# Chapter 1
Everyone has days when they do something stupid. Feng Yan’s behavior today was a perfect example.
In order to act out a scene from the story he was writing, Feng Yan deliberately tried to stuff three boiled eggs into his mouth. After all, no one’s mouth was large enough to hold all those things at once, and sure enough, the eggs got stuck in his throat!
“Ahhhkk!!!”
Feng Yan immediately began to choke. He frantically tried to pull the eggs out of his mouth, but they broke apart and filled his throat cavity, leaving him unable to spit them out or swallow them.
“Uhh… uhh…”
As he struggled to breathe, Feng Yan was terrified when he realized that without proper first aid, his life would abruptly end at the age of twenty-four.
What was even more horrifying was that he would die in the rented house where he lived alone. Considering how rarely Feng Yan contacted his family, by the time his parents realized their son had disappeared, his body would probably already be dried out.
God! I’m too young to die. I haven’t even gotten married yet! Feng Yan screamed inwardly.
In his panic, his thoughts began spiraling out of control. He imagined what the police would say when they arrived later. After the forensic examination, they would discover that Feng Yan had died of asphyxiation. Then they would find the unfinished novel Feng Yan had written on his computer, in which the character had a miserable fate: the ending involved the character choking to death after putting three eggs in his mouth during a live stream. The similarity between the character’s death and the author’s would naturally make people speculate about supernatural phenomena and think that Feng Yan’s novel was cursed.
Things like that were bound to attract attention and might even become sensational news because they carried a hint of the supernatural.
However, only people who thought logically would understand that wasn’t the case. After all, Feng Yan had merely wanted to prove whether the plot he had written was realistic—in other words, whether someone would die from swallowing three boiled eggs at once.
And his research had immediately proven it. Feng Yan didn’t know whether he should be happy or cry about that fact. Who would have thought he’d lose his life over a single scene in his novel? What a waste.
Still, it was obvious that the man wasn’t ready to die yet. Feng Yan struggled to his feet and kicked the stool, doing his best to stay calm as he tried to remember the Heimlich maneuver he had occasionally seen in short videos.
Fortunately, people were granted a brief moment of reflection before they died. Thus, Feng Yan suddenly remembered several videos about first aid in vivid detail: if someone choked while alone, they had to find the edge of a table and forcefully thrust their abdomen against it.
Moving erratically, Feng Yan groped around for the corner of the table, found the right spot, and slammed himself against it. But by then, his consciousness was beginning to fade, and he could no longer feel anything.
After crashing into the table two or three times, Feng Yan still felt no relief. Just when he thought he was really going to die, he vaguely heard someone knocking on the door.
At first, there were two knocks. When the door didn’t open right away, the knocking became more urgent.
Feng Yan didn’t care who was knocking. He only struggled to open the door, but by then, his limbs could no longer move. He collapsed onto the floor.
Ah… I’m really going to die. At least someone will find my body soon… Feng Yan thought.
Before Feng Yan completely lost consciousness, the keypad lock beeped and the door opened.
Then a young man rushed in and quickly pulled Feng Yan up from the floor. He wrapped his arms around Feng Yan’s waist and performed a textbook Heimlich maneuver.
When the man thrust against Feng Yan for the third time, the egg finally came out.
Only then did Feng Yan feel that he could breathe more easily. It was the first time he had ever felt that air was so precious.
“Cough, cough, cough, cough!!!”
Feng Yan coughed desperately and tried to lift his face to see the great benefactor who had saved his life. Fortunately, even though his eyes were full of tears, Feng Yan could still see him clearly.
The person who had come was a man Feng Yan had never seen before.
The man looked slightly older than Feng Yan, perhaps around twenty-seven or twenty-eight. He had a handsome face and extremely fair skin, with a high nose bridge and deep-set eyes. He was about the same height as Feng Yan, around 1.8 meters tall.
Someone with that kind of appearance should have been easy to remember, but Feng Yan had no impression of him at all.
After Feng Yan finally finished coughing, he spoke in a suspicious tone. “Thanks, man. May I ask who you are?”
