03

Seeing that I wouldn't budge no matter what, the crowd only turned nastier. Ryan McClain stood about six feet off, and the way he looked at me, he wanted me dead.

Gretchen Lambert was a busybody at heart, and she pressed the question for him. "Why exactly won't you rent it out anymore? Mr. McClain seems like an honest man. Do him this favor and you're really doing yourself a favor too, don't you think?"

Facing Gretchen's question, I sat there trying to work out how to say it: that a stream of floating text had warned me, and that if I rented the place out, in two years I would become a murderer.

Not only would they never believe that, I wouldn't have believed it myself.

Since the text showed up that one time yesterday, it hadn't appeared again, and I'd half started to think there was no such thing at all.

And just as I was denying it, another line of text floated up in front of my eyes. 【You can't doubt me. I'm real, but I won't be here forever.】

【Here's a fairly important piece of information for you: Ryan McClain doesn't have a son at all. The story about renting the place for his son's wedding is just a cover.】

The text really did feed me the news right on time. No wonder that when I'd asked him for details about his son, he couldn't come up with anything.

With that one line, I knew exactly where to break him open.

He wanted to use other people's mouths to humiliate me, to smear me, and as it happened, that trick didn't scare me.

I brought up meeting his son again, and from the firm way Ryan refused, I could see how much he wanted to shut that door.

Maybe the text was right that he had no son, but I didn't call it out. There was something off about Ryan.

I kept wondering why he was so bent on renting my place, working this hard at it. If I didn't play along, a temper like his would only dig in harder than mine.

I dropped Tracey at school and went to work, and to my surprise Ryan came chasing after me all the way to my office.

He stood downstairs with that bullhorn again, broadcasting about me for everyone to hear, and my coworkers turned on me the same way my neighbors had, whispering and pointing.

I'd been assigned to go close a contract, but because of the scene Ryan made, my manager pulled me off it.

I got through the day in a daze. By the time I clocked out that afternoon, it wasn't just people at my company pointing at me. People at other companies had heard about my exploits too.

I dragged my worn-out body off to pick up Tracey, and right then I wanted so badly to have someone to talk to.

My husband, Marvin Lyons, was without a doubt the first person I thought of, and on the way to get Tracey his call came through.

The moment I saw his name flashing on the screen, my eyes went hot, like tears were about to spill.

I answered fast, but before I could get a word out, Marvin's scolding came pouring through. "Minnie, what is wrong with you? Didn't we agree the place was getting rented out? How could you suddenly go back on it? Do you know how many people from our complex called me today?"

"I already work hard enough away from home. Can you please stop making trouble for me? Tomorrow you go find someone and rent it to him, right away."

I'd actually thought that with Marvin calling, I'd finally found someone I could pour it all out to, someone I could tell the truth. Instead he didn't even give me the chance to open my mouth.

Marvin got it all off his chest and hung up, without a thought for what state I was in.

I pulled the car over to the side of the road and let out a long sigh, and with my trembling hands I forced myself to send Marvin a message, telling him about the floating text I'd seen.

In my heart Marvin was the one person I could lean on, the only one I could say what was really on my mind.

But his reply was the last thing I expected, and it froze my heart through.

04

Marvin's reply came back: 【You've watched too many of those cheesy dramas. Your head's not right anymore. Go sign the contract with him first thing tomorrow.】

I stared at those words and, out of nowhere, I laughed.

I realized that in all of this, in the end, I stood completely alone.

After the hurt and the grief passed, I decided to look into Ryan McClain myself. And to look into him, I first had to keep him calm.

I texted him that I could reconsider renting him the place.

Ryan sent back a smug little emoji, as if he'd known all along that I would cave.

When I brought Tracey home, her mood was low too. I noticed it and asked her about it, and she finally stammered it out. "The kids at school say my mommy is a person who doesn't keep her word. A lot of them won't play with me anymore."

Seeing the tears about to spill from Tracey's eyes, I pulled her into my arms. I truly never imagined this thing could reach her too.

I comforted her, but I honestly couldn't find anything better to say. All I could tell her was that I would fix this as soon as I could.

On the way back I thought about a lot of things. The only people I had left to lean on now were probably my parents.

I decided to send Tracey to my mom and dad's first, so I could throw myself fully into digging into Ryan.

My mom saw the state I was in and only said she would take good care of Tracey.

That night when I got back I didn't even eat dinner. I started digging into Ryan right away, and it was a good thing I did, because I actually turned something up. This Ryan didn't just have no son. His wife had been reported missing two years ago, and there was no property, no car under his name.

By the time I'd gotten that far, I honestly had no idea what Ryan's real reason for renting my place could be.

I was just wishing the floating text would give me another hint, and the harder I wished for it, the more it delivered. The text really did appear.

【Ryan's whole reason for renting the place was never to live in it. It's to hide a body.】

【He isn't renovating your unit. He's building a hidden chamber, sealing it up inside a false wall.】

That line left me staring, dumbstruck. How on earth had he thought of this.

That night I didn't sleep well, and I didn't rush to reach out to Ryan either. Ryan got impatient and took me straight to court.

I received the court summons, and before long the court held its first hearing.

Ryan produced no small amount of evidence. His deposit transfer to me was genuine and valid, our verbal rental agreement was indirectly backed up by the property management office, I had no legitimate grounds to break the contract, and all I had was an empty "floating-text warning" that couldn't stand as evidence.

The case wasn't hard to decide at all. The judge ruled on the spot: a rental agreement had been formed between us, I had unilaterally breached it, I had to pay double the deposit, forty thousand, and I was required to keep performing the five-year lease.

Which meant I was looking at paying out money and still being bound to carry out the rental agreement.

After all this blew up, I became, in the eyes of my neighbors and my coworkers, a woman with no heart, no honor, and no decency.

Of course I wasn't going to sit there and wait for it to happen. They didn't believe my floating-text prophecy, but I said it out loud anyway. "The reason I won't rent to him is that he isn't renting the place for his son's wedding at all. Two years from now he'll give up the unit, and during the renovation he'll have hidden a body inside my home. Once he moves out, I'll be the one on the hook for murder."

The judge shot back at me right there. "And who exactly is this body he's hiding?"

The question stumped me. I couldn't answer it, and I had no solid evidence to get the police to investigate him either.

Just as I was turning it over and over with no way through, the floating text suddenly appeared again.