The red phone on the desk rang for the second time, and Lin Yuqing reached out to answer it.
The screen displayed: Mortal-World Hospital.
The instant her fingertips touched the receiver, the electronic clock on the wall flipped to 6:01.
The phone stopped immediately.
"...You people are punctual even about this?"
A notification popped up on the screen.
> The Nighttime Anomalies Unit has ended its shift. > New cases may not be created outside active-duty hours. > Unanswered calls have been transferred to the next shift's task list.
Lin Yuqing pressed “Handle Now.”
> Request rejected. > The caller has a direct identity relationship with the customer-service agent handling the case. > To avoid a conflict of interest, customer-service agents may not process their own death appeals.
She pressed it again.
The system patiently rejected her with the exact same wording.
"When you were about to add my name to someone else's death, how was that not a conflict of interest?" she asked.
No one answered.
After six, the office seemed to turn into a different place. The fluorescent lights shifted from bluish white to grayish yellow. The posted notice on the wall reading “Listen Carefully to Every Member of the Dead” rolled itself up, revealing another slogan on the back:
> Clocking out on time is also a kind of merit.
The elevator, which had been motionless, began opening its doors one after another. Day-shift employees in gray uniforms streamed inside. Some had pale faces. Some had no faces at all, though every one of them wore a neat name tag on their chest. They placed stacks of new cases on the desks, deftly avoiding the scorch marks on the floor, the overturned chairs, and Nervous, who still hadn't completely crawled out of the filing cabinet.
One day-shift employee glanced at Lin Yuqing, then at the smoking phone on her desk.
"Night shift?"
"First day," Lin Yuqing said.
The other employee gave her an understanding look and walked away with a teacup in hand.
Lin Yuqing had no idea what he understood.
Nervous finally pulled the corner of his uniform free from the drawer. He put his black hat back on, though the tip was still crooked to the left. "We're off the clock. First we have to turn in the fieldwork object echo, then write the bus-stop investigation report, the soul-reaping seal anomaly report, the mourning-staff usage log, and—"
"You call that off the clock?"
"We can take the reports back to the dorm and write them there."
"That's not getting off work. That's just moving overtime to another desk."
Nervous froze, as if hearing such a serious accusation for the first time.
Xie Bi'an tucked the suspension notice into his sleeve. His bronze badge had gone completely dark, leaving only a few old wooden plaques without any writing at his waist. The man who had been able to open the rejected-case door with a casual gesture now stood among the day-shift employees like a piece of office furniture whose name had been removed from the system, but which someone had forgotten to carry away.
"You can keep pressing it," he told Lin Yuqing. "Press it until work starts tomorrow. It still won't let you take the call."
"Then who handles it?"
"The supervisor assigns it."
Lin Yuqing looked toward Director Wu's office. The wooden door was shut tight, and a sign had appeared outside it: “Handover Meeting in Progress. Do Not Disturb Unless It’s a Major Death.”
"Does my death count as major?"
"You don't even have a death record," Xie Bi'an said. "By their classification, you're probably just a data loss."
Lin Yuqing stared at him.
"That joke isn't funny."
"Then you're starting to get used to this place."
He turned and walked toward the elevator. Lin Yuqing remained where she was until her chair slid forward, pushing her away from the desk on its own. A line of text immediately surfaced across the desktop:
> Off-duty employees must leave the work area.
"Where am I supposed to go?" she asked.
Nervous had already stepped into the elevator. Hearing her, he poked his head back out. "Back."
"Back where?"
The elevator doors stopped just before closing.
Nervous looked at her, then at Xie Bi'an.
"You don't have a dorm?"
"When I woke up early this morning, I didn't even know whether I was dead. Do you think someone would have arranged a dorm for me in advance?"
"Normally, the personnel procedure would—"
He stopped halfway through and shut his mouth on his own.
The three of them looked together at the blank form on the office desk marked “No Such Person on Record.”
Xie Bi'an held down the elevator door-open button. "Let's get something to eat first."
"Dead people have to eat too?"
"No."
"Then what are we eating for?"
"Habit."
The elevator didn't move up or down. It moved backward.
When the doors opened again, a long street with no visible end lay outside. The sky was still the underworld's distinctive gray. There was no sun, yet the nighttime lamps beneath the eaves went out one after another, replaced by pale yellow paper lanterns. Employees in night-shift uniforms poured out of the various government offices. Some dragged their feet toward the dorms. Some gathered in front of food stalls to complain about their supervisors. Others sat motionless by the roadside, staring at pocket watches that had stopped long ago.
Wooden signs hung all along both sides of the street: Soul Retrieval Division Field Supplies, Reincarnation Administration Express Haircuts, Dream Delivery Writing Services, Paper Effigy Repairs. Farther away stood a black elevated bridge. A long vehicle with no front carried rows of employees through the fog.
A general store was taking in cardboard boxes burned over from the mortal world. The clerk broke the seals and pulled out three paper phones in different models. Two had no screens. The third began endlessly playing an advertisement its worshipper had forgotten to turn off the moment it powered on. At the stall next door hung a banner reading “We’ll Queue for Your Reincarnation Number—No Refunds Guaranteed.” The vendor was asleep facedown on the table, with a stack of number tickets beside him that people had actually taken.
There were deceptive advertisements here, regulars who never paid back what they owed, and employees who started lining up the moment they got off work. Death hadn't made anything more solemn. It had simply put a new set of forms on all the hassles people had carried in life and kept them running.
