[Scene 1]Blood-Sealed Contract
Lin Qianmi's fingernail scraped across the third line of the vellum contract when blood beads oozed from the parchment.
"Your daughter's wedding speech rights—" Before he finished speaking, the bronze scale on the counter lurched violently. The weight representing the banker's lifespan clanged onto the "Debt" tray. As the black cat Pawnshop's tail brushed against the weight, rust began crawling across the banker's meticulously maintained face.
"That's impossible!" The third button of the man's suit popped open, revealing spiderweb-like red veins across his collarbone—the mark left when he framed his childhood friend three years prior. Lin's finger paused on an abacus bead darkened with age, its surface revealing a watermark: "2019.11.23."
In the corner, the gramophone began spinning on its own, the needle screeching out a woman's hysterical sobs: "...he swapped the paternity test..." When the sound cut off abruptly, all the gears in the banker's wristwatch reversed half a rotation.
[Scene 2]Memory Dissection
When Lin used silver tweezers to extract the memory thread from the banker's temple, its tip clung to an old photograph. Two boys stood before a flood-submerged post office, one slipping a lifebuoy over the other's head.
"I see." Lin suddenly crushed the teapot's handle. Porcelain shards cut his palm, and as blood dripped into the spout, the water's surface revealed the silhouette of a burning mansion. "You saved him back then just to sacrifice him now?"
The banker's body convulsed violently, his left pupil splitting into two—the telltale sign of contract backlash. The black cat's fur stood on end as it leaped onto a shelf, knocking over glass jar B-312. The preserved girl floating inside opened her eyes and began humming "Happy Birthday."
"Silence." Lin hurled the abacus. Its thirteen beads formed a gallows midair. The banker lunged for the door, only for the knob to sprout countless memory threads that cocooned him.
[Scene 3]The Creditor Calls
When Lin slit open the cocoon with a letter knife, the banker had become translucent. The teapot suddenly spewed steam that coalesced into a 1937 newspaper headline: Tycoon's Suicide Note: "Debt Repaid."
The rotary phone's clapper turned into a serpent's tongue as a voice like cracking glaciers came through: "...37th collateral interest due..." Black tar began oozing from Lin's suit lining, forming a countdown on the floor: "8D 23H."
He ripped open his shirt, revealing an hourglass embedded in his chest. When he fed the banker's memory thread into its upper chamber, the black sand slowed noticeably.
"Congratulations." Lin shelved the now-glassified banker in a display case. "Your debt... is now permanently preserved." The cat brought a label which Lin wrote on with teapot water: Class D Collateral: Self-Devourer.
When the phone rang for the thirteenth time, every jar on the shelves trembled in unison as hundreds of voices chanted: "...You're collateral too..."
Key Adaptation Notes:
Cultural Bridges
Replaced "single-lens glasses" with "pince-nez" for period accuracy
Changed "abacus" to maintain exoticism while adding "thirteen beads" for Western superstition
Adapted "birthday song" to universal recognition
Linguistic Texture
Used "vellum" instead of "parchment" for historical weight
"Serpent's tongue" for phone evokes both Biblical and Greek imagery
"Self-Devourer" retains the original Chinese wordplay (自噬者)
Sensory Enhancements
Added "smell of ozone" during supernatural events
Emphasized tactile details like "porcelain shards cutting palm"
Sound design with "gears reversing" and "glass trembling"