This was a much longer day than how Kôra longed for it to end.

The boy spent his first class in the medical office. His head was hurt and he had no energy to study. Up to the point he swiped the key card and entering Keane's house, his head was still heavy. He thought of skipping classes for the whole day, yet to his view it is an undisciplined act as he was still physically abled to attend. He needed to pump up those grades, anyway. Naldo brought back his lunch box; it was not only cleaned, but also filled with homemade pigeon rice he learned from an online recipe. Near the lunch time, he visited the boy to make sure he ate, and dwells in a futile attempt to cheer him up. Such a kind person, Kôra thought. That unnecessary treatment made Kôra feel even worse; how could he repay that boy?

The food was undeniably delectable yet Kôra could not eat that much. He shared it with Tal and Delven, while feeling bad for the cook. Those two noticed his bruises and desolate behavior that they started to ask questions. Kôra tried his best to mask and brush it off, much to Delven’s incessant interventions of worry and Talst's jealousy.

Kôra arrived home alone. The house was empty as Keane explained his schedule earlier. A moment of relief of him, he had time to conceal his bruises and erase the lethargy from his face. After putting his backpack near the stairs, Kôra went straight to kitchen grab a drink. Although his injury got better thanks to the ointment which the nurse gave him, he still felt drained and. . .

Who is that?! 

The boy was alarmed by the dark shadow of the unlit dining room. It bore the shape of a human being. Kôra was besieged by the intruder, sneaking up to find a vantage point for peeking. When he looked closer, it was something even more insidious.

It was him, something just like him.

That was the reflection. The thing was sitting on the dining room chair while humming some strange melody; the voice was deeper than his and has an otherworldly ring to it. Kôra ignored him as what Keane said; he tells lies to manipulate and should be ignored altogether. The thing was just a mere reflection, a piece of illusion; nothing else.

“Do not pretend not seeing me,” the thing called him out. Those words pierce Kôra and shattered his detachment. He reluctantly turned his head, facing the thing which wore the mask of his smiling face. "I made hard effort to be you, appreciate me."

“What do you want?” the teen confronted him with a shaking voice.

“I means no harm,” he spoke in broken English with a same peculiar accent. The accent somewhat evoked an unpleasant air, it somehow struck him like a déjà vu. "Cooperation is I want."

“You are probably a liar." Kôra’s heart beat faster, his right chest was pounding.

“Why believe them more than own people?” he deprecated. “You look like person I knew. So, I here. Wishing to make you free and tell truth stories." The thing pointed at himself.

“If you want me to believe, can you please stop doing this? Stop harming and manipulating people! Stop giving them visions and nightmares!” Kôra implored. “Do you know how bad it affects them?”

“I just do what need,” the reflection stated. “They poison to your mind, I must reach you with clear mind; you are not them, you with me. I not care about other than our people."

“There is another way if you really meant good."

“But me pick best easy way,” he grinned wide ear-to-ear, his eyes peered through. Kôra never thought the sight of his own face could be this eerie. "Now you are here and listen, it works."

“Please stop or I will stop you for good,” Kôra begged in a threatening manner, he clenched his fist tight.

“Try hurt me? You hurt yourself,” the thing taunted, he stood up from the place he was sitting and approached Kôra. “I am disappointed by mind poison you absorbed. If you not change, you will have no one! Praise, I come so you have someone."

“No. I can change."

"So listen, my time limited and I have role to play as bad," the being continued, his face was up close to Kôra. "I in bad position; I will help only if you help yourself."

“You tell lies,” Kôra stood in a guarded position.

“We need to trust each others, we are same kind of being,” the thing did not cease to persuade. “We need to pay our grudge to the living, they killed us all. We the Ae—"

"I cannot trust people who hurt me."

"You stupid? I said it is play! I need to save you from danger lurk," he argued. "But danger watches over me. So I play bad."

“NO! You are BAD! It was you! YOU! You lied to make me feel guilty and do what you want!” Kôra yelled while kicking the thing back. “If you have good intentions you would not do it this way!”

"Again?" His voice started to harden, getting impatient while standing up. "The earthquake is not enough to open your eyes?! It is not the truth your knowledge have. You are sure you honor them you lost? Help me list who died there: start with your mother."

Kôra's troubled mind started to connect the scantly scattered dots. His thoughts drew a line and draw a shape with it: a possibility. The boy's lilac eyes glistened, his breath heaved with rage.

He knows everything about me. . . The earthquake. . .Could it be. . .? It could be this wicked being?

Kôra was drowned in his thoughts of speculations, it all started to get clear in his blurred judgment. His anguish over his unfortunate presence, his guilt over his cause, he could end it. A white sheep dyed with charcoal is a black sheep, he just needed a green light. That was it.

"H... How much do you know about the earthquake?" Kôra asked. His way of speaking was akin to a dissipating smoke coming from an extinguished fire; docile, defeated. "Please, do you know the truth? I want to know."

"As much as you want to know," the being replied. "I saw everything," he added a convincing point hearing Kôra lowered his tone, probably he started to open his mind.

