Nobody paused to look at him, no-one gave a second glance to his passing. All that time he had spent on himself was, it seemed, solely for himself.

But they will be looking, soon enough.

And look they did. They gasped, even cried, and covered the eyes of those innocents around them when the shot rang out, when the colour of the floor mirrored that of the man's shirt. It happened in an instant, as most gunshots are wont to, but it echoed longer in the mind. The arc of blood as the bullet made its course, the way the perfectly pressed suit wrinkled as the body beneath it fell to the ground, lifeless.

The usual array of police and paramedics arrived only minutes later, taping off the crime scene in haste. The building was deemed secure, the man pronounced dead, and so the CSI unit got to their work.

Of course, they found nearly nothing. Not a trace of the sniper, though they pin-pointed where the shot was aimed from. Their only clue was in that dingy hole of a restroom, so covered in prints and fluids that it was impossible to isolate a single one.

Their one clue, solitary amid a pile of shards, was a note, handwritten. It read, simply, Seven Years.

You would be right to connect the note to the warning against breaking mirrors, as it did, after all, lay in the remnants of that vain edifice. One might add that the bane could be lifted by grinding the mirror to dust, but that, too, is just a superstition.

And yet it is so powerful, superstition. People live by, though they don't know about it. Soon after the media got whiff of that fateful note, the building became abandoned, feared cursed, though no-one ever directly said it. Still, it was avoided, left behind, deserted.

Exactly as planned.

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The man in the mirror is the plot outline.

Why is he preparing himself?

What is so important to him that his appereance has to be perfect?

What awaits him outside?

The chapters can be as long as you choose, and the story is as you perceive it.

Have fun. I look forward to your responses. :)

updated Sep 2 by Rayvielle