Marta leads Kuba into a hidden room in the school, where mirrors and a sleeping gramophone begin to reveal feelings neither of them is ready to face.
The school Marta attended stood at the edge of the woods, its old stone walls dark with years of rain and secrets. By spring, even the corridors seemed different after the last bell, as if the building was holding its breath.
Marta liked those quiet afternoons best. That day, she had brought Kuba, a boy from the parallel class who almost never spoke unless someone asked him a direct question.
"Promise you won't tell anyone," she said, stopping beneath the creaky cupboard under the stairs.
Kuba swallowed and nodded. The small brass key Marta had pressed into his hand felt far too heavy for something so tiny.
She crouched, pulled the cupboard open, and slid her fingers along the back panel until something clicked. A narrow door, hidden in the shadow of the wall, gave way with a low groan.
Inside was not the pile of broken chairs or forgotten cleaning supplies they had expected. The room beyond was bare and cold, lit by a grey strip of light from somewhere overhead. In the centre stood an old gramophone, its horn dulled with dust. Around it hung mirrors, each one clouded as if someone had breathed on them from the other side.
Kuba took one step in and stopped. "This is... wrong," he whispered.
Marta did not answer. Her stomach had tightened the moment she crossed the threshold, as if the room had recognised her.
She reached for the nearest mirror.
The glass shivered under her fingertips.
Then, from somewhere deep inside the horn of the gramophone, came a soft crackle. A second later, music drifted into the room: gentle, warped, and faintly uneasy, like a lullaby remembered by someone who had almost forgotten the words.
Kuba stared at the mirror in front of him. At first he only saw his own face. Then colour bled through the glass, spreading from his eyes like ink in water. Dark blue. Sharp. Restless.
"Marta..."
She turned. Her own reflection had changed too. Beside the outline of her face, something else flickered there - joy, bright and impossible, tangled with a feeling she could not name and did not want to.
The gramophone needle jerked forward.
The music grew louder.
The mirrors began to pulse one after another, as if the room were waking up around them. Marta stepped back, but the door behind them swung shut with a hard, final sound.
In the glass, their reflections did not move when they did.
They just stared back, waiting.