"Ah. . .  So. . . It's. . . You," Kôra said with a heavy breath, his words grated slowly like a growl. "You killed them, right?! You caused the earthquake so you can reach me!"

The being raised his eyebrows to Kôra's confounding reaction. Quickly it escalated, down it went. "I not—"

"How dare you! How dare you!" Kôra shouted from the top of his lungs. He snatched the largest kitchen knife on its rack, then lunged without a second thought to the creature. He tried to hit the chest but missed, the thing was swift.

“Do you realize what did you do to them?! My mother, Tasei, Nyilmâ, Amûn, Yûzan. . . Yûzan!” he mentioned the names of those declared dead and missing because of the Aylar earthquake, while relentlessly seeking an opening for a blow. "You took them from me!"

The being froze for a second, he had heard one of the names before.

There was no time to process with a raging Kôra approaching. The boy tried to throw anything available; glass, cutlery, even he tried to hit the enemy with a chair. Some managed to land a hit on the reflection, but those were light damages. He was good at evading.

“Later you’ll get everyone else! You need to be stopped!” Kôra screamed wild while jumped, pinned the clone down. Flashing in his mind was his uncle; then Naldo, Delven, even the unpleasant Talst and Keane.

That reflection smiled; the silent smile mocked, belittled him. Not even a flinch or grunt of pain was visible in him from the face of the infuriated teen. He was celebrating Kôra’s effort, toying with his resolve. Kôra looked down at that face of him, how could a being look so vile? How could he maim its ugly face, his ugly own disgusting face.

“What do you want?! Why you do this?! Why they have to die?! Why I have to become like you?! We are not the same! You pest! Pest! Die!”

This surge of unconditional wrath, the flow of loathing disappointment; it was hard to rationalize this sensation. Kôra could not help but blindly stabbing that thing to express these feelings out. He stabbed the shoulders, grazed the chest, and nicked the clavicle. Those stabs were shallow, it felt like a knife went through fowl meat and pulled. Kôra trembled in infuriation, he wanted the thing to perish. He hated that it could not be done in a blink, he hated his weakness.

That reflection reacted nothing, he only put an unfading remorseless smile. How indecent. That thing did not even bleed.

“What is in your mind?! Do you think you will never be punished for this!!!” Kôra yelled; the fiery anger engulfed him whole. His pressure heightened with the compressed sentiments, it nearly explodes. “Fuck you! Shit pest! I will end you in the name of God! Sinner! God will incinerate you in hell!” he swung the final blow of the knife to the chest.

The last stab ended in the lower stomach, not at the exact place and depth as the kid wanted it. His clone had already grasped Kôra’s hand, he was capable of freezing the boy's motion before the stab got too deep.

The reflection's face started to crack and break, like a wrecked porcelain doll. Kôra jumped and kept a distance from him. After the deafening noise of creaking and breaking, a dispersing smoke screen from the shattered shell revealed a figure of a young man lying down. He turned his face at the petrified Kôra, smiling.

The hanged man he was, Kôra recognized from the drawing he saw. Like a discarded mannequin he laid there still completely naked. He was surprisingly tall in height, with toned muscles and ta similar shade of brown skin. He has an elongated diamond-shaped face, a prominent nose, and almost lack of eyebrows; while his mouth is still grinning.

His narrow eyes were unnerving, staring motionless to Kôra’s core of the soul. That was not all of the peculiarities of him; a certain bell chimed inside Kôra's memory. Deep, intertwined, among connections of neurons: seeing him up close, there was a strange sensation that Kôra had known that man. A harrowing sense that summoned a ghost from an unknown past, the boy tried to chase it off in denial.

"Still alive?! Go die, pest!" Kôra looked around for the knife hoping to deliver more blow, but it disappeared among the shards. "If we really same being, you must be a horrible pest so I forsake!"

"You really look like that person. Sad, I still cannot remember."

"Stop talking and die, long face!" Kôra slapped the thing's mouth.

“I defeated, yes,” that man closed in a strangely disappointed tone. He closed his eyes. "May you learn from this fool decision, or you end up miserable like me."

Kôra clenched his teeth.

"Until we meet again," he called with a nostalgic ring.

A single goodbye that ended their interaction. With one bang that pierced the eardrums, the hanged man's body exploded. The debri faded into thin air and disappeared. Nothing of him left to be seen.

Not even a particle.

Vanished.

Finished.

“I did it! I defeated him!” Kôra shouted triumphantly. He rushed to the sound of gate unlocking, shouting his happy achievement. "Everyone is safe! Hahaha!!!"

It was a bit difficult to smile wide; it was even more difficult to walk straight. The boy's body felt light, and the strength of his steps ceased in blight. Red blood started seeping, dyeing his shirt a line encircling the knife lodged in. The rush of adrenaline powered his recklessness, the burst of ecstasy numbed him senseless.  

A bloodied and bruised boy welcomed Keane and Dina at the door, with an intact knife stuck in his lower abdomen. Kôra beamed with a big victorious relief, ignoring all the wounds he got. It was not for a long; he panted, he trembled, as the reality struck him again.

Pain.

As he realized, his entire struggles and fights went back to him.