Martial Arts Tomie's body leaned into Yang Yi, her warm breath brushing against his ear.
"Pretty please? Handsome~"
Yang Yi simply met her gaze calmly, then spread his hands with an innocent expression.
"I just arrived in this world too."
"I don't have a house right now either."
The expression on Tomie's face froze.
She suddenly straightened up, shooting Yang Yi a look as if she were staring at trash.
"After all that, you're actually dead broke?"
This man was absurdly strong, capable of casually crossing through space, yet he didn't even have a place to live?
Tomie's eyes darted around rapidly. Her instincts as "Tomie" filled her with a primal desire to conquer a powerful male like Yang Yi; but her combat intuition as "Martial Arts Tomie" frantically warned her that the man before her was extremely dangerous.
The fierce conflict between these two instincts made her irritably scratch her smooth, long hair.
Suddenly, she thought of something.
"Ha!"
Tomie suddenly clapped her hands, her face blooming with radiance once again.
"I know a great place!"
She excitedly hugged Yang Yi's arm.
"Let's go live in a haunted house!"
"Those places have super heavy resentment, so absolutely no one dares to go near them. And most importantly..." She leaned in close to Yang Yi's ear and lowered her voice, "It doesn't cost any money!"
The two hit it off immediately.
Under Tomie's lead, they passed through several gloomy alleys, eventually stopping in front of a dilapidated apartment building.
The building was about ten stories high, with large areas of concrete peeling off the exterior walls to expose rusted rebar. In Yang Yi's vision, a dense aura of resentment shrouded the entire building.
Tomie stood at the bottom of the building, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath, her face full of enjoyment.
"Ah... this is the place. Such rich resentment, it's simply a top-tier 'haunted house'!"
She opened her eyes and began introducing it to Yang Yi. "According to the memories of other Tomies, this is a famous haunted apartment in Tokyo. Legend has it that many people who move in receive a death prediction call from the future at midnight, and then those people will die when the predicted time arrives."
She tilted her head, smiling both innocently and crazily. "How about it? Isn't it exciting?"
Yang Yi looked up at the apartment. Although the building was overflowing with resentment, there were still a few windows with lights on.
"It's totally normal," Tomie said, as if guessing Yang Yi's thoughts. "Because the rent here is a full ten times cheaper than anywhere else, it's filled with a bunch of guys so poor they aren't even afraid of ghosts!"
"Come on, let's go experience the atmosphere of a haunted house!"
She pulled Yang Yi along, skillfully dodging the dust-covered security camera next to the main door, and then the two slipped into the mildew-smelling hallway.
Just as they stepped onto the stairs, an exaggerated shout came from upstairs.
"Holy shit! Fam! I feel the temperature dropping! Is that female ghost about to come out? If the number one bro on the leaderboard sends a rocket, I'll perform a forced kiss on the female ghost!"
It was a paranormal streamer.
Going further up, they could hear a fierce argument coming from next door.
The corners of Tomie's mouth split into a grin; she couldn't wait any longer.
The two went all the way up, eventually stopping on the seventh floor. Tomie pointed to a door with the number "704" on it. "This room has the heaviest resentment. It seems the 'previous tenant' died the most gruesome death."
Having chosen a room, she pulled a long, thin wire from her pocket, inserted it into the old keyhole, and gently twisted it.
"Click."
With a soft sound, the door opened.
Tomie whistled smugly and pushed the door right open.
As soon as they entered, a cold, gloomy aura rushed at their faces, making it feel as if it were several degrees lower than outside.
The furnishings in the room were very simple. The walls seemed newly painted, the pale white paint reflecting an eerie light. A pitch-black ceiling fan hung from the ceiling, and a few yellowed talismans were pasted in the corners, drawn with twisted symbols in cinnabar.
"Wow! This room looks super exciting at first glance!" Tomie excitedly spun around the room, then rubbed her hands together, urging Yang Yi with a look of anticipation. "Quick, quick, take out your phone! We're waiting to receive that 'ghost call'!"
Yang Yi looked at her behavior, his expression a bit strange.
"You..." He paused, but still asked, "Don't tell me you don't have a phone!"
"..."
Tomie's excitement froze on her face.
