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Ever since I got pregnant, it was like a starving ghost had moved into my belly.
I could pack away enough for seven or eight people in a single sitting, and still I needed to snack around the clock.
If I didn't, the hunger would drive me half-mad, and my stomach would cramp up in sharp, twisting waves.
And yet, eating like that, I kept dropping weight anyway — and every checkup came back normal.
To keep my strength up, my mother-in-law was up before dawn and busy till late, cooking me a different nourishing meal every day.
Watching her bustle around for me, I was so touched I couldn't help snapping a photo and posting it to the old dorm group chat:
“What's it like to have a spirit-medium grandmother for a mother-in-law?”
Everyone in the comments was envying my luck, saying I was blessed.
Until one comment popped up out of nowhere:
“Blessed, my foot. This isn't nourishing a pregnancy at all.”
“The demon fetus in your belly is almost fully formed. Keep stuffing your face and you can wait to die with it — two lives, one corpse.”
……
A shudder ran through me, and the bird's nest soup in my mouth suddenly lost all its flavor.
Another message came through.
“Your whole body's been swollen lately, hasn't it? And the morning sickness keeps getting worse?”
“And no matter how much you eat, you feel this frantic, gnawing hunger, and you keep losing weight?”
Tilda Fox's messages came one after another, and my face went cold.
“Tilda, all that cultivation stuff finally fry your brain?”
“You just can't stand seeing anyone else happy, so you make up garbage like this. How can you have such a black heart?”
Back in college, Tilda and I lived in the same dorm.
She was always muttering strange things.
One minute the dorm had bad feng shui, the next somebody had gotten latched onto by something unclean.
After all these years since graduation, I'd assumed she'd finally straightened out.
Turns out she was exactly the same.
I was about to lay into her again when the empty bowls on the dining table caught the corner of my eye, and a guilty little twinge crept in.
Lately my appetite really had gotten out of hand.
At lunch today, my mother-in-law had made five dishes and a soup.
Braised pork ribs, steamed sea bass, chicken soup, bird's nest, and a big platter of beef.
I'd polished off nearly all of it by myself.
And even then, my stomach still felt hollow and desperate, like there was a bottomless pit inside me.
The moment I finished, I'd throw it all back up until the world spun.
And once I was done retching, the hunger would come roaring back so hard my vision blacked out, and I'd want nothing more than to eat all over again.
I'd always chalked it up to severe morning sickness.
After all, the hospital had checked me several times.
The baby was developing normally, and every one of my own readings came back normal too.
The doctor even smiled as he reassured me:
“Every pregnant woman's constitution is different. Some just have huge appetites. As long as the tests are clear, there's no need to worry too much.”
My husband and mother-in-law kept telling me the same thing.
But because of this, I still lost my job.
Last week HR called me into the office, looking helpless.
“Mia Henson, you've always been one of our top performers. The company was planning to invest in you. But ever since you got pregnant, don't you think you've let yourself go a little too much?”
“Pregnant or not, you can't sit there gnawing on food all day long.”
“Do you know what your coworkers are saying about you now? They say you eat like some starving ghost come back to life.”
“The other day during the project pitch, you actually ate right through your own presentation. You blew a deal worth over a million dollars. The company can't absorb losses like that. You should just go home and rest up for the baby.”
I explained as hard as I could that I hadn't done it on purpose.
In that moment I'd been so hungry my stomach was literally spasming.
If I hadn't eaten something, I felt like I would have passed out right there.
But not one person believed me.
They all figured I was hiding behind the pregnancy, sure the company wouldn't dare fire a pregnant woman, so I'd just gotten more and more shameless.
After I quit, I settled in at home to rest up for the baby.
Every day it was nothing but eating and sleeping.
Everyone said I was lucky.
A husband who adored me, and a spirit-medium grandmother of a mother-in-law who treated me like her own daughter.
It was just…… how did Tilda know all this about me?
She'd dropped out freshman year and was never close with any of us. Who'd told her?
The group chat instantly blew up:
“Tilda, back to your ghost-and-demon act again?”
“If you're jealous of how happy Mia is, just say so. Why go around cursing people with this creepy, snide nonsense?”
“Who even added you back in here? Raving like a lunatic. No wonder you dropped out freshman year. Turns out you're actually insane!”
Tilda didn't explain. Instead, she sent a photo.
“Look familiar?”
Frowning, I tapped it open, and the next second, my breath stopped dead.
In the photo was unmistakably the corpse of a pregnant woman.
But what truly made my scalp crawl was the eerie, vine-like pattern spreading across her belly.
It was exactly like the marks on mine…… identical.
