After years of working with corpses, Zhao Min had learned to value silence.
The prep rooms were never truly quiet. Refrigeration units hummed behind the walls, but she had grown used to the stillness beneath the sound.
That familiarity had made her efficient. She knew how to conceal damage and give families a face they could bear to remember.
So when the accident victim arrived, she expected difficult work, nothing more.
She drew back the sheet.
The man looked to be in his thirties. The bones of his face were not broken in the way she expected.
Instead, the whole face had shifted sideways. One eye sat lower than the other. The mouth had settled off-centre without tearing, and the skin pulled in the same direction, as though a patient hand had pressed everything into place.
Just as Zhao Min reached for her gloves, Mr. Lau’s voice came from the doorway.
“Leave his face as it is.”
She turned. He stood watching the body, his expression unreadable.
“It’s only a misalignment,” she said. “I can correct it.”
He approached the table but stopped before touching it.
“A misalignment comes from broken bones,” he said. “This didn’t.”
Zhao Min looked back at the displaced eye and mouth. “The family won’t want to see him like this.”
“I agree,” Mr. Lau said. “But I wouldn’t change where it has settled.”
Zhao Min looked at him. “Then what do you expect me to do?”
“Clean him. Prepare him. Leave the face.”
“That isn’t what the family will expect.”
“No,” Mr. Lau said. “But saying goodbye is not the same as pretending nothing happened.”
Final State
Mr. Lau rested one hand on the edge of the table.
“You can try,” Mr. Lau said. “Most bodies don’t resist the work. But if the face keeps returning to the same position, stop.”
Zhao Min frowned. “Why?”
“Because then the dead man is resisting you. He may not have died the way everyone believes, and that face may be helping him finish something he left undone.” Mr. Lau looked at her. “Whatever happens, don’t force it.”
Zhao Min gave him a doubtful look. “You’re serious? I’ve worked here for years, and I’ve never had a body resist me. Leave him to me. Go and get some rest.”
Mr. Lau studied her for a moment, then let out a quiet sigh. He gave her one last look before turning and leaving the room.
Once she was alone, Zhao Min shook her head.
“As if I’d believe that.”
She arranged her tools in their usual order, adjusted the table light, and prepared to begin.
The Thought That Should Not Stay
Zhao Min cleaned the face and began with the jaw, easing it back towards the centre before working on the displaced cheek and mouth. The damage was difficult, but not beyond anything she had handled before.
Little by little, the features returned to where they should have been.
When she finished, the man’s face looked almost natural.
Zhao Min stepped back and examined her work. Satisfied, she turned to set down her instruments.
A faint sound from the table made her look back.
The sight made her frown—the corner of the man’s mouth had shifted.
At first, she thought the support beneath the jaw had loosened. She moved closer, but before she could touch him, one side of the face began to sink.
The cheek drew sideways. The lower eye slipped out of alignment. The mouth followed, settling slowly back into the same crooked position in which she had found it.
Within seconds, everything she had corrected was gone.
The face had returned to where it wanted to be.
Zhao Min examined the loosened support beneath the jaw.
“I must have missed something the first time,” she muttered. “Fine. I’ll do it again.”
She adjusted the face once more, working more carefully than before. This time, she reinforced the jaw and secured each feature firmly before stepping back.
“There,” she said. “That should hold.”
The Face That Would Not Hold
Before she could step away, the jaw shifted beneath the support.
She froze.
Nothing had loosened. The bindings remained firm, yet the jaw continued to ease sideways with slow, steady pressure. The cheek followed, then the mouth, drawing the features back across the face one by one.
There was no sudden jerk, no collapse of damaged bone. The movement was quiet and unhurried, as though something had merely waited for her hands to leave.
One eye lowered as the face settled into the same displaced alignment in which she had found it.
Zhao Min stared, her breath caught high in her chest.
“Why does it keep going back?” she muttered, irritation sharpening her voice.
