Who Taught You to Use a Curse Doll as a Shared-Sensation Doll? - Chapter 1

The floating comments kept streaming past my eyes, and all at once, so many things that had never made sense before finally had an explanation.

After the apocalypse began, I awakened a fire ability. Outside, I could roast zombies; indoors, I could keep us warm and cook our meals. It was basically the ultimate practical ability for any journey.

My childhood friend Pei Wen hadn’t awakened any ability at all. A cloth doll had simply appeared in his hand out of nowhere.

It was no bigger than his palm, with no facial features. It lay limp in his hand and looked utterly harmless.

I studied it for ages without figuring out what it did.

Pei Wen, however, stared fixedly at the doll, his expression shifting in ways I couldn’t read. In the end, he carefully tucked it into an inner pocket against his body and kept it with him wherever he went.

I soon forgot the whole minor incident.

Then, three days ago, one strange thing after another began to happen.

That day, I was lying on my stomach in bed, pretending to nap, when an odd tingling sensation suddenly swept over me.

It felt as though someone were gently tracing a finger down the groove of my back—ticklish, numbing, and far too real.

Thinking someone had ambushed me, I sprang upright in one fluid motion.

But apart from Pei Wen, who lay on his side with his back to me, there wasn’t so much as a ghost nearby.

The commotion woke him. He sat up and rubbed his eyes. “What’s wrong?”

My mind went blank for a moment. “I felt someone touching me just now.”

Pei Wen gave me a mild smile. “Were you so tired this morning that you imagined it?”

Maybe.

I lay back down and thought no more of it.

The next morning, however, something strange happened again while I was brushing my teeth.

My throat felt unbearably uncomfortable, as if someone were jabbing at the back of it.

I retched on reflex, tears springing involuntarily to my eyes, but there was plainly nothing in my mouth except toothpaste foam.

Clutching my throat, I whimpered helplessly and even tried to pull the thing out with my fingers.

Yet when I reached inside, there was nothing there.

Pei Wen heard me and hurried over to pat my back. Only then did I recover.

As he looked at the mess I was in, he murmured something under his breath.

His voice was too quiet for me to make out the words.

After that, those phantom touches came more and more often.

They were always tantalizingly faint—impossible to ignore, yet impossible to fight off.

For a while, I wondered if some unclean thing had attached itself to me.

After all, if a zombie apocalypse could happen, a ghost or two wouldn’t be that strange.

Only now had I finally learned the truth.

Before I could react, however, those inescapable touches returned.

And at that particular moment, I was bathing on the roof of our dormitory.

A massive block of clear ice had formed up there, and it looked clean enough. So I had stripped naked, walked onto the ice, and melted out a pool of fresh water.

The outdoor temperature had fallen to seventy degrees below zero. The sky was gloomy, and snow drifted down from time to time, but to me it felt no worse than a breeze against my face.

Now, though, the situation had become awkward.

Someone was molesting me from a distance, and the comments in front of my eyes were providing live narration.

【Whoa, where is he touching him?】

【His mouth. He’s using his mouth now.】

【What was the person above trying to say? Did it get censored?】

【Holy crap. The villain looks so refined and proper, but he sure knows a lot.】

【Ahhh, are we even allowed to watch this? Drool.】

For an innocent straight guy like me, this was far too much stimulation.

My head swam, and my entire body turned scorching hot.

The ice beneath me began melting at terrifying speed. I lost control of my body temperature, and the water in the pool started to boil.

Scrambling on all fours, I tried to climb back onto the ice.

Then a wave of numb pleasure swept through my whole body. It was as though every bit of strength had been drained out of me in an instant, and I collapsed back into the water.

Without realizing it, I had melted an enormous hole through the ice.

And I was trapped in the water.

Fortunately, I had trained as a swimmer before the apocalypse. I hurriedly held my breath and avoided choking.

But once I could no longer breathe, my body grew even more sensitive. I even began to convulse uncontrollably.

I thought my eyes were starting to roll back in my head.

Just as my body gradually sank, a hand plunged into the water and seized my wrist.

I was hauled above the surface, where I gulped down fresh air almost greedily.

When I looked up, Pei Wen—the culprit himself—was staring at me.

He was bundled up from head to toe, leaving only a pair of clear eyes staring innocently at me without blinking. He looked utterly blameless.

“Qi Chuan, what happened to you?”

What happened to me?

You tell me what happened!

My mouth was full of curses, but faced with those guileless eyes, I couldn’t force out a single one.

The corner of my mouth twitched. “Just pull me out first.”

Damn it. My legs had gone weak.

Pei Wen slung my arm over his shoulder and wrapped an arm around my waist.

Maybe we were simply too close, but I clearly heard him swallow.

I quickly steamed the water off my body, pulled on my clothes, and fled the roof.

Only after racing back to the dorm did a belated thought hit me.

“Why am I the one running? I’m the victim here.”