✧ Genre: Sort of inspired by Stranger Things?? Sci-fi!au?? idk how to word this lmao - angst… angst… fluff if ya squint hard enough!!
✧ Summary: Mirrors have all but been destroyed, and only rumors contain the information that there might be one left - when you’re hired to go steal one from the depths of an abandoned museum, you wind up discovering that there is much more to the all but forgotten artifacts.
✧ Check out my masterlist here!
✧ Day 2 of my October Prompts | “Mirrors.”
Vanity is a sin in the modern world, deriving from pride itself; one of the most deadly seven sins in textbooks. Should you so much as look in a hand mirror for more than twelve seconds, your very own person would be haunted with the sin in knowing that you deliberately disobeyed the laws of this world. Beauty is no longer one of the most important aspects of social norms, rather it has been sent onto a dimmed backburner for the rest of eternity - as no one should hold too much pride or vanity in their appearance.
You had been born many decades later, after the first mirror removal acts had been passed; you’d read in your history class text depicting the burning, shattering, and total destruction of mirrors all around the globe. It all started because a monk in the mountains had declared that humans were becoming far too vain, or they sought to achieve a level of vanity that the gods vehemently disapproved of. When the world leaders first brushed this warning aside, they were immediately disposed of by the gods themselves; they would be struck down by haunting yellow bolts of lighting in the middle of the day when there were beautiful clear skies, some of them even died of drowning even though they were considered excellent swimmers - no one could continue ignoring the powerful wrath of the gods.
Ever since then, the only available mirrors in stock anywhere were made of shining metals that could barely show your reflection; no one cared to try and use them for the most part, though. Now, decades later, everything has essentially become black and white. Whenever you were in class and the teacher tried to explain colors, it was as if their tongues would get twisted and they wouldn’t know how to truly tell someone what a color looked like - not that anyone could blame them.
Oddly enough, no one in the world could quite pinpoint how or when all other colors became a neutral tone somewhere in the spectrum of black and white. There was nobody alive at that point who once knew colors to explain the strange phenomenon, although there were the few conspiracy theories tossed around suggesting that the gods deemed humans unworthy of any sort of vanity - henceforth removing the rest of the color wheel from the world’s eyes.
“Y/N, are you done daydreaming yet?” A blaring voice booms through the earpiece tucked behind the shell of your ear, making you wince in surprise at the loud intrusion of noise.
“Yes, Woojin, I’m done.” You grumble back through the puffy microphone attached to the hem of your jacket.
“Good, good - I was afraid I’d have to fly all the way to Virginia and wake you up myself,” the older man chuckled playfully, “and I thought we agreed to use our codenames for this mission.”
You groaned silently to yourself, practically being able to hear the pout in his softening tone. With another hop you’ve managed to get past the debris of broken concrete at the backside of the museum, the only thing standing between you and the interior of the building being a sealed steel door. “I am not using those shitty codenames, Woojin.” You retort quietly, already working on melting the already rusting lock with a homemade flamethrower - aka a bottle of deodorant and a lighter you’d borrowed from Changbin.
“Aww, come on eagle one!” The persistent man whines into his headset.
“YES!” He cheers loudly, only to quiet down as you shush him quickly, focused on making sure you aren’t somehow caught breaking into the old museum.
Luckily the sad excuse of a flamethrower managed to melt the lock enough so you could slowly push the heavy door open without setting off any ancient alarms - sure the place was mostly abandoned, but it was also rumored to be sensitive to intruders. Just a couple months ago some new guy on the field had been imprisoned for trying to sneak inside, having been startled by the blaring alarms from days past so much that he accidently locked himself inside.
“Okay, all jokes aside, Changbin was taking another look at the blueprints earlier and noticed something strange,” Woojin mumbles to you, taking a second to pause while he typed away on his keyboard back at home base, “apparently in 2034 the last mirror being kept at the museum was taken to the capital and burned with the last official pile under their president’s orders. But, Binnie found some weird ass tunnel underneath what looks to be an Egyptian exhibit.”
A noise of acknowledgement escapes your lips as you pull up the map of the museum on your watch, the hologram’s lights dimmed down to accommodate for the darkness of the building; should a passing guard see a bright light emitting from the abandoned building, they would likely send out a notice or chase you down themselves.
