Possessed Cat, Possessed Life

Lin Yanyu did what any rational, educated young woman would do when confronted with a ghost in her mirror.

She threw a talisman at him.

It was hand-drawn (badly) with a permanent marker, folded unevenly, and smelled like hotpot grease. She’d copied it off a blog titled Ghost-Be-Gone: Taoist DIY for Broke Students. The blog had three stars on Bilibili, but it was all she had.

The paper slapped through the air and flopped to the ground. Shen Weizhi didn’t even blink.

“That… usually works,” she mumbled.

“It does not,” he replied coolly. “And your ‘ink’ smells like expired beef.”

Yanyu scrambled backward on all fours until she hit her laundry pile. “Okay, okay. Let’s start over. Who are you, why are you in my mirror, and can I please not be cursed until after finals?”

Shen Weizhi stepped out of the mirror.

Literally stepped.

His robes flowed like water as he glided onto her tacky IKEA rug. The air around him shimmered with a strange glow, ancient and cold. It made her ramen cup tremble.

“I am Shen Weizhi,” he repeated. “Royal Exorcist of the Late Han Court. Sealed within that jade hairpin for over two thousand years.”

Yanyu blinked. “Okay but… why?”

His expression twitched, just for a second. “I was betrayed. Poisoned. Cursed by the very spirits I was sworn to control. I have slumbered until someone foolish enough… touched the hairpin.”

He glared at her.

She pointed at herself. “Me? Foolish?”

His gaze dropped to her hoodie, which said in large pink letters: GHOSTS HATE ME (AND I HATE THEM BACK).

“…Fair,” she admitted.

A loud bang echoed from the kitchen.

Yanyu jumped three feet in the air, knocking over a pile of cursed tea mugs. “What now?!”

Shen turned sharply toward the door. “That sound was—”

Before he could finish, a black blur launched into the room, hissed like an ancient demon, and leapt onto her desk.

Chairman Meow.

His eyes glowed gold. Not in the normal, judgmental cat way. In a definitely-possessed-by-something-spiritually-unstable way.

“Yanyu,” the cat said, in perfect Mandarin. “This ghost is annoying.”

Yanyu screamed again. Her throat was going to need ointment by the end of the week.

“You… possessed my CAT?!”

Shen looked vaguely offended. “I needed a vessel. The feline was… unoccupied.”

“You couldn’t possess something inanimate? Like a chair? A dust bunny?!”

“The cat had fewer complications,” he said flatly, now speaking through the cat. The feline’s mouth moved awkwardly like a badly dubbed anime character. “Also, I enjoy the warm paws.”

“Get out of my cat, Shen!”

“I will return to spiritual form shortly,” the possessed Chairman Meow said. “But be warned—this binding is not temporary. You and I are linked now. Wherever you go, I follow.”

The light flickered. The temperature dropped again.

Then, suddenly—nothing. The glow faded. Chairman Meow blinked normally again and licked his paw like none of it had happened.

Yanyu stared in stunned silence.

Then she looked at the hairpin, now glowing faintly again on her desk.

Then at the mirror.

Then at the cat.

Then at her cursed, miserable life.

“I need new hobbies,” she muttered.

Chairman Meow meowed casually and batted a talisman off the desk.

Shen’s voice echoed faintly from the mirror once more.

“This is only the beginning.”

Yanyu buried her face in a pillow and screamed one more time for good measure.