The trip ended.
Or so it seemed.
The bus returned to school on schedule.Teachers smiled, thanked the students for their cooperation.Parents picked them up as if nothing had happened.
Normal.Too normal.
Sam stared out the window of her house, watching the rain slide down the glass.It was all supposed to be over.
Yet in the reflection of the window, she could still see faint traces of vines curling at the edges of her vision.Ghost images.Flickering.Like the Mirage was still hiding in her blind spots.
Wang hadn't called.
She texted him.He replied, but the words felt... off.
"Yeah, all good. Let's rest. It was just a trip."
Sam clenched her phone.
Wang would never say that.Wang knew.Wang would never forget.
Something's wrong.
The next day at school, everything felt... sterile.
Too perfect.
Students laughed.Classes went on.Teachers praised how well-behaved the students had been on the trip.
But Sam noticed the cracks.
One girl kept doodling the same spiral of thorns over and over in her notebook, her smile frozen.A boy stood by the window at lunch, whispering to the empty field, waiting for "the flowers to speak back."
Sam's skin crawled.
They weren't free.
The Mirage hadn't been defeated.
It had simply... integrated.
No more hallucinations.No more warped flowers.
It had seeped into the routines, the systems, the daily grind.
And worse—It was adapting.
That night, Sam forced Wang to meet her at the park.
He showed up late.
When he arrived, his eyes were glassy, his posture slouched like a puppet.
"Wang," she whispered. "It's not over, is it?"
Wang smiled softly. "Sam… maybe it is. Maybe we imagined it all. We should let it go."
"No," she said, stepping back. "That's not you talking."
His smile widened, too wide.
"I'm tired of fighting, Sam. You should be too. The Mirage isn't so bad. It gives you what you want... peace... no fear..."
Sam backed away, her heart pounding.
Wang wasn't fully Wang anymore.
The Mirage had found a new tactic.
It was no longer brute-forcing fear.It was seducing them with comfort.With numbness.With the illusion of a perfect, peaceful world where nothing hurt anymore.
Sam shook her head.
"I'd rather feel pain than feel nothing."
She threw her drink at him—splashing cold water onto his face.
Wang blinked.
Shivered.
Clutched his head.
"Sam... I… I can't... it's in my head. It's telling me... everything will be easier if I let go..."
Sam hugged him tightly.
"Don't listen. We're still here. We're still real."
For a moment... the fog in his eyes lifted.
He gripped her hand like a drowning man. "Sam… we're not done. The Mirage… it's spreading. Through the screens... the phones... the reflections..."
Sam's stomach turned.
Of course.
Mirrors.
Screens.
Anything that reflected could be a seed.
The following week was a blur of paranoia and fear.
Sam and Wang stayed off their phones, covered mirrors, kept their heads down.
But the world around them shifted.
A strange calmness washed over the town.People moved slower.Smiled more.No one argued.No one complained.
Sam realized the horror of it.
The Mirage didn't need to make them see monsters.
It just needed to make them stop caring.
It was winning.
Quietly.
Subtly.
No one would even notice they were asleep.
One night, Wang showed up at Sam's window, pale, shaking.
"Sam… I found it. The seed. It's in the school's greenhouse. I saw the vines under the floorboards. They're growing fast."
Sam's breath caught.
They hadn't killed the root.They had only broken the illusion's first layer.
The real root had already found a place to grow in the real world.
And it was starting… in their school.
They stood together in the darkness of the greenhouse that night, their flashlights flickering against the glass walls.
Inside… the same exotic flowers from the trip.Only now… they weren't just decorations.
They were watching.
The vines twisted toward them as they moved, pulsing under the soil, whispering their names.
Wang pointed to the center.
There, under the cracked floorboards, was a pulsing mass of flesh-like roots tangled with black vines—glowing faintly red.
The Seed.
"It's not the root," Sam whispered. "It's the next generation."
The Mirage had adapted.
It would never stop.
Unless they found its true heart.
Not in the Mirage.
But in their world.
"Sam…" Wang's voice trembled. "What if there is no true heart? What if this is just… what the world really is now?"
Sam swallowed hard.
Then she grinned bitterly.
"Then we burn it anyway."