“I’m coming up on the exhibit.” You inform Woojin, your steps pattering silently against the ground as you make your way to the exhibit you’d marked on your hologram map. “Okay, did Changbin find where the entrance might be, or am I going to have to push down each of these fake as fuck statues to find it myself?”
“Do you really think our dear Binnie would just let you do all the work yourself?” He hummed teasingly, glancing over to one of the large monitors on the round desk. “The entrance is supposed to be right under the Great Sphinx of Giza. Apparently it’s just made of styrofoam so… you could breath in its general direction and it’d topple over.”
You hold back a laugh of amusement, choosing to instead step over the shards of broken glass that once stood tall as part of the elaborately fake display.
Most of Virginia had been swept away, so to speak, by a category five hurricane over twenty-two years ago. While there had been recovery efforts instilled at first, the people of the country decided to simply use their resources and fortifying the land they had left to the west. Even so, there were still sprinkles of life in the mostly abandoned State - with part of the government instilled operating in what was once the capital, just a few miles away from the crumbling museum.
“Tell Binnie he’s a fucking genius for me, yeah?” You breathe out into your mic once you push the model sphinx away, only to reveal a sort of medieval looking trap door underneath it. Somehow, the floods from the hurricane hadn’t seeped through the cracks from what you could tell - in fact, it was like the speed of the winds had done the most damage rather than the water currents. In any case, you were just glad that whatever hidden contents lied inside were likely still in peak condition.
“You’ll probably go offline underground, but the second you come back up the connection should be just fine… be careful, eagle one.” You hear the man sigh, hinting at his worries.
With a soft laugh, you start your descent into the hidden tunnel, signing off with words of reassurance. “I’m always careful, honeybear.”
You were sure that you’d be burning a shit ton of calories by now, especially from how long you’d been walking in the lone tunnel. You couldn’t quite exactly tell how long you’d been walking, since your watch had buzzed off a while ago before you could look at it. Most other missions had been easy and not as, well, interesting, as this one.
A few weeks ago, a very famous millionaire from Sweden had contacted your associates with the offer of over three million dollars should you acquire what was rumored to be the final authentic mirror in the world. Honestly, none of you were all too concerned with why this lady wanted it, but then again you all figured it was just something she wanted for her personal collection of prized artifacts.
Finally you saw what appeared to be a flickering light of sorts just feet ahead of you in what you guessed was the end of the tunnel. Another couple steps and you’d entered a dome-shaped room, stuffed with boxes covered in yellow tape that read ‘danger!’
But what really caught your attention was the object in the back corner of the room, peeking over a stack of wooden crates and boxes. You saunter over, being extra careful in moving the other things aside. Now, standing before you was what you could only assume was the full-body mirror the client had been asking for. It was covered in a cloak of sorts, though you made quick work of it by tossing it aside onto the concrete floor.
“Holy shit…” You breathe out airily, a sound of disbelief bubbling up from between your lips at the sight before you.
It’s you - or your reflection, anyway. Yeah you would occasionally catch glimpses of yourself in the crystal clear water of puddles after a storm or the lake by your house back home, but they couldn’t compare to the raw, unwavering reflection of a real mirror.
Filled with growing curiosity and utter astonishment, you take another tentative step closer to the mirror, eyeing its ornate golden edges and dusty glass. You reach out to brush some of the dust off of the object, only to watch as your fingers slip through the mirror - you barely even have a moment to scream in horror and fear as the entity pulls your entire body into its clutches.
And then, you hit the ground with a sickening thud.
“m-be, their h… rate going down-”
As if you’ve been struck by lighting, your entire body convulses and suddenly shoots up from wherever you’d been laying down. You don’t even register the ragged sound of your own breathing or the mad pounding of your heart in your rising and falling chest, as your eyelids snap open.
You see… everything. You don’t know what it is you’re looking at, but there isn’t just black and white anymore - there’s a whole palette painting the world in front of you, even the two bug-eyed men standing by your side.
“W-who are you? Where am I? What are all of those - those things?” The words come out slurred and slightly rushed, not that you could really help it. You watch as the two men quirk an eyebrow at each other, one of them bending down to your level - since you’d sat up in what felt like a normal cot - and going to gently hold your shaking hands with his own.
“Shh, calm down, everything’s okay,” the man said softly with a twinge of an odd accent, one you were positive you had never had the pleasure of hearing before, “my name is Chan, and my friend over there is Felix. You um, kind of fell out of one of our mirrors.”
