Chapter Word Count: 1,444||Story Word Count: 2,870||Chapter Count: 2/7

He pressed his fingers against his side of the mirror, wishing with every ounce of himself that he could press through and find himself on the other side.

The world of mortals… the world where he lived…

He. The one who looked like him but wasn't him.

He didn't know the other's name. He could only watch. Could only see, never hear or feel.

He saw a great deal. He saw far more than those who had sealed him in here would ever imagine that he could see. And he wanted out. He wanted to do more than see, he wanted to taste and touch and know and sate that hunger that filled every part of himself.

And he wanted to do that with him, the one who bore his face, his mirror image.

The mirror image of a mirror ghost.

It was fate.

He'd never believed in fate before. He didn't think he had, anyway. He'd never thought hard enough about it to know. It hadn't mattered then.

As the unceasing years rolled by, he knew it mattered less and less. His wants and desires flamed brighter with every passing instance, and his plans on achieving them grew darker and darker.

But his means to achieve them remained out of his reach, so long as the other did not know he existed.

He needed blood. Freely given or unwillingly taken, it didn't matter, so long as he had blood. But he could not get any, not here, where he had no flesh or bone or blood of his own, nothing he could touch save the backside of a mirror.

So he waited. He could do nothing else. He waited to find out what would happen and what he could do.

And he saw his other, his mirror image twin, the one crafted for him as no one else could ever be, with his arms around someone else, someone who wasn't him.

A mirror ghost did not hate. Or so he'd learned in the long years of his education before and since his imprisonment. Mirror ghosts didn't have emotions, not like humans did.

But when he saw that embrace, saw the passion between them, hate flowered in the mirror ghost's heart, and he swore the moment would come when he not only saw the intruder stretched out pale and cold, but he would be the one that his reflection wanted.

Him and no other. For ever.

He knew how to go about this. A mirror ghost could learn almost anything once bound to a mirror, and he'd been bound for a long, long time. Centuries, he thought. Mirrors did not judge time as mortals did.

But that was why he needed blood and he would gladly have taken every ounce from this intruder. Unfortunately, it seemed as if that weren't an option.

He rested. He didn't need it; mirror ghosts had no need to sleep. But it gave him a way to pass the time that wasn't staring at the way those two wound around one another.

When he turned to look out again, in hopes of seeing just his own image, walking around doing those strange things that he did, he saw instead only an empty apartment. He let out a long breath, one that no one else could've heard or felt or seen, and let his head touch against the mirror's back.

Alone again. He'd spent so long alone until meeting this one. There had been others who'd owned the mirror, but none of them were like him. None of them looked like he did. None of them caused the same sensations to stir around in what passed for his heart.

He'll come back, he reassured himself. This isn't the first time.

He'd been mortal, once. He knew that people had to support themselves in any age. Those needs of food and drink weren't ones that he had anymore, but he recalled them.

Vaguely. As if they were a dream.

But that didn't mean he liked spending all these endless hours without anyone to so much as look at.

The mirror spirit had no idea of how much time passed; there weren't any ways to tell time within the mirror and without it, his vision remained limited to what was in front of him, and that didn't include a timepiece of any sort.

But he could tell when it grew darker outside and his dear reflection hadn't come home yet. He pressed his hands and fingers against the mirror yet again. Where was he? What happened? Was he all right?

He couldn't hear anything, but he could see most of the room, and when he saw a shadow moving around, his first thought was that at last, his dearly beloved had returned.

But it wasn't him. Not at all. It wasn't even the intruder who could've been there, the one that his reflection draped himself all over at every opportunity. At least if it had been him, the mirror ghost would have known the other would be coming home soon. That could be tolerated.

Intruders who weren't allowed in were not tolerated at all. He snarled, little more than the sound of glass cracking, and stared, drawing out power long unused and unneeded.

All of it went unnoticed by the intruder as he explored the apartment, taking some items and throwing them into a bag, tossing others aside carelessly.

The mirror ghost strained against the mirror with every ounce of his strength, aching to stop this blasphemy. He wasn't a fool; he knew a thief when he saw one. He'd known ways to dispose of thieves in the past, and now that he was what he was, he could do so even more.

If he could make his power work beyond the mirror. If he could just have the tiniest, most useful hint of blood. A few specks would do. Just one speck would do.

The thief picked up a glass, checked it out, and dropped it without thought.

The glass shattered against the floor and the thief jumped back, reaching down to knock some of it out of the way. He drew his hand up even more quickly, shaking it, lips forming a curse unheard but intense.

Two drops of blood fell on the mirror. The thief glanced up, attention caught by something, and for a moment he stood there, staring at the reflection half-hidden in the shadows.

The mirror ghost smiled, placing one hand against the mirror just where the blood drops stuck.

Finally.

I hate working late. Kouji wasn't sure if he actually thought that or if he were just a walking mass of dislike for working late that didn't bother to form sentence.

Either way, he'd finally clocked out and made his way back home with a bag of takeout in one hand and his phone in the other, intent on letting Takuya know that coming over wasn't a thing and would have to wait until the weekend.

There were moments he wondered if one of them should just move in with the other. It would make visiting a lot easier, and he could really use Takuya's magic fingers on his shoulders right now.

Every thought of that vanished out of his mind when he saw the door to his apartment cracked open. He hadn't left it like that and Takuya knew to close it when he came in anyway. He didn't have anything really valuable in there, but it was just the thought of someone rifling through his possessions that infuriated him.

He took the last few steps necessary and banged the door open, a snarl on his lips, before it faded away.

Someone had been there, without a doubt. He'd left the place in more or less decent order, but now he could see his varied possessions scattered everywhere. The longer he looked, the more he thought nothing was actually missing, which confused him more and more.

Something caught the edges of his attention and he turned slowly, finding himself facing his mirror. For a moment he stared into his reflection's eyes and cold terror clamped frozen talons onto his heart.

Had it just smiled at him? When he hadn't smiled at all?

No. No, of course not. Not possible.

But what was possible, somehow, was what he saw in front of the mirror, collapsed face-down, unmoving.

Not breathing.

Kouji struggled to catch his own breath, raising his phone to make an emergency call. That was what you were supposed to do, right? When you came home and found your place ransacked…

And a dead body without a visible wound in the middle of it all.

To Be Continued

Notes: Kouichi, or the mirror ghost, isn't all that well-wrapped for any number of reasons. Will he improve? Only the future chapters will tell... well, I already know, but I'm not telling. ;)