Demons Beside You

“Fali, did you just receive your pay?”

“No.”

“Then why did you take so much stuff? You’re not expecting me to pay for those cosmetics, are you?

Fali rolled her eyes. “Of course I’m paying myself.”

“Those things cost more than a thousand, right? When I wanted to borrow money from you the day before yesterday, you said you didn’t have any.”

“I’m going to use my credit card.” Fali rolled her eyes at Chen Zhao again. “My dad gave it to me.”

“You’re still using your family’s money when you’ve already been working outside for a few years?”

“Yeah I know. I’m used to splurging. My dad also knows that my current work certainly can’t sustain my spending.”

“So your family’s quite rich I suppose?”

“I would say so. At least my dad’s income should be pretty high”

After they left the supermarket, they filled the trunk of the car with stuff.

…

UCLA.

“Smith, it’s late. Aren’t you going back?”

Smith lifted his head, adjusted his glasses, and replied, “Not yet. I still need to organize the data I got today.”

Smith was a historian. He had obtained his PhD at UCLA.

Currently, he was a lecturer in UCLA. His main research interests included the Maya civilization and the Inca Empire.

He had led teams deep into the Amazon rainforest several times to find traces of the Maya civilization.

Also, he had brought many relics back, including many with important historical or research value.

Smith was indeed successful in his career and also had a loving family.

However, twelve years ago, Smith suddenly divorced his wife.

That time, all his colleagues were bewildered. They did not understand why the two would divorce despite their seemingly stable relationship.

Furthermore, after his divorce, Smith had become very dispirited.

The once admirable, elegant, and handsome lecturer was gone, replaced instead by a decadent, slovenly man whose face was permanently filled with an untidy beard and whose body always emitted an unpleasant odor.

After the last colleague left the lab, Smith stood up and took out a coin from his pocket.

Staring at the coin in his hand, his eyes were filled with a complicated look.

He had found the coin in one of the ruins of the Maya civilization. That time, a rich man who wanted the coin had already contacted him in advance.

Smith accepted the deal because he really needed money. Moreover, the rich man had offered him a very high price.

Therefore, he secretly brought the coin out of the ruin and did not inform the archaeology team.

Little did he expect it to be a cursed coin. Since the day he received the coin, he had been surrounded by bad luck.

The first victim was the rich man. The day after they completed the trade, the rich man died in his own house.

The coin also eerily appeared in his pocket again. Next, his pregnant wife miscarried due to an accident.

Because of this, they eventually divorced.

By then, Smith had already realized the coin’s peculiar and ominous nature. He tried to destroy the coin.

He took the coin to one of the buildings in the university and dissolved it with sulfuric acid.

The coin vanished completely before him, but tragedy happened again.

That day, about a dozen students wanted to steal from the warehouse. Coincidentally, Smith had just taken the sulfuric acid from the warehouse and forgotten to lock the door. The students successfully entered the warehouse.

When they were discovered by others, they were already dead in the warehouse, killed by chemical poisoning.

In addition, the supposedly destroyed coin appeared before Smith again.

That time, he had yet to realize the severity of the issue. He tried to destroy the coin a few more times, but he would always get the coin back again in peculiar ways.

No matter where he left the coin or how he destroyed the coin, it would return to him in the end.

In addition, he discovered a pattern: the more severe he damaged the coin, the more severe the accident would be.

Also, the accidents all occurred beside him.

However, he also found out that every time a person died, he would obtain a corresponding amount of wealth.

Before the rich man died, he had obtained a huge amount of money from the man.

When the students died in the warehouse, he won the second highest prize in Powerball, which was a million dollars.

It was almost as if the money was a reward for his work.

At the start, Smith was thrilled, but soon, he was creeped out.

Although he had received all the money legally, every time such a coincidence happened, he would have a sleepless night.

Later, he tried to give the coin to others.

However, the coin would still somehow return to him. The person who received the coin would also experience an accident, where the severity depended on the time he had the coin with him.

Half a year ago, he went to Hawaii for holiday and left the coin on the cruise.

The next day, he received an inheritance from his grandfather whom he had not met for many years. It was a total of twenty million dollars.

Then, he heard that the cruise ship which he had been on was missing due to a storm.

There were over two thousand passengers on the cruise back then!

Suddenly, the coin in Smith’s hand began to tremble and give a buzzing sound.

“Again?” Smith looked at the coin, after which he walked towards the now abandoned university building.

In the past years, he had been studying the coin.

Therefore, he now more or less knew the coin’s characteristics. The coin seemed to feed on souls.

The coin had two special states, one of which he called “hunger.”

If it did not kill anyone for over a week and remained in Smith’s possession, it would cause disaster to random people beside Smith. Every time, at least one person would be killed.

The other state was “full,” just like now. The coin would buzz and tremble.

When this happened, Smith had to find a place to release the extra souls from it.

The abandoned building had become the perfect choice.

Even Smith had no idea how many souls he had released into the abandoned building over these years.

Thus, the abandoned building had also become an actual haunted place. Students who entered the building would eventually encounter accidents of various severity.

The university had tried to demolish the abandoned building before, but again it was accompanied by accidents.

One time, the university planned to demolish the old building by implosion. However, the explosives prepared by the engineering company blasted its own people into the sky instead.

In another instance, there was a mechanical accident. When the excavator removed a wall, it fell down and killed four people.

Since then, the abandoned building had been left untouched.

After all, the amount of compensation that the university had paid was enough to buy a few pieces of land of similar size.