Mystery

At 11:30 PM, I was home alone and ordered some takeout.

When the map showed the delivery driver was zero meters away, my phone rang.

I picked up, but there was nothing but silence on the other end-an eerie, unsettling quiet.

Impatient, I hung up. Just then, the driver sent me a private message: [I’m so sorry. I’m deaf and mute. I called you just to make sure you’d know your food had arrived immediately, but I couldn’t explain the situation over the phone. Please forgive me.]

[You must be waiting. I’ve already left the food at your door. Please pick it up as soon as possible.]

I was just about to open the door when several lines of bullet comments suddenly drifted across my vision.

[Don’t open the door! That person outside isn’t a delivery driver at all-he’s a murderer!]

[He called you so he could hear your voice and confirm whether you’re a woman living alone!]

[I’m so over this. The protagonists in these horror stories are always so brainless. This delivery guy is obviously suspicious, yet she’s still going to open the door.]

The couple living across from me fought until midnight every single day, while their child wandered around scavenging for trash to eat.

Anyone who dared to give the boy food was met with a barrage of verbal abuse at their doorstep, or even targeted with malicious sexual rumors.

One day, as I was passing through the stairwell, I spotted the boy hiding in a corner, too afraid to look at me. “Hey kid, want something to eat?” I asked.

He claimed he wasn’t hungry, but his stomach was growling like thunder. “Big sister, just leave me alone,” he sobbed. “My mom isn’t a good person.”

I leaned down and looked him in the eye. “Well, neither am I.”

A serial killer targeting young women had appeared in our small town.

He even had a following of brainless sycophants who helped spread his message: “Women are better off staying in their place.”

As I was about to head out, my neighbor cautioned me, “Are you wearing a skirt? It’s not safe lately.”

I smiled. “You’re right. He isn’t safe.”

It is a little-known fact that criminals are even more vulnerable than women or children.

After all, whether they end up dead or maimed, they can never step into the light.

Why couldn’t he just stay in his place?

He just had to go and catch the eye of a lunatic like me.

The neighbor’s kid jumped off the building after being bullied.

She landed directly on my brand-new car, her head lolling, hanging off the windshield.

She died, and her mother lost her mind.

When the neighbors held the funeral, several of the bullies actually showed up at the scene.

They mocked the mother relentlessly: “Your family line is completely dead now. You don’t even have a single relative left, do you?”

They were making too much noise.

I slowly pushed open my door to teach them a lesson: “A near neighbor is better than a distant relative.”

Besides, her neighbor might just be insane.

My husband and I have been sleeping in separate rooms for two years now. We’ve grown distant, with no passion left between us.

But last night, after he’d been drinking, he climbed into my bed and went absolutely wild…

I said, “Honey, you were nothing like yourself last night!”

Later, I saw a message from an unknown number on his phone:

“You slept with my wife, so I’m going to sleep with your wife. Only then are we even!”

My husband’s latest reply was:

“Now we’re square, right!”

Should you take the initiative to add a stranger’s number that you saw in a dream?

Absolutely not!

Because you’ll never be able to guess what might be on the other end!

Back when I drove heavy-duty trucks, I was often the one to lead the way down new, untested routes. In the industry, we call this “Chong Sha.”

Only after I had successfully passed through would other drivers dare to follow.

Afterward, I’d receive a fair share of red envelopes as a token of gratitude.

People always ask me, “Didn’t you ever see anything strange while you were doing a Chong Sha?” I thought about it for a moment. “Nothing much.

Just people constantly trying to flag down the truck in the middle of the night, scammers frequently collapsing in the center of the road to stage accidents, and the occasional cluster of identical villages appearing one after another along the highway…”

The princess ran away with her lover, leaving me behind with a male concubine and orders to impersonate her.

Terrified of being exposed, I had no choice but to play the part as convincingly as possible.

By the time the princess returned, I was pregnant.

She looked at me in shock. Why didn’t you use the male concubine I gave you? Do you not like him?

I was stunned.

If that’s the case, then who was the man making me beg for mercy every night?

Just as I was preparing to flee, that person returned in the middle of the night. Wait… why are there two of them?

When Nan Mu was very young, he met someone who told him: never, under any circumstances, become friends with Wen Miao.

As the years passed and he was on the verge of forgetting that warning, he met a girl. Her name was Wen Miao.

Even more shocking than the genius girl Wen Miao winning the nation’s highest award in physics was the fact that she was murdered in the Biology Research Lab like a common lab rat-with her very skull sliced open.

Lately, I keep feeling as if there’s someone else in the house.

At night, while I’m studying in the Study, I hear a faint breathing sound behind the right wall, along with the soft rustling of clothing.

I’ve been living in my boyfriend’s house for two months now, and I’m familiar with the layout of this villa. There’s no room to the right of the Study-my boyfriend said so too.

But is there really not?