She pulled the instruments closer and began again.
This time, she did not work gently. She tightened the supports until the skin drew taut, then reached for several small pins she would never have used during an ordinary preparation.
“You want to stay like this?” she said under her breath. “Fine. Let’s see how long that lasts.”
She fixed the jaw first, forcing it towards the centre, then secured the cheek and mouth more firmly than procedure allowed. Each time one feature resisted, she pressed harder.
“Stop moving.”
The words left her before she realised she had spoken to the body as though it could hear her.
She drove another pin into place and adjusted the face until the features held beneath the strain.
“There,” she said, breathing harder now. “You’re not moving again.”
After the Door Closed
For several minutes, the face held.
Zhao Min watched it closely, waiting for the slightest movement. When none came, she removed her gloves and began packing away her instruments.
“You should’ve stayed put the first time,” she muttered. “Would’ve saved me half the night.”
She switched off the table light, left the prep room, and pulled the door shut behind her.
The corridor was already dark except for the emergency lights along the floor. Zhao Min checked the time and sighed. She had stayed far later than planned.
“All this over one stubborn face.” Her footsteps faded down the corridor.
Inside the prep room, nothing moved at first. Then one pin slipped free and struck the metal tray with a soft click, followed by another, then a third.
The jaw eased sideways beneath the loosened supports. The cheek shifted after it, and the mouth slowly returned to its former position. One eye lowered until the face had settled once more into the same damaged alignment.
The final pin dropped.
In the darkness, the man’s lowered eye remained fixed on the closed door. In its stillness lingered something unmistakable—hatred.
The First Revenge
By the time Zhao Min stepped outside, rain had blurred the city beneath yellow streetlamps. Headlights stretched across the wet road in trembling lines.
She told herself that the night had unsettled her because she was tired. Nothing in the prep room had been beyond explanation. Even so, she walked with her jaw clenched and her shoulders stiff.
At the first junction, an ache gathered along one side of her jaw.
She pressed her fingers against it, expecting the soreness to pass, but the pressure climbed towards her cheekbone and settled beneath her eye. Distracted by the pain, she stepped onto the road when the signal changed.
A car turned sharply towards the crossing, its horn blaring as it bore down on her through the rain.
A passerby shouted, “Watch out!”
Zhao Min snapped her head up, and the headlights filled her vision. She threw herself aside, lost her footing on the slick road, and stumbled onto the opposite pavement as the car swept past, spraying rainwater across her legs.
She stood on the pavement, breath coming hard, her fingers still pressed to her jaw as the car disappeared into the rain.
Only when her pulse began to slow did she realise the pain had vanished.
The Man in the Glass
As Zhao Min continued home, she passed a darkened shop and glanced at the window, checking the side of her face where the pain had been.
Her reflection looked normal at first—jaw straight, mouth untouched, rain sliding down the glass between her face and the dark shop beyond.
She blinked, and the dead man stood behind her in the window.
His face was still in the damaged state she had uncovered beneath the sheet, his jaw dragged sideways, his mouth twisted off-centre and one eye hanging lower than the other.
He leaned so close that his ruined cheek almost touched hers in the glass. The lowered eye did not stare blankly like the eye of a corpse. Its lowered eye was webbed with red, fixed on her with a hatred far too alive for a corpse.
Zhao Min’s breath stopped.
Her fingers dug into her jaw as she stood frozen before the glass, too afraid to turn and see whether he was truly behind her.
She blinked once, and the reflection was empty.
Her own pale face stared back from the glass, trembling beneath the trails of rain.
Zhao Min spun around, half expecting the dead man to be within arm’s reach, but found only wet pavement and strangers passing beneath their umbrellas.
By the time she reached home, she had convinced herself that exhaustion had put him in the glass.
The Face in Every Reflection
At work the following morning, Zhao Min opened a storage cabinet to retrieve a set of instruments. As she reached inside, the metal door swung back and struck her cheekbone.
