The Mirror and the Crack

I

The bathroom was still steamed up from the shower. Hot water had turned the whole space into a sealed cocoon. Droplets on the tiles slid down slowly, leaving winding trails behind them. I stood in front of the mirror for a while, watching the paths those droplets took. None of them went straight.

Then I reached out and drew a line through the fog. Index finger, left to right, a single horizontal stroke. The face in the mirror split in two: forehead and eyes above, nose and mouth below. I drew another line, vertical this time, and the face became four quadrants. Piece by piece, like a puzzle that hadn't been put together properly.

But the horizontal line was crooked. The right side sat about a centimeter higher than the left. I wiped the whole mirror with my palm and started over. This time I used my fingernail, trying to carve a straight line, but the nail slipped on the wet glass. The line came out uneven, broken in places, some sections deep and others barely there. I stared at that broken line for a long time. Then I grabbed the towel and cleared only a small patch, from my left eyebrow to my right cheekbone, about the size of my palm. Everything else stayed blurred.

I stared at that small patch for maybe two minutes.

Eyebrows. Not thick, not thin. The tails angled downward, as if something heavy was always pulling on that strip of bone. Eyes. The whites had a yellowish tinge, not sickly, just dull, like a glass of tap water that had been sitting out all day. Two lines ran down from the corners of my eyes, framing the bridge of my nose, more visible when I wasn't smiling. The corners of my mouth turned down. No, not turned, exactly. Hung. Like a coat hung on a hook, gravity dragging the fabric down.

I lifted the corners of my mouth slightly, then let go. They snapped back. Lifted again, let go. A third time. On the third try I stopped moving them and just let them hang in that downward arc. Symmetrical, left and right equally low. So symmetrical it made me want to crack it out of alignment. Even if one side sat higher than the other, at least it would mean something had moved.

Next to the toothbrush cup on the sink sat a book with curled corners and a library label on the spine. The numbers were long since blurred beyond recognition from water damage. I'd bought it for three kuai at a secondhand stall last year. The vendor was an old man, hunched in an army coat on a winter morning. His fingers were purple when he reached out from his sleeve to take my money. I asked him what the book was about. He said, "Fate. It's all fate," then coughed twice and spat into the drain grate beside him.

One page had a dog‑ear folded deep enough that the paper was nearly torn through. That page said: Those with low brows and heavy‑set eyes are prone to overthinking, burdened by a mind that cannot find release. Next to the printed line, some previous reader had drawn a circle in ballpoint pen, pressing hard enough that the indent showed through on the reverse side.

I picked up my phone, opened the front camera, and turned on the flashlight. The face on the screen glowed pallid, every pore and fine line exposed. I pushed my eyebrows up from the tails, lifting them toward my hairline. The person in the screen didn't look like me. He looked like some relative who'd been told to smile for a photo but was cursing everyone in his head. I let go. The brows dropped back. There I was again. Pushed up again. Let go again. The third time I didn't touch them at all. I just looked at the person on the screen, the one whose brows I hadn't moved, the one looking down at his phone with his chin slightly tucked. Then I turned the phone off, closed the book, and dropped it into the bottom drawer of the nightstand. The drawer had old charging cables, expired throat lozenges, and a single sock without a mate. The book landed at an angle, knocked over the throat‑lozenge tin, the lid popped open, and the lozenges scattered.

I closed the drawer.

II

That night I couldn't sleep.

There was a dip in the middle of the mattress. When you lay down you'd roll slightly toward the center, and when you slept on your side there was a hollow under your waist that needed a folded corner of the pillow for support. I turned over a few times, fluffed the pillow, slapped it, rearranged it, until I found a position I could hold still in: flat on my back, hands crossed over my stomach, like lying in a coffin. I'd read somewhere once (or maybe it was in that book) that sleeping on your back with your hands crossed on your chest was the subconscious mimicking the posture of the dead.

The ceiling had a crack near the light fixture, starting from the metal rim of the base and snaking crookedly to the corner of the room, about a meter and a half long. The edges of the crack were slightly raised, the dried paint curling like cracked mud at the bottom of a dry riverbed, a shade darker than the surrounding white. Water damage, probably. I stared at that crack for a long time. The ceiling was white, the crack a grayish brown, and in the dark it was hard to make out clearly, but my eyes had grown used to its silhouette. I knew it was there, even with the lights off.

Then a thought surfaced, uninvited.

What if I just stopped? Right now.

The thought came abruptly, but it wasn't unfamiliar. Like someone you've known a long time tapping you on the shoulder from behind. You turn around and think: oh, it's you. Not startling. Just oh.

I followed the thought down: after I stop, what then? No work. No dog‑eared book. No endless showers and endless mirror‑wiping. No brushing my teeth twice a day, the bristles already splayed and splitting, jabbing my gums every time, and I still hadn't gone to the supermarket for a new one. All of that, gone.

