Mirror

The sensation of teleportation wasn't like moving—it was more like being pulled out of water, wrung out hard, then thrown back in. In his vertigo, Lin Shen grabbed the inner wall of the teleportation pod, his fingers meeting cold metal. The hatch made a hissing sound as it depressurized—like opening a can of soda. He opened his eyes. The same control room, the same teleportation pod, the same rows of aging equipment. But outside the window, the sun was shining brightly.

It took Lin Shen a few seconds to stand upright.

His knees felt weak, as if he'd just done two hundred squats. A persistent ringing echoed in his ears, like a mosquito buzzing deep in his ear canal. He gripped the edge of the teleportation pod and took deep breaths—once, twice, two and a half times. He didn't finish the third. He realized he only took deep breaths like this when entering his own home.

This wasn't home. This was another world.

He pushed open the control room door. The hallway was exactly the same as over there—gray concrete walls, old cable trays, explosion-proof lights humming. The service elevator still worked; he pressed a button, and the cable mechanism ran just as steadily as it did over there.

The elevator rose to the surface. The door opened, and the sunlight made him squint.

Blue sky, white clouds, a mild southeast breeze. There was an indescribable difference in the air—perhaps because the humidity was slightly lower, or because a faint scent of osmanthus drifted on the breeze, even though the season over there shouldn't have osmanthus. Or maybe it was just his brain desperately searching for evidence of "difference" to convince himself this wasn't an illusion.

Lin Shen walked out of the hydroelectric station. Eagle's Beak Cliff Dam glowed under the sun with the same gray light as over there, but the water level was different—the surface here was about two meters higher. A sign hung on the fence at the dam's exit: Institute of Quantum Physics — Eagle's Beak Cliff Experimental Station · No Unauthorized Entry. The paint on the sign was still fresh.

He walked down the mountain road. After three kilometers, he hitched a ride on a passing agricultural tricycle. The driver was a farmer in his fifties, smoking a cigarette, speaking the same dialect as over there, but Lin Shen had never heard a single headline from the news playing on his radio. Company X acquires Company Y, City Z opens a new subway line. The texture of the world was the same, but every detail was new.

An hour and a half later, he stood by the roadside in the urban district.

The streets were still the same. Zhongshan Road, Jiefang Road, People's Square—the names were all identical. But the bakery on Zhongshan Road had turned into a milk tea shop, the bank building at the Jiefang Road intersection had become a telecom company, and the billboard at People's Square was playing ads for brands Lin Shen had never seen. The bus paint jobs were different, and the arrangement of traffic lights had subtle differences—green on the left or right? He stared for a while before confirming.

This was Mirror A.

A place with the same skeleton as the original world, but wearing a different skin.

He pulled out Su Wan's diary. The pages hadn't changed during the teleportation—still blank, the correction mechanism having wiped them clean. But Lin Shen remembered every address written inside. He recited them silently, then walked toward the bus stop.

The buses in Mirror A required a different type of transit card. He didn't have one. He chose to walk. Three kilometers. This was the first time in this world he'd traveled on his own two feet.

The Institute of Quantum Physics was located at the easternmost edge of University City, a twelve-story building with a glass curtain wall. The institute's nameplate used two scripts—Chinese and some symbols Lin Shen didn't recognize, probably a unique academic notation specific to this world. There was a security gate at the entrance, and a uniformed guard sat in the duty room scrolling through his phone.

Lin Shen stood across the street and watched for a while. He didn't know what to say. "I'm from another world, looking for someone named Su Wan"? They'd probably call security.

He sat down on a bench across from the institute. Sunlight filtered through the gaps in the plane trees, scattering golden碎片 on the ground. People came and went on the street—some on phone calls, some walking dogs, some riding shared bikes. But the bikes were a different color from those in his world; here, they were green.

A normal city. A normal world. These people knew nothing about quantum physics, nothing about Corrector Agents, nothing about parallel realities. They just lived—went to work, came home, picked up their kids from school. For them, this world was the only one. Just like Lin Shen a month ago.

He sat on the bench for forty minutes. Not because he was tired, but because he didn't know what to do next.

Then he saw someone.

