Insert Song | Mirror | Stray Kids

Adolf is breaking down. He clicks his tongue and gazes into the mirror. A tear-stained face of gold gazes back with a trying smile. He trembles. Not knowing when this will all end, his fear only darkens; not knowing if he is truly capable of providing Yan proper help, he can only laugh. He can ask himself infinite questions, but he hasn't an infinity to answer them, and doesn't have all the answers.

It ought to feel that way, at least. The issue with Adolf is that in the process of becoming human, he has smashed and discarded the shards of himself, and whatever is left of him remains repressed to the darkest depths. He has always known he was meant to support Yan, after all, so why did he ask the Drifblim about it? Undoubtedly, Adolf wavered. He wavered and now pays the price of false ignorance.

The man— the Hypno who takes the image of man— However should he label himself? His wrinkled nose and arched brows want to dismiss any attempt to reclaim himself. His heart says otherwise. Does form matter as much as function? Adolf sighs and wipes his tears, cries some more and throws his hands up. He dislikes introspection, even if it's necessary. Glancing at Yan's body, he wonders what purpose he now has. Thanks to his hypnosis, only Yan can help herself, and he can only wait for her to wake up.

If only he is so simple a creature he doesn't have to fret as much as to overthink. But Adolf knows he is a maze, that there are dead ends and detours he has to experience, that he can't fool himself with the mentality that the entrance is the exit when his position remains powerless, desperate, stagnant.

So he decides to take the disgusting plunge into himself, to invade his core and obtain those shards of himself he hurled beyond the cliff of reason. He collapses on the floor, his fingers intertwining with the woman's, feeling her subtle motions occasionally.

The man, or the Hypno? He altered his appearance, his image, but how will she react when he returns to his base state? Will Yan rejoice or spit at him? The beads of cold sweat on her palm soaking into his flesh, he feels, is a good gauge.

She's trapped in her snare.

His eyes glint at the familiar process—struggling. She mouths words he can't comprehend and her lips only move faster every passing second without rest, as if she has been enhanced into an android. Tense muscles will no longer feel pain, and so the heart wouldn't hurt as much. If only she were an android.

Who's to say that technology doesn't struggle? Everything in the world fights against and for something as long as it exists. Those who think themselves on the fence unconsciously stand their moral ground as well. Adolf sighs and squeezes her hand, in a guise to provide comfort when he truly means to stress her till she wakes up due to the pressure.

I'm a maze. I'm also the runner. A delver and his abyss.

He lets go. Adolf releases his grip on Yan's hand, on his self, on his sanity—everything. Betting his life and reason on this one release, he hopes to gain the power to exit the maze.

The walls close in, beckon him to stand up. A gentle whirring, succeeded by a flutter of sparks, travels from the outside in. He doesn't have to know; all he has to do is speculate, to make a conjecture and trust it fully, that the hands on one of the two clocks now gyrate as a cog in a machine, rapid and restless, churning out his fate one rotation at a time. Adolf narrows his gaze at the glowing text on the wall, the blood-red seeming to pop out.

"Until you have awoken, you shall not return." Saying it makes him want to rip himself apart.

The only stability here is stagnancy, but soon, even that will lose equilibrium. Adolf treads with quaking legs and clenched fists to the mirror and kisses his reflection before placing both palms on it, smashing his head against the glass. Blood oozes from his forehead, a passionate colour matching his hair, the way it meanders down his flesh causing his eyes to still, his heart to race.

"A-Answer me," he whispers to his broken reflection. "What is the point of my existence?"

And have I awoken?

Adolf shakes his head and beats his chest. Perhaps all he has to do is to enter his psyche, his id. Clearing his head, he shuts his eyes and pressed his body against the cool glass.

"I am still a Hypno, no matter my form. I can do this!"

His surroundings flash and collapse, breaking apart into cubes and lens flares, the floor disintegrating beneath his weight, the sky churning mist that coils round him from the crumbling window. Thuds collide with clangs till he is alone in a patch of light, between narrow walls, gazing hard into his double. A scan leads him to the runic symbols glowing blue on the obsidian walls, symbols that gradually morph into familiar characters. He looks behind him, where the mirror fills the gap between two large slabs. The entrance. All he needs is the exit, and freedom will be the prize.

Once upon a time, there was a creature who loved to help others.

How fairytale-like! Adolf snorts at the statement unravelling on the wall, beckoning him to proceed. He takes a right turn, because he wants to be right. The text on the next wall presents itself.

Once upon a time, there was a creature who believed the world was a good place.

These... These are the shards of his repressed self. Adolf figured that much, and strode straight on, turning right again. Each time he changed direction, the text told him something else of himself, all the things he had chosen to forget, the things he'd toss aside.

Once upon a time, there was a creature who trusted everyone.

Once upon a time, there was a creature who loved everyone.

Once upon a time, there was a creature who became a therapist.

