Ever since Kim Min-kyung could touch objects, he seemed to have found a new way to amuse himself.

Fortunately, he still couldn’t touch humans.

This time, the first to suffer was not Eun Chul-woo, but the young man who was always hovering around him.

Ever since the vase fell for no reason in the reading room, the young man’s interest in Eun Chul-woo had grown even stronger.

“Do you have special powers?” the young man whispered. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone. After all, even if I did, no one would believe me, just like they don’t believe you, right?”

The young man was clearly a bit clever, but unfortunately, he was too young. He overestimated his own ability to handle things and, more importantly, underestimated the viciousness of the “special power” itself.

The first accident happened when the young man was eating.

Eun Chul-woo, as usual, had no appetite. He pushed the kimchi soup to the young man and only ate a few bites of rice and a vegetable salad.

The young man was overjoyed and, as usual, poured the kimchi soup into his own bowl and then wolfed it down.

“Ah—!”

After just a few bites, the young man suddenly cried out. A bloody glass shard was spat onto the dining table, leaving a long gash on the side of his tongue.

The inmates were shocked and started rummaging through their own trays. Even those who usually ate quickly began to chew slowly.

Kim Min-kyung burst out laughing. “Isn’t it so much fun, Chul-woo? No wonder the ghosts in movies love to scare humans. Did you see their expressions? Haha, so cute, right?”

The young man was taken away by the prison guards to have his wound dressed, and the glass shard was taken along with him, meaning they were going to investigate its source.

Eun Chul-woo stared at the tray that had mixed two bowls of kimchi soup. Kim Min-kyung didn’t even need to see his expression to know what he wanted to ask.

“Are you wondering if that shiny, cute little piece of glass was originally in your bowl or his?” Kim Min-kyung looked at Eun Chul-woo with a smile.

Eun Chul-woo still said nothing.

But this time, Kim Min-kyung didn’t find it boring. He said gently, “Of course it was in your bowl, my Chul-woo~ I told you I don’t like him, but you always give him your food. I’m really not happy~”

“Heh…” Eun Chul-woo sneered.

Is that so?

Because you were unhappy, you put a broken piece of glass in his bowl. What if I had been the one to drink the kimchi soup today? Would the person with the cut tongue have been me?

But there’s nothing to be done. Because I killed a madman, I have become the plaything of a mad ghost, constantly entangled, and it may never stop.

You really are lucky, Min-kyung.

“Don’t look like that~” Kim Min-kyung whined. “You always eat slowly and chew your food carefully, unlike that naive idiot. But well, even if there was a one in ten thousand chance that the injured person was our Chul-woo, that would only be because you’ve made me angry too many times. Even God couldn’t stand it, so he punished you, right?”

Eun Chul-woo closed his eyes.

He had a feeling that this guy, Kim Min-kyung, seemed to have gone even crazier.

The incident in the cafeteria was taken very seriously because the guards found that, based on the CCTV footage, no one in the kitchen or the cafeteria had made any movements that looked like they were putting glass shards into the kimchi soup.

Just when everyone thought it was an accident, a sharp-eyed guard suddenly said, “Didn’t a vase break in the reading room that day? It was inmate Eun Chul-woo who broke it, right?”

Upon comparison, the material and pattern of the vase matched the glass shard in the kimchi soup. Thus, as the person most associated with the glass shard, Eun Chul-woo was taken away by the guards for questioning.

The questioning was polite at first, but then the guards grew impatient and started to get physical. If he wouldn’t admit it, a beating would serve as a warning.

Eun Chul-woo returned to his cell, clutching his abdomen. His cellmates stared at him. “Hey, isn’t that kid on good terms with you? Why would you put glass in his soup and give it to him to drink?”

The inmates saw that the glass shard was small enough that it wouldn’t get stuck in one’s throat. If the young man had eaten a little faster and swallowed it directly, he might have died.

“I didn’t do it,” Eun Chul-woo said indifferently.

“If you didn’t do it, who did?!” Another inmate almost rushed forward but was held back by others. “You bastard, you put that kind of thing in the food of someone who showed you goodwill! You murderer!”

If they were outside, they wouldn’t care who did what. But here, where everyone was forced to live together every day, and the other person was a murderer who would harm those around him, who could sleep soundly? Was he trying to test how tough their lives were?

Eun Chul-woo said again, “I didn’t do it.”

“You say it wasn’t you, so it wasn’t you? I can say I saw you do it! Anyway, the glass shard is so small it won’t leave any fingerprints. No one can do anything to you. That’s what you’re thinking, right?!”

“Oh my, just a shard of glass. I didn’t expect them to think this way~” Kim Min-kyung seemed a little troubled. “Chul-woo, you’re so good at shifting blame, aren’t you?”

He faced the wall.

“What’s the matter?”

