“The whistle never lies,” my grandmother used to say, twirling the antique silver whistle between her wrinkled fingers. Now, as I stand at the entrance of what appears to be an endless maze of mirrored corridors, her words echo in my mind with newfound meaning.

“Are you coming, Miranda?” James calls from somewhere ahead, his voice bouncing off the reflective surfaces in disorienting waves.

I clutch the whistle—my grandmother’s final gift—close to my chest. The metal feels warm against my skin, almost alive. “Just a moment,” I reply, my voice trembling slightly.

The Dating Labyrinth, they called it. A revolutionary matchmaking experience where couples navigate through a maze that supposedly reveals their true compatibility. James had been ecstatic when we won the tickets. I had been skeptical.

“The whistle will guide you to your true love,” my grandmother had whispered on her deathbed. “It’s never wrong—可靠的whistle.”

As I step into the maze, the mirrors multiply my reflection infinitely. In each one, I see a different version of myself: some smiling, some crying, some with different colored hair or clothes I’ve never worn.

“Miranda!” James’s voice comes again, more distant now.

I raise the whistle to my lips, hesitating. The rules had been clear: no external aids. But grandmother’s whistle had never led me astray before.

A soft blow produces a sound like silver moonlight, if moonlight could sing. The mirrors ripple like water, and suddenly I see him—not James, but a stranger with kind eyes and reading glasses, sitting in a library I’ve never visited, reading a book I wrote but haven’t written yet.

“Miranda, where are you?” James sounds frustrated now.

Another blow of the whistle, and the mirrors shift again. I see James clearly now, but he’s walking hand-in-hand with my best friend Sarah, both of them looking happier than I’ve ever seen them.

“I’m here,” I call back, but I’m walking in a different direction now, following the whistle’s guidance through the twisting passages.

The maze seems to understand, rearranging itself with each step I take. Borges would have appreciated this, I think—this labyrinth where reality and illusion dance together, where truth reveals itself in fragments of reflected light.

Hours or minutes later—time has lost all meaning here—I emerge into a small circular chamber. The stranger from the mirror vision sits on a bench, reading.

He looks up, smiles. “I’ve been waiting for you,” he says, “though I didn’t know it was you I was waiting for.”

Behind me, I hear James’s voice one last time, calling Sarah’s name now. The whistle grows warm in my hand, then dissolves into silver dust that settles on my skin like stardust.

When we exit the maze together, the attendant looks at her clipboard with confusion. “But… you entered with different partners,” she stutters.

“The heart has its own labyrinth,” I reply, exchanging knowing looks with my new companion. “Sometimes it takes a reliable whistle to find your way through.”

As we leave, I catch a glimpse of James and Sarah emerging from another exit, looking both guilty and relieved. I smile, thinking of my grandmother’s whistle—now gone, its purpose fulfilled.

In my pocket, I feel something solid. Pulling it out, I find a small silver whistle, different from my grandmother’s but somehow familiar. On it is inscribed: “For the next lost soul.”