Adolf pauses. A therapist. He, a Hypno, is also a therapist.

That's how I decided to help Yan, isn't it? Her trauma... That's right. I messed up. What if there are confabulations?

Adolf grumbles and shakes his head. No, he needs to move on, for now, or else.

Once upon a time, there was a creature who hated himself.

His feet halt so abruptly he almost trips. Self-hatred, huh? Adolf breaks into a grin and punches the wall. He pants, chest heaving, pupils dilating, pain flaring. He turns by instinct, hoping to remove himself from the hard gaze the text leaves on him, but to no avail. The mental image is there, imprinted in the damnable memory. The emboldened line remains indelible, an existence born out of that bloodlust he possesses toward himself, a burning sensation he ignores with a brave front, one that he knows will haunt him even in the spirit realm when the Dusknoir comes for him.

But that's just not it. Adolf's mouth dries, hope evaporating from his heart, as he comes face to face with a glassy surface obstructing his path. A dead end.

For the first time, Adolf reaches a dead end, even when he thinks he is right. The funniest thing, perhaps, in a Schadenfreude manner, is that the other direction delivers the same result, and the dreaded line plasters itself on the walls and glass, duplicating itself, an endless barrage of pop-ups ready to suffocate him. Adolf clutches his head and falls into his knees, letting out a scream that pierces his human husk.

How does one lose his way within himself? Adolf wants to tear his flesh apart, and return to who he has always been. The Hypno just wants to be himself.

"Why won't the answers come?"

His question bounces off the walls. He kneels in the intersection of three paths brimming with reminders of self-hatred.

Or was it simply self-denial?

Of course, had he truly thought so, he wouldn't have been overwhelmed. Adolf rocks his body and bites his lower lip. Caged in his own confusion, he sinks into the silence.

The text and walls reduce themselves to dust. From this vast grey, the maze isn't just opaque, but made up of mirrors facing in all directions, cutting his reflections here and there, deforming a couple along the way. Adolf looks up with a sniffle and his body falls onto the floor where rising water now flows. Bubbles escape his mouth. The motionless man discards his shell for a skin he hasn't worn for a long, long time.

In that breathlessness, Adolf's stained memory stirs awake.

•

Once upon a time, there was a creature who hated himself. It was simple, really. Because he had always put others before himself, and hurt himself in the process. He hated his naïveté. It led to all this self-destruction business he wanted nothing to do with, and he'd exchange anything for him to be free of it.

It was the reason the creature gained a new identity: a name, a new flesh, a new voice... It was the reason he was upgraded into a human. Just so he could rectify the mistake caused by his naïveté.

Thus, Adolf forsook himself to be someone else. He agreed to the Drifblim whose name he chose not to remember because he thought it insignificant in comparison to the task. He would ascend to the skies to help a struggling woman he had been stalking (as instructed), to redeem himself and how much he had intercepted into his life. He had used a different approach to let her experience her fears, unlike his usual hypnotherapy for his Pokémon clients in the wild. After all, she is his first human client ever, profile sent to him without her consent or knowledge. He didn't know much of humans to risk hypnotherapy, so he decided on something unorthodox.

Something so unconventional it only worsened the situation, because he grew attached to her.

He had been there since that fateful day, and he will be here till the end. Too much telling, he thinks to himself on watching the woman encounter various ghosts and take revenge. Adolf strengthens his resolve and resorts to showing, a tried-and-true method that is said to be most effective.

To do so, he left her alone to explore herself, to show herself who and what she is. It failed miserably, because things took a darker turn.

She never woke up.

This was the moment the creature spat up all the seld-hatred he stockpiled. It made him realise the trite truth he always ignored: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

And he repressed this truth, too.

•

Adolf lifts his head out of the water. He is far from being concerned with his blocked ears. Rather, he fixes his attention on the maze.

The answers won't come anymore because they have never gone anywhere. They have always been there, but the fool I made myself be ignored them.

The Hypno rises and charges toward the path he has always deemed right. His reflections may scramble everywhere, but their individual parts do not make him. His gaze penetrates even the imposter in the dead end, who thinks its glare to be paralysing, and leaves it stock-still instead. The imposter breaks under the pressure of his empowered self and reveals a clear path.

Whatever that may be, Adolf takes it to be the exit. His denial had been an obstacle, but he had crashed through it and accepted it altogether. Running is the only option now, and he sure isn't running away.

Adolf runs out of the maze. He leaves behind glass shards and ripples, an echoing nothingness and an indelible history.

On pulling himself to reality, the Hypno holds Yan's head to his chest.

"It feels like we are supporting each other spiritually," he mumbles. "For a moment, I thought we spoke."

In the isolated sky castle, memories unravel the truth. Red words tiptoe off the wall. Outside, the whirring softens. A Drifblim watches from the window, seeing unseen.

Adolf allows the tears to flow. "I'm rooting for you. So please wake up soon, Yan. I'll be waiting."