Pain burst beneath her eye and sank deep into the cheekbone. Zhao Min pressed her palm against the spot, rubbing slowly until the throbbing began to ease.
She pushed the cabinet door closed.
A face surfaced in the dull metal.
The reflection was warped and faint, but it was not hers. One eye sat lower than the other, the mouth pulled sharply to one side as the dead man stared at her through the scratched steel.
She spun around, but the room behind her was empty.
“The pain must have made me hallucinate,” she whispered. “That’s all.”
She avoided reflective surfaces for the rest of the day.
Over the next two days, small accidents followed her. A cabinet door struck her cheek, a slipping file caught the corner of her mouth, and a sudden stumble twisted her jaw painfully to one side. Strangely, nothing ever bruised her arms or knees. Every impact found her face.
After each one, the dead man appeared.
She caught him in dark windows, polished steel and the black screen of her phone—always close behind her, his damaged face staring back with the same bloodshot hatred. The moment she turned or blinked, he was gone.
The Third Day
By the third day, Zhao Min could no longer pass a reflective surface without checking it.
Before leaving work, Zhao Min noticed a fresh bruise forming beneath her jaw, the result of yet another small accident that afternoon.
The soreness had made her hold her head slightly to one side, so she stopped before the staff bathroom mirror and tried to straighten it. As she lifted her chin, her jaw shifted softly beneath the skin before slipping back into place.
Zhao Min gripped the edge of the sink and waited for the dead man to appear behind her. The mirror showed only her own reflection.
Somehow, his absence frightened her more.
Outside, rain glazed the roads and stretched the headlights into trembling bands across the wet ground. She knew she should take a taxi, but the bus stop was only a short walk away. She told herself that the cold air would clear her head.
Halfway across the road, the signal changed. Zhao Min tried to run for the opposite pavement, but her legs would not obey.
A car swept around the corner from her right, its tyres cutting through the rainwater. The horn blared, but Zhao Min remained rooted to the spot.
For one violent instant, the world became headlights, rain and the sickening crack of impact. Her body lifted from the road before crashing back onto the wet pavement.
The last thing she saw was the dead man’s face stretched across the bonnet, watching her with that same bloodshot hatred.
Then everything went black.
Consciousness returned with pain.
It filled Zhao Min’s face before she could open her eyes, spreading from her jaw to her cheekbone and gathering beneath one swollen lid.
The Last Evidence
When Zhao Min opened her eyes, she found herself in a hospital room. Bandages covered most of her face, one eye hidden completely beneath them.
Mr. Lau sat beside the bed.
Zhao Min tried to speak, but the words barely passed her lips. “My face…”
“The doctors did what they could.”
Mr. Lau placed a folded document on the bedside table.
“Do you remember the body you were working on?” he asked. “The police reopened his case this morning.”
“It wasn’t an accident,” he continued. “The marks on the road showed that the car changed direction before striking him. The driver knew where he was and aimed for him.”
“Then why wasn’t anyone arrested?”
“The driver escaped. There were no witnesses, and the vehicle was never found.”
Pain pulsed beneath Zhao Min’s bandages.
Mr. Lau looked towards the rain-darkened window. “His face was the only thing left that showed the angle of the impact. The jaw, the cheek, the lowered eye—it all pointed to how the car struck him.”
The memory of the face beneath the sheet returned with terrible clarity.
“He wasn’t resisting because he wanted to remain disfigured,” Zhao Min whispered.
“No,” Mr. Lau said. “He was protecting the evidence.”
He sighed and looked at her bandaged face. “That’s why I warned you. If a face keeps returning to the same position, you don’t force it back.”
Zhao Min swallowed. “How long will he keep doing this?”
“Until the driver is judged.”
Later, when the nurse removed part of the dressing, Zhao Min asked for a mirror. The face in the mirror was still hers, but the damage was exactly the same as the dead man’s.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Please forgive me. I should never have forced your face back.”
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