The stranger, Chan, explained in such a soft tone that, if you weren’t on the verge of freaking out more so than you already were, you were sure you would’ve visibly swooned.
“Mirror?” You echoed him aloud, blinking as you turn your head around in each possible direction until you spot the same exact mirror you’d been trying to steal just moments ago. “I - I was in a tunnel and uncovered it… I went to dust it off when it just, pulled me into it.”
The man with darker spots spread across his face hums thoughtfully at your explanation, tapping on his chin in curiosity and slight bewilderment. “Where did you come from - like, where was this mirror when you found it?” He asks.
“Um, it was in the end of a hidden passageway in an abandoned museum near the capital of Virginia.”
“Uh huh… tell me, can you see the color of my hair?” He pries further, tilting his head in wonder when you blush and shake your head.
“Yes - well, no - I know it’s a color, but I don’t know what it is. Usually I just see shades of black and white.”
“I think I may know where you came from, stranger,” he concludes, dipping his head over to his friend still crouched down beside your cot, “Chan, watch them for a while. I’m going to go see Hyunjin, he has to know what’s going on.”
“Gotcha, Felix.” Chan hums, waving his friend off as he steps out of the bright room and leaves you alone with whoever this guy was. A name wasn’t enough to go off of, a lesson you learned quite some time ago.
“So… do you wanna learn about colors?”
What felt like hours had flown by as you chatted with Chan, the man insisting that he teach you all about the other colors in the world - from reds to yellows, to purples and pinks, he made sure to vividly describe all the new, fascinating colors to you while you both waited on his friend to return.
So far, you had come to recognize what red looked like - you’d learned that most apples were this color, while there were some that appeared to be green. It amazed you how much you were seeing, since you were so used to apples being a neutral sort of gray color, nothing more, nothing less.
You also learned that water was apparently blue, in most cases - unless you counted polluted water, which turned a sickly sort of dark green according to Chan.
He even described his colors to you in detail: his skin was dark, well, tan, and he called it melanin, though he also told you there were people with so many different skin tones that he wouldn’t be able to list them all on his ten fingers. The bubbly man also explained that his hair was dyed a darker brown, even though his natural hair color was supposedly brown itself - a little variation, he called it.
Hell he even went on to tell you what you looked like - what your skin tone was, the color of your eyes, the hue of your hair; everything.
“Alright, so your shoes are what color?”
“Um… I think, they’re blue-”
“Sorry to interrupt this color lesson,” a familiar voice broke you both out of concentration, with you snapping your gaze towards the man from earlier - Felix, who according to Chan may be of legal age, but he was still basically a kid, “but my assumption was correct. Hyunjin only confirmed what I already knew.”
He goes to sit at the edge of your cot, holding a thick book in the palms of his hands. “Every universe has its own carbon copy according to history, only the opposite one will be a parallel of the original. Parallel universes are connected by some sort of bonding object - some are intertwined by fireplaces, some by pools of water, and it looks like ours are connected by mirrors.” Felix explains, flipping through the pages of the book whilst you and Chan listen in wonder.
“Both of our universes believe in gods related to the likes of Greek and Roman gods and goddesses; but almost a century ago, your world suddenly cut itself off from ours after one of the gods became so vain that he tried to claim that he was the king over every human in existence in our universes. Once he was banished, the remaining gods and goddesses decided that pride was the worst deadly sin of them all, and henceforth made it their mission to make sure no human became as vain and prideful as their old comrade.”
“That… kind of makes sense,” you mutter after a stunned moment of silence, catching the two men’s attention as you look down at your lap and wring your fingers together in deep thought, “from what I’ve read in our textbooks, the gods threated humans to be rid of mirrors completely - when they didn’t listen, many of the world leaders were killed. Even now my people avoid trying to look at their reflections in puddles after a rainstorm in fear of becoming the slightest bit vain in their appearance.”
“There’s nothing in this book about you all losing the ability to see colors besides black and white, but Hyunjin suggested that the gods might’ve gone overboard over time and erased it just because they could.”
“Mhm. Not to mention I think I know why your universe was so hellbent on destroying our connection,” Chan speaks up from beside you, his eyes narrowed at the scribbled ink on the book he’d politely taken from Felix’s hands, “the god who was banished came here ages ago in the form of a human, like us - only they were so vain and enchanting that they could get whatever they pleased. Obviously they’ve cooled it down a bit over time, but they live here now among us humans. I doubt the others wanted to risk one of your kind falling into a mirror and stumbling upon the banished one.”
