I Don’t Want to Be Turned into a Girl by Magic

Chapter 222 : Lin Nan's Past

At the start of the film, the atmosphere in the room was fairly harmonious.

Uncle Wu Guodong and Cousin Wu Jiaming chatted intermittently about recent international affairs. Liu Xinyi lit a cigarette and stood by the ventilated window, smoking while occasionally interjecting with questions. Only Lin Nan had curled into a ball, out of place with the other three.

"When did you learn to smoke, Xinyi?" Wu Guodong glared at her disapprovingly, then took out a cigarette himself and casually handed one to Wu Jiaming. While smoking himself, he scolded, "What kind of girl smokes?"

"Because I want to." Liu Xinyi couldn't be bothered to care.

Lin Nan suddenly realized she was the only one in the whole room who didn't smoke.

However, Wu Jiaming waved his hand in refusal, lowering his head to chat with his girlfriend on his phone.

"When is Cousin Jiaming planning to get married?" Liu Xinyi asked gossipily. "I heard you have a girlfriend?"

"When have I not had one?" Wu Jiaming pouted and looked up. "I'm only just over twenty. What's the rush to get married?"

Wu Guodong trembled at this topic, trying hard to minimize his presence.

"Little Uncle isn't even married yet. Even if he got married, we still have a twenty-five-year-old older cousin above us. What the hell are we rushing for?" Wu Jiaming crossed his legs, then suddenly looked at Lin Nan. "Though among us, the one getting married fastest will probably be Lin Nan."

Lin Nan, huddled in a ball against the headboard, silently rolled her eyes, then looked up at him and explained weakly, "It really is just borrowing money! Not a bride price!"

"You might think it's borrowing, but I'm afraid he thinks it's a bride price," Cousin Jiaming teased. "You probably don't even know if someone's after your body."

"I do know, okay..." Lin Nan muttered as she turned her head away, her face slightly flushed.

After finishing her cigarette, Liu Xinyi moved closer to Lin Nan again. The bedroom was already full of smoke anyway, so Lin Nan didn't mind, except this girl was into girl. She had to be on guard.

She leaned directly against Lin Nan's side, shoulder to shoulder, and asked in a low voice, "Cousin, you didn't already... give it away for free, did you?"

Lin Nan's face reddened a bit more. She used her hand to pull the blanket up to cover most of her face, leaving only her eyes exposed as she looked up: "No..."

"Sis, you look so guilty."

Well, she'd almost given it away for free.

"Sis, tell me about him? Do you have photos? Is his family rich? How old is he?" Liu Xinyi pushed Lin Nan with her shoulder, showing a smile that all women understood.

But Lin Nan really didn't understand.

"He and I are just best friends... that's why he lent me money for the surgery." Lin Nan complained. "Besides, aren't you accepting this too quickly? Don't you think it's strange that your male cousin became a female cousin?"

"Didn't they say you were always a female cousin to begin with?"

Although that was indeed how it was explained back then, even so, aren't you accepting it too readily?

Lin Nan was at a loss for words and looked up at the wall where the movie was projected.

The movie's plot had made some progress. There wasn't anything scary yet, which let Lin Nan relax quite a bit. However, the atmosphere emanating from the film grew increasingly heavy and tense, involuntarily affecting people's emotions.

Gradually there was no more conversation in the room as all four watched the movie seriously.

After a long while with no so-called horror scenes, the group just stared at the screen, discussing the plot in low voices.

However, just as Lin Nan relaxed, the plot suddenly entered a tense moment. The sound effects also became eerie as they entered the main storyline. Following the protagonist's startles and jumps, Lin Nan began to feel tense.

"Cousin, are you really that scared?" Liu Xinyi beside her glanced at Lin Nan and discovered her body had actually begun to tremble slightly.

"It's fine..." she said casually, but suddenly a horrifying ghost flashed across the screen, scaring Lin Nan into covering her eyes with the blanket and screaming.

