It was the spring of my second year in university. Since I happened to be passing by, I casually dropped in at the house of my master of the occult. After knocking on the apartment door and opening it, I saw the master sitting cross-legged on the tatami mats, intently staring at something. As I drew closer, I made eye contact with the master, who still had his back to me. "Yo." It was an oddly-sized mirror—too big for a tabletop, yet too small to be a full-length mirror. A faint wave of unease washed over me. When I asked the obvious, "Is that a mirror?", he simply nodded, tore his gaze away from the glass, and stared straight ahead with a piercing look. I sat down beside him and silently observed. What on earth was he doing? The most normal assumption would be that he was thrilled to have acquired some occult mirror with a dark history. The second most likely possibility was that he was just staring at his own face. It had to be one of the two. The mirror was a vertical oval, supported by a post extending from the center of a ceramic-like base, which connected to a ring-shaped frame. The mirror itself seemed to be supported by rods sticking out from the sides of the frame, allowing it to spin freely up and down. It looked old, but it didn't give off a particularly ominous vibe. "What are you doing?" Growing impatient as the master kept staring at the mirror, I finally spoke up. He slowly shifted his forward-leaning weight back. "I was thinking," he said, letting out a sigh, as if he had just remembered how to breathe. "About the mirror?" At my question, he gave a dry chuckle and slowly turned to face me. With one hand, he spun the mirror around. "Here's a riddle for you," he said. "A tree falls in a deep forest where no one is around. Did it make a sound, or did it not?"
Ah, I'd heard this one before. If a tree falls deep in a forest where no one is around, it means there was nobody there to hear the sound. It’s the question of whether a sound can exist without a human observer to perceive it. "I don't really get that one. Of course it made a sound, didn't it? I mean, since there’s no observer to begin with, you should be doubting whether the tree even fell in the first place. But if we're taking that as a given, then of course it made a sound." "Wasn't it Einstein who said, 'The moon is still there even if nobody is looking'? ...Well, never mind. You can look at this proposition in different ways—depending on whether you define 'sound' as the vibration itself, or as the vibration being perceived by a living creature's auditory organs. But most people would answer that it did make a sound." Having said that, the master reached out to the mirror again, spun the back around with his index finger, and stopped it. "Then, what about the next question?" He stopped it dead, with the mirrored surface facing me. "A tree falls in a deep forest where no one is around. A mirror has been placed right in front of that tree. Does that mirror capture the exact moment it falls?" This was a new one. I tried to visualize it. Deep in the forest. A decaying tree. A mirror in front of the tree. The mirror reflects the tree, reversed left to right. The tree falls. The tree inside the mirror falls as well. A fallen tree. Deep in a forest where no one is around. I got it. "It definitely captures it. It's just like the sound. Even if nobody is watching, it's only natural to think that it's being reflected." Hearing that, the master broke into a grin. Then, he pulled out a giraffe figurine from somewhere and placed it in front of the mirror. I recognized it. Probably one of those toy figures that come with candy lately. He pointed at the mirror and said, "Well? What do you see?" In front of the mirror, a giraffe was standing with its back facing us. And inside the mirror, the giraffe was standing facing us.
"It's a giraffe." "That's right." The master poked the giraffe, making it fall over. The giraffe inside the mirror fell over too. What is he trying to do? With an expression like he was hiding a prank, the master tapped my shoulder and gestured for me to move over a bit. I lifted my hips and changed my seating position. This meant I had moved about fifty centimeters to the right of the mirror's center. "Well? What do you see?" Facing the mirror from an angle naturally changed the scenery being reflected. "An elephant." Before I knew it, an elephant figurine had been placed on my left side, and its reflection was in the mirror. "Then, further this way." The master slid my seating position further to the right. "What do you see?" By now, the angle of the mirror surface was quite extreme and hard to see, but I could make out an alligator reflecting in it. "An alligator." The moment I answered, I had a strange illusion, as if I had wandered into some bizarre space. Huh? Why is an alligator being reflected? Looking to my left, I could indeed see an alligator figurine placed right where it would reflect in the mirror. And yet, a strange sense of discomfort welled up from deep inside my body. A hand patted my shoulder, making me flinch. He instructed me to move all the way to the corner of the room. Sitting by the wall as told, I tried not to think about why my chest was pounding. The master's voice took on a dark tone. "Now, what do you see?" The angle of the mirror was gone, and I was now in a position that was practically parallel to it. The mirrored surface looked less like a flat plane and more like a single line, showing nothing but a dull, metallic color. Neither the alligator, nor the elephant, nor, of course, the giraffe was reflected anymore.
"Shall we leave the room now?" The master's words were an invitation. With my eyes wide open, as if experiencing an out-of-body-experience, I was led out of the room by the master—leaving my physical body behind. The master walked briskly through the city. I followed right behind him. Every time he stopped, the master asked me: "What do you see?" I couldn't answer. I could only see the apartment door. "What do you see?" I couldn't answer. I couldn't even see the apartment anymore. "What do you see?" I couldn't answer. Before long, the two of us entered the forest, and deep in those deserted woods, we stood before a decaying tree. A mirror had been placed in front of the tree. A mirror facing the tree. The master asked, standing directly behind that mirror: "What is reflected?" The back of the mirror was pitch black, showing nothing at all. "Well? What is reflected?" I don't know. I don't know. My eyes were glued to the back of the mirror. Even though the decaying tree standing silently on the other side was well within my field of vision, I couldn't picture what was being reflected on the other side—on the flip side of the mirror's black back. I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. It felt as if my brain was being churned up. It felt horribly nauseating, yet strangely comforting... Tap. A hand patted my shoulder. "I'll ask you once more." In an instant, I was back in the master's apartment. I realized anew that I had been sitting by the wall the whole time. "A tree falls in a deep forest where no one is around. Does the mirror placed in front of that tree capture the exact moment it falls?" Even though it was the exact same question as before, its texture felt strangely twisted. In front of the mirror, the giraffe lay fallen, in the exact same pose as before. "I don't know." When I finally forced those words out, the master, looking satisfied, picked up the giraffe, the elephant, and the alligator.
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