“When can I go home, though?” You question them quietly, worry filling your mind at the thought of Woojin and Changbin panicking over your very prolonged absence. They were probably worried sick.
Felix sighs and takes the book back from Chan’s hands, flipping to another page closer to the end. “We’re not sure, honestly. The trip took a lot of energy out of you, I wouldn’t suggest trying to go back so soon - you need to rest as long as you can, especially since none of us know what the trip back will do to your body.”
“So essentially I’m stuck here for a while, huh?” You concluded.
Chan sighs next to you and scoots closer to you on the cot, reaching out to comfortingly place on of his hands on your shoulder. “It’ll be okay, trust me. You can stay with me until we figure out when you can go back.”
Just like that, you were stuck in a parallel universe.
“Chan, give me Gyu back before I stomp on your toes!”
“Aww, you wouldn’t do that Y/N my sweet little angel - ow, what the fuck-!”
“Did I stutter, Bang Chan?” You huffed, snatching the stuffed plushie back from the taller man’s clutches as he hissed in pain from you promptly stomping on his toes like you threatened merely seconds ago.
He laughs weakly, though the Australian man quickly recovers and stands up so he has to tilt his head down to look you in the eyes. “Clearly you didn’t.” He snickers, playfully ruffling the top of your head of hair before he slunk past you into his bedroom, gesturing for you to follow him.
So you did, like you had done many times before, and practically flop onto his cream-colored blankets with a sigh of genuine content, the back of you head meeting the softness of his fluffy pillows. Technically you had your own bedroom, the same room you had literally fallen into when you first arrived, but Chan figured that it was probably weird for you to sleep on a shitty cot in the same place with the ornate mirror stood in the corner, the very one that had transported you to his universe.
Now you and Chan had come to settle with sharing his bed, agreeing to put up a barrier of pillows between your bodies each and every night - although it never did seem to work, as you would find your legs tangled together the following morning, usually with his face nuzzled into the crook of you neck. It had been strange, at first, sleeping in the same bed with a total stranger - but as the months went by, you both grew incredibly comfortable with one another.
“Can we watch the one movie with the red flame that talks - um… Howl’s Moving Castle, I think? It has the guy with the really pretty blonde hair!” You describe the movie you wish to watch in detail, not once skipping a beat when it came to mentioning every possible color you could think of that held significance to the film.
Ever since Chan had taken the liberty to teach you all about the different colors in his universe, you’d imprinted each of them into your memories, never wanting to forget them: like the beautiful red roses the man would bring you after work on Wednesdays, or the pale pink plushie tucked under one of your arms that he’d won for you at a carnival a few weeks ago.
“Sure thing babe, get comfy and I’ll get it started.” He hums nonchalantly, acting as if he didn’t call you babe for the fifth time that day while you were reduced to a blushing mess, struggling to wiggle under his stack of fluffy blankets due to your flustered state.
You weren’t quite sure when you had started to fall for the cute, dimpled man, in all honesty. While you did recognize that he was immensely attractive in general since the first time you had laid your eyes on him, there was just something so utterly wonderful about him that made your heart beat madly in your chest whenever he would tease you with such pet names.
“I swear all we watch these days are Studio Ghibli films - not that I’m really complaining.” Chan speaks up with an amused smirk as he slides into his bed next to you, tucking himself in under the blankets and presses play on the tv remote before he places it on his nightstand. He turns onto his side just enough to make steady eye contact with you, his rosy lips pulled into a cheeky smirk.
“I’m sorry Chan, but they just have so many colors! I love them so much.” You murmur with a blush, not once daring to break your gaze away from his.
He scoffs quietly, moving his hand over to your pink dusted cheeks and brushing your sensitive skin with the pads of his fingers gently. “Don’t apologize, Y/N - it’s adorable how much you adore them.” Chan mumbles softly, which makes your cheeks heat up even more so than before.
Only when you start to feel his warm breaths on your skin do you realize your close proximities, with his parted lips being just inches from your own pursed ones. The tip of his nose brushes against yours when he seems to scoot even closer to your frozen form, and for a moment you see a flash of emotion sweep over his eyes.
