Different from what the strange figure in the mirror had expected, the woman charged toward the vanity without a shred of hesitation, as though in that moment she had forgotten all fear.
Her long skirt billowed and trailed through the water. In the blink of an eye, the woman was at the little girl's side. She didn't spare a single extra thought for anything else — she simply grabbed the girl, whose head had been forced into the sink, and pulled her out.
"Are you okay?!"
Water droplets slid down the girl's face. Her complexion was deathly pale, and her purplish lips were stretched wide to either side.
Having been shoved underwater and nearly drowned, the little girl didn't cry or scream — she even wore a faint smile, which struck the woman as deeply unsettling.
She failed to notice that the monster in the mirror was slowly becoming clearer. On that blurry face, a sinister smile had appeared — almost identical to the little girl's.
"I'm getting you out of here."
Even now, the woman didn't forget to cradle the little girl protectively as she hastily retreated.
The faucet had never been turned off. The liquid spilling from it was growing darker, as though what poured from the pipe was no longer water, but blood.
A drip, drip, drip echoed through the cramped washroom. Something was crawling across the floor, producing a soft, rustling sound.
The woman didn't dare look back. Clutching the little girl, she burst into the pitch-black corridor.
The phone's built-in flashlight danced across the walls. She couldn't see the path ahead clearly, only that the once-smooth corridor now seemed to have something extra on the floor — it felt soft beneath her feet.
It took only a few seconds for the woman to cross the corridor, but when she stopped at the doorway, she found that the door leading outside had somehow been locked.
"Is someone else in this school?!" The woman set the girl down and glanced back toward the corridor. Water was gushing from the washroom, and floating across the floor like strands of waterweed were vague, filament-like shapes.
"Did you see anyone else in here?" The woman shielded the girl with both arms and looked at the girl's pale face, a pang of distress rising in her chest. "Two other teachers came in earlier — you must have seen them, right?"
The little girl stood quietly before the woman. The whites of her eyes had spread. Her bluish-purple lips parted slowly, and she uttered two words: "Ma… ma."
"Mommy? Are you talking to me?" The woman's arm instinctively loosened slightly around the girl. She was beginning to realize that everyone and everything in this room was deeply wrong. "You've got the wrong person, sweetheart. I'm not your mother."
The girl didn't correct herself. She called out "Mommy" once more, then raised her little arm and grabbed the woman's sleeve.
"Wait, you—" Fear finally surged through the woman. She stood and angled her body toward the door.
But before she could get close, the little girl, who had been standing perfectly still, suddenly twisted into a hideous expression: "Don't… go!"
Crack!
Before the girl could finish, the glass near the woman exploded outward in every direction!
A thick, coppery scent of blood flooded into the room. Half of a massive, spike-studded hammer — its face twisted into a monstrous snarl — was lodged in the window frame.
Boom!
Before the woman and the little girl's eyes, the hammerhead was wrenched free with brute force, then brought down again — even more decisively this time, shattering the window frame entirely.
"Not very sturdy, is it?"