Scene 1
You never got used to elevators this smooth, the way they gulped down whole floors like air, the way your guts seemed to float somewhere between your sneakers and the next penthouse. The ceiling lights flickered overhead with the smug regularity of a good dental hygienist. Twenty-seven floors slid past in silence, glass walls on every side turning the city into a greasy, sparkling puddle at the bottom of the world. The elevator dinged like it wanted to be ignored.
Tijjani waited just outside, doing his statue routine in the hallway. His arms were crossed. His head tipped back as if he’d spent the last five minutes dissecting the ceiling tile pattern for evidence of your incompetence. When the doors shushed open, you caught the side profile: perfect jawline, cheekbones that could file your taxes, and skin so tan it made you second-guess the shade of your own knuckles. Tijjani could sell you on anything—even your own mediocrity.
“Late,” he said, monotone, like he was reading it off a parking ticket.
You shouldered your backpack and tried not to look like you’d just sprinted twelve blocks and nearly pissed yourself at the lobby security check.
“As usual,” Tijjani added, because of course he did.
“It’s called fashionably late,” you said, even though your shirt had a stain from three meals ago and you’d long since burned through the last ounce of shame. “You wouldn’t get it. You always look like you’re about to fire someone for breathing too loud.”
Tijjani looked you up and down, a smirk carving itself into the right side of his mouth. “Only because they keep making it so easy.”
He stepped forward, all six-foot-two of him, and for a second you thought he might just bulldoze right through you. Instead, Tijjani wrapped one long arm around your shoulders and pulled you in for a hug that was somehow both quick and bone-warm, like he’d done it a thousand times but still found it funny every single time. The scent of cologne and static electricity left your nose feeling like it owed someone money.
“Is this the part where you steal my wallet?” you said, pulling back and glancing at his hands, just in case.
Tijjani rolled his eyes. “You’d have to have money first. Come on. I made drinks. Yours is probably already watered down.”
You followed him into the hallway. Every step echoed off the glass and steel and polished concrete, the designer kind that costs more than your monthly rent. The entire twenty-seventh floor looked like it belonged in an architecture magazine no one actually read. Every window was a full-on flex, with the skyline flashing neon and the river curling through the distance like a conspiracy.
Tijjani’s apartment sat at the end of the corridor, an obsidian door with a brushed steel handle. He unlocked it with a flick of the wrist and stepped inside without waiting for you, already moving fast. Like if he stopped, the gravity would get weird and the whole place would fall off the edge of the planet.
You shut the door behind you and tried not to leave fingerprints.
Inside, the apartment was black tile and bone-white everything else. Minimalist, if the minimalist had a shopping addiction and zero patience for clutter. There were no family photos, no knick-knacks, no evidence that a living human being spent any time here at all, except for the smell of fresh espresso and the faintest whiff of something burned from the direction of the kitchen.
Tijjani went straight to the wet bar and poured two glasses of clear, glacial liquid. He handed you one, raised his own in a mock toast, and said, “To punctuality. May it rest in peace.”
You knocked your glass against his and took a sip. It was gin, fancy and botanical, something that tasted like the memory of a garden you never visited as a child. You let it burn your throat on the way down.
“Are you trying to get me drunk?” you said, eyebrow arched.
He sipped his own, barely any visible movement in his face. “No need. You’re already embarrassing enough sober.”
You set your bag on the floor next to the immaculate white sofa and flopped down, stretching your legs like you owned the place. Tijjani watched you, eyes narrowed, like he was about to launch into a monologue about all the ways you were currently wrecking the aesthetic.
Instead, he sat down next to you and stared out the window. The city looked back, a million pixelated faces stacked on top of each other, judging. You let the silence hang for a minute, because you knew Tijjani hated awkwardness more than he hated anything else.
“So,” you finally said, “did you bring me here just to roast my entire existence, or is this a social call?”
Tijjani took another drink. “If you want friends who sugarcoat, I can refer you to someone with less backbone.”
“Tempting. But then who’d keep me humble?” You grinned, and this time, he almost smiled for real.
You waited for him to start the actual conversation, but he just sat there, swirling his gin, scanning the skyline like he was counting down to some invisible disaster. After a few beats, you reached into your bag and pulled out the folder you’d lugged all the way here, the one with the printouts and diagrams and god-awful spreadsheet. You slid it across the table.
“Thought you wanted to see the progress,” you said.
Tijjani didn’t look at it. “It’ll be trash,” he said, voice dead serious, “unless you fixed the vertical shear problem.”
“I fixed your vertical shear problem,” you snapped. “It’s like, seventy percent less likely to pancake anyone this time.”
He finally picked up the folder, flipping through the pages without looking at you. The silence thickened. You watched him, the way his fingers hovered over each page, the way his lips twitched at every third or fourth line. He was reading the mistakes before he found them.
