Shadow-Grasping Hand

"She said she really did see it." Chen Momo felt a strange chill as she brought it up.

She sat on the chair, shifted her bottom, and loosened up a little before continuing. "I asked her, since she'd fainted in the bathroom, how could she have seen my phone?"

"Exactly. How could she see anything if she'd passed out?" Ke Meng also noticed the flaw in Mrs. Chen's logic.

If she had fainted in the bathroom, how could she have seen what was on Chen Momo's phone?

The two of them hadn't even been in the same place.

"She said she was standing behind me, watching me use my phone." At this point, Chen Momo hesitated, unsure whether she should go on.

If she continued, this would turn into a ghost story. If she stopped here, she could still pass it off as a joke.

But this wasn't a joke Chen Momo had made up. She had personally asked her mother after going home last night. It had really happened; she hadn't imagined hearing things.

Her mother could accurately describe what Chen Momo had been looking at, and even exactly what Chen Momo had typed to Ke Meng.

"Go on. Don't keep me in suspense." Seeing Momo hesitate, Ke Meng urged her to continue.

The most frustrating thing about listening to someone tell a story was when they hemmed and hawed, told half of it, then withheld the rest to keep you hanging.

"She knew what messages I'd sent, but she couldn't explain how she'd fainted. Or rather, she wasn't even aware she'd fainted, yet she knew what I'd sent."

Chen Momo glanced at Ke Meng. "If you don't believe me, I'll stop. It's pretty hard to explain anyway."

"Keep going. I'm listening." Ke Meng didn't say whether he believed her. After all, he had never encountered anything this bizarre either.

Someone had fainted in the bathroom yet knew exactly what her daughter was doing. Just thinking about it sent a chill down his spine.

In a modern society so grounded in science, an ordinary person would find something like this hard to believe.

As it happened, however, the man sitting in front of Chen Momo wasn't an ordinary person. He was a powerful boss lurking behind the scenes.

His boss powers existed in the game world. Ke Meng himself didn't possess the outrageous strength of a New Game Plus boss, but he had a powerful combat pet, an educational pet, and the Shadow-Grasping Hand skill the system had just given him. Those were advantages ordinary people didn't have.

Ke Meng adjusted his mindset, shifting from casual listening to rapt attention.

Noticing Brother A-Meng's gaze fixed intently on her, Chen Momo lowered the rice ball in her spoon and continued. "Then I asked my mom whether she'd told me, 'There's no room at home.' She said she'd only thought it and hadn't said it out loud."

"My mom can't remember how she fainted anymore. It's a little weird."

"When I was helping my mom up in the bathroom, I think I saw a dark shadow flash past. It looked like it went into her. I don't know whether my eyes were playing tricks on me or whether a shadow really did enter my mom's body." Chen Momo voiced all her concerns in one breath. The weight on her eased, and she no longer felt it bottled up inside.

"Hey, say something now that you've heard it all, you blockhead." Chen Momo tapped her bowl with her spoon, producing a clear clink.

Ke Meng put down his spoon and asked for further confirmation. "This really happened?"

"I'm not lying. It happened around nine thirty last night. After that, Mom and I closed up early. Your lights on the second floor were still on then," Chen Momo grumbled.

"If it really happened, then the dark shadow you saw last night was probably someone's shadow. It might have entered your mom's body or her shadow."

As he spoke, Ke Meng looked at his newly acquired Shadow-Grasping Hand skill. Sure enough, the system hadn't given him some arbitrary skill.

Hearing Ke Meng earnestly discuss such unconventional things left Chen Momo a little bewildered.

"Wait, you believed me just like that? You accepted it that quickly?" Chen Momo herself was baffled.

Anyone living in a normal world wouldn't believe a friend telling a ghost story in all seriousness so quickly, would they?

Yet Ke Meng believed her. Not only that, he was even helping her analyze what last night's dark shadow had been.

"This is a little hard to explain, but if your mom really is in danger, I can't just ignore it. After all, she pays me rent every month. As the landlord, I need to keep my tenants safe, so I'll have to come clean with you." Ke Meng spread his hands.

There was no getting around this. If he needed to use Shadow-Grasping Hand on Mrs. Chen, her daughter needed to know the risks involved.

It was a matter of taking responsibility for someone's safety. Ke Meng also needed to protect his source of income. If that dried up, he wouldn't be able to enjoy his carefree life anymore.

"Come clean? About what?" Chen Momo's mind could no longer keep up.

She couldn't shake the feeling that Brother A-Meng had suddenly changed his whole style, shedding his laid-back landlord persona and putting on the coat of a detective with delusions of grandeur.

"How should I put this? Let me think..." Ke Meng was a little troubled. How could he explain this strange view of the world?

He looked at the bowl holding the rice balls. There was a faint shadow beneath it, pale but unmistakably there.

"This world might not be as normal as you imagine. Some strange things might exist in it whose workings can't be explained by current scientific theories." As Ke Meng spoke, he reached out and grabbed at the ceramic bowl's shadow, using Shadow-Grasping Hand.

Chen Momo blinked. The round dark shadow beneath the ceramic bowl had vanished, and she had no idea where it had gone.

Ke Meng opened his palm and showed her. "Look. I've grabbed the ceramic bowl's shadow."

The round-faced girl looked at Brother A-Meng's palm. Sure enough, a round black shadow rested on it.

Ke Meng moved the shadow in his palm back beneath the ceramic bowl, and the bowl had its shadow again.

Nice. It worked on the first try, Ke Meng thought.

If he'd failed to grab the shadow, his attempt to show off would have fallen flat. Luckily, that hadn't happened.

"Show me again." Chen Momo looked eager and wanted to see it a few more times.

Ke Meng hadn't had enough either. He nodded and grabbed the shadows of all the inanimate objects in the room. Every one of them came away in his hand.

Even when he shone his phone's flashlight directly on them, the objects cast no shadows. Their shadows were already gone.

Ke Meng tried moving the refrigerator's shadow onto a chair. With a grab and a flick of his right hand, the refrigerator's shadow appeared beneath the chair.

Beside him, Chen Momo's little mouth fell open into a circle at the sight.

Was this a magic trick?

Was this some advanced form of psychological suggestion?

Ke Meng shook his head. "This isn't a magic trick. Shadows really can be grabbed. By the same logic, an abnormal shadow might have entered your mom's body. That's why what happened last night sounds so eerie, like a ghost story."

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