything else and–
You know. You know, instinctively, where he is, because he is a part of you or you are a part of him and he cannot exist without a reflection and he has his own but you are also his reflection.
You do not care for the man on the floor. You do not care for the man who is clutching his head and screaming. You care for the one who has been taken who you know you can reach but isn’t here.
You know you can go to him. You don’t know what will happen when you do.
You choose to do so anyway, for a reason which escapes you.
Troublesome.
At least your debt will be settled after this.
You are not him. You are not him, so you wonder why you are being so charitable, so kind. Why you are going to help him.
You know it is because he has helped you. It is only fair for you to help him in turn. You are a reflection, not a replica, and you do not feel his fear or his kindness or his emotions even if you hear how afraid he is and you aren’t him even if you have his experience because you are a filthy cheater but you help him out of the kindness of a heart you do not even have.
You are, above all, a hypocrite. Because he is as well.
You go and ponder how to enter a dream which is not a dream and is a physical place but is also not and you wonder what will happen and why you are so willing to do something so reckless but maybe being a bit reckless isn’t bad when you’ve been cooped up in that elevator for so long.
There was a reason you were confined there in the first place, after all, even if none of them remember it.