The university sits quietly in the middle of the city, old, heavy with history, its whitewashed walls stained faintly yellow by decades of rain. The air around it is warm by day, but by evening, a strange chill seeps through its hallways.
And somewhere inside that campus, behind the oldest building, past the classrooms with creaking wooden floors, is a restroom that no one likes to use.
It looks ordinary enough: cubicles, a row of sinks, a large mirror that stretches across the wall. But every student who has entered it alone swears that it feels… wrong.
Like the air moves differently there.
Like the silence is too complete.
Norma never believed in the stories.
She was practical, confident, and always the one to laugh at her friends for believing in urban legends. She’d heard them all, the weeping lady by the library, the piano that plays by itself, the ghostly child near the stairwell.
But the story about the girl’s restroom, the one with the mirror, she found that one oddly fascinating.
They said years ago, a student had walked in there and screamed so loudly that people on the next floor heard it. They found her staring blankly at the ceiling, trembling, her mouth frozen open.
When she woke up, she never spoke again.
Norma thought it was nonsense.
Until the night she stayed late.
The building was nearly empty, the lights dimmed, the faint hum of the fluorescent bulbs echoing off the high ceiling. Outside, the wind pressed against the old windows, making them rattle softly.
Norma had been working on a project and lost track of time. When she finally packed up, the guards were already locking the outer gates. She rushed to leave, but her stomach twisted uncomfortably.
She needed to use the restroom before heading home.
The only one nearby was that one.
When she stepped inside, the smell of old water hit her first, metallic, like rust.
One of the lights flickered above the sink, buzzing every few seconds.
She glanced at her reflection in the mirror: tired eyes, ink-stained fingers, the faint shadow of exhaustion beneath her cheeks.
She turned on the faucet. The water came out in short, uneven bursts.
The dripping echoed louder than it should have — plip, plip, plip — a rhythm that didn’t stop even after she turned the handle off.
Norma frowned.
That’s when she saw it.
Her reflection blinked, a moment too late.
Then it smiled.
But Norma hadn’t.
She stared. Her reflection stared back, but the corners of its mouth lifted slowly, unnaturally, stretching into a grin too wide, too sharp.
Norma’s breath caught.
Behind her reflection, something shifted, a faint shadow, like a person standing just a few steps behind her.
Her hands trembled as she turned around. The cubicles were empty. The room was still.
But when she turned back, the woman was there.
Her face was pale, almost colorless, her hair long and soaked, strands clinging to her face as if she had just risen from deep water. Her eyes were wrong, black and depthless, staring right into Norma’s.
And then the reflection — that thing in the mirror — moved closer.
Its head tilted slightly. The smirk widened.
Norma stumbled backward, her breath coming in short, broken gasps. The lights flickered violently and in the dark, she heard a whisper.
Low. Breathless. Close.
“Don’t look away.”
When they found her, Norma was standing motionless in front of the mirror.
Her eyes were wide open, her pupils shrunken to tiny dots. Her lips moved faintly, though no sound came out.
And her gaze wasn’t on her reflection, it was fixed on the ceiling, where a small wooden cross hung crookedly above the door.
She stayed that way until the priest arrived.
The exorcism took hours. She screamed once, a deep, guttural sound that didn’t belong in her throat, and then fainted.
When she awoke, she didn’t remember what she saw. She only asked one question, over and over again:
“Why was she smiling at me?”
The next morning, the janitor removed the mirror to clean the wall behind it.
He found scratches, long, uneven marks, as if fingernails had clawed at the surface.
And between them, faintly written in the dust, were the words:
“SHE’S STILL HERE.”
Years passed.
The school changed names.
New buildings rose. The old ones were “renovated.”
But some say the old restroom was never really torn down, just bricked over, hidden behind a newer wall.
And if you walk around the campus today, late at night, you might notice something strange.
A faint draft where there shouldn’t be one.
A section of the wall is colder than the rest.
And if you listen closely, beneath the hum of the city, you might hear it.
That soft, steady dripping water
They say the mirror is still there.
The same one Norma looked into.
The same one that smiled first.
No one knows exactly where that restroom is now.
But somewhere in that school, in a corner too quiet, down a hallway no one uses anymore, there’s a door that doesn’t open.
And if you ever find it…
Don’t go in.
Because if you do, and you see a mirror inside, you won’t just see your reflection.
You’ll see hers.
Smiling.
Waiting.
And this time…
She’ll be real.