“Not bad,” he said at last. “For someone who nearly failed sophomore statics.”
“Hey, I passed. Eventually.”
Tijjani closed the folder and dropped it onto the table with a soft thud. “If this building falls over, I’m blaming you in my suicide note.”
“Fair,” you said. “But I get a footnote. Or, like, a dedication. ‘To my favorite disaster.’”
He stood up and walked to the window, hands buried deep in the pockets of his tailored slacks. The city stretched out in front of him, endless and bright and impossibly indifferent.
“You ever think about just—” He stopped, biting off the words. “Never mind.”
You waited. If there was one thing you’d learned, it was that silence wasn’t empty space; it was an arena. And you’d been fighting in it long enough to know the rules.
“Think about what?” you prompted.
He turned, face blank but eyes glittering. “If any of this matters. The buildings. The work. Impressing people who won’t even remember your name in a year.”
You laughed, but it wasn’t really funny. “What else is there to do? Besides, you’d be miserable without someone to one-up.”
He smirked again. “You’re projecting.”
“Yeah, well. You’re deflecting.”
He stared at you for a long second, then looked away. “Drink your gin. Try not to get it on the furniture.”
You toasted him with your glass and leaned back, letting the city swallow you whole.
Out in the hallway, the elevator pinged again, a muffled chime that sounded almost like a warning. You closed your eyes and let the silence come back, just for a minute. Just long enough to remember why you always said yes to these nights, no matter how much of an asshole Tijjani was.
Because it beat the hell out of being alone.
And because, in a city like this, you took warmth wherever you could steal it.
Scene 2
You trailed Tijjani through the main artery of the apartment, the floor under your socks so cold it could shatter teeth. Every surface was black, mirrored, or both, which meant you kept catching flickers of yourself at fucked-up angles, limbs stretched, face bisected by edge-on glass. You remembered reading somewhere that the rich built houses this way because it made the space look bigger, but right now it just felt like a funhouse for narcissists with trust issues.
The kitchen was a crime scene in chrome and obsidian. Counters glared, reflecting the streetlights outside. The fridge door was spotless enough to double as a headstone. You half-expected a Roomba to zip by and start vacuuming your thoughts.
Tijjani didn’t even pause. He moved to the wet bar and topped up your glass before you’d made it halfway across the room. “I got you the expensive stuff,” he said, voice as dry as the ice rattling in your glass. “Try not to waste it.”
“Why, you running out of money?” you said, smiling as you took the glass. It was heavier than you expected, like a threat disguised as hospitality.
“God, I hope so,” he said. “The entire point of having money is to complain about not having enough.”
You let him lead you to the living room, where you dropped your bag next to the sofa. The couch was a slab of white leather, square and modern and almost comically out of place in a city where most people had to fight roaches for a chair. You flopped down, spreading your arms over the backrest and staring at the wall-sized TV, which was, predictably, off.
Tijjani didn’t sit. He paced, turning slow circles in the open space between the couch and the window. His reflection stalked him in every single wall, like a panel of judges following his every move. You caught a glimpse of your own face, then another, and another, all stretched and multiplied until you felt like you were being audited by the ghost of every mistake you’d ever made.
“Don’t be scared,” Tijjani said, finally noticing your discomfort. “It’s just glass. Helps you remember who you are.”
You tried to act cool, but the way your reflection blinked a split second late in the window behind him made your skin crawl. “Sure,” you said. “Or it’s just the world’s laziest security system.”
He grinned. “You want cameras? I have those too. The mirrors are just more honest.”
You downed half the drink in one go and coughed, trying to ignore the eyes (your own, Tijjani’s, the world’s) tracking you from every possible angle. “Kinda creepy, no?” you said.
Tijjani shrugged, as if that was the least of anyone’s problems. “Not if you’re okay with yourself.”
You laughed, but it came out raw. “We both know that’s a big if.”
He looked at you, really looked, and something dangerous flickered in his smile. “Guess that means you’ll just have to get used to it.”
You wanted to tell him to shut up, but the mirrors made you feel like you’d only be talking to yourself. So you sipped your drink and pretended you didn’t care. It was easier than admitting the truth: that you didn’t recognize the person staring back from all those angles, and you weren’t sure you ever would.
Tijjani poured himself a refill, then clinked his glass against yours. “To new perspectives,” he said.
You raised your glass in return, but didn’t quite manage to smile.
Scene 3
Sometime between the first and third drink, you excused yourself to the bathroom, pretending it was just the gin and not the prickling at the back of your skull. The hallway leading there was lined with more mirrors—because why not—each one angled to bounce your image endlessly down the corridor. You kept your eyes on the floor, tracing the veined pattern of the tiles, and tried not to think about how every step made your reflection lurch like a stop-motion ghost.