At first, Feng Yan had guessed that the man was either the cleaner who came to clean the corridor once a week or a food-delivery courier. But after taking another look, that didn’t seem to be the case. He didn’t look like a security guard either, since the average age of the security guards in this community was between forty and fifty.
The young man brushed the egg crumbs off his clothes and answered indifferently, “I’m the neighbor who lives next door.”
“Huh??”
Feng Yan made a sound like a dumbfounded cow in response. His tear-streaked face, covered in egg crumbs, looked extremely ridiculous. His next words were even more foolish. “Wait, someone actually lives next door?!”
Feng Yan’s shock wasn’t without reason. For context, the occupancy rate in this community was only thirty percent. When he rented this room, the landlord had told him that Feng Yan was the only person living in the building. And indeed, it was usually so quiet that he never even heard a dog barking.
Feng Yan had lived here for an entire year. No matter how rarely he went out, he still left every two or three days. Yet he had never seen this man in the building, nor had he ever heard anything from the neighboring house that suggested any signs of human life. So where had this neighbor come from?!
Feng Yan tilted his head. “You really live next door…?”
The young man didn’t answer Feng Yan’s question. As soon as he saw that the idiot was all right, he left.
Seeing the man’s retreating back, Feng Yan immediately came to his senses and stopped him. “Wait a second, man. I haven’t properly thanked you yet. If it weren’t for you, I’d be dead right now. Have you had dinner? Come on, let’s go out to eat. It’s on me.”
The young man answered calmly, without a hint of emotion. “No need.”
“Don’t be like that.”
Feng Yan randomly grabbed two crumpled sheets of paper from the table and wiped the corners of his mouth, then looked down at his stained clothes. He immediately felt that it would be far too embarrassing to go out with his savior dressed like this, so he hurried toward the bedroom and shouted to the person behind him, “I’m going to change clothes. Wait a minute—don’t leave!”
It took about three minutes from the moment Feng Yan entered the bedroom until he came back out. The young man was gone, and Feng Yan was alone in the living room. Everything looked normal, as though nothing had ever happened. Only the crushed egg scattered across the floor proved that what had just happened wasn’t some crazy hallucination in Feng Yan’s head.
Only then did Feng Yan’s brain start working again, suddenly remembering that the man had opened the door and walked in by himself.
Feng Yan shuddered. “How did he know my house’s passcode? He couldn’t be a burglar, could he?!”
As he considered the possibility, a chill ran down his back. He had always thought there was nothing to worry about as a grown man living alone, but it was still frightening when a stranger suddenly entered his home. On top of that, the man had looked quite strong and even knew his house’s passcode.
“Then… that guy must have been crouching in a corner and spying on me for a long time!”
Feng Yan touched his neck and shuddered as he imagined the worst possibilities his mind could come up with.
“No, no!” Feng Yan shook his head, trying not to overthink it. “Okay, calm down. Think this through carefully and slowly…”
He dropped onto his shabby sofa and pressed the tip of his thumb to his lips.
“It’ll be easy to prove whether he’s really a neighbor or a bad guy. This is a seven-story building with two apartments on each floor. There’s no risk of identifying the wrong door, so I’ll just go next door and knock. If there’s no one there, I’ll call the police immediately!”
Feng Yan rushed out toward the neighboring door. He carried his phone in his hand, with the police number displayed on the screen and ready to call at any moment. He knocked once, and the door opened. The person who answered was the young man.
Feng Yan couldn’t help freezing. He didn’t know whether to be grateful that the man really was his neighbor or horrified that someone had been living next door without him realizing it at all.
Feng Yan’s vivid imagination immediately began spinning wild theories. If this happened in a novel, there had to be something wrong with this man. Either he was a cold-blooded killer, a shaman, or someone with mental problems.
The young man stared at Feng Yan without saying a word.
Feng Yan felt uncomfortable under that gaze, so he laughed awkwardly and said, “So you really do live next door, huh? Hahaha. I really want to thank you for helping me. Let me buy you a meal. Yeah?”