"If you had to choose between wrong and very wrong, what would you choose?"
When two young scientists decide to decode the secret behind a very millennial-looking zombie roaming the streets of their city on a moonless twilight, they are faced with...
As Petra walked into the teaching department's private library, she realised that being the teacher's favourite did, in fact, have its own perks.
Not accessible to all the university students, it was built solely for the teaching staff, and often played the role of a "chillout zone" for professors to retire for rest after a weary day of tolerating Gen Z students and their equally Gen Z tantrums. The library was redbrick, Victorian, sitting self-importantly at the topmost floor of the commons' building. It had a chessboard-tiled floor and row after row of neatly lined up books — their spines facing outward, colour coded with dots — on subjects ranging from science, mathematics, liberal studies and literature, to art and architecture, music, physical education and weekly magazines. There were floor cushions, comfortable leather arm chairs, tables for quiet study, and computers for doing book searches or surfing the web.
Every once in a month or two, professors offered their best students a chance to explore the aisles of thier library. Today, Petra just happened to be the lucky kid.
While tracing her fingers against the spines of books in the organic chemistry section, Petra was quickly scanning the titles when she suddenly stopped. There, sandwiched between two hardcover volumes, was a thick blue paperback. Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, the title said. Frowning at why a dictionary was tucked in a shelf of science textbooks, she carefully removed the book, and was about to place it in the English section when a ruled sheet of paper fell from between the pages.
When she picked it up and turned it over, her eyes unmistakably caught a word on the sheet.
Enigma.
That was enough for her to linger.
The handwriting was an eloquent cursive, the sentences haphazardly filling the entirety of the page. It must've belonged to a professor making notes from the book, but Petra could not find it in herself to tuck it back between the pages because that word, enigma, now commanded all of her attention. It rung a bell, but she couldn't place a hand on what. So she read on.
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