The bathroom was so bright it felt like a surgical theater. The walls were matte black, and the only decoration was a single slab of mirror above the sink, so wide it caught your reflection from shoulder to shoulder even if you tried to look away. You stared at yourself, just to prove you could. The face looking back was the same as always: eyes a little bloodshot, skin already flushed from the alcohol, hair doing that thing where it refused to commit to a single part. You splashed water on your face and blinked hard.
But the reflection didn’t blink with you.
You froze. Stared harder. It was you, but it wasn’t. Your hand gripped the edge of the sink; in the mirror, your fingers curled a beat late, just a flicker, but enough to make your stomach knot.
Maybe it was a trick of the light, you told yourself. The apartment’s architecture had already proved it was designed by a sadist.
You lifted your hand slowly, touching your cheek. In the glass, the movement was just off, like buffering video. Your mirror self stared straight back, eyes unblinking and hard, like it was waiting for you to do something first. You tried to laugh it off, but the sound died in your throat.
“Fuck off,” you whispered to the mirror. It didn’t reply, but you thought you saw the mouth quirk, just for a split second.
You yanked your gaze away and dried your face, refusing to look up again until you were ready to leave. When you finally did glance at the mirror, everything was perfectly in sync. Your heart hammered in your chest all the way back down the hallway.
Tijjani was sprawled on the couch, phone in hand, face aglow with the blue-white light of social media misery. You didn’t say anything at first, just collapsed onto the other end of the sofa and reached for your drink. You could feel the mirrors in the walls watching, multiplied versions of yourself and Tijjani circling the room like wolves.
“Ever feel like…,” you started, then shook your head. “Never mind.”
Tijjani didn’t look up. “Like what?”
You shrugged. “Like the mirrors here are watching us. Or, like, everything’s just a little off. Like someone’s running a simulation and forgot to update the code.”
He scrolled for a few seconds, thumb moving in tight, surgical strokes. “Maybe they are,” he said, deadpan. “Maybe this whole place is just a black box experiment for future sadists.”
You wanted to laugh, but the memory of your reflection’s stare had hollowed something out in your chest.
Tijjani set the phone down and finally looked at you. His face was blank, but his eyes were all teeth. “Or maybe you should ask the mirrors what they see.”
You didn’t know what to say to that, so you drank instead. The city outside the windows blazed with headlights and promise, but all you could see was your own face reflected a thousand times, waiting for you to slip up.
“You ever regret any of this?” you said, voice low.
Tijjani smiled, just a little. “Only when I remember how much worse it could be.”
You wanted to ask him what he meant, but you were afraid the answer would be staring you right in the face.
Scene 4
You tried to sleep, but the apartment refused to let you forget yourself. Every time you shifted on the couch, another wall of black glass threw your silhouette back at you, twisted and spliced by seams and corners. You wrapped a throw blanket around your shoulders and tried not to look at the TV, or the bar, or the windows, or the doors. Each reflection was a little more tired than the last, a little less interested in playing along.
You decided you needed air or another drink. Maybe both.
The hallway was empty, but the city outside the windows blazed like someone had poured kerosene on a circuit board. You stumbled toward the kitchen, feet silent on the tile, and almost missed the shape moving in the corner of your vision.
The hallway mirror was long and thin, stretching from hip to head. You passed it once, and for half a second, you saw yourself walking the other way. That wasn’t right, but you told yourself it was just the gin.
On the way back, you made yourself stop. You faced the mirror dead-on. Your reflection did too, for a heartbeat. Then it cocked its head—not the way you did, but the exact opposite, like it was correcting your posture for you.
You snapped your own head to the other side. The reflection mirrored it, in the wrong direction.
You reached out, half expecting to see your arm stutter or the glass to ripple. Instead, your hand pressed cold against the surface, and so did the hand on the other side, palm to palm. Your fingers trembled. The glass felt much too thin.
“What do you want?” you whispered, and the words fogged the surface, a ring of condensation just under your fingertips.
Your reflection smiled, a second before you did. Then it opened its mouth wide, but no sound came out.
A voice behind you, so close it nearly toppled you: “Careful. If you look too long, it starts thinking it deserves your life more than you do.”
You spun, heart hammering. Tijjani leaned in the doorway, arms crossed, face unreadable in the shadows.
“What the hell does that mean?” you said, voice too loud, too desperate.
He shrugged, like he hadn’t just sent a death threat via urban legend. “You’ll figure it out.”
Then he turned and walked away, bare feet silent on the tile.
You looked back at the mirror. The other you was still smiling.
You pulled your hand away. The reflection waved, one beat late.
The next morning, you’d swear the mirrors had always been there, and that you’d been the one who was out of place.