Don’t Be a Kept Man

CH 92

Default Dyslexic Roboto Lora

ach up to scratch at them and instead, went to shower as per normal, before heading to sit on his bed and trim his nails.

“Snick—-“

He trimmed and trimmed, but not only did his nails not break, they were growing longer and longer.
Yan Yu raised his eyebrow as he looked at his nails and then threw the nail clipper aside.
He grabbed a talisman, burned it into ashes, added water and then downed the entire mixture,

That ticklish feeling seemed to stop momentarily, but then it came surging back like a tsunami.
Surging deeper and deeper, all the way to his heart, tickling until it was almost painful, as if to make someone……make someone want to just chop through it all with a knife!

Yan Yu’s body swayed from side to side, and he reached out to steady himself with the table.
Glimpsing through his phone screen, he silently watched his own shadow.
He froze with suspicion and then started to scratch at his neck.
Just once, and blood and flesh followed with his fingers as they departed from his neck.

A pool of blood appeared in the center of his palm, but there seemed to be some relief from that ticklish feeling.
Yan Yu crouched on the ground and tightly grabbed onto his own throat.
Lowering his head and with an unclear expression, his body language looked like he was in a lot of pain.

The lights in his room flashed once and Xun Chuan appeared in his view.
He was sitting on the bed and looking down at Yan Yu.
Watching him breathe in pain, watching him struggle with his throat.

“Does it hurt?”

He tilted his body, looking at Yan Yu at eye level.
He faintly sighed, as if he could not hold it in.

Yan Yu was dripping with cold sweat and his hair was a violent mess.
Half crouched as he held up his body, his handsome face was completely pale.
His eyes were full of pain and his voice held a broken raspiness,

“Help me……”

He grabbed onto Xun Chuan’s hand, fingers ice cold.
It would be hard to tell whose hands were colder at this point.

Seeing this, Xun Chuan laughed out loud.
Laughed and laughed until he couldn’t.
He reached out to hold onto the back of Yan Yu’s head with both of his eyes blood red.

Ghosts did not have tears, so he couldn’t cry.

Xun Chuan seemed to ask Yan Yu, yet also seemed to be asking himself,

“I save you.
Then who will come to save me?”

Even so, the dark cloud of negative energy swirling around Yan Yu’s neck followed his fingers, flowing back and away.
The bloody atmosphere was dissipating, leaving only a faint scar behind.

Yan Yu’s frozen limbs could finally move and he pushed himself up from the ground.
His fingers slightly moved and a peach wood sword appeared in his hand2.
When Xun Chuan dropped his guard, he immediately stabbed forward, pushing the sword right up against his throat.
And at the exact same time, he reached up with his other hand to stop Xun Chuan’s retaliating right hand.

Xun Chuan couldn’t believe that he fell into Yan Yu’s trap again and his receding bloodshot eyes turned violently angry.
The resentment around him grew exponentially and he looked about ready to take Yan Yu down with him.

“Don’t move—-“

Yan Yu scolded and moved his sword downwards, leaving Xun Chuan’s throat.
There lay an injury, that could never be removed.

Ghosts stayed on the human plane because of their hatred and thirst for revenge, but they also stayed because of their regret and obsession to finish an unfulfilled desire.
When they get their revenge, when their obsession or regret gets solved, they would leave for reincarnation.
Yan Yu silently stared at the side of Xun Chuan’s face before finally saying,

“I know you hate me.
Just wait until I die.
The day I die, I’ll go down to pay for my sins against you.
That text message that day, asking you to wait, that wasn’t from me.”

When he said those words, it was to hopefully resolve his obsession, letting him go to reincarnate sooner.

Xun Chuan’s eyes that were filled with darkness looked at him,

“Why should I believe you?”

Yan Yu retracted his hand that was holding a talisman,

“When I say I won’t go, I won’t go.
There was no need to send a message to deceive you into waiting for me.”

This was cold hearted, where each word was sharper than a knife.
An explanation where it would have been better to not have been said at all.

Xun Chuan’s fingers couldn’t control their slight shakiness.
His pair of eyes had turned so red that blood could start to drip from them.
The resentment in his body felt even stronger than yesterday’s, and it seemed to be getting stronger by the second as it gathered even more darkness and moodiness into itself.
Xun Chuan seemed to be smiling, but the expression on his face was very twisted and crooked,

“You wouldn’t even lie to me……”

Yan Yu lowered his eyes,

“……were you not deceived enough when you were alive?”

And then he flipped his wrist, retracting the peach wood sword that was held against Xun Chuan’s throat,

“Leave.
If there is a next time, I will not stay my hand.”

Xun Chuan didn’t move.

The light above them suddenly flashed twice, and the cups on the table shook uncontrollably, rattling against each other as the curtains on the window started flying.
Then following a low thunderous sound, the room was drenched into darkness.

Xun Chuan had left.

Yan Yu seemed to sense something and he paused.
Then, using the wall to push himself up into a sitting position, he took out a box of cigarettes from his pocket.
The lighter was almost out of fuel and he had to flick it twice before it would light up.
With its tiny flame, the corner of the room was lit up for a brief moment before fading away.

Yan Yu lowered his eyes and blew out a long ring of smoke, almost as if he was blowing out a sigh.
His handsome face was a bit mysterious in the darkness.
But he had always been like this, never quite clearly letting anyone see what he was thinking about.

The day was starting again and sunlight was pouring in through the windows, shining across the pile of cigarette butts on the floor.
Yan Yu had sat on the floor for an entire night, his expression lazy.
His eyes were bloodshot from the smoke of his cigarettes, and with the paleness of his face that was so unreal compared to a normal human, he was quite like a poster child of a vampire.

When the older aged landlady came to knock on his door, she was freaked out by the state of him,

“Oh my goodness, what did you do, looking so much like you are dead? You couldn’t have gone messing around with the wrong people have you? A young man like you……”

The renters in this building were a mixed bag.
Right above Yan Yu was a woman said to be working in the porn industry.
Spending days in and nights out, leaving only when it was dark and dressing herself up in a million ways to present herself.

Notes:

*1 Messing around: the words used here mean to live in a mess or like terribly, without aspirations and living aimlessly/without need/fulfillment, sneakily/lawlessly, hanging out with not good members of society or in a way not accepted by normal society.
Kind of like an idiom as the words are actually “ghost” and “mix/intertwine” so if the author had the intention (very likely) it could be seen as wordplay that he’s been fooling around with ghosts.

*2 peach wood sword: it’s very well known/believed that a peach wood sword has the powers to repel evil, attract good luck, hold down the fort, etc.