Tokyo, Spring 1997. Rain slants sideways, slicing through the gray sky like scratches on old film.
Anya watched the campus of Kurobara Girls' Academy blur past the window of the van. Her cheek pressed against the cold glass, leaving a faint fog print shaped like a question mark.
She hadn't said a word in the last three hours.
The driver hadn't either.
The school gates looked older than the rest of Tokyo combined — black iron twisted into spirals, one side stuck partially open. At the top, a bronze plaque read:
黒薔薇女学院
Kurobara Girls' Academy
Founded 1896. Memory Is Duty.
Memory is what? Anya blinked and reread it.
The words had shifted. Now it just says Founded 1896.
Inside the gate, everything smelled like stone and roses and wet notebooks. The academy was built like a cathedral in mourning — all slate roofs and gargoyles that didn't blink even in the thunder.
She stood there in the rain, oversized duffel bag in one hand, paper file in the other. The uniform she wore was wrong: the boy's version, pressed clean but not hers.
Everyone else wore long skirts and ribbon ties. Girls stared as they passed, but said nothing. The wind did all the talking.
She checked the file again. Her name had been typed and erased, then retyped in crooked bold letters:
Anya V. — Transfer, Class 3-K
Nationality: Russian (Unconfirmed)
Medical Note: Memory loss episode at age 11 (See Page 4)
She flipped to Page 4.
It was missing.
The dormitory key she'd been given didn't match any lock in the West Wing.
It wasn't until another girl dropped her mirror in the hallway that she finally found it. The girl apologized, bent down — but in the shard's reflection, the numbers on the door behind her were backwards:
K-3.
Class 3-K.
Her new room was on the third floor of the East Wing. Students weren't supposed to be housed there — too old, too broken-down. But somehow her key worked.
The walls were lined with faded floral wallpaper peeling in strips like burned skin. The desk had a drawer that wouldn't close, and someone had scratched a name into it, but it had been crossed out too violently to read.
Inside the closet: a mirror covered by a black cloth, taped down.
She didn't touch it.
Dinner was quiet.
Girls whispered about her — the uniform, the accent, her hair: black with a blonde updo, the blonde just visible through her bangs. She wore them long enough to hide her eyes.
Someone finally asked, "Are you a scholarship student?"
Anya shrugged.
Someone else tried, "Why are you in the boy's uniform?"
Anya blinked. "I don't remember choosing it."
A few girls laughed, awkwardly. But one — a short girl with neatly parted bangs and hands that trembled when she held her teacup — didn't. She stared at Anya like she was staring through glass.
Later that night, when the lights cut off at exactly 10:07 p.m., Anya opened her file again.
Now it had a sticky note on it that wasn't there before.
"Do not say your full name in front of a mirror."
— S
She didn't know who S was.
She didn't remember telling anyone her full name.
She didn't remember the last school she went to. Or the last time she saw her parents. Or what her natural hair color was.
She looked at the mirror in the closet. Still covered.
Don't say your full name in front of a mirror.
Who said anything about mirrors?
That night, she dreamed of fire.
Not flames exactly — more like memories burning from the edges inward. A girl stood in the center of the inferno. Short. Burned at the arms. Hair black, ends blonde, and her face turned away.
Anya reached for her.
The girl whispered, "You're not the first one."
Anya woke up gasping, clutching her shirt. The fabric was damp — not from sweat.
From blood.
A single smear down the collar.
She threw open the closet.
The mirror was uncovered.
But her reflection wasn't moving.