The sharp voice immediately startled the other three as well. Lin Nan's reaction was even more frightening than the movie itself.

The scream didn't last long, but Lin Nan had completely buried her head under the blanket, her body trembling uncontrollably.

Wu Jiaming was still joking, "You scared the hell out of me. You're more frightening than the movie."

"I've never seen you this scared watching this kind of movie before, have I?" He completely couldn't understand why Lin Nan's reaction was so extreme.

Liu Xinyi beside her gently patted Lin Nan's shoulder, softly comforting her cousin.

"It's okay, it's okay. Look up again, it's not scary anymore."

Hearing this, Lin Nan tremulously revealed her eyes. After watching for just a few seconds, the movie's protagonist was attacked by the ghost again, accompanied by intense music.

This time she controlled her throat and didn't scream, but her body suddenly shuddered as she whimpered and buried her head in the blanket again.

Liu Xinyi revealed a successful prank smile.

I shouldn't have watched this kind of movie...

I thought when girls screamed it was all planned and deliberate...

I never imagined that one day I'd make that kind of scream too.

Lin Nan was so scared she was about to cry. Her heart was beating violently as if it would jump out of her chest. Her head was dizzy with fright, and her whole body trembled involuntarily.

When she was little, her fear of horror films had only been within the normal range, but for some reason, she'd grown more and more afraid of horror films as she got older. Now she even suspected there really were ghosts in the world and stayed far away from horror films.

Is my courage really this small? How embarrassing...

Lin Nan suddenly threw off the blanket and got up: "I'm not watching anymore. I'm going back to play on the computer."

She pushed open the door but discovered pitch darkness outside. Except for this bedroom with the projector's light, the lights in all other places had long been turned off.

And the hallway light switch was probably on the wall about five meters ahead.

She took a step forward but suddenly felt countless gazes shooting at her from corners in all directions. Lin Nan's footsteps immediately froze.

Then she awkwardly retreated two steps, turned around, closed the door, her shoulders trembling, and looked up at the three people in the room, asking with a crying voice, "Can someone... someone help me turn on a light..."

Wu Guodong helplessly turned on the bedroom light. Looking at Lin Nan, he saw his niece had already been scared to tears. That appearance was so cute it made people want to bully her even more.

But Lin Nan obviously couldn't continue watching this movie.

He was just about to get up when he saw Liu Xinyi had already jumped down from the bed, put on slippers, and came forward.

"I'll turn it on for you! I don't want to watch anymore anyway! Let's go back together."

Liu Xinyi came forward, glanced at the pitiful-looking Lin Nan, opened the door, and went straight to the switch to turn on the hallway light.

Only then did Lin Nan cautiously poke her head out to look at the situation outside, then shrank her little head back: "Turn on the upstairs and downstairs lights too."

"Are you really that scared?"

She muttered and ran back and forth twice more before finally turning on all the lights on the three floors. Now there wasn't a single dark place left in the hallway.

Lin Nan finally had the courage to walk out the door. Accompanied by Liu Xinyi, she hurried upstairs to the bedroom with quick steps.

In the second-floor bedroom, Wu Jiaming, who had witnessed everything, questioned, "Isn't Cousin Lin Nan's courage a bit too small? Does becoming female also make your courage smaller?"

"Who knows, maybe she really encountered a ghost on the back mountain before." Wu Guodong had no more interest in continuing the movie either and got up to pack away the projector.

"You were in the provincial capital attending middle school then. Lin Nan went to play on the back mountain after school and didn't come back until after midnight. She was completely dazed, like that Wang the Fool from the neighboring village, just blank."

"There was such a thing?"

"Otherwise, why do you think your grandparents took such good care of Lin Nan before?"

Wu Guodong continued reminiscing, "Later they found a monk to cure her. There weren't any aftereffects, except her courage became smaller. I didn't know it was to this extent... Tsk, Lin Nan has really had a rough time since childhood."