'The thing that most people don't understand is the flashes in the glass. The little strange glimpses of people who aren't people. People who aren't in the room. The flashes in the glass of strangers and nightmares and daydreams. The idea that people truly see these apparitions is, of course, preposterous. These glimpses are merely a combination of paranoia, overactive imagination, and the placebo effect.'
Lovino sighed in relief and sat back in his squishy, well-used library chair. A stack of books on hallucinations, insanity, and superstitions was precariously perched on the table in front of him. He set the book he had been looking through down, still open to that page.
"So that's it, then. Feli's just imagining all of it." Lovino said to himself. "Hell, I thought he was going nuts!" He chuckled a bit and skimmed the rest of the page. Then he stopped to reread a paragraph.
'Sometimes, however, these phantom images are thought to be more than just an illusion. Some people believe that certain places are weak spots where our dimension touches another, parallel universe, and that the people in the glass are the reflections of our world that have been altered to match that other dimension. It's unknown what caused these suspicions, or where they originated, or if there is even any truth to them. Believers of this particular version of the 'flash in the glass' saga tend to vanish from their places of warning after a while. It is unknown if these people go to a particular place together or if they simply move away and try to forget about it, but more often than not, they turn up again, dead. The cause of death is never the same and it is unknown who is targeting these particular people.'
Lovino went pale as a ghost. His brother always said that the other side of the mirror was a different world.
'If the mirror world of the flash-in-the-glass-people could be reached, the only likely entrance and exit would be through the glass itself. Through every mirror and reflection, every still birdbath and every windowpane, lies the mirror world. Our regular reflections are, theoretically, in the way of any attempted passage, though many have tried to get through. One theory tested in the mid twentieth century by the scientist Ivan Braginsky of Russia, who went missing during his research, was that shards of glass from mirrors could be used as portals to the other dimension if slipped through from the side. It is unknown whether or not these experiments ever found anything, as almost all of Braginsky's research vanished with him.'
"Ivan Braginsky... Why does that sound familiar?" Lovino muttered. Then it clicked. Natalya Arlovskaya, Ivan Braginsky's younger sister, had made their city her residence. She was in her late sixties, but perhaps she still knew something of Ivan's research.
Lovino shook his head and stood. He was being stupid. Feliciano was fine, nobody was going to just up and try to drag Feliciano through the mirror.
... Right?