Chapter 18: A Defective Zombie
"Young Master, you haven’t been eating anything since yesterday..." Cristoff gave him a worried look. "Are you sure about this starving thing that—"
"It’s called intermittent fasting," Matthew said. To find out if he was really a zombie, he chose to do something a little different than hurting himself. He disliked pain, of all things, and didn’t want to experience the pain that he felt in his past life. So, he was starving himself. "I had dinner before six last night and it’s currently..."
"One in the afternoon," Cristoff said.
"Right, so I’ve been fasting for about nineteen hours now." He turned his attention back to the book he was reading. The hunger had started not long after dinner—but it wasn’t normal hunger. He still remembered the taste of the food, still found it appetizing. But something felt off. The food didn’t satisfy him. It didn’t fill him. Not really. There was something different about this hunger. Something deeper.
"A friend of mine will come today. His name is Teddy. Let him in. Before anything else," he glanced at the ghost following behind Cristoff.
One thing was clear—his hunger was somehow connected to the ghosts. The moment he started feeling that deep, gnawing emptiness in his stomach, the spirits began to appear again. He still couldn’t explain how or why, or why that encounter with Adam the other day had left him feeling strangely better. But now that the hunger had returned, so had they.
And the hungrier he got, the more ghosts he saw. They lingered throughout the mansion—by doorways, in hallways, near windows—some pacing, some still, all silent. Yet none of them seemed to notice him. They never made eye contact, never reacted to his presence.
Over time, he had learned to ignore them.
He got up from where he was sitting. "Did you prepare the thing that I told you to?" he asked.
"Yes," Cristoff answered.
"And you kept it a secret?"