novellhall Chapter 17: Beating Mary Up, Curse of Misfortune
Chapter 17: Beating Mary Up, Curse of Misfortune
The thought had barely crossed my mind when a pungent smell of smoke wafted over from the other end of the corridor.
It doesn't taste like a regular cigarette.
It's stronger, more pungent, with a sweet, herbal spiciness that makes your scalp tingle just from the smell.
Evan pushed open the bedroom door, rushed to the next room, and kicked open Mary's door.
The door lock was the cheapest kind of spring lock, and with his current leg strength, it was practically made of paper.
The door slammed against the wall with a loud bang, and plaster began to fall off the wall.
Mary was half-lying on the bed, wearing a loose, dirty nightgown with the neckline wide open, revealing a bluish-purple hickey on her collarbone.
She held a thick cigarette she had rolled herself between her fingers, and the smoke swirled around the room, making one's eyes sting.
Seeing Ivan kick the door open, she didn't even lift her eyelids, a familiar sneer on her lips, as she brought the cigarette to her lips and took another drag.
Ivan's voice sounded like it was being squeezed out from between his teeth, each word trembling with anger.
"How many times have I fucking told you not to smoke in my house!"
"And where the hell did you hide my money?!"
Mary exhaled a thick cloud of smoke, which drifted directly toward Evan's face.
"none of your business."
The three words, spoken lazily and with a nasal tone, sounded like someone swatting away a buzzing fly.
The last thread of reason in Evan's mind snapped.
He strode forward, swung his right hand in a wide arc, and slapped Mary hard across the left cheek.
The sound was crisp and loud, like someone whipping a wet wooden board with a belt.
Mary's head was flung to the right by the slap, and the cigarette flew from between her fingers, tracing an arc of sparks in the air before landing on the sheet and burning a black spot.
Her left cheek swelled up instantly, the marks of five fingers were clearly visible, her ears were ringing, and her vision went black.
A physique of 1.903.
The force of that slap far exceeded that of an ordinary man.
Mary was stunned for a full three seconds.
Then her eyes widened, her pupils filled with disbelief.
In her mind, Evan was a sickly man who could die at any moment, a useless person who couldn't even beat her.
"You bastard! How dare you hit me!"
She screamed and lunged at Evan's face, her nails scratching at his face.
Evan grabbed her wrist.
Mary's wrist was as thin as a withered twig in his palm; he could even feel the bones digging into his fingers beneath the skin.
He twisted hard, forcing Mary's body to rotate half a circle.
Then he dragged her out of the room, like dragging a sack, through the hallway, and all the way to the front door of the apartment building.
He opened the door and pushed Mary out.
The immense force sent her staggering out the doorway, her knees scraping against the wooden floor of the corridor, drawing blood.
Her right arm hung at an unnatural angle, her shoulder dislocated during the dragging.
"Get the hell out of here. I'm taking your stuff to offset the rent you owe."
Ivan stood in the doorway, looking down at her, his voice cold and calm. The most intense wave of anger had passed, leaving behind a cold and resolute determination.
Mary crouched in the hallway, her knees scraped, her left cheek swollen, and her right arm dislocated, looking like a wildcat that had been kicked over.
Her eyes were bloodshot, and her smudged eyeliner left two black tear streaks on her face. Her lips trembled, and her voice was high-pitched and hoarse.
"You just wait! I'm going to kill you!"
Ivan closed and locked the door.
Her shouts came through the door, growing fainter and fainter until they were swallowed up by the echo in the stairwell.
Ivan turned and went into Mary's room, where he began searching.
The room was a mess, as if it had been robbed. The sheets were crumpled up, and there were used handkerchiefs and empty wine bottles stuffed under the pillow. Cheap rouge boxes and hair clips were scattered on the floor.
The air was filled with a complex stench of perfume, tobacco, sweat, and that cloying, herbal smoke.
He crouched down and searched under the bed.
My finger touched a cardboard box, so I pulled it out and opened it.
His money wasn't in there.
He recognized his own money; it was wrinkled and smelled of sweat.
"If she didn't take it, then it was her customer who took it!"
Evan felt like the whole world was against him today, which made him unable to control his anger.
There was no money in the box, but there was another eleven dollars and forty-nine cents.
"This is what I deserve."
She was several weeks behind on her rent, which was two dollars a week, and owed at least eight dollars.
This three dollars can be considered as interest.
He put all the money into his pocket and continued rummaging through it.
My fingers touched another box.
This box is smaller than the one for holding money; it's a tin tobacco can, and the pattern on the lid is worn away and illegible.
He unscrewed the lid, and a strange smell wafted out.
It doesn't smell like tobacco.
Sweeter, stronger, with a pungent spiciness that makes your scalp tingle, just like the smoke that filled the room earlier.
He looked down.
The jar contained a pile of dried leaves, dark green with brownish tinge, curled at the edges, some already crushed, mixed with tiny stems and seeds.
