"It's only been three days," Rin mumbled as she tossed pebbles upwards and hit them midair with an old baseball bat. "I can't do it. Three days is torture already. How am I supposed to survive another three months?"
Despite rolling her dark blue capris high above her knees, the ends of the jeans were still covered in thick layers of dirt and dust. To make the situation of the summer day worse, even Rin's tying her hair back and wearing a short white shirt that openly exposed her midsection did nothing to ease the intensity of the burning sun. Her bare toes dug into the hot dirt beneath, and the sun's rays scorched her pale face. The miserable girl did nothing to hide her displeasure.
While Rin was hitting the rocks across the yard, Grandpa Rinto and Oliver sat on the porch, glasses of ice cold lemonade between them, as Grandpa Rinto told his grandson more about the Mirror World the child was so eager to learn all about. Oliver sat wide-eyed as he absorbed every one of Rinto's words just as a dry sponge absorbs water. The boy soaked in every word and didn't hesitate to interrupt his grandfather whenever he had a question that demanded an answer.
"If there really is another world on the other side of the mirror, then how come we don't go there?" Oliver asked.
It was with a twinkle in his eye that Grandpa Rinto answered, "It's not safe fer someone from this world to go to the Mirror World, and the same's true the other way 'round. If a person could come and go between worlds as he pleases, it would create a disorder for the both of us."
Oliver thought the words over before he questioned, "But you said that mirrors are the portal. How come it doesn't work? Every time I try to go through one of your mirrors, all I do is hit glass."
Chuckling, Grandpa Rinto replied, "You can't go through just any ol' mirror, Ollie. What you need to travel to the Mirror World is a magic mirror."
As Oliver opened his mouth to an O shape at the simple yet wonderful solution, Rin snorted at the thought. "Magic mirrors?" she mumbled as she picked up another pebble. "Now I've heard everything."
Rin tossed the pebble in the air with one hand and, holding the bat with the other, hit the airborne pebble as hard as she could. The sound of rock meeting wood cracked. Almost pleased with herself, Rin watched as the pebble soared and landed a good few yards away.
"Great arm!" yelled an unfamiliar voice.
Spinning around, Rin saw two figures coming up through the back way. One was a girl with ankle length teal hair worn into two pigtails and dressed in a gray, mid-thigh length skirt and a green tank top. She smiled with all her teeth showing at Rin and waved so fast it was amazing that her hand didn't fly clean off her wrist. The person with her was another girl, this one with short blonde hair tied to the side and wearing white jean shorts and a hot pink T-shirt. The second girl also smiled, but she completely avoided eye contact with Rin.
"I've been wanting to meet you!" the first speaker, the tealette, said. When her eyes locked onto the bat and noticed which hand Rin held it with, she cocked her head to the side and asked, "Are you left handed?"
"Ambidextrous," Rin corrected, her irritation evident in her tone. "Now if you don't mind-"
"Why, if it isn't Miku!" Grandpa Rinto shouted, unknowingly cutting Rin off. Noticing the blonde beside Miku, he added, "And Neru with her! It's so good to see you again, darlin'. How ya likin' it here?"
"It's . . . different," the yellow-haired girl, Neru, replied, her shy smile still decorating her face.
"Rin," Grandpa Rinto began, turning his attention to his granddaughter, "these are your new neighbors for the summer. Miku visits me a lot. What a kind, sweet girl, that one. Neru's her cousin. Like you, she's new here. You should get along with them all right. Heck, y'all might become the best of friends."
"I have my doubts," Rin said under her breath. She was about to open her mouth to ask to be left alone when Miku started talking.
"When Mr. Rinto told us that he has a granddaughter our age coming to stay with him for the summer, I got so excited! This is a super small town, and the nearest school is so far away that my parents just decided to homeschool me. All the adults and old people here are great, and there are some children, but it gets super boring being the only fourteen-year-old around, especially when nobody is within two or three years of your age! I'm happy Neru is living with us now, and now I'm even more happy because I get to make a new friend!"
It took all Rin had to not scowl. "Look, that's real nice of you, but I'm having enough fun already hitting rocks. No friends needed."
"You're funny," Miku said, all her white, crooked teeth still showing. "I know you're not having fun: you look grouchy."
"My demeanor's locked in one position," Rin replied, gripping the bat harder. "I look bored out of my mind, but I'm truly enthused."
"That's not what you said this morning," Oliver called out as he wrapped his fingers around his sweating lemonade glass. "You complained that you were ready to jump out of the window because both of your ear buds broke."
"Oliver!" Rin hissed, but nobody paid her any heed.
"If it's new ear buds you need," Neru began softly, "there's a computer store in town that should carry them. We can take you there, if it's okay with Mr. Rinto."
