The street outside was the usual mess. Cars honking like crazy, people bumping into each other on the sidewalks, and the occasional guy yelling at nobody in particular. The buildings here weren't much to look at either. They all kind of blended together, gray walls and cracked windows, like tired faces stacked one on top of another.
This was the "slums" of New York City.
At the very end of the block, there was one building that leaned just a little too much to the left. It wasn't falling apart, but it didn't inspire much confidence either. It was a three-storey building with graffiti stains all over the walls and two small doors — one as the main entrance and the other situated at the back of the building.
That was where David lived, on the second floor, in a flat that always smelled faintly of damp and cheap food from the deli downstairs.
David's flat wasn't the kind of place you'd show off to anyone. Two rooms, a kitchen, and a bathroom that made noises from the pipes. The wallpaper had given up years ago... it curled away at the corners, stained in patches where damp had seeped in. If you pressed your hand against the wall, it felt soft, like the building was slowly rotting from the inside out.
The floorboards didn't like him either. Every step on the boards usually produced an irritating groan; some spots were worse than others, so David had learned a careful path through the apartment just to keep from waking his daughter when she managed to sleep.
The kitchen was small enough that if you stretched your arms, you could touch both walls. The fridge sat in the corner, buzzing, its cracked handle patched with duct tape.
The table was even worse... three good legs and one that stood on a folded magazine just to keep it steady. On nights when he was too tired to notice, the wobble made his coffee slosh over the rim.
The light came from a single bulb that flickered sometimes, throwing the whole place into shadows. David had gotten used to his weird apartment and had learned to keep up over the years.
The living room was where his daughter, Lily, spent most of her time. The couch sagged in the middle, but it was piled with blankets to make it softer. Her books and toys were stacked nearby, worn from months—years?—of use. On the small table, hospital receipts and prescriptions sat in messy piles, papers that seemed to multiply every week no matter how many he shoved into drawers.
The walls were bare. Not because David didn't want pictures, but because frames cost money he never had. The only real color in the whole flat was on the fridge... Lily's crayon drawings.
Suns with smiling faces, stick-figure families with their hands joined, lopsided houses under skies too blue to be real. She always drew herself smiling. She always drew him beside her.
David was in his thirties but looked older, as if life had aged him twice as fast. His face was long and sharp, though the sharpness had been dulled by exhaustion. Dark stubble covered his jaw, uneven like he had given up trying to keep it neat. His hair was black but had strands of early gray, always messy no matter how often he combed it. His skin carried the pale tone of someone who spent too much time indoors, and his brown eyes, once probably warm, were sunken and shadowed.
Inside, David was sitting at a small table that could barely hold more than the glass of water and the bottle of pills resting on it. His shoulders slumped forward, and his face told the story of a man who hadn't seen a proper night's sleep in months. His eyes were ringed with shadows, his stubble uneven, and there was this hollow look about him, like someone slowly disappearing from the inside out.
He was definitely suffering from insomnia.
Across the room, on the worn couch, his daughter Lily was curled up under a blanket. She was ten, but the sickness had drained her so much that she looked smaller. Too small. Her skin had lost most of its color, almost turning gray, and every breath she took seemed harder than it should've been. Still, when she noticed him watching, she gave him a weak smile that hurt more than it comforted.
"Dad… do I really need to take them again?" she asked softly.
David picked up the pills, pretending his hands weren't shaking.
"Yeah, sweetheart. Just a little more. The doctor said it'll help you sleep." His voice cracked halfway through, and he quickly cleared his throat.
On the table, the old radio buzzed, a news anchor's voice droning on:
"Hospitals are reporting more cases linked to the unusual pandemic. Officials still insist there is no cause for alarm, describing it as seasonal. However—"
David reached over and shut it off with a sharp twist of the dial. He didn't even want the word pandemic in the air.
Not around her.
'Seasonal my foot, this pandemic has been going on for a decade now.'
He passed her the pills, watching closely as she swallowed them with the water. Her eyelids were heavy already, her body surrendering faster than he wanted it to. Within minutes, she was asleep again, breathing softly.
David stayed there a moment longer, just staring. He memorized the curve of her cheeks, the way her hair stuck out in messy strands, the tiny rise and fall of her chest. It felt like if he blinked, she'd vanish.
David sighed.
It's been ten years… a decade since the pandemic started. NDS – Necrotic Dermatosis Syndrome, to be precise. It's a normal illness… at least that's what WHO says. Just flu, headaches, fever, coughing, illness... and skin turning gray.
To top it all, it seems no drug will do. The pandemic had already spread, killing more than a million across the globe. The government had tried and is still trying their best. Every week or month, a new medicine was made but all to no avail.
'You'll survive... not by hope, not by fate, but by my confidence and my words. I won't falter, I won't stop, I won't give up… until you're better, Lily.'
Finally, he stood, grabbed his coat, and quietly slipped out of the apartment. The key made a tired clink as he locked the door behind him.