"I'm asking what it tastes like."
Evan picked up a leaf, brought it to his nose, smelled it, and then threw it back into the jar.
"This slut is actually smoking marijuana."
Ivan had absolutely no interest in this thing.
He scooped all the leaves out of the tin can, went into the bathroom, lifted the toilet lid, and threw them in.
Pull down the flushing cord, and the rushing water swirled the pile of dry leaves into a ball, which then disappeared into the sewer.
After finishing with the leaves, Evan turned and walked out.
Just as he stepped out of the bathroom, the sole of his right shoe landed on a slightly raised floorboard.
His body lunged forward suddenly.
His eyes went straight to the iron hook for hanging clothes above the door frame.
The hook was made of cast iron, with its tip pointing outwards and covered in a layer of brown rust, and it was positioned directly in front of his left eye socket.
His 1.903 physique saved his life at that moment.
With lightning speed, his left hand grabbed the exposed water pipe next to the wall, his five fingers gripping the iron pipe tightly, and the muscles in his forearm suddenly tensed up, like a fully drawn bowstring.
His entire body was suspended in mid-air in a posture that no ordinary person could possibly do, leaning forward at nearly 45 degrees, with the tip of his nose less than two inches from the iron hook.
He could see every single rust mark on the tip of the hook.
Ivan braced himself against the water pipe and slowly pulled his body back to an upright position.
After regaining his footing, he didn't move, just stood there at the bathroom door, his face gradually darkening.
It was a coincidence.
Both times it was just bad luck.
But this series of events couldn't compare to the tram incident, bird droppings, laundry water incident, stolen money, and slipping on flat ground; each event was interconnected and escalated step by step.
It's like an unseen hand manipulating dominoes in the dark, with each domino falling at an angle precisely pointing to the next one.
This is no coincidence.
This is "Final Destination".
"Could it be that I'm cursed? Cursed by misfortune?"
Knowing full well that extraordinary powers existed in this world, this was the first answer that popped into Ivan's mind.
"What is the medium of the curse? Who is the one who cursed me?"
He looked down at the money he had taken back from Mary; Mary hadn't stolen his money.
The master bedroom door lock was untouched, the door was not broken, there were no signs of ransacking, and it couldn't have been done by her guests.
Those who come here to find women don't have the ability.
The clues in my mind instantly clicked together.
"LeBon. Thomson. Or other middle-class or even aristocratic students."
"The medium is very likely the money that was stolen from me."
He recalled the scene of brushing past LeBang in the school corridor these past few days.
The blond youth walked past quickly with his head down, his face showing fear, but beneath that fear lay another expression.
A kind of waiting.
A kind of resentment and malice.
He was waiting for something to happen to him.
Ivan's back was instantly soaked with cold sweat.
"That's really unreasonable."
"Without any warning, without any contact, it was like crushing an insect with a casual flick of the wrist."
Fear and anger surged up at the same time, churning together in my chest.
But there was more anger than anger.
That anger wasn't just directed at any one person, but at the entire set of rules.
In this parallel world, the control that the rich exert over the poor is no longer limited to sweatshops and monetary exploitation.
They can use their superhuman power to annihilate, enslave, and crush the poor at the bottom of society, and the poor at the bottom don't even know how they died.
Pris, a noble vampire who uses students to test his potions.
A middle-class student who curses himself because he failed to bully others.
They treat people like dirt.
He stared at the iron hook on the door frame used for hanging clothes.
Without the physical enhancement from the potion, that stumble would have been enough for the rusty iron tip to pierce his eye socket.
A poor student died at the door of his own bathroom, his eye blinded by a clothes hook, and he bled to death.
The coroner will write "accident," but the newspapers won't publish a single word about it.
"Directly alters a person's luck, creating a series of fatal coincidences."
Ivan's mind was racing.
"It seems that extraordinary abilities in this world are not just about cultivating the body and strengthening the spirit through numerical calculations."
"It's more like a bizarre, mechanic-driven game where you kill people using the rules."
"but."
He looked at his arms, which had become much stronger, and the muscle lines on his forearms were clearly visible in the dim light.
"As long as the value is high enough, the mechanism can be broken by force."
Avoiding laundry water is a numerical value.
I just grabbed the water pipe to save myself, which is also a numerical value.
The curse creates accidents, but when the body's reaction speed and strength exceed the accident's lethality threshold, the accident is no longer fatal.
"What misfortune will be next? How can I break the curse? Or how can I fight it?"
Before he could sort out his thoughts, another, more pressing issue came rushing at him.
"Mary. She must have gone to find Zack."
Ivan's pupils contracted slightly.
"I see. Offending Mary was part of the misfortune."
"No wonder the anger came so fiercely just now; I almost couldn't control myself."
The curse amplified his volatile temper, causing him to act at the worst possible time and push things in the worst possible direction.
"This is forcing me to directly offend the Guz gang."