"Fine by me, gals," Grandpa Rinto said. Lifting up his glass as if to propose a toast, he added, "Tell Mrs. Kagene that I said 'Hello' and that I thought her last batch of lemon cookies were excellent."
"Will do, Mr. Rinto," Miku replied. She waved at the old man, turned to Rin, and said, "Let's get going. It's a long walk to town, so we'd best leave now so that we can getcha back by supper."
"I never said that I was going," Rin argued, but as both Miku and Neru walked away, Rin gave in to the temptation that promised her new ear buds. If she was to survive the summer, she would need music constantly playing for her to do so.
The three girls walked for some time. Miku, undoubtedly the talkative one, kept asking Rin about where she was from and what it was like over there. Trying to avoid real conversation, Rin merely answered each question with no more than three words a piece. To Rin's frustration, even one-worded answers were satisfactory enough for Miku to encourage her to keep going with the interview. Eventually Rin stopped talking altogether, but that didn't stop Miku from her attempts to befriend the blonde.
"I guess it's time I tell ya a little about myself, ain't it?" she said, giggling. "Not much to tell, I guess. Lived here my whole life. I've an older sister, but she left for college back in August. Originally she was supposed to come back for summer break, but now that we've taken Neru in, we don't have room. I don't mind kuz Lily and I talk every day, but having a small home can be an issue sometimes."
For the rest of the walk, Rin had to keep herself from groaning and ripping her hair out. In a matter of minutes she also learned Miku's favorite color, strongest subject, weakest subject, hobbies, and interests. This led Rin to liking Neru far more, if only because the girl was quiet and pretty much left Rin alone.
By the time they reached the town, Rin regretted even more leaving her ear buds by the sink that morning. Had they not falling into the running water, they would not have broken, and Rin would have no reason to be with the two girls right now. To Rin, this was the summer where nothing could go right.
Now at their destination, Rin's eyes began scanning the area for the computer store. The town – Rin finding the term to be a bit of a stretch – consisted of a plaza on one side of the street. The bricked buildings were linked together, and signs hung overhead to inform shoppers which store was which. There were three set of these connected shops, and two of them met near the third in almost an incomplete square. If the plaza had been three times larger, Rin easily would have mistaken it for a chain mall.
The other side of the street was more scattered. Various buildings dotted the area, each building designed completely different from its neighbor. Trees were seen here and there, but other than that, there was no landscape save for the parking lots. Multiple hover taxis parked in these spaces, waiting for their patrons to finish their errands at the store and to return home to relieve the vehicles of their duty.
"Oh," Miku, who had started her trek on the plaza with the others, stopped suddenly and turned to Rin, "Mr. Rinto told us to tell Ms. Rui hi." Giggling, Miku looked both between Rin and Neru and whispered, "He has such a big crush on her. Ms. Rui has been widowed for over thirteen years now, and she's not shy about her desire to date again. She so obviously likes Mr. Rinto back, but he won't gather the courage to ask her out!"
"Maybe we can give Mr. Rinto a pep talk?" Neru suggested, her face red.
"Good thinking, Neru!" Miku exclaimed. She began running down the plaza to cross the street. Her cousin jogged in an attempt to keep up, but Rin merely walked as the majority if her focus landed on finding the computer store, unsure if it would be in the plaza or on the other side of the road.
When she noticed Rin straying far behind, Miku ran back towards Rin and asked, "Ya coming? Ms. Rui's right over there. See the bakery? The pink building? That's where we're going."
Squinting despite the building not being far away, Rin questioned, "Does Ms. Rui work in the bakery?"
"She owns it," Miku replied, her smile never once faltering.
"Does she normally use peanuts and walnuts or whatever in her baking?"
"Yep! Almost every one of her delicacies has a 'with nuts' option."
"Then I can't go."
"Why?"
"I'm severely allergic to nuts," Rin answered, for once grateful to have her allergy. "Just being around them makes me break out and lose the ability to breathe. See?" Rin held up her hand to show Miku her ring. "I can't even leave home without a safety net in case I come into contact."
"Oh." Miku bit her lower lip and looked down. "I noticed you were wearing a ring, but it didn't cross my mind that it was one of those allergy rings."
"Don't worry about it," Rin said, preferring to get to her topic of interest. "Just point out the computer store, and I'll take care of my shopping while you pass along my grandpa's message."
"All right." Pointing towards Rin's left, further down the linked shops, Miku said, "Go straight down that way. If you pass the candy store, you've gone too far." Before Rin could begin going in that direction, Miku asked, "Can you be near Neru and me if we're around nuts?"
"Only if you don't eat any," Rin answered, "but it doesn't matter. I'm buying ear buds and I'm going straight back."
