The Paper Man I Raised Came to Life - Chapter 2

Chapter 2

I nearly rolled off the bed.

It was so dark in the room that I couldn’t see a thing.

That voice was incredibly close.

It wasn’t coming from my phone, nor was it the sound of a TV from upstairs or downstairs.

It was right in my ear.

I grabbed the glass from my bedside table and hurled it toward the sound.

“Who’s there!”

The glass shattered against the wall, shards spraying everywhere.

No one answered.

But a second later, the lights flickered on by themselves.

The air conditioner began blowing again, the router’s blue light started flashing, and my phone signal returned.

It was as if those few dozen seconds had never happened.

I stood by the bed, my hands shaking uncontrollably.

The broken glass lying on the floor was the only proof I wasn’t dreaming.

Early the next morning, Su Ning arrived at my door carrying soy milk.

She was my college roommate and the only person who would bring me food at seven in the morning.

As soon as the door opened, her eyes fell on the glass shards on the floor.

“Did you get into a fight with a ghost last night?”

She always spoke with a crisp, sharp tone, like someone crunching on cartilage.

I wasn’t in the mood to banter with her, so I knelt down to pick up the glass.

“I think I might be hallucinating.”

Su Ning set the soy milk on my desk and immediately shut me down.

“You’re not hallucinating; you’re getting what you deserve.”

“I told you ages ago not to date 2D characters in the middle of the night. Now look at you-he’s followed you into reality.”

I looked up at her.

“When did I ever date him?”

Su Ning rolled her eyes.

“Every day it’s ‘Ah Zhi’ this and ‘Ah Zhi’ that. You buy skins for him faster than you buy skincare for yourself. Everyone on the forums knows you’re the sole president of the Xie Zhi Support Club.”

“If you’re not dating him, then I’m practically a nun.”

I didn’t bother arguing with her.

After breakfast, I rushed to the office for the weekly meeting.

Just as I entered the conference room, my boss, Zhou Lan, tossed a folder onto the table.

“Lin Wan, the client wants the proposal revised by noon.”

She always spoke as if she were issuing an official decree-no wasted words, and no room for survival.

I nodded and opened my laptop.

The moment the screen lit up, I froze.

My wallpaper had been changed.

It was supposed to be the default system background of blue mountains and seas, but now it was a game screenshot.

Xie Zhi stood on the long steps of the Temple, eyes cast down, holding a dripping, bloody blade.

This was a screenshot I had taken when I cleared the game last night.

But I was certain I had deleted the game and even cleared the local files.

My palms began to sweat as I immediately opened the file explorer.

There was no trace of Abyss Echo on the computer, and even the screenshot folder was empty.

Yet the wallpaper remained.

Zhou Lan tapped the table.

“Don’t daze off during the meeting.”

I snapped back to reality and quickly switched to the PPT.

I didn’t process a single word of the entire meeting.

After it ended, I took advantage of the empty breakroom to splash my face with cold water.

The person in the mirror was pale, with dark circles under her eyes that looked like she’d been punched.

Just as I looked up, a sliver of a black sleeve appeared at the very edge of the mirror.

It looked like someone was standing behind me.

I whirled around.

Behind me were only the motion-sensor lights and a stack of cardboard boxes in the corner.

When I looked back at the mirror, the sleeve was gone.

While I was revising the proposal at noon, a message from a stranger suddenly popped up in the bottom right corner of my screen.

There was no profile picture.

Just one sentence.

“Master, you must eat lunch on time.”

My first reaction was that Su Ning was pranking me with some software again.

But when I clicked on the sender’s info, the account name was a string of gibberish.

Checking the details, the source device was listed as empty.

I closed the window immediately.

Three seconds later, another message popped up.

“You’ve had two coffees today. Your stomach will hurt.”

My scalp went numb.

I really had drunk two cups today.

But aside from myself, no one would notice such a detail.

I took a deep breath and typed back a single word.

“Who?”

The other side replied instantly.

“Xie Zhi.”

“You didn’t want me anymore.”

“So I had to come see you myself.”