hello this is beyond lovely and i dont have the words to express just how much i find it so! the way you used death as a metaphor is so cool. this line and its paragraph, in particular, struck me so much:

Minghao cradles the mirror’s frame with his mud-stained hands and asks the ghost standing behind it: why’d you leave before I had the chance to kill you?

the way minghao is so haunted by the ghost of yixing that he himself acts and lives very much like a ghost. oooh just absolute chills. i loved reading this thank you so much!