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Everyone knew that his behavior was an unhealthy form of attachment to objects.
For some time Felix even made an effort to hang a sheet - the darkest sheet he had - over the mirror. To make sure he wouldn't catch even a glimpse of reflection again, he turned the mirror so it faced corner. Just to be on the safe side.
He cried a lot afterwards, though. He covered his ears with a pillow and howled out of loneliness without hearing the familiar Good night, Lixie, without putting his warm hand to the cold mirror surface before he went to bed. The night was rough; he had no recollection of falling asleep. There was neither relief nor peace of mind.
In the morning, he hears a heavy sigh from the mirror and drops a cup of hot tea right on his feet.
"Aish!"
"Did you break something?"
There is a muffled sound in the corner, a worried, doom-laden voice. Lix shakes his head and forbids himself to answer. He picks up the shards of the cup with his trembling hands and mixes the sweet tea on the floor with his tears. If this is the therapy that's supposed to help, why is becoming normal so painful? What is he breaking himself for?
"Lix, just tell me you're okay in there, I'm really worried. Well, or knock so I know you're alive."
"You don't exist," Felix sobs, choking back the tears.
"Does that somehow stop me from worrying?"
"I shouldn't be talking to you, they told me not to," the boy blurted out, slumping next to the pile of shards. The damn tea is sticking to his socks, and tears are streaming down his face like a waterfall. Being alone in the apartment, in the city, and in Lix's life scared him more than anything. Only one thing was more terrifying - the thought that someday even Chan would stop responding to him.
There used to be nothing supernatural about this mirror. Felix put it next to the living room wardrobe because he wanted to check himself out in the mirror while he was getting ready for work. A gift store in the middle of nowhere seemed like a cruel joke, but even the small wages he was getting for the hours he wasted there were enough for Lee.
He doesn’t want to leave home, to become great, or to make millions. He doesn't even know what he wants to do with his life in the first place. It’s as if his soul has been sucked out of him after graduation, leaving a grayish shell as a wandering, restless ghost. Except ghosts have unfinished business, and Lix has an unfinished life.
And also Chan in the mirror, who once said that the red hat suited Felix better than the other ones. Was it scary? Terrifying.
It freaked Lix out so much he nearly broke the mirror.
But as the strange friend appeared in the reflection, the grayness of Felix's life suddenly began to dissolve. Chan would happily chat about all sorts of things, offer Felix interesting outfit ideas for work, watch movies with him, and if Lee brought a teapot and a cup and put it in front of the mirror, they could both drink tea, using, in fact, the same set. There was some crazy romantic appeal of being friends with the man in the mirror.
They jokingly waltzed around the two projections of the same room.
They would play peek-a-boo, cards, and board games in the reflection, read books, and joke about upside-down letters. If loneliness had previously been an everyday occurrence for Felix, a dreadful routine, now it is simply terrifying to be without one particular person.
He was sent to the doctor's office by his sister, who had once come to this town for work and stayed the night at her brother's place. They didn't communicate enough to be very close, but when Felix suddenly spoke to the mirror and asked what kind of tea someone non-existent would like to have, his sister took drastic measures. She said the loneliness and the empty life had driven weak Felix mad.
Chan was more real than the whole Lee family, who managed to forget about his birthday. He would talk to the boy about his love of music, sing in the evenings when Felix was sad, and always put his palm to his side of the mirror when they wished each other good night. The mirror remained cold, but it didn't matter to Lix. It was just a thin strip of reality separating him from the most understanding person in the world (no matter which one). Chan didn't say why he was there, why he was in the reflection, or why Felix was in the reflection. Didn’t say anything about the way Felix could get Chan out of it.
"Tell me what you're doing, then I can imagine and understand. It doesn't really count as conversation."
"I dropped my cup," the boy hugs his knees and squints at the sheet-covered mirror. It's equally hard to get up and turn it toward himself, removing the damn fabric, and just as hard to stay put and not let himself sustain this hallucination.
"Did you hurt yourself?" how worried Chan is hurts worse than any shards.
"No," murmurs Lee in response, getting up from the floor and feeling the nasty stickiness of the soggy pajama pants on his legs.
'Pick up the shards with a broom so you don't have to touch them with your hands. The dustpan is in the closet in the left corner, I think."
"I don't want to clean anything up."
"Sunshine, this needs to be put away so you don't step on any sharp pieces."
"Chan, I can't take this anymore!" explodes the young man, crumbling into painful ceramic dust feeling another person's concern, "What should I do? What is real and what isn’t? They say I'm delusional, that there can't be anyone in the mirror, that I just don't know how to be alone with myself, that I made you up."
The sheet falls to the floor, straight to the shards of the cup and the sticky stains. Felix abruptly turns the mirror to see the reflection, looking painfully at Chan, who understands everything. This is not a fantasy: he can see his face in detail, his curly hair, which he ruffles funnily for Lix, his thick eyebrows, which he can move, his pink lips, often stretched out in a welcoming smile.
Felix would never have imagined dimples as beautiful as Chan's.
"I am as real as you are. It's just a question of how we view our existence."
"If you disappear, I'll disappear, too. You're like a reflection of me that I can't exist without," perhaps his whisper is too emotional and loud, perhaps he'll regret it, "it's scary for them that I see you, and it's scary for me not to find you one day. In my reality, it's like we're both not real."
"And in mine you would exist as much as I do," whispers Chan and suddenly places his palm on the surface of the mirror. He's looking at Felix with hope. "Maybe it's time for a change of perspective."
"Is that my Christmas present?"
"Yes. Just yours."
Felix puts his palm on the surface of the mirror.
It's warm.
Behind Felix, the poorly decorated Christmas tree begins to flicker, the lights go crazy, as if to warn him. Somewhere in the hallway, the angels have fallen from the the wreath on the door, leaving only cracked flutes on the remnants of the decoration.
Felix presses against the mirror, as if falling through it; Chan's palm on his wrist warm and gentle. One tug, and Lix is embraced, hidden from the grayness, from people, kissed on his freckled cheeks and promised a real world. Chan's place smells really good of fir trees, and the TV plays a Christmas playlist in the background.
The mirror in Lee's apartment cracks and the burnt-out lights submerge the apartment in a graying emptiness. The silence screams of impossible things.
The angels on the floor crumble to dust.