And then I realized: what I was thinking was "I don't have to think about today's work anymore," not "I don't have to breathe anymore."

What I wanted to stop was that thing that started playing the moment I woke up, that endless, rambling channel looping the same tape over and over. That thing. It started between five‑thirty and six every morning, sometimes before the alarm. It said: what do I need to do today did I finish yesterday's thing did I reply to that email what about next week's meeting have I written the speech yet that thing I said last time did it make them unhappy – that whole business. A meeting I held with myself that never adjourned.

I wanted to adjourn the meeting. Not my heartbeat.

But the two were tied together. They shared the same wire. If you wanted to unplug the channel, you had to unplug the heartbeat too. No separate switch.

I turned on my side, and the crack disappeared from view. But I knew it was still there, behind me. I woke once in the middle of the night, rolled back onto my back in a haze, and saw it again there in the darkness. I stared for a few seconds, then turned back over and slept.

III

The next afternoon my mother called. "Is that blue notebook of your father's at your place? I can't find it anywhere."

"Which blue notebook?"

"The hardbound one with the inscription on the front page. His work unit gave it out as a merit award, but they never filled in the name, so he just kept it in his drawer."

"I have it," I said. "I found it when I was digging through some stuff."

"Just hold onto it, don't lose it. Your father used to treasure that notebook, even though he never wrote a word in it. Sometimes he'd take it out and flip through it, then put it back."

I asked: "Why didn't he ever write anything in it?"

"Who knows," she said. "He said he was saving it for something. Never found that something. You know your father – he saved everything. Saved everything until nothing ever got used."

After I hung up, I opened the drawer again. It opened more easily this time – I'd pushed the book and the lozenge tin aside. I took out the blue notebook. The corners of the hardcover were worn white, the greyish pulp of the board showing through. I opened the front page. Presented to the Outstanding Learner – six characters in blue fountain pen ink, the strokes slightly shaky, could have been a stamp or could have been hand‑lettered. But the blank line after "Outstanding Learner" was empty. A small space, enough for maybe three or four characters. My father's name was three characters. It would have fit perfectly.

He never filled it in.

I flipped through. All blank pages. Every single page. The paper had yellowed slightly, corners curling, faint creases running through the middle – the kind of crease that comes from being opened many times but never written on. Not fresh blankness. Old blankness.

I closed the notebook and set it on the table. The window was open, and a breeze lifted a few pages. I pressed them flat with my palm. Then I leaned back in my chair and looked at it.

If you have a stack of blank paper and you don't write on it, it stays blank. That's too simple to even say. But that afternoon I suddenly felt that this notebook was more unsettling than a book already filled with writing. A book filled with writing – you finish it, you close it, you know what it is. But a blank one? It could be anything, so it was nothing yet. It was waiting. It had waited longer than I had – decades already. It was still waiting.

I pushed the notebook toward the center of the table so the wind wouldn't knock it off. Then I went to the kitchen for a glass of water. A plain glass, with rings of hard water stain on the inside. I drank it down, rinsed the glass in the sink, and turned it upside down on the drying rack. Two bowls, three chopsticks, and a plate sat beside it. A film of dried grease clung to the plate. I touched it with my finger – slick, tacky.

Back in the room, the notebook was still on the table. The wind had flipped it open to page seventeen. I pinched the pages together with my index finger, closed it, hesitated, then opened it to the first page again. I went to the bathroom to get a pen – a black ballpoint with a chewed‑up cap.

On the first page I wrote:

"Watered the pothos. Even though it didn't look like it needed it."

The pothos sat on the windowsill, vines trailing down, the longest ones already brushing the radiator pipe below. One leaf had yellowed, its edges crisp and brown. When I watered it, I made sure to pour a little extra around that leaf's roots. Then I closed the notebook and slid it back into the drawer. This time, not among the charging cables and throat lozenges – by itself, on top, cover facing up.

IV

The second day, I wrote: "Threw out the expired yogurt in the fridge. Should have done it yesterday."

That morning, when I opened the fridge for milk, I caught a sour smell coming from the back – three cups of plain yogurt with a production date a month and a half ago. I took them out and looked: a layer of yellowish liquid had settled at the bottom of each cup. I dropped them in the trash. The plastic bag split, and a little yogurt leaked onto the bottom, sticky. I wiped my fingers with a paper towel and rinsed them under the faucet. The milk had expired two days earlier. I'd opened the fridge two days ago and seen it but didn't throw it out. Yesterday I saw it and still didn't. Today I did. Because I'd already written one day in the notebook – if I didn't write anything on day two, the first day's "watered the pothos" would just look like a whim. But if you don't write a second day, the first day doesn't hold. Same as running: running once doesn't make you a runner. Running a second day does – that's when it starts.

I picked up the pen and wrote that thought in the second line. Then I thought better and scratched it out. Can't write about writing in the notebook – that's just explaining yourself. Keep the first line. Second line: only the thing you did.

