My head filled with images of the girls from years ago. They lay in their beds, each pale despite the warmth of the room. Their blankets were pulled well up over them, obscuring the red bands strung tight around necks that should have been free to breathe. Their eyes, empty yet full of fear, were open and staring. Their mouths were all gasping in silent screams. I saw the room like I was there and began to feel their fear down low in my body.

My room was filled with the soft snores of my roommate. Behind it was a rumbling of screams that no one would ever hear.

"I can't fight this" I thought, my own fear adding to the chorus inside of my head. I didn't dare move, only sat in my bunk clutching the mirror for protection. After a few minutes the screams subsided. My room echoed with a vacant silence.

Time crawled by, though the silence stayed. I heard the boy's bathroom door open. A flush followed it, only a flush this time. I heard voices in the hall and forced myself to move. I grabbed a thunder amulet and went to the door. Pressing my ear against it, I thought I recognized the speaker. I cracked open the door and found Gao Xinying standing outside the bathroom.

"I think the tap's broken," He whispered in the quiet hall. "Do you think they're going to change them one by one? How annoying." He rolled his eyes.

Another boy came out of the bathroom. "Couldn't sleep either?" He asked, giving me a grin. "I kept hearing noises in the bathroom so I came to check." He pitched a thumb over his shoulder. "I think another sink broke. I tried to turn off the water like they told us, I hope nothing goes wrong."

"Let me have a look." I said, brushing past him.

I walked past the broken sink without a glance and walked towards the window. Something stopped me halfway across the room. Xuan Hailin stood in front of me wielding a pipe wrench. The hand that held the tool was shaking like a leaf. I looked closer and saw the red hairband around his wrist. It looked tight enough to turn his whole hand purple. "Xuan Hailin?" I asked hesitantly.

"Don't...don't bother me." He said in an off kilter voice. "I'll fix it. I have to befast. She's coming backthe oldthe old woman."

I gaped at him in horror. The two boys came into the bathroom behind me and began discussing the broken sink.

"You didn't turn it off all the way!" Gao Xinying said. He knelt below the dripping faucet and cranked the water nozzle. "There we go." The creaking pipes quieted at once and the two boys turned to leave.

Gao Xinying clapped a companionable hand on my shoulder and said, "Xiao Yong, let's go."

I stepped to the side of the door and gestured for him to go first. "You guys go ahead, nature calls, ya' know?" He smiled and walked out the door. I gripped the thunder amulet in my hand as the door shut behind them. Turning to face Xuan Hailin's undead visage, I maneuvered my hands and muttered the rite of soul suppression. If he attacked, I would not let his spirit run wild.

My former dorm super took a step towards me. To his left and right the air began to shimmer as the eighty-flowers girls took form. The room temperature dipped into single digits and I saw my breath puffing between us in gusts.

The girls were dressed in matching thermal nightwear. Their hair fell in dark sheets behind necks still strangled by slim red bands. I gazed at the nine spirits before me and gave a silent prayer. A thin yellow sheen surrounded each of them. I sensed around the room and gauged them to be yellow spirits, ones not usually prone to hurt others. "Usually." I thought with a grimace. "Can I take nine of them if they come after me?"

Xuan Hailin's right eye was bloodied and red where the board had struck him. The pupil was lost in a sea of red. His other eye was fine though. It stared into me like we'd been lifelong friends.

"Go from here!" He said in an echoing whisper. "The old woman will return. She killsall"

His words and expression made a terrifying pair. I felt my throat tighten in fear.

He raised the pipe wrench in his strangled hand and continued, "I can fix this" He took a step towards me, and then turned to the sink. His spirit jittered to the sink, disappearing and reappearing again and again until he was there. At the broken tap, he knelt and began working on the pipes.

"Your death controls you" I thought. As I watched, he stood up, nodded his head, and then disappeared entirely. The sink he was working on must've been a quick fix after all.

When he vanished, the eight girls moved towards me. I cringed, waiting for them to rush me and end it all, but they moved smoothly and formed a single file line. I watched in amazement as they walked past me and out of the bathroom. None of them even spared me a look.

"Is that it?" I asked the empty room. "There's nothing here except a bunch of spirits that crowd around when a sink is broken?"

Nothing answered. I didn't expect it to. I took a slow walk around the bathroom to look for clues, murmuring meditation incantations as I went. The hand holding the amulet began to sweat. I wiped it on my chest and readjusted the amulet. "I really need pockets for these." I thought.

Ten sinks lined the wall opposite of the toilets. "Eight girls and Xuan Hailin, that makes nine. Maybe" I thought.

I walked to the last sink and stood before it like a spirit. I imagined how the fight would have gone if they attacked me, and began to imagine what I'd look like as a ghost. Sweat began to bead on my forehead. The now very warm bathroom pulled it from me. I watched my eyes in the mirror and realized that they were bugging out of my head. The silent bathroom picked up my breaths and drifted the sound in circles. As I watched, a drop of sweat fell from my chin, landing with a plop into the sink basin.

The nine ghosts reappeared, each of them standing at a corresponding sink. All of them turned their heads towards me. I saw their faces in the mirror before me, but my eyes were locked onto the panting reflecting before me. "Is that me?" I wondered.

After a moment the spirits turned back to what they were doing. I cast a quick glance and caught that each of them were looking into the sink basins like there was something there. My eyes flitted over the spirits another time before it finally came to me. "They all have red bandsall of us except for me"

A small voice in the back of my mind screamed at me, "Go now! There's too many of them!"

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Xuan Hailin kneel down before his sink. He reached towards the main valve like he was going to turn it off. "Impossible," I thought. "He can't really do that, we already turned it off." I watched in awe as the valve knob in his indistinct hand began to turn with a squeal. He turned until the switch was open at full blast and water began pouring into the sink from the open faucet.

"Yellow ghosts can't move things!" I thought, "Master Liu told me! He's never wrong!"

Xuan Hailin's expression turned to one of confused rage and he began flailing at the water that was now spraying onto the bathroom floor. "It must've been this bad when he died" I thought.

Next to him, all eight of the girls knelt in unison and reached out towards their own switches.

"What is going on?"