The side door of the institute opened. A young woman walked out. She was carrying a backpack, wearing a white lab coat, and holding a stack of folders in her arms. Long straight black hair, and the way she walked—shoulders slightly rolled inward, steps quick but a little unsteady, as if walking on an invisible balance beam.

Lin Shen stood up.

Her silhouette was too similar. Not just vaguely similar—every detail matched. The length of her hair, the width of her shoulders, the rhythm of her stride. And then she rubbed her nose with the back of her hand—that was Su Wan's habit. She'd gotten something on her hands and she wouldn't use her palm to touch her face—she'd use the back of her hand.

Lin Shen strode after her. He was walking so fast he nearly hit a bicycle parked at the curb.

"Su Wan!"

He called out her name.

The young woman stopped. She turned around.

Lin Shen stopped too.

It wasn't Su Wan.

Her face was slightly rounder than Su Wan's, her lips thinner, the space between her eyes and brows wider. She wore a pair of gold-rimmed glasses—Su Wan never wore glasses. Her expression was confused, polite, but completely lacking that look of recognition—the kind that says "I know you."

But there was a teardrop mole at the corner of her left eye. In the exact same spot as Su Wan's.

"You looking for me?" The young woman frowned slightly, her voice a little higher than Su Wan's.

Lin Shen stood still. The wind blew, plane trees rustled, and a few leaves landed on his shoulders.

"Sorry," he said. "I mistook you for someone else."

The young woman studied him for a moment, as if confirming whether he was drunk or mentally unstable. Then she nodded and turned away. The hem of her lab coat lifted in the wind as she disappeared around the corner of the institute's side door.

Lin Shen didn't move. He stood on the sidewalk, staring at that side door, breathing deeper each time.

Her teardrop mole was in the same place as Su Wan's. What did that mean? Just a coincidence? Or some rule of correspondence in mirror worlds—that every crosser has a counterpart in the other world? Was the person he just met this world's Su Wan?

He took out his wallet and pulled a scrap of paper from the innermost compartment.

The correction mechanism had erased everything—photos, chat logs, the diary, the old camphor wood chest. But this scrap of paper had survived. Because it wasn't Su Wan's—it was Lin Shen's. The correction mechanism doesn't correct things belonging to Lin Shen. This paper had originally been blank, corrected by the mechanism. But at some point, the writing had returned—half of the character "Wan," in an extremely faint blue pigment. Like frost marks in winter, that would disappear with a single breath.

He held it in his palm. The scrap was tiny, no bigger than his thumbnail.

He decided to wait.

He sat on the bench across from the institute for the entire afternoon. Students finished their classes, researchers clocked out, janitors pushed trash carts past. The sun slid from overhead to the west, and the streetlights came on. Plane tree leaves swirled down in the night breeze.

A little past eight in the evening, the young woman came out again. This time she wasn't wearing her lab coat; she'd changed into a loose gray hoodie, the sleeves longer than her hands—just like Su Wan's style of dressing. She was carrying her backpack and walking toward the bus stop.

Lin Shen stood up and followed her at a distance. He wasn't a stalker—he just needed confirmation. Confirmation that "this world didn't correct her." Confirmation that "she's doing well here."

The young woman reached the bus stop, waited a moment, and got on a green-painted bus. Lin Shen memorized the license plate number and the time, and didn't follow further.

He turned and walked back toward the city. The streetlights stretched his shadow long behind him.

He walked one street, then another. The city's nightscape overlapped with the original world by about seventy percent—the café names were different, the convenience store logo had changed to a cat of a different color, but the overall contours were familiar. It was as if someone had traced a sketch twice, pressing harder the second time, unconsciously shifting the positions of the shadows.

He stopped at a 24-hour convenience store. A poster was taped to the glass door—a recruitment ad for the Institute of Quantum Physics. The slogan on the poster read: "Everything has a mirror image. Your choice determines your direction."

Lin Shen looked at it for a moment, then walked into the store and bought a transit card and a local SIM card.

Then he went to the counter and asked the clerk, "Can you help me look up this address?"

Su Wan's diary had recorded an address—her home in this world. The place where she lived before she left.

The clerk typed in the address, and a location popped up on the screen. "37 Jiefang Road North, an old residential complex, third floor. About a twenty-minute walk from here."

Lin Shen thanked him and walked out.