Day three: "Passed the flowerbed in the courtyard. Saw a cat on the railing. Made a 'tsk' sound at it. It didn't look at me."

That afternoon I went out to buy soy sauce. The iron railing around the flowerbed was painted green, most of the paint flaked off, rust showing through. An orange cat sat on top. It sat solidly, four paws together, tail hanging through a gap in the railing, the tip twitching slightly. I slowed my steps as I passed. It didn't look at me. I made a "tsk" sound – I don't normally do that to cats, but that day I wanted to see if it would turn its head. It didn't. One ear moved, but the head stayed. I "tsked" again, a little louder. It stood up, walked along the railing to the end, jumped down, and went into the bushes. I stood there for maybe half a minute, watching the bush leaves still quivering, then walked on.

Day four: "A kid in the building across the way was crying. Cried for maybe ten minutes. No one comforted him. Then he stopped on his own."

That night, just past nine, the window across the courtyard was lit up, yellow curtains drawn, but you could see silhouettes moving behind them. A child was crying. The sound traveled over the distance between buildings, muffled, like it was coming through a quilt. The crying went on for a long time, stopping a few times in between – I thought it was over, then it started again. No adult voice. No "stop crying" or "I'll hit you if you don't stop." Just a child, alone, crying for maybe ten minutes. Then it stopped. Not the kind of stop that comes from being soothed – the kind where you're crying and halfway through you suddenly realize you don't want to anymore. I stood by the window for a while, curtain open, the light across the way still on. The kid didn't cry again.

Day five: "Couldn't find anything to write. Wrote anyway. Did nothing today."

I really did do nothing. Saturday. Didn't go out. Didn't open the fridge. The pothos had been watered the day before last and didn't need it. I sat at my desk the whole morning, pen uncapped then recapped, uncapped again. Finally wrote that one line. When I finished, it felt like cheating. But then I thought: cheating still counts. The notebook doesn't judge what you write – it only judges whether you wrote or not.

Day six: "Went back and read the earlier entries. Five of them now. Reading them in order – it doesn't sound like the same person wrote them."

It really didn't. The first entry had a tentative quality, almost testing the water – "even though it didn't look like it needed it," that extra clause, like I was explaining myself to someone. By day three, writing about the cat, my tone had flattened out – just description, no extra words. Day four's kid entry – I'd written quickly, almost without pause. Day five's admission of doing nothing had a "well, that's that" quality. In five days, the voice had shifted a few times. Under the sixth line I added a small note: "Not the same person." Then scratched that out too. No annotations. If someone else ever sees it, they can see it without my commentary.

V

A few more days passed. I didn't keep count – maybe a week. That night I showered again, ran the hot water longer than usual, steamed the bathroom thicker than usual. The mirror was a solid wall of white fog, like someone had painted it with a whole coat of latex. I stood in front of it. Droplets ran down the edges, one particularly thick trail starting from the top right corner all the way to the bottom – like a tear track. The reflection was blurry, just a shape – shoulders, neck, head – features all obscured. Before, I'd have drawn a line with my finger, or cleared a small patch with the towel. But that night I didn't.

I pressed my palm against it. The whole hand, five fingers spread, the warmth of my skin meeting the cool glass. Then I wiped downward – top to bottom, the full surface. Where my hand passed, the glass emerged clear. The water droplets got pushed down and pooled at the bottom. The whole mirror revealed itself. The whole person in it revealed itself. The whole face, the full shoulders, the tiled wall behind me, the hook on the wall, the gray towel hanging from the hook – all there. No longer split in half, no longer quartered, no longer a palm‑sized clear patch surrounded by fog. Just a whole mirror showing a whole me.

I looked at him. He looked back at me. A sheet of glass between us, but his eyes were level with mine.

I looked for maybe five seconds. Then I reached down and wiped a dried smear of toothpaste off the edge of the sink – white, hardened, I didn't know when it had gotten there. My thumbnail cracked it into powder that fell into the basin. I turned the faucet on, rinsed my hands, turned the light off, and walked out.

Didn't linger.

Back in the bedroom, the crack was still on the ceiling. With the light off, the dark line remained the same grayish brown. I lay there and looked at it for a while. Same spot, same angle, same length as that night. Nothing had changed. But I turned on my side – didn't stay on my back for long. Then I remembered: yesterday's entry in the notebook was "Didn't think about the crack today."

That was the seventh line. Day seven. When I wrote it, I really hadn't thought about it. I didn't think about it after I wrote it either. Not until I lay down just now and saw it did I remember that I'd written: "didn't think about it." I didn't know if that counted as thinking about it. But I turned over, closed my eyes, and didn't stare at the crack. It was behind me. I knew it was still there. But I didn't turn back onto my back, so I couldn't see it.

As for that notebook – I'm still writing in it. Yesterday's entry was: "Passed the railing again. The cat wasn't there."