Her bare feet ran through the concrete as blood dripped from her skirt. It wasn’t her blood. “I have to run! I have to run!” she muttered under her breath. She could hear the footsteps behind her like a pig hearing the growl of a chainsaw. This girl would be dying tonight.

  The endless hallways twirled through the girl’s confused mind as she tried opening each door. “Is anyone in there!” But the doorknob wouldn’t even turn. It was just an image to mock her final moments. “Fuck! Just leave me alone!”

  Nowhere was safe. Even as she made countless turns through the concrete halls, she would still hear the echoing footsteps behind her. This was a man that could be better described as a creature. To even begin to explain his inhumanity would do his monstrosity no justice, though such a moral concept was devoid from this beast. A knife was his only means of communication.

  In the end, the girl found an unlocked door—this one wasn’t decoration. “Finally! I can get the hell out of here!” But as soon as she closed the door and flicked the lights, a body fell from the ceiling. It didn’t drop to the floor. A rope made sure of that.

  “Melissa! No!” the girl cried. Even though she had seen her best friend yesterday—alive—her body was strewn up as if she had been dead for a week—maybe even a month. “H-How is that possible? W-We…” Then the truth dawned upon her: she had been in this maze for years.

  The scene suddenly changed to a couple kissing, and not in the cutesy way. “Ah yeah, that’s good. You sure you’re a rookie? Keep smooching like that, and you’ll be a pro like me.” Shirts flew, pants stripped, and the horror vanished–though transformed would be a better word.

  “Ayo! What the fuck!” Lin screamed. She tried to pause the tape, but it kept going like a haunted film. If you replaced the ghosts with a late-90s porno. “Katie! I wanted to watch a good old slasher movie! Not whatever the hell this is!”

  Katie was laughing on the couch while Lin kept fiddling with the VCR deck. “My bad, my bad. I bought it from some thrift store out in downtown. I thought it was a vintage copy of Maze Slasher, but I guess some dude didn’t know where to store his smut.”

  “Okay! Okay! Just turn it off!”

  “One step ahead of ya.” Katie walked over and unplugged the whole TV.

  Lin sat back on the couch like a war veteran, though her Berserk sweatshirts didn’t look like camouflage. Her “uniform” usually consisted of sweatshirts, jeans, and maybe her mom’s puffy jacket if it was too cold. “I think I have PTSD…”

  “PTSD? Girl, it was literally just the kissing part. You didn’t even get—”

  “Nope! Just shut up!”

  “What are you? Five?”

  “Just shut it! And shut it!”

  Katie sat next to her and laughed. “Why? Is it ‘cause you still have the dumb crush of yours?” When Lin widened her eyes, Katie knew she struck gold. “Girl! There’s no way you’re still into Vincent! You guys only share one class, and you got bigger things to worry about in college. Besides, that guy’s weird as all hell! Sitting in the back acting all nonchalant.”

  “B-But I like nonchalant guys…” Lin muttered.

  Katie took a deep sigh as she hugged Lin. “Look. Movies make nonchalant guys look like James Bond or something, but they really aren’t shit,” she said. “Trust me. One kiss, and that whole charade comes falling apart. I did it with the one cool guy, and he turned out to be a real freak. Like, into feet freak.”

  “So Vincent is into feet?”

  “Girl!” Katie looked ready to slap her, but she managed to stay her hand. “I’m not saying anything. I’m just saying that you should like someone else. You ever look at Ethan?”

  “Ethan Chen?”

  “Yeah, Ethan Chen. That guy’s super chalant. You talk to him about anything, and he’ll actually care. He’s a little talkative, and a little weird in his own way, but he’ll treat you better than Vincent ever will. Got it?”

