Afternoon! Here's the next chapter, and we're back in double-spaced form! FYI, the story will probably be finished in about 3-5 chapters. Thanks to everyone who's stuck with me so far, and to all you new readers! Please review!

Disclaimer: I own many things, but I do not own Vocaloid. Or Mosaic Roll. Thankyou!

CHAPTER 12: THE REVELATION

My instincts were wrong- the park is not filled with children playing and mothers gossiping. There is no one else in sight.

Just me, and the man on the bench.

He looks at least 60 years old, and wears thick-rimmed glasses over wrinkled, wasted eyes. A thin grey trench coat hangs over his skinny frame. When he sees me, standing warily behind a tree, he beckons me over with a pruney finger.

I approach him, stopping about three feet away. "Are you the guy that…sent the e-mail?"

"Are you Gumi?" His voice is deep and gravelly.

I nod briskly.

"Please come sit on the bench with me; I'm old and my voice can't carry that far."

I hesitate, but eventually sit down on the other side of the bench.

He doesn't bother with an intro. He gets right to the point.

"Have you ever heard of Satoro Atsushi?"

The name sounds familiar, but I shake my head.

"He lived in your house fifty years ago. Committed suicide in 1968."

My eyes widen. "Yeah, I have heard of him-

"He was my best friend."

"Oh." I look at my shoes. "Sorry."

He ignores my apology. "I met him when his family moved here in 1965. We were 13." I can tell he's already looking into the past - his eyes are glazing over.

"At first, I didn't see anything special about him. I thought he was a strange, unstable boy who stayed in his house all day. Then one day, my mother had me bring over a cake, and he answered the door. He said 'Come and see this'."

The old man turns to face me and stares into my eyes. "That's when he showed me the mirror."

In spite of myself, a shiver runs down my spine. Considering I know how this story ends, I'm not looking forward to it.

"I know you've seen it. What do you think happened when we went into the basement, and looked into the mirror?" He's asking me, but I don't want to answer.

"Go on."

I sigh. "Slightly different versions of yourselves."

"Exactly. And the four of us became the best of friends."

Forty minutes later, we are still talking. It's eerie how similar our stories are. When he mentions his other self wanting to exist outside the mirror, I can just hear Gumi's words from a few months ago. "I was just about to recommend we start seeing each other more often."

"Satoro was all for letting them out of the mirror. I, however, was a bit suspicious," The old man continues, "So Satoro let his out and I forced mine to remain behind the glass. He was so mad, he stopped appearing. He wouldn't talk to me. I was pretty upset, but the Other Satoro made up for it. He showed us visions, every afternoon. Sometimes they'd be very disturbing- he'd show murder, rape, torture. I would close my eyes for those. Satoro didn't care; he liked all of them. In fact, he started to like the bad ones more than the good ones." He sighs, and in that moment, the man seems older than time itself.

He pauses a second to stretch his back, then plows on. "In 1968, Satoro attempted to strangle his younger sister. He and his family went to court two days later. He got off on community service, because the doctors had managed to prove he was mentally unstable. Satoro didn't even remember doing it."

The old man looks at me, his hard stare penetrating my soul.

"Why do you think he didn't remember doing it?"

I think hard. Then, when it hits me, I audibly gasp. My pale knuckles grip the edge of the bench. The world is a bit dizzy now. "It...it was..."

"Yes. You got it- his mirror self, who he had carelessly let out of the mirror just a few months ago. The Other Satoro had glided in to the little sister's room in the dead of night, and tried to strangle her. He would have succeeded, too, but the Other Satoro didn't have enough strength. He was still only an apparition."

The man is finishing up his story, I can tell. It's almost over. He leans back and rests his hands behind his head.

"His family figured the stress of the mildly big city we lived in was too much for him, so they moved out to the country the next year. All was well. Satoro turned 16, and I went to his birthday party. He seemed so much happier. And then, the day after the party...his mother found him dangling from the porch."

We are silent for a while. I have a really bad feeling in my stomach, and a headache is starting to form. How long has it been since I let Gumi out of the mirror? More than two months? Shit. I put my head in my hands and rock back and forth on the bench. The old man looks at me sympathetically.

"I hope you understand now. This is not a game, Gumi. You have to get rid of her before you get too tangled up in all of this. Distance yourself from her."

"It's not that simple." I mutter.

"There is a way. You have to break the mirror. And I mean really break it. Completely destroy it."

"She won't let me."

"I know." The old man sighs. "And that's not my problem." And he's standing up now, dusting off his coat and gathering his things.

"You're just gonna leave with that? You're not gonna help me?" I say, my eyes widening and my fists clenching. I stand up so I am eye level with him.

He looks so tired, he might faint. "I promised myself forty years ago that I would never get involved with the mirror again. I don't even live in this city...I'm two hours away."

"How did you find me, then?"

"An online forum." He says, already walking away. I walk briskly behind him. "What do you mean, online forum?"

"A social networking forum. I browse them every now and then. Someone was describing the strange behavior of a girl they knew, and it sounded exactly like Satoro in his last years. I said I could help, and they asked me to come here."

I stop in my tracks. "Who wrote this?"

He shrugs. "Their username was something like...Kagamine1?"

I don't know if Gumi heard our conversation. She could have been behind a tree, listening the entire time. I don't care. I have to talk to her about it.

I know its not a good idea to approach her about something like this, but maybe that's the one thing that didn't occur to the old man. Just talking to her. It could help.

Maybe.