The demolition orders came quietly—buried on page fourteen of a municipal report, far beneath articles on subway extensions and foreign investments. Zhongsheng Opera House, once the pride of 19th-century Shanghai, would be gone by winter. There was no press release, no televised farewell. Just a stamp, a signature, and an expiration date for the forgotten.

Most of the city didn’t even know it still existed.

But Lin Xie did.

He stood outside its crumbling facade just after sunset, his hoodie soaked through with summer rain. The sky overhead was the color of wet coal, and the street behind him was slowly disappearing into shadow as the city lit up. Towering glass buildings blinked alive, their windows filled with people already forgetting history.

He raised his camera and snapped a shot of the entrance. The building’s once-grand arch was now a skeleton of peeling gold leaf and soot-stained stone. Vines strangled the supports like veins feeding a dying heart.

Lin checked the frame. Fuzzy. The autofocus refused to settle. He frowned and stepped forward, finding a spot along the iron fence where the demolition tape had curled and torn. He scaled it silently, boots thudding against concrete on the other side.

Inside the fence, the air changed. It was heavier, dense like breath held too long. Lin paused, feeling the shift. Then he pushed forward, heading toward a broken window tucked beneath a collapsed section of roofing. He crouched, pulling his camera bag through behind him.

The opera house swallowed him whole.

Everything inside was gray and red and dust. The air was so still it felt frozen in place, as if exhaling might shatter it. His flashlight cast a cone of weak light over mosaic tiles that had cracked and lifted like ancient bones. Wallpaper curled at the seams, revealing layers beneath—floral, then crimson, then bare plaster.

And there, in the middle of it all, was silence. Deep and exacting.

Lin’s boots crunched over shattered glass as he stepped into the grand foyer. To his left was the staircase—two curved flights sweeping toward a balcony that now sagged, barely held by rusted braces. Above hung a chandelier the size of a car, suspended by a single stubborn chain. Its crystal ornaments had mostly fallen, leaving rust-streaked scars on the marble floor.

He snapped a photo.

Click.

The light flashed and vanished, momentarily painting everything in sharp relief: the cracked busts of forgotten composers, the faded banners advertising last season’s opera from over a hundred years ago.

Then darkness again. Stillness.

Lin made his way toward the main hall, passing under a rotted velvet archway. He hesitated at the edge of the theater.

Rows upon rows of once-luxurious seats stretched out before him, now sunken and devoured by mildew. The scent here was worse—moisture, mold, and something sweet and wrong underneath. Like flowers that had died crying.

He stepped forward. The old wood groaned under his feet. Each creak echoed unnaturally long, as if the space had been waiting decades to hear footsteps again.

At the far end of the theater, the stage stood untouched—raised like an altar, the red velvet curtain still drawn across its width. A faint breeze, though there was no wind, stirred the curtain’s bottom edge.

Lin raised his camera. Click.

Nothing. Just the curtain. But his fingers trembled slightly as he lowered the camera. He didn’t know why.

Backstage, things were worse. Dust was thicker here, coating everything like ash. Ropes dangled from the fly system above, knotted and frayed. A broken phonograph lay on its side, horn dented, its needle frozen mid-spin. As if it had stopped playing in the middle of a note and never resumed.

He found a corridor lined with mirrors.

Most were broken—spiderweb cracks radiating from unseen impacts. One remained intact, leaning slightly against the wall, its frame carved with roses now faded to gray. Lin approached and lifted his camera.

Click.

The mirror flashed white, and for a brief instant, he saw movement—not his own.

He looked at the preview. Froze.

There, just behind his reflection, was a woman.

She wore red.

A qipao of old silk, its thread glinting with gold embroidery. Her black hair was pinned up with delicate silver combs, and her face was painted in soft, ghostly makeup: pale white skin, crimson lips, and dark eyes lined with ancient precision. Her mouth was open, shaped into a note mid-song.

Lin looked up. The mirror was empty.

He looked down. She was still there—in the photo. Clear. Centered. Watching him.

His pulse stuttered. He glanced around. Still alone. Still silent. But the air was different now—colder, heavier, pressed tight against his ears. He backed away slowly, shoving his camera into his bag.

