Chapter 3: Chapter Three: Reaching Consensus (Please Collect!)

"Alright, now we just wait for a reply."

Niino Li lay on the small bed, letting the breeze from the balcony brush over his body, savoring a moment of cool comfort.

Although his physical condition was marked as 0, after the Inotori Park incident, his physical fitness seemed to improve steadily, as if breaking free from the system's metrics and growing on its own.

The night grew deeper; sleepiness gradually crept in, and he turned onto his side, facing the wall, and fell asleep.

Morning sunlight often carries a certain duty, faithfully waking every worker on time.

Perhaps due to his body's biological clock, even with insufficient sleep, Niino Li still woke up unconsciously, making a slight effort to overcome drowsiness.

But his eyelids were extremely heavy—that was proof of sleep deprivation.

After hastily washing up, Niino Li took out a few slices of bread and half a cup of milk from the fridge for breakfast, eating while checking his LINE messages on his phone.

What surprised him was—

Sawa Sonoko had already accepted his friend request.

That wasn't the point; he had sent the request at 2:30 a. m., yet she accepted it at—

2:31 a. m.!

Seeing this, Niino Li became even more convinced she wasn't ordinary—who in their right mind accepts a LINE request from a stranger at three in the morning?!

He briefly gathered his thoughts, held his phone with solemn care, as if praying to the guardian spirit of Kamiya Shrine, and carefully typed the following words:

"Do you believe ghosts exist in this world?"

To better gauge her level, he did not reveal his purpose or personal situation.

Deep down, Niino Li felt normal social methods would not work with Sawa Sonoko.

After sending the message, the air froze into silent stillness; only occasional wind from outside stirred objects in the room, rustling the drawings hung on the wall with faint tapping sounds.

"Ding—"

Niino Li stared intently at his phone screen; with a soft chime, a paragraph of text appeared in the message box, reflected in his pupils.

"Yes! Where there are gods, there are ghosts—nothing in this world is absolutely singular.

All things carry thought; 'thought' condenses from intense human emotions. When the 'thought' concentrated on a vessel reaches a certain level, it becomes an invisible spirit.

Spirits vary in nature, just as human emotions are positive or negative. Those infused with negative emotions carry fierce resentment and unconsciously harm the living, while those imbued with positive emotions become protective deities of the land."

Not missing a single punctuation mark, Niino Li read every word carefully, his eyes fixed on the screen, pausing occasionally to ponder and summarize.

When he finished reading the last character, she seemed to have anticipated his action and sent another message: "When a creepypasta is widely believed as a true event, the world automatically accommodates its existence."

His heart experienced an unprecedented shock.

Niino Li suddenly stood up, his eyes instantly brightening, his mind racing in resonance with Sawa Sonoko's views; the last lingering doubt within him vanished at once.

"This person doesn't speak empty words."

He recalled the three creepypasta incidents he had encountered so far; from a modern scientific perspective, they seemed like logical contradictions, absurd jokes—but upon shifting perspective, he realized they all stemmed from some unspoken, conventional law.

"Then I'll ask her about the Bug Grudge."

Niino Li organized the account Okura Sa'u had given him, checked it several times, and sent it over.

Under current circumstances, if she possessed a more effective spirit-exorcising method, it would be far safer than relying on his own unconscious, bizarre state.