The company went under, and my boss vanished owing me a hundred thousand yuan in wages. My girlfriend sent me a breakup text, saying she couldn’t wait any longer. I had only three yuan and twenty fen in my pocket, and rent was due in five days.
With nowhere else to turn, I started a livestream, offering free advice on home layouts to build an audience. The first woman who called in said a shadow stood in the corner of her house every night at midnight. The second had it even worse: she’d bought a murder house at auction for a tenth of its value, and blood seeped from the walls right on the stroke of twelve.
The whole internet called me a feng shui master, and the gifts flooded in until my screen froze. Only I knew the truth: the shadow was just a crooked decorative painting, and the blood was water from an upstairs painter cleaning his spray gun, leaking through a cracked pipe that cost three hundred yuan to replace.
I’m no master. I’m just a guy who draws plans and does renovations. But the scariest thing in this world has never been a ghost. It’s that pipe you haven’t figured out.
