Reflection of Doubt： Anai

The legend of Anai did not begin with any specific event, but rather permeated the city air like a whisper, an unsettling consensus. She was a deaf-mute girl, a fact that might ordinarily elicit only pity or indifference. However, Anai possessed an unsettling, almost absolute perfection of features. This perfection was not beauty in the conventional sense, but a kind of harmony that transcended human aesthetic experience, as if it were a fragile, fleeting projection of "Beauty itself" from Plato's world of Forms.

People first noticed her under the colonnade of the long-abandoned library on the city's edge. She sat there quietly, the sunlight tracing the impeccable lines of her profile, like a statue from a lost ancient kingdom. Yet she was alive, breathing, her eyes (said to be of an indescribable color, blending dawn and dusk) shimmering with silent light. At first, there was awe, a frantic pursuit by artists attempting to capture the unreplicable harmony. However, all paintings failed; they appeared either clumsy or merely hollow imitations, lacking that heart-stopping "sense of reality."

Doubt, like mold, began to grow quietly upon the ruins of awe.

"She can't be real," someone started whispering. "Human faces always have flaws; they are the marks of time, emotion, existence itself. Her face has none." This argument was initially dismissed as jealousy but soon gained wider, more clandestine acceptance. Her perfection became a form of evidence against her, an offense against the "normal." Her deaf-muteness was no longer seen as a defect but interpreted as proof of some non-human existence—she needed no language because her very being was an irrefutable (yet unconvincing) declaration.

The city's newspapers began publishing anonymous philosophical discussions, questioning whether "perfection" necessarily leads to "unreality." Some scholars cited ancient texts about artificial humans, mirror phantoms, about sprites capable of perfectly mimicking life forms but lacking souls. When Anai walked the streets, the gazes she felt were no longer of astonishment but of scrutiny, a probing mixed with fear and curiosity. People would unconsciously slow their steps, hold their breath in her presence, as if facing an illusion that might shatter or reveal its true form at any moment.

Most unsettling was that no one could provide reliable information about her origins. She seemed to have appeared suddenly in the city, without relatives, without a past. She lived in a humble attic near the library, supporting herself by trimming flowers for a quiet flower shop. The shop owner, a taciturn old woman, merely shook her head when questioned by the curious, saying Anai was "a child sent by the wind." This poetic answer only fueled people's suspicions.

A retired judge, known for his rigorous logic, attempted a thorough investigation into the "Anai phenomenon." He interviewed everyone who might have had contact with her, checked city birth records, immigration files, and even hired private detectives to follow her. Yet, everything led to a void. Anai's life was as simple as a straight line; apart from the flower shop and her attic, she occasionally went to the riverbank to gaze at the flowing water for long periods. The detective's report was filled with frustration: "She doesn't exist in any official records... Her daily routine is unremarkable, but precisely because of this, it seems abnormal. Her perfection is like an impenetrable glaze, sealing off all reality."

The judge eventually abandoned the investigation. It is said that in his later years, he became engrossed in studying ancient myths and alchemical manuscripts, often murmuring, "Perhaps we are not questioning her, but fearing the limits of our own perception. Perfection, like infinity, is a concept the human mind cannot contain."

The Kafkaesque absurdity lay in the fact that Anai never defended herself—she couldn't. Her silence, like a mirror, reflected the inner panic and unease of the city's inhabitants. They tried to label her—"counterfeit," "phantom," "other"—to preserve the flawed, and therefore "real," world they understood. Her existence itself was an unsolved case, one without plaintiff or defendant, only endless scrutiny and self-scrutiny.

Once, a child, not yet tainted by the doubts of the adult world, ran up and handed Anai a wildflower. Anai accepted the flower and smiled. That smile, too, was perfect, as radiant as sunrise, yet tinged with an almost imperceptible sadness. At that moment, the surrounding crowd fell into a deeper silence. Was the smile proof of humanity, or a more sophisticated disguise? This question hung over the city like an unsolvable riddle.

Anai's story ultimately has no conclusion. Perhaps she left quietly one morning, just as she had quietly arrived. Perhaps she still lives in some corner of that city, continuing to challenge everyone she meets with her silent perfection: Where, exactly, is the boundary between reality and illusion? Is our definition of "human" itself built upon a series of imperfect assumptions?

I, as the reluctant chronicler of this story, also often think of Anai in the dead of night. I try to find her shadow in the vast ocean of literature, searching for answers in metaphors of mirrors, labyrinths, and infinite loops. But all I find are more questions and a profound sense of powerlessness. Anai, the deaf-mute girl questioned for her perfection, ultimately became an uninterpretable symbol for this city, and perhaps for our era—an entrance to the dizzying yet unfathomable maze of existence itself. Her silence speaks more eloquently than any language about our shared predicament: we long for truth, yet fear the truths we cannot comprehend.