Like any institution that had a reputation to uphold, the National University of the (Weird) Arts also had its own share of urban campus legends. Among those, there were three that stood out the most, fondly remembered by anyone lucky enough to survive... I mean... To graduate, of course. 

There was SiSi in Studio No.3, the ghost of a nude female model who was forever disappointed in your shading techniques. Some said that if you sneak into the life drawing studio at night, you can hear the soft sobbing of a woman who once held a pose for 12 hours straight and never left. They say her ghost still wanders the easels, judging your anatomy skills... If your proportions are off, she gently whispers corrections in your ear, but if it's really bad, she knocks over your paint water. No one knows who she is or how she came to haunt the place, but the rumors surrounding her never cease. One year, it was said she died of cramps, right in front of the newcomers, traumatizing them for life. That entire batch of students went on to become the leading masters of the dark surrealism current, presumably under the guiding light of SiSi's sacrifice. Then, her legend evolved into the cautionary tale of someone who got fed up and simply left her soul behind, speaking about the dangers of burnout and how important it is to achieve the perfect balance between body and mind cultivation...

...However, most recently, people stopped believing she was a ghost entirely, and the theory that she was a bitter ex-grad student who was roped into posing nude by her greedy juniors emerged. Apparently, she was still there to this day, waiting for someone to hand her a blanket and the reward coffee she was promised. 

But whatever it was people liked to say about SiSi, one thing was for sure: she was a benevolent senior, someone who wanted to see you succeed despite her mild disappointment in your skills. But the same thing couldn't be said about the second campus legend, an abysmal horror in itself.

Rumour said that each year, around graduation time, some poor, unfortunate souls would be chosen by the Gods as faculty room fertiliser. Those unlucky weaklings would go back to their dorms one evening, only to find a random USB flash drive in their bags... You know the kind... Black, sleek, able to store hundreds of gigabytes of uncensored furry smut or whatever type of "entertainment" you liked to enjoy behind closed doors. 

The catch? 

The cursed USB in question would also contain a perfectly written, award-winning thesis, on a subject you never chose, nor did you understand anything about!

But it would be so good... Like already checked for plagiarism, with complete footnotes and citations, the type of thesis that would make any academic idiot foam at the mouth in awe. And if you choose to submit it as your own, you'd pass with honors, but then...

BAM!

You're cursed to become a jaded adjunct teacher who never gets hired full-time!!!

And just like that, you'll spend the rest of your days on Earth brewing coffee in the faculty room, doomed to deal with mountains of paperwork while your seniors latch onto your so-called "youthful vigour", dumping on you the tasks no one wants to deal with and sucking all your hopes and dreams! 

On the university's website, there was a little gossip column called "The Garden of Earthly Delights", a dark corner of the internet where students dumped their human skins under the guise of anonymity. It had everything, from the latest gossip to a hex wall, the cursed alternative of a confession wall where students went to jinx their competitors. And each year around graduation time, posts would start emerging from students claiming to have found the black USB, asking for help on how to deal with it.

[Guys, can anyone explain this to me? I'm totally lost, what the hell is “Meat, Memory, and the Sonic Womb: Reconstructing Ontological Trauma Through Fermented Performance Installations”, and how come it kinda makes sense?!]

[Oh no... Have you been chosen?!]

[What are you even talking about? Is that some sound-based healing shit? Are you a music major?]

[OP, what's your name? I'm trying to see if it goes well with "teacher" in front of it...]

[I think it has something to do with Bataille’s notion of formlessness...]

........

[Yo, do you really believe in that?]

[Believe it or not, Teacher Gao from the Painting Department is carrying his laptop like it's fused to his right hand, and also hasn't aged since 2006, so I don't know...]

[Guys, what the heck! There's a black USB hidden in my underwear drawer!! How the hell did it get here?! Help!]

[Hahaha, you're cooked!]

[Never mind, it's my roommate's porn stash. Said he hid it in my drawer so his mother won't find it when she comes visiting.]

[Hahaha!]

[It's quite good though... He's a drama major, so all the films are very... "artistically pleasing". Want me to share?]

[OP, fellow drama major here, share it with me! For research purposes, of course.]

[Sure, meet me tonight at 8, behind Cafeteria no.3. I'll be wearing a Pikachu hat, you'll be able to spot me in the dark.]

