"The room is purposely kept clean, and I do not want to ruin it. If you can hear me, you'd better come out on your own."
This was not the first time that Chen Ge had threatened a ghost, but he had no idea whether it would work or not. He grabbed the edge of the drawer and tried to pull, but the drawer seemed stuck on something.
"Xu Yin!" Chen Ge summoned Xu Yin, and they grabbed the drawer on both sides. As Xu Yin channeled his strength, the wounds on his body opened again. The red blood trailed down his white arms to drop on the edge of the drawer. The drawer that remained unmoved started to loosen.
"Keep going!"
Xu Yin did not hold back. He would do what Chen Ge told him to. The wounds on his body tore open, and blood dyed his shirt. His face was twisted from the exertion, and his hands were covered with his own blood.
"So painful!"
The tightly-closed drawer finally was pulled open the width of one's finger. Xu Yin's power seemed to affect the stuff inside the drawer. The blood continued to flow, and the drawer was slowly pulled open by Xu Yin. When the drawer opened to the size of half a palm, several human hands suddenly reached out from within!
There were male and female hands. They tried to stop Chen Ge and yanked the drawer close. Surprised, Chen Ge and Xu Yin released their grip, and the drawer closed shut with a bang.
"Why do you insist on this struggle?" Chen Ge stopped Xu Yin, who intended to repeat the earlier effort. He picked up the hammer and said, "I'm trying to be nice. After all, we might work again in the future.
"I hope you'll give this serious consideration. I can use brute force to smash the table or use fire to burn everything and look for what I need in the rubble, but I won't. I'm a kind person, and you can ask any of my friends to confirm that."
Chen Ge squatted beside the drawer; he was not afraid of the stuff that might reach out from within the drawer. He gripped the drawer's handle. "This drawer belongs to me, and I'm just taking it back."
He increased his strength and said, "I will forget what happened tonight. Even though all of you have tried to trick me again and again, none of you came for my life. You only wanted to scare me away. I'm telling you not to waste your time. I'm someone who you can reason with. If you have any issues, come out and talk to me."
Then Chen Ge's empty hand picked up the hammer. "Like now, you have no other option. Eventually, you'll need to face me. Why not lower your guard so that we can start this over the right way?"
The drawer slowly vibrated like the spirits inside it were in a disagreement. After ten seconds, the drawer voluntarily bounced out for one centimeter. "Good, I do appreciate cooperative spirits."
Chen Ge took out the third drawer and placed it on the table. It contained several comic books. "These are by the artist's hand?"
The notebook said that none of the publishers wanted to work with the artist, so he probably went the route of self-publication.
"So many ghosts came from these comic books?" Chen Ge thought back to his experience that night, and he understood certain things. He flipped through the comic books that looked to be the artist's work.
The artist had a semi-realistic style, and it was understandable why no publishers wanted to work with him. The characters in his story felt uncannily real. The whole comic was made up by five individual stories. The main character of the first story was a gambler. He was thin and tall; he looked similar to the man Chen Ge had seen earlier. The gambler was born in a single-parent family. He had never seen his father and was raised by his mother. He did not receive any worthwhile education.
If he did not make anything of himself, it would have been fine, but he suffered from the vice of gambling. Even in his thirties, he had no work and relied on his mother. For him, life was meaningless other than being alive.
However, when he was 37, his peaceful life was shattered. The mother who took care of him fell seriously ill, and they quickly burned through his mother's savings. His mother wanted to give up on the treatment, but the gambler did not agree. He sold everything they had but the old house that was under his mother's name.
Even so, the surgery still needed some money, and even if the surgery was successful, she could not do heavy work again. He thought about it and began to borrow money from loan sharks.
The surgery was successful, but the loan had tripled from the interest. The loan sharks forced the gambler to sell his mother's home to settle the debt. The gambler asked them to give him one night to consider.
The second day, the loan sharks returned, and they got a shock of their life when they pushed the door open. There was a basin on the round table, and it was filled with blood. The gambler's left hand was chopped off, and he stood next to the table with the cleaver in his right.
He said that he had not done anything worthwhile for his mother before in his life. Now that his mother could not do heavy work anymore, if he sold the house, she would have nowhere else to go. Therefore, he would never sell the house. If they wanted something as compensation, then he would give them his life.
He was the one who signed the loan papers. He rushed out of the bedroom, slashing the cleaver, so no one dared to stop him. They watched on as the man jumped from the eighth-floor window. The gambler died on the spot, but the arm that he chopped off was still not found.
The main character for the second story was an interning English teacher. The old landlady rented her the living room and the master bedroom while she stayed in the small bedroom. After her son passed away, the old lady became quite confused and absent-minded. The teacher took care of her like she was her real mother. The two got close, and things were moving toward a positive ending.
The English teacher would conduct tuition at night, so she came home late. However, when she returned, the old lady would have dinner prepared for her. She was already old, so she would be asleep when the teacher returned.
Afraid that she might wake the old lady up, she would advise the old lady to close the door when she went to sleep. One day, the teacher came home late again. She did not realize that someone was following her. Once she left the stairwell, someone reached out from behind to clamp his hands over her nose and lips.
She struggled vehemently and tussled with the culprit in the corridor. Surprised by her vehemence, to prevent her from making noises and attract attention, the murderer slit her throat. The body could not be left in the corridor, so he dragged the teacher's body back into the bedroom. He cut her into pieces to hide them inside the many drawers.
It was the old lady who found the teacher inside the drawers the next day.
The killer was caught five days later, but the old lady's condition worsened. With the neighbor's help, she was sent to the hospital.
It was then that the room welcomed its third tenant. It was a real estate agent, and he was the main character of the third story.