Something brushed past his cheek.

He spun.

Nothing.

Then a sound—soft, fragile, like a voice echoing from the bottom of a well. A hum. It rose in pitch for a single, aching second before cutting off completely.

Lin left.

He didn't run. That would be admitting something was wrong. Instead, he walked—measured steps, breath held, heartbeat thudding like a war drum in his ears. Through the theater, past the chandelier, out the broken window and back into the warm air of Shanghai night.

It wasn’t until he was two blocks away that he stopped and allowed himself to breathe.

Two hours later, he sat in a corner booth of a teahouse tucked behind an alley off Wuding Road. The owner knew him—never asked questions when Lin showed up with dirt on his jeans and dust in his hair. She brought him black tea and left him alone.

He scrolled through his camera.

The exterior shots were normal. Grainy. He’d been rushing. The foyer, too—unremarkable decay, though there was something oddly elegant about the desolation. Then the stage. The curtain.

And then the mirror.

The photo of her.

The woman was clearer now that he looked closer. Not just present—posed. As if she knew exactly when the flash would fire. Her hands were lifted, fingers curled delicately, frozen in a gesture of performance. Her mouth was partway open, but no sound could ever emerge.

The thing that struck him most wasn’t her beauty, though she was beautiful. It was her eyes.

She wasn’t looking at him in the photo.

She was looking through him.

Lin zoomed in.

And behind her—there it was again. Flames. Faint, but real. Reflected not in the mirror’s surface, but behind it, like the room she occupied was aflame. The opera house had never burned. Not officially.

He shut off the screen.

Outside, the rain had begun again. This time, heavy. The city beyond the glass blurred into wet neon. A cab hissed past. A girl laughed in the distance. Life resumed. But Lin stayed still.

He felt... marked.

Not in a physical way. But like something had seen him. Had chosen him. And that whatever he did next, it would not matter.

Because he would go back.

Not because he was brave. Not even because he was curious.

Because in the woman’s eyes—captured in a single frame—he had seen recognition.

She had been waiting.

And she had remembered him.

Lin’s apartment was too quiet.

The usual sounds of the city—traffic rumble, air conditioning hum, distant shouting from the mahjong parlor below—had dulled, as if his windows were sealed with cotton. Even the ticking of his kitchen clock seemed to falter now and then, skipping or echoing faintly.

He tossed his bag on the couch and locked the door behind him, twisting the deadbolt harder than necessary. The apartment was small, sterile, and filled with secondhand furniture that didn’t quite fit. The walls were bare except for a few framed prints of urban ruins. Most people found it depressing.

Lin found it… honest.

He sat on the floor, back against the couch, and opened his camera. The screen flickered once—no glitch, just static from a bad sensor. But it made his skin crawl.

The photo was still there.

The mirror shot. The woman in red.

He studied it again, now in the safety of his apartment’s dim lamplight. But it didn’t feel safe. The figure was too clear. She wasn’t just in the photo; she inhabited it. The depth, the detail—it was like looking through a window.

He zoomed in.

Her expression was complicated. Not smiling, not frowning. Her lips were parted, yes, but not in surprise. They were shaped around something—a word or a note. She had been singing. Performing. The muscle tension in her neck suggested projection. Her eyes, wide and dark, held something close to grief.

Or longing.

Lin leaned in. The background behind her flickered with the faintest orange tone. Flame? A reflection? It didn’t look like the backstage of the opera house. There were no ropes, no curtains, no dust. Just a shadowy, golden haze.

He shut the camera with a click and set it down.

He’d never believed in ghosts.

He believed in sadness.

And whatever this was, it felt like a sadness that had never been given a name.

The bathroom was the first place he noticed the change.

He brushed his teeth like always—shirtless, tired, blinking away the beginnings of a headache. The overhead bulb was dim but steady, casting his reflection in pale yellow. He leaned forward, spit, rinsed, looked up.

And froze.

The mirror was… warped.

Not obviously. Not like a funhouse mirror. But subtly. The edges bowed inward, just slightly, as if something behind the glass was pulling it toward itself. The center of his reflection shimmered—not enough to be clearly wrong, just enough to make his stomach lurch.

