Chen Yalin

Chen Yalin is Wang Xin's deceased school friend and the spirit bound to a ballpoint pen used for the Pen Spirit game. A fatal prank is initially mistaken for suicide, and her later employment at the House of Horrors gives her a way to help rather than remain trapped by that accident.

Biography

A prank that killed its performer

Chen Yalin and Wang Xin are close friends at Mu Yang High School when Yalin stages a hanging to frighten her with a Pen Spirit prank. A failed chair and rope turn the performance into a fatal accident, leaving Wang Xin traumatized and Yalin unable to explain what happened. Bound to the pen and the school alongside the twenty-four dead students, she appears hostile when mocked or pressed beyond her knowledge, but her real motivation is regret and the need to reach her surviving friend. Chen Ge brings the pen to Wang Xin, allowing the truth to replace the assumption that Yalin deliberately abandoned her. (Chapters 77–90, 101–105)

Chen Ge then accepts Chen Yalin as the first supernatural employee formally hired through the black phone. Work, fright energy, and contact with other spirits give her a new place after years of isolation. She remains limited to brief written predictions and does not become an all-knowing oracle, but her warnings repeatedly support the House while she develops independent judgment beyond the angry responses of the original game. (Chapter 105; later appearances through Chapter 1166)

Appearance and personality

Chen Yalin first manifests through a broken ballpoint pen, answering in terse writing and reacting violently when insulted. Memories reveal an ordinary schoolgirl whose recklessness, not malice, caused her death. As an employee she is lonely, guilt-ridden, sometimes temperamental, and increasingly cooperative when treated as a person with useful work rather than as a novelty to summon. (Chapters 77–90, 101–105)

Skills and supernatural abilities

Chen Yalin can animate the pen and write an answer to one question per day. Her prediction succeeds only about half the time, is constrained by what she can perceive, and becomes dangerous when users mock her or demand impossible knowledge. The pen is her medium rather than a general tool she can freely abandon. Her Special-Type Baleful Specter classification recognizes an unusual object-bound spirit; it does not grant Red Specter-level force. (Chapters 77–90, 105)

Power progression

Relationships

• Wang Xin: Chen Yalin's best friend and intended target of the failed prank. Reaching her allows Yalin to apologize and correct the story of her death. (Chapters 90, 101–105)
• Chen Ge: The person who carries her back to Wang Xin and then offers her formal supernatural employment. (Chapters 77–105; later appearances through 1166)
• Mu Yang High School's twenty-four students: Fellow dead students who keep her tied to the school because they still regard it as home. (Chapters 101–105)

Items

• Cursed Ballpoint Pen: Chen Yalin's spiritual medium and the object through which the Pen Spirit game produces written answers. (Chapters 77–90)
• Chen Yalin's name tag: An identifier connecting the spirit in the pen to the dead Mu Yang student and to Wang Xin's memories. (Chapters 101–105)