Chapter3

"No!"

On the other end of the line, Liam laughed louder than I’d ever heard him. "Mia, you're making that little goblin out to be way worse than he is! He's literally a little angel delivering cash! I was supposed to get that grant anyway; he just sped up the process a bit!"

Right after he spoke, my phone buzzed. Liam had transferred $5,000 to me. The note read: [Pocket money for Mommy from her goblin son.]

I stared at those words, my stomach tying itself into knots, and returned the money immediately.

Later that evening, Liam squeezed into my apartment and slammed two Apple bags onto the dining table.

"The newest MacBook Pro." He was practically vibrating with excitement. He tossed a set of car keys next to them. "A used Audi—down payment already covered. You don't have to work at the diner anymore."

I stared at the car logo, a surge of anger shooting through my chest. "You spent the money?"

"Why wouldn't I? The credit card late fees are completely paid off!" He threw his hands up. "Next step: renting a luxury apartment and preparing for our post-grad wedding!"

"Are you out of your mind?!" I shoved the bags back toward him. "That's over twenty thousand dollars!"

Liam shrugged nonchalantly. "There's going to be way more where that came from."

My stomach dropped. "What else did that goblin say to you?"

His eyes darted away, and he fell silent.

A horrifying suspicion surfaced in my mind. I didn't dare dwell on it, simply fixing a dead stare on him. "Did you agree to it?"

I remembered the line from that story: [Daddy said yes. He took the money, and once I'm born, he can take me to live in a big house!]

The smile vanished from Liam's face. "Enough, Mia! I'm standing right here. Am I dead?"

"Get out," I forced through gritted teeth, pointing at the door.

He cursed and slammed the door behind him.

The apartment fell silent again. I opened my laptop, logged into the university's intranet, and searched the financial department's updates for the day.

Fifteen minutes later, an announcement made me freeze: [Mr. Arthur, auditor for the Financial Department, passed away this morning from a sudden cerebral hemorrhage. Due to a system disconnection failure, several backlogged financial aid grants were approved erroneously.]

I stared at the screen, my fingertips trembling.

Someone else had died.

I stayed up all night, calling Liam over and over. He didn't pick up once.

At dawn the next day, I sent a text: [Tell me the truth. Did you or did you not agree to be his father last night?]

A few minutes later, a screenshot of a crypto wallet popped up. Balance: $100,000. The note read: [A morning gift from our son.]

Liam's text followed immediately: [I actually just casually said yes to him in a dream earlier. Look, a hundred grand hit the wallet in the early hours! I'm still alive, aren't I?]

I dialed his number immediately.

"It's really fine, Mia. Besides, the goblin said, as long as we give birth to him..."

That terrifying suspicion I hadn't dared to entertain had just become absolute reality.

"We?" I cut him off sharply.

Over the phone, Liam carried a faint, eerie smile in his voice: "Yeah. He said... since I said yes, there's no way you can run away now."

I hung up on him immediately.

I used a courier app to pack up and return everything he had left behind. I ignored every single one of his missed calls and just sent one text: [We're through. Do not contact me again.]

He replied almost instantly: [Are you crazy? I have a car and a hundred grand now. We can get married right after graduation. What are you doing?]

I put the phone face-down on the desk. The man I had known for ten years suddenly felt utterly foreign to me. Before, I just thought he was terrified of being poor. But now, for a few strings of digital numbers, he was willing to gamble with his own life—and mine.

[I don't want to get rich off dead people's money, and I am absolutely not giving birth to a monster forged from flesh and blood.]

Send. Delete. Block.

But even after doing all that, the cold sweat on my back didn't stop. The girl in that story who refused the money—she separated from the guy, but she still got pregnant in the end.

That afternoon, I went to the State University-affiliated hospital. My tense shoulders didn't slump until the doctor placed the blood test results in front of me and said, "HCG levels are normal. You are not pregnant."

As long as I severed all ties with Liam and didn't touch another man, there was no way that infant goblin could find a channel into reality.

Walking out of the hospital, I quit my job, packed a duffel bag, bought a Greyhound bus ticket, and fled back to my hometown in Ohio overnight.

I didn't dare tell my parents, terrified they'd drag me straight to a psychiatric ward. Everything finally seemed to be getting on track. I slept in every day until I naturally woke up, helped my dad mow the lawn in the afternoons, and watched stand-up comedy in the living room at night.

Until the morning of the fifth day. I was pouring milk in the kitchen while my mom fried eggs at the stove. She suddenly turned around, smiling as she asked, "Mia, did you read a lot of Nordic fairy tales when you were little?"

I froze for a second. "No. Why ask that all of a sudden?"