Following
They held the pen together. The girl couldn't shake the feeling that something was off about the man in front of her—there was an indescribable quality about him that made his words hard to argue with.
The worn-out ballpoint pen hovered above the paper. Once they finished the summoning chant, they both stopped, their eyes fixed on the blank surface.
The warehouse fell deathly silent. No one spoke; the only sound was the frantic pounding of hearts.
"What's this guy doing? Does he seriously think he can summon the Pen Spirit?" The girl shifted her gaze and glanced to the side of Chen Ge. The sharp knife she'd pulled out from under the table at some point had ended up in his hands. "Um…"
She wanted to warn him that this had gone on long enough, but Chen Ge suddenly made a silent gesture for her to keep quiet.
"Quiet. She's here."
Right after Chen Ge said those words, the pen in their hands began to move ever so slightly, drawing a circle on the white paper.
The girl could feel the force traveling down the pen's barrel. She wasn't pushing, yet the pen was moving across the paper entirely on its own.
"Is he doing this?" The girl looked at Chen Ge, trying to read something unusual in his expression. But to her disappointment, Chen Ge was staring intently at the pen in their hands, his face betraying not a single trace of excess emotion.
The pen in the Nightmare Academy haunted house could move on its own because both the pen and the table were specially designed—that was all it was, a trick. Once you explained the key steps, anyone could pull it off.
The girl had assumed Chen Ge was using the same sleight of hand, and she wanted to expose him right then and there. But after studying him for a long time, she simply couldn't find a single flaw.
The pen on the paper continued to move, its strokes growing wider and wider, until finally it wrote three characters on the white paper—Qu Changlin.
"Qu Changlin? So the person who likes you the most is named Qu Changlin." Chen Ge looked up at the girl. "It's not easy to find someone who truly cares about you. Treat him well. Don't let down a good, honest man."
When she saw the name on the paper, the girl's expression slowly changed—first surprise, then creeping into terror.
She knew Qu Changlin. He was also a Nightmare Academy employee, someone who looked after her every day. He had even confessed to her once in secret, though she had turned him down.
These were things only Qu Changlin and she knew. How could this stranger possibly know about any of it?
A storm of unease surged through her. Her arms trembled faintly, and her fingers brushed against Chen Ge's—ice-cold, unlike anything belonging to the living. It made her heart race even more.
The man in front of her smiled so warmly, so why did she feel the temperature in the room dropping lower by the second?
She couldn't stop shivering. The girl kept trying to reassure herself.
"The boss said this visitor was special—he's an expert in psychology, and he came here deliberately to cause trouble. Maybe he already looked up information on the haunted house staff before he arrived, and then figured out from my micro-expressions that Qu Changlin likes me."
She knew it was unlikely, but it was the only comfort she had right now. Only by clinging to that explanation could she keep herself together.
Biting down on her lip, the girl steeled herself. She was stubborn by nature, and she decided to expose him in her own way.
"This man could guess who likes me? But there's no way he could guess who I truly want to spend my life with!" She harbored a secret close to her heart—a secret about the person she really loved, something she had never told a soul.
After a brief pause, she spoke softly. "Can I ask the Pen Spirit one more question?"
"The Pen Spirit can only make one prophecy per day. Forcing another reading would make the result extremely unreliable."
"Just one more, please?" Before Chen Ge could answer, she gripped the pen and began chanting on her own. "Pen Spirit, Pen Spirit, you are my past life and I am your present life. Can you tell me—who will become my husband in the future?"