He reached forward.

His fingers hovered just above the surface. It didn’t feel cold. It didn’t feel warm. It felt… absent. As if something had stepped aside to let his touch pass through—but didn’t.

And then, from the edge of the mirror, a fog spread.

Slow and sure. Condensation. But he hadn’t showered. There was no steam.

The fog formed a breath.

A shape.

Words written in breath.

Three characters.

林谢.

His name.

He stumbled back, knocking over his toothbrush cup. Water sloshed across the counter. The writing vanished as quickly as it came.

He turned on the tap, splashed his face, forced himself to breathe.

"Get it together," he muttered. "It’s just suggestion. Leftover light. Ghosting from the camera’s flash."

He didn’t believe it.

That night, sleep came slowly, then violently.

He dreamt of the opera house again—but not as he had seen it. Not in ruin.

It was alive.

The chandeliers were bright. Music swelled, a strange hybrid of strings and something older, hollow, like a guzheng but deeper. He stood at the edge of a full house. Red lanterns lit the ceiling. Nobles laughed behind lace fans. The scent of opium and rose water hung heavy in the air.

Then silence.

On stage, the curtain lifted.

She stood there.

The woman in red.

No microphone. No speakers. Just her voice.

But Lin couldn’t hear it.

He saw her mouth move—slow, deliberate, mournful. He strained, leaned forward, desperate to hear.

Still, nothing.

Then she turned her head. Looked straight at him.

And sang a final note, too silent to hear—too loud to ignore.

He woke up on the bathroom floor.

His head throbbed.

He must have gotten up in the night. Sleepwalking? He hadn’t done that since childhood. He pushed himself upright slowly, wiping a dried trickle of blood from his nose. His mouth tasted of iron and heat.

The mirror loomed above him. For a moment, he expected it to be broken.

It wasn’t.

But something was off.

He rose to his feet and looked.

She was there.

Not a vision. Not a flicker. Not a ghost.

Just her—clear and still and wrong.

Her face filled the reflection. Behind her, gold mist swirled. Her lips moved, slow and sad, forming syllables he couldn’t hear. But he could feel them.

In his head.

A tune without notes. A language without breath.

It ached.

Lin reached forward. The mirror didn’t feel solid. His fingers sank a millimeter deeper than they should have.

He felt heat on his palms.

He pulled away.

The mirror returned to normal. His reflection stared back at him, eyes wide, blood beneath his fingernails.

He didn’t leave the apartment the next day.

He sat in front of the mirror for hours, notebook in hand, trying to transcribe what her mouth formed. Over and over, he rewound the photo, the memory, the dream. He tried phonetics. Mandarin, Shanghainese, even bits of Wu dialects.

Nothing fit.

But the song haunted him. Not a melody, exactly—but the shape of a melody, the shadow of it, like a note remembered but never heard. It followed him from room to room. Whispered in the tap. Flickered in the corner of his eye.

At dusk, it stopped.

And the mirror darkened.

He approached it, cautious.

For the first time, it didn’t reflect anything at all.

Not even him.

He leaned close.

A breath formed again.

This time, not his name.

A single character.

“等.”

Wait.

He whispered it aloud. “Děng…”

The mirror shuddered.

He stepped back.

Then, in a voice as soft as silk pulled across glass, he heard it:

“你回来了。”

You came back.

Lin didn’t sleep after the mirror spoke.

He tried. He lay down on the couch with a blanket half-draped over him, the room cold despite the humidity outside, but the moment he closed his eyes the song returned. Not sound, not exactly—more like the memory of something that had never been fully heard. A phantom melody that itched behind his eardrums. He tossed. Turned. Got up. Sat. Walked the apartment.

At dawn, he left.

The city was slowly waking up, the streets damp from a night of heavy rain. Carts rolled out. Bikers weaved through early traffic. The neon signs that burned through night began to flicker out one by one, replaced by daylight that crept reluctantly over the skyline.

Lin moved with quiet purpose. No coffee, no breakfast. Just his camera bag, the same clothes as yesterday, and a question burning in his chest. Not about who she was. He knew her name already. Not consciously, but in that deep animal place that feels things before the brain admits them.

