Crime

My ex, the Film Emperor, publicly called me a resource hunter on a show.

When the whole internet told me to get out of the entertainment industry, I awakened the Acting System.

Ding! Skill acquired: [Murderer]: You will master all knowledge and abilities related to murder.

Me: What kind of hellish System is this?

Later, the villainess I played was selected for the Acting Hall of Fame Textbook, and when I received the award, the audience was filled with people from Criminal Investigation (Investigation Unit), forensic experts, and prosecutors.

Netizens: Someone should investigate her-this doesn’t look like acting!

Over the weekend, while I was out grocery shopping, someone shoved a red envelope into my hand.

Inside was a note: [Three years of your life have been borrowed. If you pass this on or drop it in a merit box, your entire family will perish.]

Clutching the 900 yuan, I chuckled and chased after the person.

“Are you sure you want to try life‑borrowing from me?”

She shot me a glare, barked “Psychopath!” and spun around to bolt.

I couldn’t help but smile. To think someone actually had the nerve to try life‑borrowing from one of the Living Dead.

At the school evening party, four girls from the Dance Club collapsed from poisoning while performing ballet.

After being sent to the hospital, three died from the poison, and one was lucky enough to survive.

The one who survived was me.

The one who poisoned them was also me.

When I was five years old, my mother and I died in a car accident.

The people who orchestrated the accident were my father and my mother’s best friend.

After receiving two insurance payouts, they got married and lived happily together as a family.

Occasionally, That Woman would get scared: “The mother and daughter who died-won’t they turn into Vengeful Ghosts and come back to take revenge on me?”

My father would laugh at her for being superstitious.

But they didn’t know-I wasn’t dead.

And the me who returned alive for revenge would be far more terrifying than any Vengeful Ghost.

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?

When I was a child, my father once gave me a ten-yuan bill as pocket money.

He said he had picked it up on the road.

I remember very clearly that on the back of that bill, written in black ink, was a line:

“There is a pyramid scheme on the fifth floor. Help.”

I took the money to show my father, and he smiled and told me,

“Who knows how many people have used this bill? Who knows when those words were written? Maybe the person who wrote them has already been rescued.”

I was in a hurry to buy chocolate, so I didn’t think much about it.

Because chocolate is sweet, after all.

Not long after, there was a piece of news on TV.

“A man mistakenly entered a pyramid scheme den, was beaten to death, and then dismembered.”

As a child, I stared blankly at the television.

My father also stared blankly at the television.

I asked him what was wrong.

He shouted at me angrily, telling me not to meddle in his business, and then left the house.

At the time, I didn’t know what was going on; I just felt confused.

It wasn’t until the New Year, at the family dinner, that my father got drunk and cried uncontrollably. In front of all the relatives, he confessed to picking up that bill.

The place where he found the money was directly below the den mentioned in the news.

In other words, the words on that ten-yuan bill were very likely written by someone who had fallen into that pyramid scheme, possibly even the person who was dismembered.

He sobbed, clutching a bottle of liquor, saying that it was his fault that the man died. The whole family comforted him, but I just stood aside, dumbfounded and at a loss.

So… I used that money to buy chocolate…

Something indescribable seemed to awaken within me.

Throughout my later life, I would often think of that ten-yuan bill.

I wondered, was the original owner of that money alright? Was he really rescued? Or… did that money really come from the man who was dismembered?

If it really came from him, he must have endured painful beatings and inhuman torture before finally seizing a chance one day to write those words for help on the bill and toss it out the window.

He must have clung to hope for rescue until the very moment he died.

Yet my father ignored that hope.

I always ask myself, if I had been the first to find that bill, could I have saved him? Or would I have overlooked the writing, just like my father?

This thought haunts me like a ghost, tormenting my mind more and more as I grow older.

Until that day.

A new “bill” appeared before me.

…

At our wedding, I whispered something in my husband’s ear.

Upon hearing it, he suffered a total breakdown and leaped to his death right then and there.

After he died, countless people-including the police-asked me what I had said.

I remained silent.

Five years later, while I was living in poverty, someone tracked me down. They offered a massive reward, wanting to buy those words from me.

He wanted to know exactly what kind of sentence could kill a man.

In that moment, I was overcome with excitement.

The person I had been waiting for had finally arrived.

I died of a sudden asthma attack while being bullied.

My family sent my bruised and battered body straight to the incinerator; no one went to my school to demand justice for me.

Later, my brother started dating the girl who bullied me.

He turned her into the blade he would use to avenge me.

My son was being pestered by another boy.

The teacher called and asked me to come to the school.

When I arrived, he shouted at me for the first time. “Mom, what’s wrong with me liking boys?”

I looked at him, feeling neither anger nor resentment.

I crouched down and asked him in a low voice, “Then how can you be sure that you like boys?”