I didn't sleep that night.
How could I? The mirror hadn't lied yet. And now it told me I might not even be… me.
I kept pacing my room, fingers tightening and loosening around the torch handle like a lifeline. Every reflection — on the glass of my study table, the dark TV screen, the polished steel of the cupboard handle — felt like it was watching me. Not following me.
Waiting.
By morning, I looked like I hadn't slept in days. My mother noticed.
"You're pale," she said gently, brushing her hand across my forehead like she used to when I was sick. "Bad dreams again?"
I stared at her for a second too long.
If she remembered me differently, would she say?
If the boy sitting at this table wasn't the son she raised, how would she know?
How would I know?
"I'm fine," I lied.
And the mirror in the hallway — the one I avoided now like it breathed — shimmered faintly with new mist. New words.
"He'll prove it soon."
At school, I tried to act normal. Joked with people. Answered questions. Sat through math like I cared.
But everything felt… off.
Harish wasn't in class.
Neither was Mr. Suresh, our history teacher.
Our vice principal — a woman whose name I still couldn't remember — walked past me and paused mid-step. Just a beat. Just enough to make eye contact and tilt her head slightly, like trying to remember where she'd seen me before.
But we'd met. We'd spoken.
Hadn't we?
I cornered Harish after lunch. He was leaning against the library gate, phone in hand, headphones looped around his neck.
"You okay?" I asked.
He nodded, a little too casually. "Yeah."
He didn't look up. Didn't smile. Didn't even seem surprised I was talking to him.
I stepped closer.
"I had this… memory. Of us. That day on the roof. The deal we made."
Now he looked up. His eyes were careful.
"What deal?"
I felt like ice cracked through my chest.
"You told me if anything happened — if I changed — you'd be the one to notice first. You promised."
He didn't reply.
Instead, he leaned in and whispered, "Who are you really, Ruhan?"
The breath left my lungs.
He knew.
Or maybe someone had told him.
That evening, I went back to the mirror. Taped over it. Covered every reflective surface in the house with sheets of old newspaper.
I couldn't keep watching myself anymore.
I wasn't sure who I was looking at.
Just after dinner, there was a knock on my bedroom door.
I opened it.
It was my father.
Except he looked… older. Not like how I remembered him in these days. More tired. Wiser. Sadder.
He stepped in quietly and sat on my bed.
"I don't think you're our Ruhan," he said softly, his voice like gravel smoothed over by time.
"What are you talking about?" I whispered.
He looked at me. Really looked.
"The way you walk. The way you eat. Even the way you blink. Small things. We all noticed. We just didn't know how to say it."
I backed away slowly.
"Then who do you think I am?"
He didn't answer.
Instead, he pulled out a photograph. An old one. Crumpled and sun-bleached.
It was me.
But not this me.
I was standing next to someone else — someone with my face, my smile, my eyes… but slightly different.
He tapped the photo gently.
"This one," he said. "This is our son."
I stared at the photo.
And I wasn't in it. Not really.
Because maybe the mirror had been right all along.
Maybe I wasn't the original.
Maybe I never was.