Twenty minutes later, he stood at the base of a six-story old building. The stairwell had motion-activated lights, some of which were broken on certain floors. He felt his way up to the third floor in the dark. A utility payment notice was taped to the door, dated last month. No name, just an account number.

A faint light seeped through the crack under the door—but it wasn't electric light; it was moonlight coming through the window, reflecting off the floor and spilling through the gap at the door's edge. No one was inside.

She wasn't home.

Lin Shen leaned against the doorframe and tapped three times on the metal keypad of the digital lock—the rhythm of a pencil tap. He suddenly felt like laughing. He'd chased across a world, run hundreds of kilometers, climbed a mountain, squeezed through a collapsing passage—and now he was standing outside a locked door, waiting for someone who might never come back.

But he didn't regret it. Not one bit.

Footsteps sounded from downstairs. High heels—not Su Wan; Su Wan didn't wear heels. But the footsteps stopped on the third floor. A middle-aged woman who looked like a neighbor came up carrying groceries, and glanced at Lin Shen.

"Looking for someone?"

"Yeah. The person who lives here—her last name is Su?"

"Su?" The woman thought for a moment. "No, the woman named Su moved out a long time ago. This unit is rented now. Someone who works at the institute lives here. I think their last name is—Lin?"

Lin Shen's heart stopped for an instant.

"Lin what?"

"Lin Shen. Double-wood Lin, Shen as in 'deep.' Do you know him?"

He didn't answer. He stood under the motion-activated light in the stairwell, the light illuminating his face.

The woman gave him another look, as if she felt he seemed familiar but couldn't remember where she'd seen him. Then she pulled out her keys, opened the door across the hall, and went inside.

The motion-activated light went out. Lin Shen stood alone in the darkness.

This world's Lin Shen. Mirror A's Lin Shen. Old Zheng had said the passage was bidirectional—Su Wan was projected into his world, and in exchange, his world's Lin Shen was projected here. Two years. This Lin Shen had already been living here for two years.

He was living in the house she used to live in. He probably knew this world's Su Wan. He probably—had also fallen in love with this world's Su Wan.

Lin Shen leaned against the wall and closed his eyes.

Suddenly, he didn't know what his mission here was anymore. To take Su Wan back? But if this world's Su Wan already had her own life, her own loved one—what right did he have to rescue "his Su Wan" from the void? This world's Su Wan wasn't his Su Wan. His Su Wan was the error between two worlds—the one who had been projected out, who belonged to neither side, who was slowly fading away.

His Su Wan was the only one.

And the only path to her might have to pass through him—this world's Lin Shen.

The motion-activated light suddenly came on. Someone was coming up the stairs.

The footsteps were light—leather shoes on the old stairwell carpet, steady with each step. Not a woman's stride. A man's.

Lin Shen opened his eyes.

At the turn in the stairwell, a man in the same dark-colored shirt as Lin Shen's walked up. Slim, carrying a convenience store bag. His face was shrouded in the dim light of the motion-activated lamp.

Identical. The line of his jaw, the curve of his nose, the depth of his eye sockets.

The two men stood face to face on the third-floor landing. No more than two meters apart.

The other spoke first. His voice was almost the same as Lin Shen's own—slightly lower, carrying an extra layer of calm that came from having lived in this world for a long time.

"You're here," he said. His tone was very flat, like someone who had been waiting a long time. "Two days later than I expected."

Lin Shen looked at Mirror A's version of himself. Two Lin Shens from two worlds, standing in front of the same door.

"You knew I was coming.""I know," said Lin Shen from Mirror A. "Old Zheng came by. No—not your Old Zheng. Our Old Zheng. He told me before he retired that if another Lin Shen appeared—it would be time."

He stepped forward and pulled a key from his pocket. Just before inserting it into the lock, he paused.

"Do you want to go inside first and sit for a bit, or go straight to the hydroelectric station?"

"The hydroelectric station."

Lin Shen from Mirror A nodded.

"Let's go then," he said. "She's waiting for you."

Lin Shen was stunned. "Which she?"

Lin Shen from Mirror A had already turned and gone downstairs. His voice drifted up from the stairwell, calm, but every word drove into Lin Shen's chest like a nail.

"Your she."