Inspired by the song "The Ghost by NIVIRO".
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The first time Lena heard the song, she thought it was just a beat.
Something to drown out the silence.
But by the fifth replay, it started to sound like something alive.
Like the voice inside it was watching her.
Like the question — “Are you afraid of the dark?” — wasn’t rhetorical anymore.
She worked late at the café on the corner of Barlow Street, where the neon sign outside buzzed like a fly that refused to die. When the last customer left, she wiped tables that didn’t need cleaning, refilled sugar jars no one would use — anything to delay the walk home.
The song played again. A comfort. A curse.
“I can see you from behind…”
Her reflection in the café window blinked a second too late.
Lena turned away. She laughed under her breath — small, shaky — and muttered, “Sleep deprivation’s catching up.”
But she knew it wasn’t.
It started weeks ago.
The whispers in her apartment at night.
The way her phone light turned on by itself, screen flashing her front camera — showing her own tired face, and sometimes, something just over her shoulder.
She tried calling her mother once, but hung up before the line connected. What would she even say? Hi, Mom, I think my echo’s trying to kill me.
At 2:43 a.m., the power went out. She sat up in bed, holding her breath, feeling the dark like it was pressing against her skin.
The silence roared. Then—
A voice, soft and close:
“Are you scared?”
Lena froze. Her throat locked.
The song wasn’t playing. The speaker wasn’t even plugged in.
Still, the voice circled her.
Every syllable echoed in her skull like it had been waiting inside her all along.
“I can see you,” it whispered. “You can hear me in your mind.”
She stumbled backward, tripping over the rug. Her hands scrambled for her phone, for light, for anything real—
But when the flashlight flicked on, it caught her reflection in the mirror across the room.
And she was smiling.
Except she wasn’t.
Her reflection took a step closer. The lights flickered back to life. Her apartment looked the same — yet emptier somehow, like something had been replaced.
Lena’s pulse pounded in her ears, syncing with the bass line of a song that wasn’t playing. She stared at herself, at the girl in the mirror with the same dark hair, the same wide eyes… but something colder in them.
“Stop,” Lena whispered.
The reflection didn’t.
Her voice broke. “What do you want?”
The girl in the mirror tilted her head. And in a voice that sounded like her own, layered over the music that had never stopped echoing in her mind, it said:
“I want to live.”
The glass rippled like water.
Lena didn’t remember moving — only the sound of shattering, the sting of cold air, the realization that her reflection was gone.
Now, the café’s closed for good. They say the barista disappeared one night — left the door unlocked, her phone on the counter, her earbuds tangled beside the register.
But if you walk by after dark, you might still hear her humming through the static, right before the streetlights flicker out.
Her voice soft, almost playful:
“Are you afraid of the dark? Are you scared?”
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