The hallway smelled of dust and laundry detergent. Mrs. Green, the landlady, was there, balancing a basket on her hip. She was old but sharp-eyed, the type who knew more about her tenants than they thought.
"She asleep?" she asked.
David nodded. "Yeah. For now."
"You look worse than she does," Mrs. Green said bluntly, though there was warmth under her words.
"...You need to take care of yourself too. Or else the world'll forget you exist," she joked.
David forced a tired smile, but the words stuck with him. He didn't know why, but it left a chill in his chest.
'Forget me? Why would the world forget me?'
He said his goodbye and went down the stairs that led to the first floor and the main entrance.
David walked out of the building and sighed again. He had been sighing a lot lately.
He walked through the noisy streets without exchanging pleasantries or greetings with anyone.
****
Some time later, he was at a creek with two other men. Beside him was a pile of rubbish.
The creek stank like rot. David shoved his shovel into the mud and heaved another mound of wet trash onto the pile. His arms burned, his back ached, but he kept moving. Stopping wasn't an option. Not when every hour down here meant money in his pocket.
Beside him, Frank, a man in his fifties, grunted as he dragged out a rusted bike frame.
"You'd think the city would send a crew for this crap," he muttered, smoke dangling from his lips.
"They'd have to pay 'em more than us," Jerome, a much younger man, shot back with a bitter laugh, shaking a plastic bag free of river muck.
David didn't bother joining in the discussion... it was useless to him. He just kept working, jaw tight, sweat dripping down his temple. His thoughts weren't on the garbage, or the stench, or even the aching in his shoulders. They were on Lily. On the bottle of pills sitting back in the flat. On the fact that the envelope of cash waiting at the end of this week's work still wouldn't be enough.
'Aah... the struggles.'
He pushed the shovel deeper into the muck, grunting as he freed another chunk of debris. The motion was mechanical by now. Clear, toss, bag. Over and over. His boots sank into the soft earth, water sloshing around his ankles.
When he finally straightened, the sky was fading from gold into a dim gray-blue. He wiped his face with his sleeve, streaking mud across his cheek. Frank was already lighting another cigarette. Jerome had started counting bags, like he was impatient to be done.
"Almost there," David muttered to himself. Not about the trash or the creek. Just about the long week until pay.
The paycheck wasn't much, but it was something. Enough to keep the lights on. Enough to buy the next round of medicine that maybe, just maybe, would help Lily breathe a little easier.
That was all that mattered.
'Only Lily matters.'
After he was done, he didn't bother exchanging pleasantries with the other two. To the core of things, apart from Lily, the only person he talked to was Mrs. Green.
At least she was the only person he talked to after that day... that day, which was all in the past now.
Hopefully, in the past.
He shook the thoughts away and hissed.
****
Now, David was walking across an empty street. The houses here were abandoned, thus everywhere was silent and eerie... not that David felt any of it.
His world was back in that second-floor flat, in that tired old building at 312 Knickerbocker Avenue, where Lily was asleep beneath her blankets.
But tonight, it seemed the world finally won his attention after something dropped from the sky at a terrible speed.
It fell near a cracked pavement and landed on the soft grass. From the certain distance away from David, it refracted with the light from the rising moon, and its edges were intricately... weird?
No, they were frames that were well carved in a fantasy manner, and in that frame was a transparent shard... it was a mirror.
'Curious...'
David walked up to the mirror, and when he got near it, his curiosity multiplied.
'Wow, what a strong mirror.'
He bent down and picked up the mirror. It wasn't a small one, neither was it big. The frames were made out of wood, twigs twisted together... woven together in a beautiful yet terrifying manner. Green leaves were occasionally at the edges of the mirror.
The fact that the mirror didn't even have a scratch after falling from such a height at great speed was surprising and also... mysterious.
Speaking about the mirror, the glass, though it refracted light... it didn't show it. All David could see was pure darkness moving in the mirror, yet the moonlight refused to stop shining on it. It was as if the mirror was asking for the light even though no amount of light could quench the darkness.
'Well... you don't see that every day.'
He turned the other side of the mirror and studied the woven twigs that served as the frame and the back cover. It didn't even look like this was made by a machine, not even by a human... at least, not a mundane human.
Out of curiosity, any human would pick up that mirror and study it more. But David, he wasn't exactly human because he didn't behave like one.
Yes, he was curious and picked up the mirror, but his curiosity had limits. His every action had limits. Only his love for his daughter was... unlimited, endless.
He glanced at the mirror one last time and threw it back on the floor. Yet, the mirror didn't break or make a single sound.
He stared at it one last time with an unreadable expression, sighed, and turned his back on it, taking his first step away from the mirror.
But then the mirror did something no mirror should be able to do.
It spoke.
David froze. For a second, he thought it was a trick of the wind or a radio somewhere in one of the empty houses. But the sound had come from behind him... low and rich, not quite a man's voice, not quite a woman's, not even entirely human. It was like hearing words formed from breath and glass at the same time.
It said:
"I wasn't expecting a hug or a kiss from the first human I meet, but are you just going to walk away? And leave me here?"