During summer break, I was the only one left in the empty dorm. On a cool night, a woman in red rose from beneath my bed, her long black hair spilling over the edge and her blood-red eyes reflecting my shock. She said this was her bed, and that the withered bones sealed in the wall thirty years ago had once rested their head on the pillow I use now. I come from a Daoist clan, and my birth chart carries six Fires. She is a vengeful ghost nurtured by thirty years of resentment, yet she insists on finding out whose presence burns brighter. A mountain-spirit coin buys her promise, my vital blood is the stake, and a curse seal is our proof. The lingering soul in the crack in the wall, the pact on the rooftop, and the crescent-shaped scar she left on the side of my neck all say the same thing: whether this bond is a calamity or fate, the choice was never ours to make.
