Chapter 12: Let’s go together

July 7th, 2023

“Thank you, help me up.” Lin Xuan instinctively reached out her hand, and as her hand was held, a warm and refreshing touch came through. Only then did she snap back to reality.

Wait a minute, I’m still inside the TV.

Lin Xuan raised her head abruptly and collided with a pair of deep and profound eyes, like a cold pool. It was an extremely handsome man, even more attractive than the most popular guy in their school. The man looked down at her with slightly lowered eyelashes, casting a fan-shaped shadow. There was a small beauty mark on his prominent nose, and he seemed to have just taken a shower, exuding a hint of dampness. His fair and rosy skin was so enviable.

Zhenzi, she really likes handsome guys.

“Aren’t you coming out?”

Lost in the beauty, Lin Xuan finally came back to her senses. Her face was flushed as if she had been scalded by fire, and she quickly withdrew her hand. She only wanted to create some distance between her and the owner of the television, but she forgot about her current situation. Without any support, she stumbled and fell.

Chen Chu wanted to go and help, but it was too late. In the end, he could only barely support the television.

Lin Xuan let out a groan as she sat up. Due to the carpet, her fall wasn’t too heavy, but when she was falling, she had tried to support herself with her hand and ended up twisting it.

Enduring the pain, Lin Xuan looked up and suddenly exclaimed, covering her eyes with both hands, “You, why aren’t you wearing clothes?”

Her scream was so genuine and heartfelt that Chen Chu almost thought he was actually naked.

He lowered his head and glanced at his bare upper body, then looked at the female ghost whose long hair was scattered on the floor. Chen Chu suddenly hooked his finger towards the direction of the balcony, and a gust of wind brought in a T-shirt from the clothes rack, gently landing in his hand.

Chen Chu put on the shirt.

“Open your eyes.”

Lin Xuan moved her fingers and peeked out through the gaps, seeing that the other person had already put on clothes, she lowered her hands.

However, why did she suddenly feel a little regretful?

“Can you explain?” Chen Chu asked condescendingly.

“Ex… Explain what?” Lin Xuan looked up, tilting her neck to the point where it almost broke. This person was really tall.

“Why did you appear in my house, and why did you crawl out of the television?” Chen Chu pointed at the TV.

“Why did I appear in your house? Right, why did I appear in your house!” Lin Xuan seemed to be stimulated by something, and she suddenly jumped up from the ground. Fortunately, Chen Chu reacted quickly, otherwise, he would have been hit on the chin by her.

Chen Chu raised an eyebrow and waited for her explanation, but he saw the other person grabbing his arm and urgently asking for a charger.

“Can you lend me your charger to charge my phone?”

“???” Chen Chu was puzzled.

“No, no, charging is too slow. Can you lend me your phone? I need to call the police. If I don’t call now, they will escape.” Lin Xuan felt disgusted. Even though she had already escaped, she still felt nauseous. These two scumbags were even more despicable than the hit-and-run driver from before. She couldn’t let them get away.

Call the police? Chen Chu frowned.

Seeing that Chen Chu ignored her, Lin Xuan tried to snatch his phone from his hand. She didn’t care about anything else at this moment, she just wanted to call the police and catch those scumbags.

You don’t need to unlock the emergency number 110, you can dial it directly.

Chen Chu didn’t stop her and watched coldly.

The call connected quickly.

“Hello, this is the 110 Emergency Center.”

“Hello, I want to report a crime. There are two thugs following me. They cornered me in an alley… They… Police uncle, please hurry and catch them.” Previously, Lin Xuan had only been focused on how to escape, suppressing her fear and anxiety. But now that she had successfully made the emergency call, she suddenly felt a sense of security, and her grievances and fear surged up. She burst into tears and cried, “Police uncle, please hurry and catch them. They are about to escape. They want to… they want to assault other girls. Please hurry.”

Chen Chu’s gaze turned cold as he listened to the girl’s tearful account.

“Stay calm first, tell me, are you safe now?” the 110 operator asked calmly.

“I-I’m safe,” Lin Xuan replied sobbingly.

“What is your name?”

“My name is Lin Xuan.”

“Lin Xuan, you said someone was following you, where exactly did this happen?” the operator asked.

“At the entrance of San Cun Alley.”

“And where are you now?” the operator inquired.

“I…” Lin Xuan paused for a moment, as if she suddenly realized something, and hung up the phone directly.

“Why did you hang up the phone?” Chen Chu, who had been quietly listening, asked.

“I…” Lin Xuan looked up. Her eyes were red from crying, and there were still tears glistening on her eyelashes that hadn’t dried yet. “I don’t know how to explain to the police why I ended up here, and I don’t know how to explain it to you either. If… if I tell you I have special abilities, would you believe me?”

Chen Chu looked meaningfully at the girl, without saying a word. He bent down and took out a box of tissues from the drawer under the TV cabinet, pulled out two and handed them over.

“Tha… thank you,” Lin Xuan said, wiping her tears and then discussing with Chen Chu, “Can you let me go? I’m really not a bad person, and I’m not a female ghost either. Or you can think of me as a female ghost if you want, I promise I won’t crawl into your house again, okay?”

Chen Chu looked at the girl, who was on the verge of crying again, and handed her two more tissues. “What you said just now, is it true?”

“Huh?”

“Someone was following you.”

“Yes,” Lin Xuan nodded heavily. “I didn’t want to climb onto your TV, but I really had no choice. I was cornered in a dead-end alley by them, and I couldn’t get out. Wuu… hiccup.”