Kim Min-kyung was particularly quiet during this period, because of the new year.

The inmates were all whispering. They secretly discussed why the young man hadn’t returned after so long when he had only injured his tongue. Could it be that he had been diagnosed with some other illness?

The speculation did not last long. There were always well-informed people among the inmates. Soon, the reason for the young man’s long absence spread.

“Daebak… have you guys heard?” several inmates whispered in a circle. “That young man—he’s dead!”

“What??? Didn’t he just cut his tongue? How could he die? Was there poison in the soup bowl too?”

“Ah, [shibal]… is it that thing called tetanus? Can glass also cause tetanus?”

“Hurry up and tell us, how did he die?”

The one hour of outdoor time on the playground was a rare opportunity for everyone to communicate freely. Now that there was shocking gossip, almost all the inmates had heard about the young man’s fate after just one outdoor session.

Unlucky, and very strange.

He was originally supposed to have medicine applied to his tongue. The tweezers held a cotton ball to press on the wound, but for some reason, perhaps the doctor in the infirmary made a mistake, the tweezers slipped and stabbed directly into his throat.

The throat is very fragile. Even though the tweezers were blunt, they were still metal. If the young man hadn’t dodged quickly, he probably would have died then and there.

With his tongue and throat injured one after the other, to make up for the doctor’s mistake, the young man was specially approved to stay in the infirmary until he recovered.

The environment in the infirmary was much better than in the prison. At least he could go to the toilet whenever he wanted, he wouldn’t be bullied, and he could eat more nutritious patient meals.

That’s what the young man thought at first.

But soon, strange things began to happen. The young man’s light soup would occasionally become very spicy, as if it had been rinsed with Cheongyang chili peppers. His rice would be mixed with sand and heavy salt, and even his water was mixed with strange things.

The fragile wound would easily become inflamed. When he was given an anti-inflammatory injection, the needle would also strangely point directly at the young man’s eyeball.

In just over ten days, the guy became even more silent than Eun Chul-woo, as if he had been punished by a demon from hell.

Until one morning, the young man’s body was found in the toilet—cause of death: drowned in the sink.

Drowned?

Eun Chul-woo froze. His hand loosened, and the cup hit the table with a clang.

Ever since the young man had moved into the infirmary, no one had talked to Eun Chul-woo during their walks on the playground. So Eun Chul-woo only heard his cellmates discussing this matter after he returned to his cell.

Could a grown man drown himself face down in a small toilet sink? It was almost impossible unless his head was being held down.

It was self-evident who the murderer was, but this realization sent cold sweat down Eun Chul-woo’s whole body.

That guy… couldn’t he not touch living people?

His ghost state was indeed constantly evolving, Kim Min-kyung hummed and smiled at himself in the mirror.

At first, he could only float around with his feet off the ground. No one saw him, and no one heard him. Later, he could start walking on the ground, and this guy Eun Chul-woo could even hear him.

He originally thought this was all, but before long, he unexpectedly found that he could even send a vase flying. And then this time… he had personally taken care of a very tactless and self-righteous, annoying little ant.

This was the first time Kim Min-kyung had killed someone with his own hands.

It felt pretty good.

No wonder that guy Chul-woo liked it.

Taking advantage of the fact that no one could see him, Kim Min-kyung wandered around the prison without a care. He even visited a few unoccupied solitary confinement cells, thinking about which one would be more suitable for him and Eun Chul-woo to move into.

Ah…

How can I be put in solitary confinement?

To be honest, it doesn’t matter if it’s in prison or not. As long as there’s a separate space for him and Chul-woo, that guy might be willing to say a few words to him, right?

Always performing a one-man show, even if he is an actor, he’s going to go crazy~

It seemed that everyone who got close to Eun Chul-woo would have bad luck, regardless of whether their relationship was good or not. This was the newest conclusion the inmates had reached.

For example, that young man who had suddenly died more than a month ago. The police announced it was suicide. This conclusion seemed a bit hasty. The media reported it extensively and relentlessly. The police had no choice but to release the CCTV footage.

In the footage, the young man, who had just washed his hands, suddenly froze in place. Like a rusty robot, he slowly raised his hand to turn on the water in the sink. After the water was full, the young man even smiled at himself in the mirror.

But the next second, his face darkened as he plunged his head into the water, his palm pressing down on the back of his head. He seemed to have gone crazy, his right hand clenched into a fist, desperately hammering the back of his own neck, as if he wanted to break his own cervical spine.

Compared to suicide, it was more like some kind of terrifying ritual.

Although the inmates found it strange, thinking of the young man’s eyeball being poked by a needle and the life sentence with no future, it seemed that going crazy and committing suicide was also plausible.

However, what happened next was unexpected. The inmates living with Eun Chul-woo started having accidents one after another.