3

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.