Lin Xuan hiccuped and choked.

Chen Chu was too lazy to hand her tissues anymore and directly handed her the whole pack of tissues. When his fingers touched the girl’s palm, he felt a cold touch and a slight tremor.

She was very scared, and she probably wouldn’t lie.

Chen Chu had seen Lin Xuan before, about two weeks ago when he went to the hospital to visit a friend and ended up dealing with a thug who had a watermelon knife at the hospital’s newspaper office. It wasn’t him who noticed the thug, it was a bald girl.

Of course, the girl wasn’t really bald, she just had a little hair shaved off because of an injury on her head. Maybe the girl was too concerned about it and kept chattering in the convenience store with her best friend, forbidding her friend from mentioning her baldness. Chen Chu found it quite interesting and couldn’t help but take a few glances. It wasn’t just him, almost everyone in the convenience store was secretly looking at her… bald head.

That’s why he didn’t take any action when he saw the ghostly face.

“Can you go back?” Chen Chu asked.

“G-Go back? Where?” Lin Xuan pointed at the TV. “Go back in there?”

Chen Chu nodded. “Crawl back in.”

Lin Xuan widened her reddened eyes, filled with fear.

“You said you didn’t know how to explain to the police, right? Once caught, there’s no need to explain,” Chen Chu said.

“I can’t fight them,” Lin Xuan was about to cry in fear. Did she look like she could fight and escape by crawling into the TV?

“I’ll go with you,” Chen Chu said.

Lin Xuan’s eyes widened slightly, as if she understood what he meant.

“I… I don’t know if I can crawl back in,” Lin Xuan hesitated. Chen Chu furrowed his brow. Hadn’t she mastered her abilities yet? She seemed to have just awakened recently.

Chen Chu was about to speak when he heard her say, “I… I’ll ask.”

Ask? Ask who?

Lin Xuan lowered her gaze and called out to the system, “System, can I still crawl back in?”

System: “This is a Level 2 ability, and you need to accumulate proficiency points to reach a hundred times to activate it. If you want to use it in advance, you need to pay fifty merit points to temporarily activate it.”

“Then… can I bring someone with me?” Lin Xuan asked again.

“Fifty merit points for one time. Because Sadako is satisfied with the appearance of the companion, she’s willing to give a 20% discount,” the system replied.

Lin Xuan looked up at Chen Chu. This was a face that could get a 20% discount from Sadako.

“What’s wrong?” Chen Chu asked.

“No, nothing. Um… I can take you with me.” No matter how many merit points it took, Lin Xuan was determined to capture those two scumbags today.

“Deduct 50 merit points, Level 2 ability activated. Deduct 40 merit points, companion skill activated,” the system announced.

As soon as the system prompt sounded, the familiar portal appeared before their eyes once again. Lin Xuan turned to Chen Chu and said, “Let’s go.”

Chen Chu looked at the TV and asked in confusion, “How do we go?”

Lin Xuan paused for a moment and quietly asked the system, “System, can’t he see the portal?”

“[Xuan-chan, if you want to drag a man back into the TV, you have to hold onto him tightly and never let go.]”

Those words suddenly appeared in front of Lin Xuan’s eyes, and the strange tone made her feel uncomfortable.

Time was running out, and Lin Xuan didn’t have time to think about it. She reached out and grabbed Chen Chu’s hand.

In the moment of astonishment, another portal suddenly appeared before Chen Chu’s eyes.

“It’s inside there.” Although she had said she was going back to catch those two scumbags, Lin Xuan was still a little scared. Her hand holding Chen Chu’s trembled slightly.

Chen Chu didn’t say anything, he just held Lin Xuan’s hand and firmly led her towards the portal.

They passed through the portal and returned to the dark alley. At this moment, the alley was silent and empty, devoid of any people.

“Maybe… maybe they’ve already left,” Lin Xuan, who had been hiding in fear behind Chen Chu, cautiously peeked out when she saw no one in the alley.

Little did she know, as soon as she spoke, the voice of the yellow-haired man came from the entrance of the alley, “You bitch, knew you were still in there. Quite good at hiding, almost let you slip away.”

They had been waiting outside and hadn’t left.

Lin Xuan was terrified and quickly shrank back behind Chen Chu, clutching his clothes tightly with her fingers.

“Keep screaming, little slut. Big brother will make you scream even better later,” the bald man also ran in, spewing vulgar language.

Chen Chu’s eyes instantly turned cold. He gently patted the hand of the girl clutching his clothes and softly said, “Stay here.”

With those words, he gradually pulled his clothes out of the girl’s grip and turned around to face the yellow-haired man and the bald man.

Lin Xuan stood there in astonishment, feeling a sense of familiarity with that back figure.

“Who are you?” The bald man saw Chen Chu and his heart skipped a beat. He shouted sharply. Chen Chu answered him with a swift kick, too fast for the bald man to dodge.

With a loud thud, the bald man was kicked and flew backward, crashing into the yellow-haired man behind him.

The two scumbags tumbled into a pile and struggled to get up. But Chen Chu had already approached, delivering punches and kicks, knocking them back to the ground. What followed was a one-sided torture, with the alley echoing the wailing and screams of the yellow-haired man and the bald man. Chen Chu let them scream until they could only whimper, as if they were about to lose their lives, before finally stopping.

He looked towards the end of the alley and said, “Now we can call the police.”

Author’s Note:

Sadako: Ladies, when you meet a handsome guy, remember to drag him away.