The blare of motorbikes on the boulevard came in a relentless wave, tearing through the lonely atmosphere that enveloped the cramped bathroom. Lam An stood frozen. His hands still gripped the edge of the yellow-stained porcelain sink, while icy droplets clinging to his chin fell onto the tiled floor one by one. Drip... drip...
The woman in the mirror was still there.
It wasn't a blurry shadow or an optical illusion caused by eye strain. Morning sunlight streamed through the ventilation window and fell directly onto the mirror, bringing every horrifying detail into stark relief: long, pitch-black hair hanging loose and dripping wet, as though she'd just surfaced from the depths of a river, falling over both of An's shoulders. Her face was deathly white, her skin pallid like flesh that had been soaked in water for too long, and her eyes... those eyes were completely empty, nothing but two deep, bottomless black sockets.
She was smiling. The smile stretched all the way to her ears, oozing a slimy gray fluid between her teeth.
"Get out... Get out of here!" An screamed hysterically.
He swung his fist straight into the mirror.
Crack! Smack!
The glass shattered. Sharp fragments sprayed everywhere, lodging in the back of An's hand and sending fresh blood streaming down. Cracks spread across the mirror in a spiderweb pattern, reflecting dozens of fragmented images of An.
The woman's figure vanished. The room returned to its original silence, leaving only his hurried, ragged breathing and the faint sound of blood dripping onto the floor.
An collapsed to his knees, clutching his bleeding hand. The physical pain seemed to help him regain a little clarity. He tore a strip of cloth from an old T-shirt and tightly wrapped the wound, then staggered out of the bathroom.
Everything in the room was still in its original place. The laptop had powered down, and the phone lay in the corner with a lightly cracked screen. An picked it up. The display read **8:15 A.M.**
Almost reflexively, he raised the phone and turned on the front-facing camera.
The pupil of his left eye was still a gloomy ash-gray. It hadn't disappeared at all. When An tried moving a finger closer, he realized that the vision in his left eye had completely changed: he could no longer see ordinary colors through it. Everything seen through his left eye was reduced to black and white. In exchange, he could see faint black wisps rising from the dark corners of the room—places where his right eye saw absolutely nothing.
"What the hell... happened last night?" An muttered, his thoughts in disarray.
The gnawing hunger in his stomach, combined with the suffocating feeling in the rented room, forced An to go outside. He hurriedly grabbed a sun jacket, put on a mask and dark sunglasses to hide his strange gray eye, and headed down the stairs of the housing compound.
The old housing compound was fairly lively in the morning. Street vendors calling out their wares, office workers hurrying by, children crying and whining about having to go to school... All the familiar sounds of everyday life should have made An feel safe. But they didn't.
The moment he stepped into the shared courtyard on the first floor, An suddenly found it hard to breathe.
Through the sunglasses and his gloomy left eye, An was horrified to realize that the world around him was no longer the same.
Beside Ms. Cuc, the sticky-rice vendor at the mouth of the alley—a normally kind old woman—a hunched black shadow clung tightly to her back. Its hands squeezed her neck, making her cough repeatedly and complain about the pain and stiffness in her shoulders. At the foot of the ancient banyan tree in the middle of the courtyard, several gray, misshapen shadows perched limply on the branches, their hungry eyes fixed on the people passing below.
An shuddered, his heart pounding as though it might burst from his chest. He hurriedly lowered his head and quickened his pace out of the housing compound, avoiding the gaze of those "entities." He realized a terrifying truth: Yin-Yang Sight didn't merely let him see the dead. Those spirits seemed to have begun realizing that he could see them, too!
An ducked into a small café tucked deep in a corner of the street and chose an empty table in the darkest corner. He needed a moment of silence to collect himself and make sense of everything.
Just then, the phone on the table began ringing incessantly. The screen displayed a name: Master Vu.
Master Vu was an old acquaintance of An's family, a renowned geomancer who lived in seclusion. Before An's mother died, she had warned him, *"If you ever run into something science can't explain, go find Master Vu."*
Like a drowning man reaching for a piece of driftwood, An quickly tapped the answer button.
"Hello, Master Vu..."
*"Is that you, An?"* The voice on the other end was low and hoarse, carrying an unusual gravity. *"Did anything happen at your place around three o'clock last night?"*
An was stunned. "How... how did you know?"
*"I cast a divination this morning. Your Fate Star has shifted into the Underworld Palace. I can even sense the dark energy clinging to you through the phone."* Master Vu cut him off, his voice growing urgent. *"Listen to me, An. Last night, you saw something you shouldn't have seen and opened a door that should never have been opened. Whatever was outside your door wasn't an ordinary ghost... it was a Grudge Spirit come to collect a debt."*
"Collect a debt? I don't owe anyone anything, Master! I've always lived an honest life!" An said in panic, his hand tightening around the phone.
*"This isn't a debt of money from this life. It's the Blood Debt owed by your Lam family, dating back three generations!"* Master Vu let out a bitter sigh. *"Your left eye... has it turned gray?"*
An fell silent. His palm was drenched in cold sweat. "Yes... It's ash-gray. Master... what do I do now?"
*"Hang up and get a ride to my place on the outskirts immediately. Remember this carefully: under no circumstances take off your sunglasses on the way, do not answer anyone who calls your name from behind, and most importantly... if you see the White Raincoat Figure standing at a bus stop, you MUST keep going straight past it!"*
*Beep... beep... beep...*
The call abruptly disconnected. An's phone screen flickered on and off repeatedly before displaying a message from an unknown number that wasn't in his contacts:
"It's standing right behind you."
An's entire body went rigid. In broad daylight, right there in a crowded café, a bone-chilling wave of cold air once again blew directly across the back of his neck...