“I shouldn’t, but… I really want to kiss you, baby.” He admits almost inaudibly, the only reason his words were heard by you was because you had been focused entirely on him in that moment of nervousness.
You still weren’t sure when or why you had fallen for Bang Chan. You knew all too well that one day you would be able to pass back through the mirror so you could be taken to your universe again. Yet, you found yourself starting to close the gap between your lips and his own until they finally met. Both of you were seemingly hesitant to really kiss the other person, since there would one day be a time where you could choose to stay in this universe, or go back to your home universe - it was a commitment neither of you could predict the outcome of.
“Fuck it.” You whisper against the shocked man’s lips, letting your eyelids flutter shut while you started to move your lips against his, waiting to see if he would kiss you back. You weren’t left to wait long, of course, as the man gingerly placed one of his hands on your waist to pull you closer while he deepened the long awaited kiss.
You were completely and utterly in love with Bang Chan.
He would now bring you a variety of colored flowers after work each day - actually, he did it every single day for the next month, not once forgetting to drop by the flower shop. While you were certainly familiar with colors at that point, you didn’t mind how he would seat you gently on his lap in the living room and describe the colors of the stunning flowers for hours on end, even going as far as to point out the blended parts, the shading, the reflection of light - you could listen to Chan talk for days if need be.
On the weekends, rather his days off of work in the recording studio, Chan would drag you off to some place in the city he was sure you had never been to before. From arcades to sweet little cafes, he knew how to treat you like royalty itself. Each day you fell in love with him a little bit more.
“Love, could you go see if that old keyboard is still in the guest room?” Chan asked you softly, chuckling to himself as you whined in protest, not wanting to remove your arms from around his apron-covered torso just yet. “Dinner will be done soon baby, I just want to make sure that the room is cleaned out before my parents show up tonight.”
That’s right - Chan’s parents were finally coming down to visit so they could meet you in person. According to your boyfriend, they were desperate to meet the very girl that had him smitten; the thought of meeting them was crazy in itself, especially since neither of them knew of your situation.
Not that they needed to, nor would they likely ever know - you decided ages ago that you wanted to stay here, with Chan by your side. You’d grown close with his friends as well over time, and while they would never replace Woojin and Changbin, you had never felt so happy in your entire life. Chan swore up and down that one day he would figure out a way to bring your friends to his universe so you could see them again and vice versa.
“Alright alright, pushy.” You whine dramatically, a sigh escaping your lips as you reluctantly pull away from his warm body.
Ignoring his amused laugh, you turn tail and head straight into the guest room like he’d asked of you. The keyboard was still there as he thought it was, meaning that you’d have to find free space in the house to put it so his parents would have more space for their luggage and such.
You go to leave the bedroom, only to realize that you can’t; it’s like something is pulling at your body, tugging you back into the depths of the guest room while you struggle to move against its force.
Only when you look back in a panic do you see the same fucking mirror you’d travelled through before, except this time the force was voluntarily dragging you closer and closer until the heels of your feet started to sink into the mirror.
You desperately cry out for Chan, your fingers clawing and grasping at the rim of the mirror so you won’t be sucked back in before you can see him again.
“Y/N - no, baby no-” He starts to choke up the second he realizes what’s happening, his hands reaching out to try and grasp onto your fingers and keep you in place after he’d rushed into the guest room upon hearing your cry for help. “I love you - I love you so fucking much, yeah?”
“I love you too, Chan. I-”
“I’ll f-ind you again, Y/N, just wait f… m-e-”
You let out a ragged scream of heartbreak as his voice starts to fade away, your fingers finally being forced to let go of the rim of the ornate mirror. In seconds you’ve fallen back into the mirror, just to land on your back painfully on… concrete?
“No, no no nonono! Fuck!” Your voice is hoarse with tears, your fists going to pound on the mirror after you rush to stand back up on your own two feet.
And once more, and when you open your watering eyes for the third time, you see a familiar face staring back at you from the other side of the mirror.
You watch his lips mouth the same words over and over again while you desperately fight for the mirror to just take you back again.
To take you back to Bang Chan.
To take you back to your happy place, where you could see colors and wake up next to the love of your life.
‘I love you, I love you, I love you’
origamiaround
tangentwithtanner
2087
jacobvanloon
snowghoul
vaporwave
blakekathryn
romaincrisis
titsay