"Not without us, you're not," Miku replied, crushing Rin's hope that they would leave her alone now that they walked her to town. Before she ran back to her cousin, Miku said, "We'll only be a moment. See ya in the store!"
"Not if I get out of there fast enough," Rin mumbled. Following Miku's directions, Rin located VY's Technological Wonder and stepped through the automatic glass doors.
The first thing Rin noted was the vast amounts of items the store carried. The noticeable thing after that was how cluttered the small building seemed as a result. There were multiple aisles trapped inside the coffee-colored walls. Despite not being claustrophobic, Rin felt uncomfortable at how close everything was.
"May I help you?"
Rin turned in the direction of the speaker to find a girl who was probably about eighteen standing behind the counter. She had short, curly pink hair and lime green eyes. Her attire consisted of a neon orange shirt exposing her midsection paired with a black skirt with gray suspenders wrapped over her shoulders. Her nametag read Mizki.
"Ear buds," was all Rin said.
Mizki pointed to the back of the store and replied, "Over there. You'll see the sign."
As Rin scanned the selection, another costumer came in evident by Mizki's second, "May I help you?" Rin cringed at the thought of Miku and Neru finishing their business sooner than expected, but the speaker proved that to not be the case.
"Only looking, thank you," said a man's deep voice. He began to walk around the store, and the pattern of footsteps told Rin that he was not alone.
Though she had never been one to be paranoid, something about these new visitors gave Rin an uneasy feeling. Wanting to get out of the store quicker now, Rin gave up her search for her favorite color and grabbed the first ear buds in reach. She then stalked towards the checkout, but upon rounding the corner, Rin ran right into the man and dropped the ear buds in surprise.
"Sorry," the man apologized as he bent over to retrieve Rin's item. His hair was midnight blue, and he was dressed in a black suit that must have been uncomfortable in the May heat. As he handed the package back to Rin he added, "I didn't see you there, little girl."
"I'm not a little girl," Rin said as she snatched the ear buds from his grasp. "I'm just short for my age."
"Well, you should be careful no matter your age." Leaning forward, the man said in a volume barely above a whisper, "There's been four kidnappings in the past two months. All of them not too far from the area. If I were you, I wouldn't be alone as long as I could help it."
"Kaito, stop," spoke the other man. "You're scaring her."
The first man, Kaito, stood upright again and looked at his companion. "I'm just warning her, Gakupo. Wouldn't want this sweet little face to disappear, wouldn't we?"
Despite her heart constricting desire to get away quickly, Rin found herself taking in both men - boys, really, now that she looked them over. The second of the two, Gakupo, had long purple hair tied back in a high ponytail, and like Kaito, he wore a black suit. The two couldn't have been any older than nineteen or twenty, but their height and the way they carried themselves made both appear so much older. Each one had a look in his eyes that told Rin they knew more than they were letting on, and Rin didn't want to stay long enough to figure out what it was.
"I'll be careful," Rin promised, planning to put the comment into action. She tried to walk away from the men while excusing herself, but Kaito grabbed her collar from behind.
"Don't go falling into any glass," he whispered into her ear, the strange words rough and threatening. Fear involuntarily scrapped down Rin's spine. "You're a pretty girl. It would be a real shame if we had to search for you next."
Before she could react, Kaito released Rin and began to walk towards the watch section, Gakupo wordlessly following behind. Rin's breathing hitched for a moment, and she clutched the ear bud package so tightly that it was leaving marks in her palm and fingers. It wasn't until Miku and Neru walked into the store that Rin snapped out of her trance.
"You okay, Rin?" Miku asked at the notice of how pale the blonde's face was becoming.
"Fine," Rin answered. Dismissing the encounter from her mind, Rin said, "After I purchase these, let's get out of here. I'm ready to go."
Rin believed that the moment she and the others made it back to Grandpa Rinto's home, Miku and Neru would leave. The girl was all but ready to see them go away when Grandpa Rinto invited them to stay for dinner, and it was to Rin's great displeasure that the two accepted the invitation. Even now she sat glaring at all who sat at the table. Grandpa Rinto was at the head across from her, Oliver on his right and Miku and Neru on his left. To make things worse, Oliver asked his grandfather to tell him more about the Mirror World, and Miku joined in to fill Neru in on what she didn't know.
"They're different from us kuz they're more into art and stuff," Miku was saying.
Oliver bounced back with, "Yeah, Grandpa Rinto says that almost everyone there is left-handed as well, just like Rin!"
"Ambidextrous," Rin corrected through clenched teeth. For emphasis, she held up her fork with her right hand and stabbed at her food with just as much coordination as she would with her left. "I'm ambidextrous. There is a difference," she added.
