On my first night in the attic of the used bookstore, I pried a black-covered diary out of a crack in the floor.
I flipped to the first page, which contained just one line: “If you’re reading this diary, it means I’m already dead.”
The handwriting was sloppy, as if written with the left hand.
I assumed it was a prank left by the previous tenant, so I casually flipped to the next page.
“October 3. It’s windy tonight. I heard something scratching at the floorboards from under the bed.”
I jerked my head up and glanced at the calendar. Today was, in fact, October 3.
I swallowed hard and kept reading.
“Late at night on October 3. It came in. It stood by the bed and stared at me for a long time. It looked exactly like me.”
My breathing began to quicken. Because just a moment ago, I had indeed heard a faint scratching sound coming from under the bed.
On the last page of the diary, the handwriting became extremely distorted, as if written by someone in the grip of extreme fear:
“It took my diary. It wants to become me. Remember, never look back, never…”
The sentence ended abruptly there.
Just then, the wardrobe door behind me let out an extremely faint “creak.”
A cold breath brushed against the nape of my neck.
A voice identical to mine whispered right into my ear:
“You’re reading too slowly.”
I froze in place, not even daring to turn around.
The next day, the landlord came to collect the rent.
“I” opened the door, smiled, and handed over the rent—behaving perfectly, without a single slip.
After the landlord left, “I” walked over to the desk, opened the diary, and wrote a new entry in extremely neat handwriting:
“October 4. A new day. It’s quiet in the attic.”
After finishing, “I” closed the diary and slipped it back into the crack in the floor.
But from that day on, the resident of this attic never looked in a mirror again.
Because every time “I” passed that full-length mirror, the “person” in the mirror always smiled a second later than the “person” on the outside.
