This is for JiminHasNoJams. Happy birthday chica! 

I hope you like it.

Jay

----------------

A mirror is a lonely place. All harsh glass, brutally honest, reflecting everything it sees in perfect opposite.

Can you imagine?

Being confined to a mirror for eternity. Surrounded by glass windows that do nothing but show your reflection every time you look through them. Surrounded by white walls and white floors, the only splashes of color the rooms around the windows that hold chairs and tables and carpet and art. So much art. And color. Color against the white. Color in the drearyness. Even if they can see each other, reflections very rarely talk. They’re always rushing of here or there, somehow ending up at different windows exactly when they’re needed. But sometimes they do. Some reflections will stand in rooms by the windows for hours, drinking beer or wine, sometimes in dresses and suits, sometimes in barely anything at all, and talk. Or dance. Sometimes they sleep together. Sometimes the windows are on the ceiling, instead of the walls, and the reflections lay there and look up, staring at lives that are infinitely better, yet hold faces just like theirs.

Did you know that some reflections go insane? Stuck so long in the whiteness. The faces in the windows taunt them. They make them believe that they can escape. Some try. Not many succeed.

It started with a late night phone call.

Kyungsoo was in his dorm room, studying for his computer science test when the chorus of Aerosmith’s Dream On started to blast through the room. The ringtone belonged to one person and one person only. Jongin.

Or Kai, as he liked to be called these days.

The name fit him in a sad way. It was daring, short and fiery, much like the person Jongin had become. Gone were the days where the two boys sat side by side on the lawn, staring at the stars and wondering why fireflies couldn’t be different colors. Instead there was Kai, a leather clad biker with a cigarette constantly dangling from his lips and a selection of choice words hanging onto the end of every sentence. He didn’t speak softly anymore, and he had gotten a spiky haircut to go with his new prickly personality.

“KYUNG!”

There was the first change. Kyung. His childhood nickname Soo no longer existed, nor their old greeting, “compadre!”. Instead it was just “KYUNG” screamed out to the beat of pounding club music.

“I’M COMPLETELY ING WASTED!”

Another change. The Jongin from before never drank. He tasted alcohol once and thought it was disgusting. But Kai liked it. And he drank all the god damn time. He practically lived in clubs and bars now, drinking liquor for breakfast and dancing on tables in places the Jongin Kyungsoo knew before would never have gone near, much less entered.

“COME PICK ME UP!”

And there was the other thing. Jongin as a general rule had been cautious. Nervous about inconveniencing others. More often than not, he made incredible sacrifices of his time and his wellbeing to avoid troubling his friends. But Kai had no such reservation. He was always calling Kyungsoo now, often for the stupidest things. He would need a ride back from a wild party (often bringing a girl with him). He would need a place to stay because he didn’t pay his electricity bill and the lights went out. He would want ramen, and ask Kyungsoo to run down to the store to buy some for him. The requests never ended, each one ridiculous in its own way.

Still, Kyungsoo usually did what he asked. At least when he was running errands he got a chance to see Jongin. Otherwise Kai was running around with his new crowd of friends, each of them drowning in leather, cigarettes burning on their lips and metal piercing their ears. So Kyungsoo asked.

“Where are you Jongin?”

“IT’S KAI!!”

Kyungsoo snorted. He hated the nickname. It sounded like a middle-schooler, trying to get cool by changing his name.

“Fine. Where are you