"Either way," Grandpa Rinto began, "what's common in our world is rare in theirs. When somebody here says they like music, they usually mean they like to study it. Not so in the Mirror World. There, liking music is associated with playing, singing, and meditating on it." He looked at his granddaughter and winked. "I think you would like that, Rin, since ya always got them ear buds in."
Rin said nothing. All she did was stab at her fried chicken strips and scowl at the comment.
"Didn't you also say that the people in the Mirror World have magic?" Oliver asked. He stirred around his mashed potatoes and added, "Because that would be really cool to have magic so that I wouldn't have to clean my room anymore."
Chuckling, Grandpa Rinto answered, "Magic doesn't perform yer work for ya, Ollie. Magic still takes energy, and sometimes it's less work to do something yerself than to recite a spell."
"Um, I'm sorry," Neru interrupted, raising her hand slightly as if she was getting a teacher's attention in class. "One thing confuses me: I get that interaction between both worlds is forbidden and all, but why can't we trade with these people? I'm sure there's something we have that they would want enough to exchange some of their magic for."
Before Grandpa Rinto could answer, Rin slammed her hands on the table and stood up so fast that her chair went sailing to the floor behind her. "I can't believe you all are going along with this!" she exclaimed, her fingernails digging into the wood below. "Never in my life have I heard anything so stupid. Are you all really that dumb to believe such garbage?!"
"Calm down, Rin," Miku said slowly as she set down her utensils. "We know that the Mirror World ain't real. It's just a fun, made up story we tell to pass the time. Nothing but a little harmless fiction."
"Harmless?" Rin snorted. "There's a reason fiction is going extinct, Miku. It's a pointless waste of time. Why do you think the only books that are written these days are textbooks and nonfiction? Why do you think movies and television shows made purely for entertainment don't exist anymore? Oh, that's right, because no one could care less! If there's nothing educational about it, then it's mind rotting. So don't try to tell me that any of this is harmless, you bloated serpent."
Miku's jaw dropped at the name. Neru gasped and looked between Miku and Rin. Grandpa Rinto narrowed his eyes at Rin and rebuked, "You apologize to Miku right now, young lady. That is not how we treat a guest."
"I don't care!" Rin shouted. "She should know better than to encourage your crazy stories. I can't believe you would feed such nonsense to my little brother!"
"It's not nonsense," Oliver argued. He stood up and immediately jumped onto the chair in an attempt to make himself appear taller. "I believe Grandpa Rinto. The Mirror World is real!"
"No, it's not," Rin argued.
"Is too!" Oliver shot back before folding his arms over his chest in the way he did when nobody was going to convince him of anything he didn't believe."
Fighting the urge to pick up the first utensil she touched and to throw it across the room, Rin turned attention back to her grandfather and cried, "Now look what you've done! Oliver is never going to grow up if you have him believing such stupid fairytales. He's going to get bullied at school and sent to therapy all because you couldn't keep your stupid mouth shut over your crazy, make believe world."
"Rin," Grandpa Rinto said her name as if it was a warning, "you're causing a scene."
"I don't care," Rin growled.
"Maybe we could change the subject," Neru quietly suggested, but she instantly regretted calling attention to herself.
"Shut up, you nimrod!" Rin snapped. To her and Miku both, "I am not your friend. I will never be your friend. Leave me alone. If either of you ever speak so much as a word to me again, I will destroy you." To her grandfather, "I don't want to be here. My parents only sent me here to punish me! And you had to go and make it even more unbearable with your ridiculous stories of the stupid Mirror World! I'm ashamed to be named after you. Heck, you're absolutely insane! I hate you. I hate all of you."
Leaving her cruel words to seep, Rin stalked out of the dining room without looking back. "I hope they hate me now, because I regret nothing," she grumbled as she climbed the rickety stairs. She paid little attention to where her feet led her, and it was as if suddenly waking from a dream that Rin realized that she stood under the attic door.
The thought of being another floor away from everyone appeasing her, Rin pulled on the latch, let the attic stairs hit the floor with a soft thud, and climbed the wooden planks. She turned on the lights while simultaneously pulling her nano player and ear buds from her pocket, but she stopped midway at the sight of the grand mirror across the room. Despite herself, Rin approached the mirror and glared at her reflection.
"Mirror World? Puh." Her ears burning and teeth clenching, Rin kicked the bottom of the mirror only to instantly regret it at the shock her bare toes suffered. "Ow!" She bent down to cradled her aching digits. Rubbing the pain away, Rin began to stand upright again when she heard a soft, musical sound.
Rin put her nano player and ear buds back into her pocket and took a step towards the decorated object. The closer she got, the louder the chanting became. Pressing her palms against the mirror, Rin leaned forward and touched her ear to the glass. What she heard held a musical rhythm, and something about it made Rin want to understand it better. This desire caused her to press herself in further.
And fall through the glass as if it had never been.