It happened first on the fifteenth.
She was getting ready for work. Seven AM, the geyser running, the flat in its morning configuration — the window open for the courtyard sounds, the light that specific early-morning quality. She was doing her hair at the mirror, a simple thing, a hundred times a week, the routine motion of a woman running a brush through her hair before a work day.
Her reflection moved her arm a half-second after she moved it.
She stopped.
She held the brush up.
The reflection held its arm up.
She moved the brush left.
The reflection moved left.
Instantaneous. No delay. She had imagined it.
She put the brush down and leaned closer to the mirror and looked at her reflection's face. Her own face looked back — the same wide nose she'd made peace with at sixteen, the same dark semicircles under the eyes that were genetic and had never responded to any product, the same mouth.
The same mouth.
Except.
She was not smiling.
Her reflection was.
Not largely — not the broad performed smile of someone doing something deliberate. A small thing. A very contained, very specific expression at the corners of the mouth, the kind of expression that a face made involuntarily when it was pleased about something private.
She watched it.
As she watched, the expression faded.
The reflection's face settled into neutral — the same neutral she was wearing, or close to it.
She took a step back from the mirror. Then a step forward. She made her face move — raised her eyebrows, opened her mouth, turned her head. The reflection did all of it, exactly, with the fidelity of a mirror.
Normal.
She was tired. She had worked late three days in a row on a campaign brief. She was in a new city with new routines and her sleep had been broken for two weeks and tired people saw things wrong.
She went to work.
She did not think about the mirror.
She almost believed that.
* * *
WhatsApp. Tanvi to Poorvi Desai. October 15th. 8:47 AM.
Tanvi: Okay weird question
Tanvi: Has a mirror ever freaked you out
Poorvi: YES the one in my masi's bathroom gives a fun house effect I hate it
Poorvi: Why
Tanvi: There's a mirror in my flat. Old one. Teak frame.
Tanvi: I thought I saw my reflection smile when I wasn't smiling
Poorvi: 😂 okay sleep more
Tanvi: Haan I know. Tired.
Poorvi: Or it's haunted obviously
Poorvi: 👻
Tanvi: 🙄
Poorvi: Has it said anything useful yet
Poorvi: Like stock tips
Tanvi: I'll keep you posted
* * *
On the seventeenth she asked Babulal Parekh about the mirror.
He took twenty-two hours to reply.
His reply was: The flat came furnished as seen. Mirror was always there.
She asked: Who owned it originally?
He did not reply.
She asked: Who was the previous tenant?
He replied, forty minutes later: Previous tenant left. New tenant is you. All the best.
She sat with her phone and thought about that reply for a while.
Previous tenant left. Not: the previous tenant relocated. Not: the previous tenant's contract ended. Not: the flat was vacant for a while. Just: left.
She put her phone down.
She looked at the mirror across the room.
In the evening light, her reflection looked back.
She could not see, from this distance, whether it was smiling.
She went to bed with the lights on that night. The first time she had done that since she was eight years old.