........

[Bro, forget about the cursed UBS... My little friend experienced "the elevator"!]

["The elevator"? What is that? And why is it in quotation marks?! It's not like there's only one elevator in the whole university...]

[It's not an elevator, it's "the elevator", ah! OP, details?!]

[Yeah, my friend, let's call him Little Mu, he's the protagonist of our story... Little Mu is a frail young Omega with silky black hair and big, moist eyes. When he smiles, two dimples appear on the sides of his plump lips, sweet enough to lick honey out of...]

[OP, are you also a drama major?! What the hell is with that description?!]

[Yeah, OP, we get it. You have a crush on your little friend, now move on! "The elevator", remember??!]

[Right, "the elevator"... So one night, Little Mu had business to attend to in Building 4, you know, the big studio that's on the rooftop. So when he was done, he took the elevator down, but instead of stopping on the ground floor like normal, it actually went further down, by itself...]

[Oh no, creepy]

[Yeah, and when the doors opened... There "it" was...]

[What?! What "it" was?!]

[Room 4164, of course...]

Alongside SiSi in Studio No.3 and the cursed USB flash drive, the third urban legend of the National University of Arts was just that... A plain, old, and decrepit elevator. Inside Building 4 of the Drama Department, there was a big, rooftop studio that every student loved. It had floor-to-ceiling windows and a spacious terrace, filled with natural light all year long, and the cosy smell of the osmanthus trees that surrounded the building. However, one of the elevators was very old and totally unreliable, arriving only when it liked, and seemingly only agreeing to carry people it found pleasing to its metallic, demonic eyes. Some could stand in front of it for eons, until they grew old and their children took their places to wait in line, but the doors covered in peeling paint and ripped performance posters still won't open for their ugly mugs. Other times, some little beauty would take one dainty step on the hallway, and the elevator doors would ding for them, as if inviting the gods into its humble abode. 

However, it still did what it wanted. 

Sometimes, the elevator would carry you to your desired destination, but other times... It would go straight to hell, stopping right in the basement of Building 4, a place that even ghosts feared. And as soon as the doors would open, at the end of the dark, moist corridor, there would be one, single ray of light, coming from underneath a tightly closed door...

Room 4164, the so-called "bureaucratic hell". There would be papers everywhere, mountains of boxes filled with documents tripping you on every step, and the annoying sound of a printer going on and on, using its doomed ink to etch your sentence in stone. And if you dared take one step out of the elevator, some dusty, old figure would grab your wrist, inviting you in for a cup of tea...

[Oh no, was Little Mu forced to submit some scholarship application again and again?]

[I once had to fill in the same form 47 times... I don't know what happened, but I kept putting my first name in the surname column.]

[That's rough, man. I only had to do it twice. I somehow managed to not mess up my own name, but that "someone" still found a typo...]

[So, did Little Mu manage to escape, or is he still down there, submitting forms?]

[He texted me to come get him, and we had to invent a family emergency. Otherwise, he still had some contracts to sign, in five exemplars... They somehow agreed to email it to him.]

[Nice, OP! The hero saving the beauty...]

[Who cares about that?! My Little Mu's soft fingers were already blistered by the time I arrived! We had to pop them one by one in the dorm later that night!]

[I bet something else was popped in the dorm, later that night...]

[Piss off! Don't run your dirty mouth to ruin my Little Mu's reputation!]

...........

[Guys... Isn't Room 4164 just the International Students' Office? You know, they had to relocate after Building 6 had that big leak last year, so the only available space was in the basement of Building 4...]

[International Students' Office?! What is that? Never heard of it.]

[Of course you didn't. With your grades, who on Earth would offer you a scholarship to study abroad?!]

[What the hell? Do you even know who I am?!]

[Of course I do, Fellow Cultivator Shen! I can smell your rotten butyric acid pheromones through the screen!]

[The hell?! Donghao, you pig! My pheromones smell like sandalwood!]

[Heh.]

The children liked to horse around, and most of the time, "The Garden of Earthly Delights" was harmless, just a place for students to release some steam. But other times, it struck a little bit too close to home, prompting Dean Zhao to advocate for its demise. After all, since the beginning of last semester, rumours started surfacing about one of their own, Teacher Xu from the School of Drama and Film.