Pei Hu's mind went completely blank. The girl's face was inches from his own: porcelain-smooth skin now mottled with livid purple bruises, delicate lips parted in a sweet, curious smile, bright eyes dancing with what should have been teenage mischief. It was the closest he had ever been to a girl this pretty. For one frozen heartbeat his brain tried to rewrite reality into something romantic (no rejection, no running away, just a dreamlike moment where a beautiful classmate turned to look at him). Then the impossible neck that had twisted a full one-hundred-eighty degrees blinked. The clear skin darkened to the sickly blue-black of strangulation, veins bulging, eyes protruding until they seemed ready to pop. The smile never wavered.
A scream ripped out of Pei Hu's throat, high, inhuman, and loud enough to rattle the windows. He yanked the nametag with all his strength and bolted. The thin red string refused to snap; instead the entire mannequin lurched forward with him, chair screeching, desk toppling. Tables crashed like dominoes. Twenty-three other mannequins swayed, tilted, and began to move, joints creaking in perfect, nightmarish unison. Heads rolled off shoulders; arms flopped; painted smiles multiplied in the flickering light.
Wang Wenlong, already convinced one of the figures had been tracking him, heard the scream and needed no further encouragement. He sprinted for the door without looking back, flashlight beam carving wild arcs across the chaos.
Pei Hu was ahead, dragging the blood-soaked girl mannequin behind him like a grotesque backpack, her arms flopping over his shoulders. "Don't follow me! Don't follow me!" he shrieked, voice cracking into sobs.
Wang Hailong, still near the back wall reaching for the furthest nametag, saw the room explode into madness. Mannequins toppled in waves; severed heads bounced across the floor, glass eyes glinting; limbs tangled into a writhing carpet. "F*ck! What is happening?!" He snatched the tag he had come for and dropped to all fours, crawling frantically through the avalanche of plastic bodies, screaming, "Wait for me!"
He was almost at the door when it slammed shut with a deafening bang.
The impact sent him sprawling. His forehead cracked against the wood; stars burst across his vision. When he looked up, dozens of mannequin heads had rolled to a stop around him, forming a perfect circle of smiling faces all staring up at him from the floor. Their glass eyes reflected his own pale, terrified expression back a hundredfold. Tears welled involuntarily. "Pei Hu, you absolute bastard…" he whispered, voice breaking.
Outside in the corridor, Pei Hu and Wang Wenlong collapsed against the wall, chests heaving, drenched in sweat. Dou Menglu and Xia Meili were screaming something, but the words didn't register at first.
"That classroom is cursed!" Pei Hu wheezed. "She winked at me! She actually winked!"
"Behind you, look behind you!" the girls shrieked in unison.
Pei Hu whipped around. The blood-drenched girl mannequin was still attached to his back, arms draped over his shoulders like a grotesque hug. With a strangled yelp he tore free, hurling the figure down the corridor. It hit the ground hard; the impact snapped the neck completely. The beautiful, bruised head detached, rolled lazily across the tiles, and came to rest against the far wall, still wearing that gentle, curious smile, eyes wide and unblinking.
"That… that was the one that smiled at me through the window," Pei Hu whimpered, sliding down the wall until he sat in a puddle of his own fear. "Let's just give up. Four minutes in and I'm done. No amount of money is worth this."
Wang Wenlong wiped sweat from his brow, trying to sound reasonable. "We can't quit now, we've barely started. That classroom was obviously the main scare; the rest should be milder—"
"I'm out," Pei Hu cut in, voice flat.
Dou Menglu was staring through the classroom window, face pale. "Wait… where's Brother Long?"
The corridor went deathly quiet.
Pei Hu and Wang Wenlong followed her gaze. Through the frosted glass they could see overturned desks, scattered limbs, and dozens of smiling heads—but no sign of Wang Hailong.
"…He's still inside," Wang Wenlong whispered.
From behind the sealed door came a faint, furious pounding and a muffled, heartbroken roar: "Open the damn door!"
Pei Hu and Wang Wenlong shoved the classroom door open in unison. Wang Hailong was slumped on the floor beside the lectern, surrounded by a carpet of smiling mannequin heads. His face was ashen, lips faintly purple from hyperventilation, and unmistakable tear tracks glistened on his cheeks. For a moment he looked small and broken, nothing like the confident leader who had marched them in.
"Brother Long! Why are you still in here?" Dou Menglu cried.
Wang Hailong's head snapped up. The question lit a fuse. "You two still have the nerve to ask me that?!" he roared, voice cracking with leftover terror and fresh fury. "I'd love to know why I got abandoned in a room full of possessed dolls! Get over here and pull me up—now!" His hands were ice-cold and trembling so badly that it took three tries before his legs would hold his weight. Once upright, he cracked his knuckles hard, as if the pain could force warmth and courage back into his body.
Wang Wenlong leaned in, voice low. "Brother Long, let's just quit while we're ahead. We'll walk back to the entrance, sit there until the twenty minutes are up, then leave like nothing happened. No one will know we gave up."
Wang Hailong's glare could have melted steel. "Your brain only produces garbage ideas, doesn't it?" He covertly wiped the remaining moisture from his eyes with the heel of his hand. "That would mean we lost to a Haunted House. Lost. You want the boss watching us on camera, laughing because five grown adults got scared by plastic dolls and ran away with our tails between our legs? No. We're finishing this."
Xia Meili surprisingly backed him up. "He's right. If the boss suddenly opens the boards and finds us camping at the entrance like cowards, I'll die of embarrassment before any ghost gets me."
Pei Hu was close to tears again. "But we still don't know how big this place is! We haven't even seen a real actor and I'm already traumatised. What if the next part is worse? Can we please not torture ourselves just for pride?"
Wang Hailong rounded on him, finger jabbing the air. "I haven't even settled the score for you two locking me in with those things, and now you're defying me? Look at yourselves—worse than the girls!" His voice shook, but the authority was back, brittle and furious.
Wang Wenlong muttered under his breath, "Pretty sure it was you crying a minute ago…"
Wang Hailong acted as if he hadn't heard a word. "Get it together. We've probably used ten minutes already. We still have a chance. Look—" He opened his palm to reveal the nametag he had grabbed in the chaos. "One from me, one from Pei Hu, the first one at the door, and—" Wang Wenlong produced another from his pocket, "—this one I found in a drawer. Four already."
Wang Hailong pocketed them all with forced optimism. "See? Tumultuous process, excellent result. They're just ridiculously realistic mannequins. The trick is not to scare ourselves. Especially you, Pei Hu. Grow a spine."
"But she did wink! Her face turned blue and her eyes bulged like she was being strangled!" Pei Hu insisted, voice climbing again.
"Enough!" Wang Hailong snapped. "If you're that terrified, walk behind Meili and keep your mouth shut." He turned and strode deeper into the corridor, shoulders squared, refusing to let his friends see how badly his own hands were still shaking.
The group fell in behind him, footsteps echoing unevenly. None of them noticed that, far behind in the shadowed corridor they had just left, the blood-soaked girl mannequin—now missing her head—was slowly, laboriously dragging her torso across the floor. Plastic fingers scraped against tile as she crawled toward the detached head that still wore its gentle, curious smile, as if determined not to be left behind.