Chapter 5: The Hollow Mirror and the Despair Left Behind
Translator: Soafp
Several weeks had passed since Yuki disappeared.
Mio's days were like a broken record, stuck in an endless loop. She woke up each morning to a room with the curtains drawn shut.
In the lightless space, she would simply stare at the ceiling. She didn't have the will to go to school—or rather, she was afraid of school. It felt like the echoes of the events she had caused were soaked into every corner of the classroom.
Her mother, looking utterly exhausted, would visit Mio's room. Once always composed and firm, her voice now trembled and sounded fragile.
“Mio… can you eat something?”
Mio didn't reply. She didn't even have the energy to respond. With a sigh, her mother quietly left the room. Her parents had stopped talking to each other, and a deep silence enveloped the house. The once-perfect “Hinata family” had begun to crumble from within.
Mio had lost Yuki. That fact mercilessly constricted her heart. He had been the most precious person to her—the only one she could remove her mask around.
And yet, she had treated him like a tool, deeply wounded his heart, and in the end, lost him with her own hands. Regret and guilt gnawed at her relentlessly.
No amount of crying or screaming could erase that pitch-black mass of emotion.
At sunset, Mio stood before the large mirror in the living room. Reflected there was a face unrecognizable from the once-perfect beauty she used to be.
Her hair was a mess, her eyes devoid of light, and only a vacant emptiness remained. The flawless mask she had always worn was nowhere to be seen.
The shattered fragments had not only hurt Yuki, but had also carved deep into Mio herself, wounding the very essence of her being.
She asked the girl in the mirror:
“What… was I trying to achieve?”
To be perfect. To be accepted by others. That had been everything to her. But now, that very perfection had taken everything away—Yuki, whom she had cherished the most. The trust of her parents. Her own place in the world.
The eyes in the mirror offered no answer. Staring back at her was nothing but the despair and emptiness born from the self who once pretended to be perfect.
She no longer had anyone to atone to, no one to beg forgiveness from. All that was left was the isolation of being forced to face herself.
Meanwhile, the atmosphere in Sakuramine High's class had changed completely after the incident of violence. The once-lively chatter was gone, replaced by a heavy, suffocating silence that hung over the classroom.
Yamada Kenta, the ringleader of the bullying, had been expelled and remained shut in at home. The wounds on his face gradually healed, but Yuki's “eyes with no highlight” were burned into his memory and wouldn't leave.
At night he had nightmares, where an expressionless Yuki constantly beat him. He had become a shell of his former self—his once-arrogant smile now vanished, replaced by a constant look of fear, tormented by the dread and remorse of his past actions.
He would never be able to hurt anyone again. But that, too, was a different form of “despair” that had stolen his freedom.
Ayaka Satou, too, was haunted—by Yuki's emotionless gaze and her own shame of wetting herself in front of everyone. She had been suspended indefinitely and couldn't return to school.
Her days at home were mentally unstable. She overreacted to every little noise, recoiling whenever someone approached. Her mother tried to take her to counseling, but she adamantly refused.
Every time she looked in the mirror, the memory of that day flashed before her eyes. She realized that her careless actions had triggered something irreversible, and was consumed by guilt.
The other classmates who had taken part in the bullying also carried deep emotional wounds. They had witnessed Yuki's sudden violence, the school's handling of it, and the ruin of Yamada Kenta and Ayaka Satou.
Through all this, they had come to feel the foolishness and sinfulness of their actions. Guilt hung thick in the classroom, along with a vague fear that they might be next.
They avoided each other's eyes and quietly waited for time to pass. The painful memory was etched into their hearts and would never be forgotten.
Even the homeroom teacher, who had failed to notice or act on the bullying, was wracked with regret. He blamed himself for overlooking the students' suffering and, as a result, ruining so many futures.
He couldn't sleep at night, lost his appetite, and rapidly grew thin. He began to question whether he could continue teaching and was mentally cornered to the point of considering resignation.
That class at Sakuramine High had lost all of its former brightness, now enveloped in a heavy, oppressive air. Everyone bore deep scars, each forced to confront themselves in their own separate ways.
Mio continued to stare into the hollow eyes in the mirror.
The fact that she had lost Yuki—because she had tried to protect her vanity—would forever bind her heart. Now that her perfect mask had fallen away, all that remained was deep despair, and a never-ending journey of confronting the mistakes of her past.
End
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4 Comments
This is a wish-fulfilment fantasy by someone who was bullied at school. I love a bit of a self-pity trip, but when the outcome is this cathartic, I feel it must be the work of someone wanting to overwrite their own childhood trauma. I'm not against it, but I think it is unrealistic in how all the guilty parties completely fall apart and self-destruct. People don't have personality-changing epiphanies like this. The levels of self-reflection and soul-searching, and regret are a fantasy.
Completely fictional story.
Bullying people never regret. School never trying to punish wrongdoers, it's trying to silence everyone and make responsible people as possible.
And most important - you can't show your weak side to the girl. Girls never forgive it and never forget. Do it once and you are nothing for them. Not only as a boyfriend, but as a common friend also. Expecting support from a girl in that situation is foolish. This situation requires male actions only.
I've read some novels by this author and they feel like they're AI-generated. They often have similar arc and end abruptly with one of the characters lamenting how things turned out, and it always feels like it's missing other perspectives. The background setting and the character names change, but especially the last chapter always feels like you could remove the character names and then you couldn't even tell which novel's last chapter this one is.
End? This is the last chapter? I hope there's an epilouge or bonus chapter. Yuki felt tacked on and I'm curious to see how he's doing in his new environment.