Chapter 2: The Man in the Mirror

The first rays of morning sunlight slipped through the heavy curtains, spilling into the room. Yet Li Ran remained in bed, trapped in the lingering dread of a nightmare. He lay still, eyes fixed on the ceiling, the scene from his dream echoing vividly in his mind—the vague, faceless man, whose image had begun to vanish from the mirror.

Throwing off the covers, Li Ran forced himself out of bed. His heartbeat was still irregular, his mind clouded, as though the dream hadn’t ended but had followed him into waking life.

He walked into the bathroom and stared at his reflection. His facial features were all there—eyes, nose, mouth—unchanged. Yet the unease the dream had brought refused to fade.

“Impossible,” he muttered, drawing a deep breath and shaking his head. He had to stop thinking about that blurry face. He couldn't let an absurd dream disrupt his life.

He washed up quickly, packed his things, and prepared to leave the oppressive old house. But just as he was about to go, a familiar photo caught his eye again.

The photo lay silently on the bedside table, its clean surface unmarred. Li Ran wanted to toss it into the trash, but as he approached, a strange sense of pressure weighed down on him.

His heartbeat quickened involuntarily. The man in the photo again drew his attention. He instinctively reached out to flip the photo over—but stopped halfway. For reasons he couldn’t explain, he was suddenly afraid of what he might see on the back.

“I have to figure out what’s going on,” he murmured to himself, voice tinged with uncertainty and fear.

He placed the photo back into his bag and left the house. Outside, the rain had stopped, and the air felt fresh, as though everything had returned to normal. Yet inside, Li Ran’s thoughts churned with unease. That photo—the unfamiliar group shot—still echoed in his mind.

He drove back to the city, to the empty apartment he called home. Everything around him looked as peaceful as ever, but he could no longer ignore the anxiety creeping through him. A sinister premonition gnawed at him, like an invisible hand quietly nudging him toward an unavoidable abyss.

One week later.

Li Ran still hadn’t told anyone about the photo. Day and night, he asked himself—who was that blurry man? Why was his face erased from every photograph? His mother’s reaction, that flicker of terror in her eyes, had rooted itself deep in Li Ran’s heart.

He began searching through his father's past—old friends, coworkers, every document his father had left behind. But there was nothing. No trace of that man.

Until one day, Li Ran found a clue in his father’s study—inside an old notebook.

On the first page, written in his father's familiar handwriting:

“He is not human. Do not go near him. He should never appear in a photo. If you see him—remember—don’t look back.”

The words hit Li Ran like a hammer. What had his father gone through? Why leave such a chilling warning?

Li Ran flipped through more pages. The writing didn’t resemble his father’s usual notes; it felt more like an outpouring—raw and emotional. As he read on, he began to grasp that his father had experienced something terrifying, something beyond Li Ran’s comprehension. And it all seemed to revolve around that blurred face.

Then came a second warning:

“He will gradually blend into your life, until you can no longer escape. His goal is to replace you. Do not let him stand in front of you. Do not let him see you.”

Li Ran’s fingers trembled as he turned to the last page. The handwriting there was pale and faint, as if written in a final moment of desperation:

“I’ve made my decision. I can’t escape, but you can. I couldn’t stop it—but you can.”

The sentence stabbed into Li Ran’s chest like a knife. What had his father been facing? And what force was behind that ever-present, faceless man?

Just then, his phone rang.

It was his mother. Her voice shook with urgency and fear: “Did you… have you seen it?”

“Seen what?” Li Ran asked, confused.

“The photo!” she cried, her voice rising. “You mustn’t look at that photo! Don’t let it sit in front of you! Li Ran, destroy it now!”

Her voice grew more and more panicked. Li Ran’s heart clenched. He ended the call and rushed to his bag.

But the photo—was gone.

“What… how?” Li Ran froze, trying to recall exactly where he had placed it. But it had vanished without a trace.

He quickly called his mother back, but no one answered. Only the cold, repeating tone of a disconnected line greeted him.

His heart pounded in his chest. A foreboding sense of dread surged through him.

Then, like a sudden flash of insight, he remembered the back of the photo. That day in his father’s study, he had caught a glimpse of some faint markings—symbols or… something he couldn’t understand.

Li Ran hurried back to his father’s study. Grabbing a magnifying glass from the desk, he began examining each page of the notebook. When he reached the page that read “He will gradually blend into your life,” he noticed something peculiar—tiny scratches along the edges of the page.

These weren’t part of his father’s handwriting. They looked like… marks made by fingernails scraping across the paper.

Li Ran realized—he was already entangled in something deep and unfathomable.

That faceless man, the one he had never seen before—what did he truly represent? Was he already weaving himself into Li Ran’s life, becoming a shadow he could never shake?

In that moment, Li Ran understood one thing:

There was no escape.

And that man—was already beginning to take root in his world.