"You little idiot, are you deliberately looking for trouble? I reserved this room first, so of course it should be rented to me!" Now Grace Lincoln wasn't afraid of Jason Grant being crazy anymore—after all, if anyone dared to snatch her shared apartment inside the Third Ring for just four hundred yuan a month, she could go crazy herself and take them out.

"Little girl, just because you reserved it first, it's yours? Do you even know what market competition is? Beauty, don't pay her any mind—whatever price she offers, I'll add five more! Plus, I'll throw in a private oil massage every night." As Jason Grant spoke, he shamelessly pulled a piece of chocolate from his pocket and stuffed it into his mouth.

"Fine, you're just asking for it! Do you even know what I've been through today? I can't keep up with my studies, my parents got divorced behind my back! After coming back to China, I don't even have enough money to stay in a hotel, and now you're here to make things worse! Are you even human?!" Grace Lincoln finally broke down, crying like a dam bursting.

Don't blame her for being weak—who could go through so much misfortune in a single day and only break down now? It's already a miracle of life.

"Stop crying!" Suddenly, the woman in red, who had just been gentle, shouted, startling Grace Lincoln. Her expression changed again, instantly softening as she said, "You two are fighting so hard here, but you haven't even seen the apartment yet. Is it really necessary? How about you come in and take a look too, young man?"

The woman swung the door of 1440 wide open. Jason Grant took a deep breath, grabbed the handle of his suitcase with one hand, and slung that strange black box over his back. "Alright, let's take a look."

So, Jason Grant walked into the shared apartment. As he passed by Grace Lincoln, he leaned in close to her ear and whispered, "I gave you a way out, but you insisted on walking into a dead end... silly girl."

Chapter 2: The Ghost Landlady

A shared apartment—a term that sounds so ambiguous, it can instantly make losers fantasize about a thousand different AV plots.

But in the capital, it's just a more tactful way of putting things. For the millions of outsiders flooding into this city, a shared apartment is more like a nightmare—a place even nightmares can't contain.

A few flimsy pieces of plywood, so thin you could poke through them with a finger, a five-square-meter room, a small bed, and windowless walls—these are the components of this nightmare.

Only after living in a place more crowded than a four-generation household will you understand that what dream-chasing drifters in Beijing need isn't perseverance, but endurance.

If life were even a little better, who would willingly get up at 5 a.m.—not for work, but just to avoid being late after queuing for the bathroom? Coming home at night, you have to keep your headphones on, or else you'll be treated to a never-ending loop of moans mixed with arguments.

For everyone's sake, the capital has long since banned basement rentals, letting the sunless drifters finally come up to the surface.

But the resulting three-bedroom, one-living-room apartments converted into ten-room, no-living-room shared flats really taught everyone what it means to have "ambitions higher than the sky, but walls thinner than paper."

Want to see sunlight? No problem—add a hundred yuan for a cubicle with a window, and don't even think about bargaining. That's just this month's price...

Grace Lincoln had nothing to complain about regarding all this. The dream she needed to fulfill here was far more difficult than that of the average Beijing drifter. How many people have ever thought about saving their family, and how many have actually succeeded?

As the saying goes, when it rains, it pours; when a mother wants to remarry, fate can't be defied.

Unfortunately, nineteen-year-old Grace Lincoln still didn't understand what "fate can't be defied" meant. She only knew that if fixing her parents' marriage required a sacrifice, Grace Lincoln would step onto the altar of the shared apartment without hesitation.

However, there was someone trying to stop Grace Lincoln from risking everything for her family. This guy, sucking on candy, dragged his suitcase behind him, looking at everything around him with the disgust of someone who'd just walked into a rat's nest.

Actually, the environment provided by the landlady wasn't bad. It was a 120-square-meter, three-bedroom, two-living-room apartment. One room was reserved for the landlady herself, while the other two bedrooms and two living rooms had been partitioned into ten rooms. Each room was about six square meters—just enough for a small bed and a desk.

The only thing a bit off was the decor. The hallway was lit with ambiguous red bulbs—the kind you'd only see in a hair salon that doesn't actually cut hair.

The walls of the hallway were covered with photos of the landlady, all taken during her travels: Dubai, Italy, France, Bali... It was clear she was a woman who knew how to have fun, and her smile back then wasn't as cold as it was now.

"Smells like a corpse in here..." Walking down the straight hallway, Jason Grant casually took a photo off the wall and sniffed it.

"Corpse smell? That's just your own body odor from not showering, old man," Grace Lincoln shot Jason Grant a disdainful glare.

"Judging by the smell, the body's been rotting for at least three months." Jason Grant ignored Grace Lincoln completely, his fingers flying as he calculated. "Just my luck—today happens to be the Ninth-Nine Soul-Returning Night, the most troublesome day of all."

"Stop pretending to be all mystical. You're just trying to scare me off so you can steal my room." Grace Lincoln was at the end of her rope—unless she actually saw a corpse, there was no way she'd give up.

Just then, strange breathing sounds came from the room beside them. The door, not fully closed, was left ajar.