He needed to hear her.

That desire was irrational. But it was pure.

He spent the day drifting through Shanghai’s older streets, chasing the scent of forgotten things. Antique stores, pawn shops, secondhand sellers tucked between massage parlors and noodle stalls. Most had nothing but trinkets, souvenirs for tourists, knock-off porcelain. A few had real age—war-era cigarette tins, clocks with gears like bones, faded photographs where eyes looked half-living.

He spoke little. Just one question, each time:

"Do you have anything from Zhongsheng Opera House?"

Most frowned. Shook their heads. Some hadn’t heard of it. One elderly woman in Xuhui simply said, “That place is cursed,” and refused to say more.

It was late afternoon when he found it.

A narrow shop on a forgotten lane, its name missing from the storefront. Just a hanging lantern faded orange, and behind the glass, shelves filled with stacked boxes and records, layered in dust. The place smelled like mold and incense. The air buzzed with stillness.

The man behind the counter was small, thin, perhaps seventy. He wore a gray Mao jacket and didn’t look up when Lin entered. Just continued sorting brittle paper slips into a ledger.

Lin cleared his throat.

“Do you have anything from Zhongsheng Opera House?”

The man didn’t stop writing. But his hand slowed. Paused. Then resumed.

Without looking up, he said, “That place was never meant to last.”

Lin waited.

Finally, the man stood and walked into the back without a word. Lin heard boxes moving, the soft scrape of old wood, the pop of something being pulled from vacuum. Minutes passed.

The man returned and placed a black vinyl record on the counter.

It had no label. No sleeve. Just faint red ink scrawled along the edge.

L.M.

Lin stared at it. “Is this a recording?”

The man nodded slowly.

“Found it in a trunk marked for burning. Most wouldn’t play. That one did. But only once.”

“Who’s on it?”

The man’s voice lowered. “Someone who shouldn’t be remembered.”

Lin’s pulse picked up.

“I’ll take it.”

The man put out his hand to stop him. “Don’t play it after dark.”

“Why not?”

“Because that’s when she sings.”

Lin returned home as dusk bloomed.

The sky bled orange along the skyline, bruising purple toward the rooftops. His building seemed darker than usual, the hallway light outside his apartment flickering as he passed. He tried the bulb. It wasn’t loose.

Inside, everything was exactly as he left it.

He set the record gently on his kitchen table and stared at it. It looked so unremarkable. Smooth black surface. Barely visible red letters.

He waited.

Part of him wanted to obey the warning. Wait until morning. Play it in sunlight, with open windows and background noise to keep the shadows back.

But the other part—the part that had entered the opera house, the part that stood transfixed before the mirror—needed to know. Now.

He took a deep breath, plugged in his old turntable, and set the record carefully onto the spindle. The needle dropped with a gentle hiss.

At first—silence.

Then static. A low scratch, almost like breathing.

Then the voice.

It did not burst. It crept.

Soft. Delicate. Like silk unraveling in water. A humming tune with no words, just shifting tones. Notes that weren’t quite notes. Music without accompaniment. A lullaby sung to the dead.

Lin froze.

He knew this voice.

Not from dreams, not from the mirror.

From inside himself.

The melody moved like memory. He felt tears prick his eyes, unbidden, as if something inside had cracked open. She wasn’t singing to him. She was singing through him. As if his bones were her stage.

The record popped once, then again. The tune continued, then stumbled—as if the singer had lost her place, hesitated. A breath. A pause.

Then a single note.

High, pure, and so sorrowful it made Lin’s spine ache.

Then silence.

The record continued spinning. But no more sound came.

He sat for a long time in the dark, the only light now the glow of the city slipping through his blinds.

Something had changed in the room.

The shadows had moved.

Not longer, not darker. Just… wrong.

He turned on the lamp.

And saw the mirror across the room.

It was fogged again.

Words formed slowly. This time in English:

"Did you hear me?"

He approached.

"Yes," he whispered.

The fog cleared.

And behind his reflection, in the mirror’s depth, her mouth moved again.

But this time, for the briefest moment, he thought he heard it—not in his head. Not imagined.

A single word.

"Come."