The next second, her face actually turned red.
"I... I just haven't had the time to get one yet!" Her voice suddenly rose. "I was born in a lab before, and this is my first time out! Those guys from the Gay Foundation have been chasing me non-stop, where would I find the time to get that kind of stuff?!"
The more she spoke, the angrier she got, finally kicking the wall fiercely, shaking loose a piece of plaster and revealing the scorched black wall underneath.
She turned her back to Yang Yi, muttering softly.
"I originally wanted to 'farm some gold' off you, but it turns out you're not much better off than me. You don't even have a place to live!"
Looking at her embarrassed state, Yang Yi suddenly found it very amusing.
This Tomie seemed quite different from the traditional Tomie.
"You want communication devices, right?"
"Easy."
Yang Yi smiled faintly and, under Tomie's puzzled gaze, casually waved his hand.
The next second, Tomie's mouth dropped wide open.
"Thump! Thump! Thump!"
Accompanied by a series of thuds, all kinds of "communication devices" appeared out of thin air and landed on the floor!
First, an old-fashioned black hand-crank telephone, followed by a rotary phone, a brick-like early mobile phone, a pile of pagers, long-obsolete PHS phones...
Then came Nokias, Motorolas, flip phones, slider phones, first-generation smartphones, the newest folding screen models... heavy satellite phones used for polar exploration, and a beeping old-fashioned telegraph machine...
Finally, a sci-fi-looking "Quantum Communicator"; a "Wetware Communicator" made of flesh and metal emitting psionic fluctuations, and more appeared before Tomie.
In the blink of an eye, this small room was piled high with all sorts of communication devices.
"Boom—!"
The vengeful spirit of the "Ghost Call" was thoroughly enraged!
Its rule was to dial a death call. It had just been worrying that there was no phone in this room, and then these two pulled a stunt like this.
This was a provocation! This was an insult!
Tomie stood frozen in place. It took her a few seconds to react.
"Whoa—!"
Her eyes sparkled with golden light as she dove headfirst into the "mountain of phones." Like a happy groundhog, she rolled around frantically inside, hugging all sorts of devices she had never seen before.
"I knew it! I knew you weren't an ordinary person!"
"Can you conjure up some money for me?"
"Thud." A gold ingot smashed onto the ground, cracking the floorboards.
Tomie's eyes lit up. She rushed straight over and hugged the gold block. "Wow! I'm rich! I'm rich!"
However, Tomie got bored of playing after a while, and the two began waiting for the call.
After a bit, she felt that just waiting for the call was a bit boring, so she pulled Yang Yi to sit by the table. Then, she took a pen and a piece of paper out of her pocket, hastily drawing a few patterns and writing a few words on it.
"Handsome, waiting is so boring. Let's play Pen Spirit!"
Without waiting for Yang Yi to answer, Tomie grabbed his hand, and together they held the pen.
The cold, gloomy aura in the room seemed to grow heavier.
Tomie chanted softly, "Pen Spirit, Pen Spirit, you are my past life, I am your present life. If you wish to continue our fate, please draw a circle on the paper..."
The moment her voice fell.
"Bzzzt—!"
The lights on the ceiling completely went out, plunging the room into darkness.
Immediately following—
"Ring, ring, ring, ring, ring—!"
"Beep beep! Beep beep!"
"The vast horizon is my love—"
"I am looking up~ above the moon~"
"Praise The Emperor! Loyalty!"
That pile of devices all rang at the same time. The "Ghost Call" couldn't hold back any longer.
At this very moment, the pen under their fingers began to shake violently.
It didn't draw a circle, but instead moved crookedly across the paper, as if writing something.
Tomie and Yang Yi looked down at the same time.
Written on the paper was: "Die... Die..."
The Pen Spirit had also arrived.
"Awesome!" The smile on Tomie's face grew even brighter. "Both urban legends are actually real! Double the happiness!"
She directly threw away the pen in her hand and snapped it with a crack under her foot.
After doing all this, she excitedly picked up a few phones.
"Let me hear when you plan to kill me!"
Looking at the unhinged Tomie and the calm Yang Yi, the Ghost Call suddenly felt a bit of regret.