I Wasn't Born Lucky

Fu Jianlin's screams were loud enough to break the sky. It didn't only the people waiting next door frown, but his wife in the house also rushed out asking doubtfully. "What happened, Husband?"

The man gripped his crotch. He was sitting down against the door, his head and neck shaking violently. "Don't ask, don't ask. I don't know!"

"Should… I call 120? What's wrong with you?" The woman asked anxiously.

The child inside started crying once his mother disappeared while the man kept refusing to say what he encountered. This made her lose her mind.

"What 120? Do you want the world to know that I have encountered a ghost?" Fu Jianlin bared his teeth. He waited for the initial pain to pass before lowering his head, undoing his pants and looking inside. "Get me some ice!"

"Encountered a ghost? What's wrong with you?"

Fu Jianlin opened his mouth and cursed. "Isn't it a disaster brought about by you? Fucking hell, there was only half a mannequin and it inexplicably kicked me!"

"Huh?" The woman hadn't expected this answer. She held Fu Jianlin and looked outside boldly. "I don't see anything there. Are you…"

"Are you suspecting that I'm lying?!"

"No, of course not."

"I really have to burn incense to get rid of the bad luck you brought along."

The Fu Jianlin husband and wife didn't notice a strand of black hair hidden in the darkness. In the eyes of those watching in the next door, it was like a long and endless centipede. It gradually approached Fu Jianlin and wanted to wrap around his left ankle, only to be blocked by some force. After several useless attempts, the hair retreated to its original position.

Inside the door, Ye Zeqing retracted his peeping gaze and told Xiao Li in a near whisper, "Old Li, your second child successfully injured him but Tan Li couldn't."

Xiao Li didn't look outside the door. He sat in the living room with a coin in his hand. He had no extra curiosity. He just needed to hear that there weren't any extra screams to know that Tan Li hadn't succeeded. There was the sound of the door next to them closing and then a pained cry. The sounds seemed like they came through a membrane but it was still clear.

The doll who failed in the attack hooked her hair around Xiao Li's finger and shook it. After being comforted by Xiao Li, Tan Li returned to his pocket.

Ye Zeqing was waiting for an answer but Xiao Li remained silent. Thus, he had to ask again, "Why is this?"

Xiao Li turned the coin in his hand and threw it high into the air. "In the memory of the unnamed female corpse, he is invincible against any external force but he can be attacked by women. Let's consider the legs and Fujiang's voice as female. My blind guess is that before the female corpse died, he was beaten for at the same time. For some reason, he didn't fight back."

"I guessed it randomly." The coin circled the air and didn't fall into Xiao Li's palm. He added casually, "Still, we can follow this path and solve the matter here earlier."

Zheng Yi was normally responsible for asking this question but he wasn't here, so Ye Zeqing had to assume the role. "What is the method?"

Xiao Li didn't say anything. He placed the coin in the palm of Shen Chenzhi's hand, pulled out a pen and shook it in front of Ye Zeqing.

***

Meanwhile, Fu Jianlin was laying on his back in bed. His groin was covered with ice and he scolded his busy wife from time to time.

"Will you go to work later?" The woman's voice came from the kitchen mixed with the sound of washing dishes.

"Do you think I can still go?! No, I'll tell the manager about it tomorrow." Fu Jianlin roared before tugging on the pillow and placing it behind his back. He didn't choose to play with his phone. He was thinking about the scene that happened just now.

The inexplicable pair of legs, that voice, the sharp pain from the kick that went straight to his brain&#k2026;

Fu Jianlin felt a deep tremor. It was as if this scene wasn’t unfamiliar. There was a sense of fear deep in his heart which he usually didn’t feel from the time he encountered the legs. What was going on? Why did the legs come to him? Was it a ghost?

He suddenly remembered the note the leg had asked him to pick up. He hadn't opened it and read it. It was left at the door. Fu Jianlin yelled and asked the woman outside to pick it up and hand it to him.

The woman did so while asking in a puzzled manner, "What is this?"

Fu Jianlin didn't answer her. He held the note and waved for her to leave. The woman was used to this. She turned to the kitchen and continued to do the dishes.

Fu Jianlin opened the note in a trembling manner and found that it was a piece of paper folded in half. The paper had these words written on it: [Currently the most popular divination game, Pen Fairy.]

[How to use: You only need a pen, a piece of white paper and two hands to summon the pen fairy.]

[Once online, the pen fairy will answer questions. You can ask anything and resolve all your doubts. It is just three questions. Don't you want to give it a try?]

[……]

What was this messy thing?

Fu Jianlin couldn't tell what he was feeling in his heart. He was disappointed and terrified. The contents of the note were quite different from what he had thought. He crumpled up the paper, threw it onto the table and lay back to appease his injured area.

He was lying down and felt the pain gradually fade. Drowsiness hit him and he was about to fall asleep. Just as he was falling asleep, he was suddenly awakened by the sound of chopping meat.

"What is that sound?"

He rubbed his face in a daze. Once he was sober, he looked around and could clearly hear the sound of a kitchen knife hitting something.

Thump—

Fu Jianlin stretched out his neck. "This dead wife, are you cooking?!"

"No, I'm feeding the baby." The woman's weak voice was heard from the next room.

Thump—

The sound of chopping meat continued. Fu Jianlin sat up on the bed and listened for a while. He finally locked onto the source of the sound which was next door. The couple next door were cooking meat?

