Mirrors were tricky things: as much as they like to preach their reflections as truths, reflections were all they could offer. They showed you a different version of yourself, one where your hair parted onto the right instead of the left, and where your longest scars were on the wrong arms. The wrong knee clicked when you walked. The wrong hand fussed with your hoodie.
Eugene preferred to get his sense of self from a lit screen, one where he could heft heavy armour and a boss claymore, all with his fingertips poised above the keyboard. He had power there, and an identity that could be remodeled or wiped entirely from the options menu. He'd saved villages, taken down great spires, and wrecked his enemies. He was a hero. The adrenaline-inducing victories were infinite, broken only by the wide-eyed face reflected back at him in dark loading screens. There was nothing he could do about that face.
Eugene gradually came to terms with his lifestyle; he was letting a machine live it for him. What else could he do? He didn't like the boy that stared back at him. That boy was scared, lopsided, and, most of all, he was small. Unimportant. Eventually, Eugene didn't know whether to believe the machine or the mirror.
But mirrors were machines too, albeit simple ones. They offered the same thing as his computer: a reality. All he had was his choice between the two, or so he'd thought.
Slowly, the choices blended together. The loading took longer. He saw that same doe-eyed face paired with a raging hero, a digital Achilles, and he started to hate them both. They were two machines offering reflections of the truth, sitting out, rotting, decaying before his eyes. Each day, he found something more to hate in those reflections.
So what did Delsin see when he looked at him? Where was his hair parted? Where were the scars?