Maybe you shouldn’t wish harm upon her. Maybe you shouldn’t want her to scream the way you once did—raw, desperate, animal. Maybe you shouldn’t want her to bruise like you, to shatter like you, to feel the exact shape of your pain.

But you do.

You want her to suffer just as you have, because it feels like you’re the only one who’s ever been in this room for so long.

The room is made of mirrors. No walls, no corners—just reflections stacked upon reflections, until even the ceiling seems to breathe with your face. Sometimes you press your palm to the glass and imagine it’s skin, warm and human. Sometimes you talk to it. You whisper things you don’t mean, and it whispers them back with your voice.

You can’t remember when you last saw sunlight. You can’t remember your mother’s face, or your father’s laugh. Those memories slipped away long ago—maybe taken, maybe erased. You only remember the day the government came.

They said you were special. They said you were beautiful. Too beautiful for the outside world. They took you when you were four, wrapped in a white sheet, their hands careful but not kind. They told your parents you’d be famous, studied, adored.

But beauty isn’t freedom. Not here.

Here, beauty is a job. A profession. A punishment. Beautiful women are given “rights” — rights to serve, to smile, to please the men who built the world from metal and ash. The others — the plain, the scarred, the unwanted — are forgotten.

You were told you were rare, irreplaceable. You were told you would help the nation’s future. So you stayed obedient. You learned to stand still when they measured your bones, to bite your tongue when the needles went in.

They test everything here: how much pain you can take before your tears smudge your mascara, how long your heart keeps beating after they shock it, how quickly bruises fade on perfect skin.

You’ve lived in this mirrored room for thirteen years. You don’t remember your last birthday, but you know you’re seventeen now — they remind you every time they take your blood. They say it’s the “awakening age.” They say it’s when the body becomes most valuable.

And then—one day—something new.

They bring a silver tray. You smell alcohol, metal, perfume. A needle glints in the light. You try to ask what it is, but your voice comes out slurred, as if the words are afraid to exist.

“It’s an empathy trial,” one of the doctors says. “You won’t feel so lonely anymore.”

The needle slides into your arm. The liquid burns. Your vision fractures—mirrors blooming like flowers in every direction, each one reflecting something different. For a moment, you think you see another girl standing there.

She looks just like you.

Then you blink, and she’s gone.

That night, you dream of footsteps echoing across tile. You wake up to the door hissing open — something that hasn’t happened in months. A girl stumbles inside, her knees buckling under her. Her skin is bruised in familiar shapes. Her wrists glint with metal cuffs, just like yours.

She collapses onto the other bed — the one that’s always been empty. Her hair spills over the pillow like dark ink.

She’s… beautiful. Too beautiful.

“You must seem happy that I’m like this, aren’t you?” she says hoarsely, not even looking at you. “I can feel it.”

Her voice sounds strange — like an echo bouncing through glass.

You freeze. For a moment, you can’t tell if she’s mocking you or mirroring you. Her face is the kind of face that feels familiar in a way that hurts. Like looking at your own reflection after too long in the dark.

And when you finally whisper, “Who are you?” she just smiles — a small, broken smile — and says,

“You already know- maybe you don't.. my name is Jane"