This sound lasted for a while. Instead of disappearing, it became louder as if to let him hear it on purpose. Later, there was even the 'sizzle' of something being fried in a pan.

Fu Jianlin didn't want to cause trouble at first. The young couple and those who moved in upstairs and downstairs always gave him a strange feeling, especially the two people next door.

The young man who said he was the boy's husband was okay. He hadn't paid much attention to Fu Jianlin the entire time and his attention was always on the other person. However, the beautiful black-haired young man was always peeping at him like he was a dead man.

This type of gaze made Fu Jianlin imagine that the black-haired youth was observing his every move through the door. But why? Fu Jianlin shivered along with the accompaniment of the two sounds. Come to think of it, the pair of legs only appeared after the men moved in next door…

Were they ghosts?

Fu Jianlin couldn't sleep anymore. His spirit was standing up as he listened to the next door. The sound kept lingering in his ears as if he was going to uncover something at the bottom of his heart. Fu Jianlin had a premonition that he could no longer listen.

The man plucked up his courage and directly pushed open his door to knock on the door of the neighbours.

Someone soon came to answer the door. It was Xiao Li. He was holding a kitchen knife in his hand and the slanted knife surface reflected his delicate side profile. "Is there something I can do for you?"

Fu Jianlin saw the kitchen knife and calmed down his tone of voice. "What are you… what are you doing? It disturbed me."

"I'm chopping meat." Xiao Li replied. "It can be placed in the frying pan once the chopping is done.

Fu Jianlin didn't know what to say. Before this person moved in, the previous neighbour was cowardly, introverted and didn't talk to him at all. The neighbour only knew how to hum in agreement when threatened. Now…

According to reason, this young man wasn't strong. He could hit three of such people but his instincts were telling him not to attack this person.

Therefore, Fu Jianlin hesitated twice and didn't say his threat. He just told this person to do it softer and went back to his house.

Xiao Li put down the kitchen knife and gave the handle to Ye Zeqing. He watched from the living room as Ye Zeqing continued to chop meat while Gong Mingming fried a piece of wood in a frying pan, trying to make as much noise as possible.

***

Xiao Li's efforts soon took effect and Fu Jianlin became more manic. He covered his ears with his hands and struggled several times. Then his eyes suddenly fell on the ball of paper on the table.

Pen fairy, would the pen fairy help him?

Fu Jianlin fidgeted. He unfolded the paper and made a decision.

He called for his wife and the two of them sat down at the table with the paper in the middle. They held a pen in their hands and Fu Jianlin said, "I am your past life, you are my current life. If you want to continue with me, please draw a circle on the paper."

At first, the pen didn't move. Fu Jianlin didn't know if he was disappointed or relieved. He just wanted to let go when he found that the pen had moved and it drew a regular circle on the paper. The baby burst out crying at a magical timing. Combined with the sound of meat being chopped and fried next door, the three sounds made Fu Jianlin a bit irritable.

"You didn't move it did you?" He questioned his wife.

His wife was quite afraid and she shook her head. "Old Fu, I-I don't want to try it anymore. Let's stop playing this game. There is the child, I have to take care of him."

"No, let him cry. He cries all day long and it should be fine. Just for a moment. I will ask a few questions. According to the rules, I can only ask three." Fu Jianlin insisted and talked to the pen in his hand. "Pen fairy, I-I want to ask…"

He decided to ask about the legs first.

"The legs I just met, it is a ghost. Why is it haunting me?"

The moment he finished speaking, the pen in his hand automatically wrote:

[Don't you know what you have done?]

"I-I didn't do anything?"

[Of course you did. You killed one person, no, you killed two people. Don't you remember?]

"I didn't! What are you talking about?" Fu Jianlin stood up and pushed his chair back some distance. It was as if he had been stabbed in a painful place as he shouted at his wife, "This isn't the pen fairy. It is you, isn't it?!"

The woman was also scared seeing such words but she didn't know anything. "It isn't me, it really isn't me. It is the pen that moved by himself!"

Fu Jianlin took a deep breath and started to think that this pen fairy was speaking nonsense. It might've done it on purpose to engage his mentality. He decided not to ask any more questions. The more he asked, the more uncomfortable he felt. Even so, he didn't let go.

Fu Jianlin licked his dry lips. "You're wrong, you're wrong."

Pen fairy: [I never make a mistake.]

"Okay, then tell me. When will I get rich next?"

[After tomorrow.]

"Oh? How am I going to get rich? Will I get a promotion and a pay rise or win the lottery?"

Fu Jianlin was suddenly interested when he saw this reply and he looked forward to it.

Pen fairy: [You will get billions of false paper money offered to the dead.]

Fu Jianlin, "……"

He stared at this line of words and his mood was a sharp contrast to before. He only felt that his head was numb. He vowed to never believe in this pen fairy's words. He decided it must be one of the ghosts.

It was just that before letting go, Fu Jianlin hesitated for a while. Then he asked, "Nonsense pen fairy. I-I will ask you one last question. The black-haired young man who moved next door to me. Who is he? Is he human?"

This time, the pen paused for around three minutes before writing in sharper strokes than before:

[Sherlock?]

[He…]

[Of course he isn't human. He is the devil!]

The author has something to say:

Little yellow book: No, he's a little angel.

Proofreader: Tofu