  Lin cradled herself into a little pout. “Fine…”

  The next day, Lin showed up to evening-class lecture with boots, a black skirt, and a mesh long-sleeve. Katie’s jaw dropped. Calling it a deviation from the uniform was an understatement–this was a complete rebellion. “What the fuck are you dressed up for? Ethan’s not even in–”

  Katie looked at the back of the classroom. Surely enough, Vincent was sitting there with the usual eyebags and hoodie. There must’ve been a six-foot radius between him and the nearest person. “You’re kidding,” Katie said.

  “I’m sorry…” Lin mumbled, “but today just feels special! I know I can get his number this time! I have a fire outfit on, and I just gotta ask. Besides, did you really think I was gonna talk to Ethan?”

  Ethan was surrounded by girls in the front. He had that fake laugh that girls were willing to believe. “You just want me to talk to him so you can learn about him,” Lin said. “You have a crush–”

  “Oh shut it and sit down.”

  Lin took her seat as Professor Smith walked through the door. “Hello everyone, sorry that I’m late. I had some decent traffic today, but I’m sure you were all super excited to attend this humanities elective class, right?”

  The class laughed.

  “Too bad we’re not just any ordinary elective class. Rather, we are the prestigious Asian History Class. Prestigious in my opinion at least, since American schools teach jack and shit about Asia, even though Asian history is cooler than those old white guys.”

  “Old white guys like you, sir?” Ethan asked.

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  The class giggled, as did the professor. “Yes, Ethan I suppose you’re right. Maybe one day, you’ll take my spot and teach Asian history yourself. This actually segways into a topic I’ve been meaning to talk about today.”

  The professor went to the chalkboard and drew an assortment of symbols. But Lin didn’t really know or care. Her eyes were instead glancing back at Vincent in the young-female fashion: act like you’re looking at something else and look back before they notice.

  “Miss Huang, is there a fly back there?” the professor asked.

  “Huh?” Lin bumbled.

  The class chuckled a little. “Now then,” Professor Smith continued. “I want everyone to look at the yin-yang. It’s an age-old symbol that Hollywood loves to get wrong all the time. Miss Huang, can you tell me what it means?”

  Lin pointed to herself for clarification, and the professor nodded. He really was asking her for the answer. “U-Umm… is it… good and evil…? Or something…?” She felt so stupid sitting here with her stupid outfit. It might as well be a clown suit.

  “Not quite,” Professor Smith answered. “Yin-yang represents energy. Yang is the energy of the sun, while yin is the energy of the earth. These can represent a multitude of things. Action and inaction, kings and subjects, or even husbands and wives. The Chinese believed that this balanced dynamic was the very essence of life itself.”

  From that point on, Lin stopped paying any more attention. The teacher droned on as she planted her face on the desk. “I don’t care about this stupid class…” she mumbled, “I just took it ‘cause Vincent was taking it…”

  One nap later, and class eventually ended. Katie had to wake Lin with a tap on the shoulder. “Head over to the apartment without me. I’ll stay back for a bit.”

  “Huh?”

  But Katie was already gone once Lin blinked. She was walking over to Ethan, who was still surrounded by his posse. “Katie has the confidence to talk to Ethan…” Lin thought. “And I can’t make eye contact with Vincent.”

  Lin made her way outside where the rain pattered against the ground. In her haste to wear her outfit, she had completely forgotten to bring an umbrella. “Aw shoot. And the apartment is a couple minutes away.”

  To her surprise, an umbrella suddenly covered her head. “Vincent, is that you?” But Lin turned to find a suit-and-tie woman instead. Her smile went straight to a frown. “Oh. Sorry. I thought you were someone else.”

  “Who were you expecting?” the woman asked.

  “It’s nothing. Please,” Lin answered. “Thank you for the umbrella, but I think I can make it home from–”

  “You love that boy, don’t you.”

  Lin’s heart stopped. It was less like she was talking with some gossip-girl, and more like she was talking to a ghost. Lin had always screamed at her horror manga characters for not running at the first sight. But right now, she was equally helpless. “I… um… you…”

  “You needn’t worry. Love is a fickle thing. You hear of fools who proclaim that it is a mystery that only heaven can solve. But alas, that is only their justification for laziness. The truth is that you can make anyone yours. Even that boy.” The woman brought out a talisman marked with the distinct yin-yang symbol.

