Don't Lend Anything to Lin Ye

There was a saying going around school: Don’t lend anything to Lin Ye.

Lin Ye always thought it was a joke.

Until the third day of term, when his roommate tossed him the pen he’d been using for six months, its cap worn white from chewing.

That night, he was woken by a voice right beside his ear:

“Daddy, I’m hungry.”

He’d never had a child.

From that day on, anything he lent out came back on its own, and the tooth marks on the pen cap grew deeper by the day; each night, another child’s handprint appeared on the inside of the dorm-room door, moving half a finger’s width lower each time; and people who got close to him started having bad luck.

He discovered that if he “fed” it a little of someone else’s stuff, it would stay quiet all night.

But every time he fed it, he owed it another debt.

Someone had set the whole thing up long ago, just waiting for him to walk right into it.

And the name in his contacts, the one he’d blocked but could never delete,

he couldn’t even remember who it belonged to.