When a bad neighbor meets a bratty kid

I bought an old, rundown apartment for $70,000 in cash, but the elderly neighbor upstairs had been harassing everyone in the building for over a decade. The previous owner had been driven away, and the law couldn't do anything about it. When I knocked on the door to confront the elderly man, he threw himself on the floor and shouted that he was having a heart attack—a common tactic used to avoid confrontation in some cultures. Even when the property management staff arrived, it was useless. I didn't lose my temper. Instead, I bought ten kilograms of snail noodle soup broth—a pungent, fermented rice noodle soup popular in China—loaded it into a syringe, and poured it into the ceiling cracks. Three days later, the entire building reeked of a foul, rotting smell, and the elderly man broke down in tears and called the police. The property manager stared at me and asked, “Did you do this?” I blinked innocently and replied, “My cooking went bad. Is that a crime?” The day the elderly man moved out, I gave him a decorative thank-you banner that read: “Thanks for the life lesson.”