  Lin wanted to say something like “no thank you!” or “I’ll be heading home now!”, just as she yelled at horror movie characters to do. But in the end, she stood under the umbrella and kept looking at the necklace. “Are you selling this to me?”

  “No. I am giving it to you,” the woman said. “The instructions are simple. You must kiss the boy that you love, and they will be connected to you just as yin and yang are connected. That way, you will be as inseparable as the sun and the moon.”

  Lin blinked. “I knew I should’ve paid attention in class. I swear Professor Smith was saying something about yin and yang or something.” The necklace had a horrific aura to it, like a doll that makes your hair stand straight up.

  “Fuck it.”

  Lin put on the necklace, and the woman laughed. “I knew you would see things as they should be,” she chuckled. “Remember. You must kiss the boy you love. Don’t leave all the work on the talisman.”

  The woman left without a further word. All that was left was Lin, the talisman, and the woman’s umbrella in her hand. Part of her wanted to hand it back, but her mind was further occupied on the strange necklace around her neck. “Did I do something stupid?”

  Even as she returned home, Lin’s mind was still preoccupied with the exotic talisman. “Maybe that woman was just kidding me. It’s not like scammers are nonexistent,” Lin thought to herself. “But she didn’t ask for anything in return. That’s weird.”

  Lin did what any Gen Z college kid would do: take her questions online. “Hey chat, I was just given this weird necklace. It has that weird yin-yang thing. Do any of you guys know what this means?”

  She ate some instant noodles while she watched users reply to her question. “That sounds really sus. Are you sure it isn’t laced with anything? I know that people would lace letters with anthrax to kill political leaders.”

  “Anthrax?” Lin muttered. She googled it, and found that bleach kills anthrax. So she casually dipped the necklace in a bowl of bleach. Nothing happened. “Well, I doubt it’s coated in anything like that anyway. It’s not like I’m the president of Cuba or something.”

  She returned to her computer. Her question wasn’t just deleted–the whole thread was gone. “Huh?” There was only one additional response.

  “Kiss the boy already.”

  That definitely put a knife in her back. Her throat choked on her own breath as she stared at the message. “Maybe that lady saw the message. But there’s no way she could delete it unless she owns the whole website.” Needless to say, Lin had put herself into a swamp of trouble. “What do I do?”

  Her phone suddenly rang. She jumped back. It was like one of those campy jumpscares from the old 80s movies. Lin mustered her courage to pick up the phone. “Oh. It’s just Katie.” Then she stopped for a second. “But is it really Katie?”

  She hesitated. Then answered. “Hello?”

  “Lin, Ethan is such a piece of shit. You were right to ignore that asshole.”

  Lin sighed in relief. Part of her was scared that some ghost had captured her, or something along the script of a horror movie. “I’m glad you’re alright. I just had the craziest thirty minutes of–”

  “He was just so annoying!” Katie interrupted. “And would go on and on like some kind of pick-me boy! He was basically like, ‘Hey guys. I feel so bad being ugly. But it’s not as bad as having to deal with period cramps. Wow, women are so strong. Did I mention that I’m tall and single?’ That guy can shove it!”

  Lin just smiled. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Could you do me a quick favor and grab my order real quick though? I got some Chinese food for the both of us,” Katie said. “It stopped raining for a bit, but my phone says it’ll rain in an hour. So you better hurry up then.”

  “But–”

  Katie hung up. Just as she said, the rain stopped pattering against the windows. Lin groaned as she changed out of her outfit and slipped into her sweatshirt and sweatpants. “Fine. I guess I’ll go get the food.”

  But before she left, she remembered to wrap the necklace around her neck. It was just that strange feeling that it was something she had to do. “Well, I’ll hope to see you soon Vincent.”