"This place isn't just offices?" Lin Yuqing asked.
"The underworld is huge," Nervous said. "There are government offices, dorms, the transfer waiting area, the trial waiting area, and the Eighteen—"
Xie Bi'an coughed.
"And eighteen places that are very unsuitable for a new employee to visit on their first day off," Nervous corrected immediately.
They sat down at a breakfast stall with no sign. The vendor pushed three bowls of soy milk toward them. No steam rose from the bowls, but when Lin Yuqing leaned closer, she could smell a faint charred fragrance. Every sesame pastry beside them was missing one corner, as if someone had taken a bite before sending them here.
Lin Yuqing took a sip.
The soy milk had no taste.
The next second, she remembered the breakfast shop beneath the office building in the mortal world. The paper cups were always too thin. The female clerk would draw a circle on the lid with a red pen to remind her that the cup had no sugar. She even remembered one rainy morning when she held an umbrella in one hand and a phone in the other, hurrying through puddles to clock in.
The memory appeared so completely that she almost thought she would see that gray office building if she looked up.
Then the flavor vanished.
She was still sitting on the sunless long street, a bowl of cold soy milk in her hands.
"The food here isn't for your stomach," Nervous said. "It's for your memories."
"What happens if you eat too much?"
"Some souls keep remembering their favorite flavors from life and refuse to enter the reincarnation cycle. That's why the employee cafeteria limits portions."
"What about you? What do you remember?"
Nervous bit into a sesame pastry with a missing corner and thought seriously for a moment. "Forgetting to eat breakfast before an exam."
"That's not a good memory."
"That's why I usually only eat half."
Xie Bi'an sat across from them, drinking tea. His cup was older than the others, with a repaired gold line around the rim. He took three sips, his expression never changing.
"What do you remember?" Lin Yuqing asked.
"Unpaid debts."
The vendor immediately shouted from farther away, "Seventh Lord, good to know you remember!"
Several nearby tables of employees burst out laughing at once.
Xie Bi'an calmly pushed the bill in front of Nervous.
"Why me?"
"My pay has been suspended."
"But I'm only a trainee—"
"Then you'll work harder to pass the exam."
It was the first time since waking up that Lin Yuqing had heard anyone around her laugh for real. It wasn't a satisfaction-survey sound effect played by the system, or the soft chuckle Xie Bi'an used to dodge questions. It was just a group of people who had recently gotten off work, sitting at a breakfast stall and making fun of a former Black Impermanence who wouldn't pay his debts.
For that moment, the underworld didn't feel like the world after death.
It felt more like a company so large it had no exit.
She lowered her eyes to the soy milk. After Chen Guochang's case ended, she hadn't had a moment to stop. Now the phone had gone silent, and the screen was no longer forcing her to choose. The questions buried beneath work mode began rising to the surface one by one.
Where was her body?
Why had a hospital called the underworld?
Had anyone looked for her during those forty-nine days?
If she really was still alive, was there an unused bowl beside her hospital bed?
Lin Yuqing gripped the cold rim of the bowl, her knuckles gradually whitening.
"Don't think about it right now," Xie Bi'an said.
"You know what I'm thinking?"
"Everyone who just finds out they might still be alive makes about the same face."
"You've seen a lot of them?"
"I shouldn't have seen any."
After saying that, he shifted his gaze toward the street.
Lin Yuqing didn't keep asking. She realized that when Xie Bi'an truly didn't want to answer a question, he didn't joke around.
After breakfast, Nervous took her to the employee housing office. It was a gray building resembling an old civil-registration office. Three rows of ticket machines stood in the lobby, and a sign on the wall read: “Souls, please register for an underworld household record. Employees, use the right side.”
Nervous pulled a ticket from the right-side machine.
The slip displayed: Number of people waiting ahead: 0.
There was no employee at the counter.
They waited ten minutes before a face covered by a white cloth slowly rose behind the counter.
"Type of application?"
"Dormitory for a new employee," Nervous said.
"Name?"
"Lin Yuqing."
The keyboard clicked twice.
"No underworld registry found."
"She has an employee badge."
"No underworld registry found."
"She also has a forty-nine-day review case."
"That's a case, not a household record."
The counter pushed out a rejection slip.
> Unable to confirm whether the applicant is a soul, a living person, or a formal employee. > Please obtain an identity before applying for lodging.
Lin Yuqing stared at it for a long time. "If I had a way to obtain an identity first, I wouldn't be here applying for temporary lodging."
The employee beneath the white cloth paused, then pushed the rejection slip another inch forward.
"Next."
"There isn't anyone before or after us."
"Next."
Nervous pulled her away from the counter. "Don't argue with Housing. They can make an applicant wait until reincarnation."
"So where am I sleeping tonight?"
"You can go to my dorm."
"Trainee underworld-agent dorms prohibit overnight stays by the opposite sex," Xie Bi'an said.
Nervous's ears immediately turned red. "I only meant she could have my bed while I write reports in the hallway!"
Xie Bi'an tore a strip of paper from the back of the suspension notice, wrote a few words on it, and slipped it beneath the bottom edge of the rejection slip.
After a moment of silence from inside the counter, a bronze key emerged.
"Nighttime Anomalies Unit, temporary holding room, one day's use," the employee beneath the white cloth said. "Renewal requires a new application each day. Items from the room may not be brought into reincarnation. Do not summon living people. Do not leave death messages on the walls."
"Aren't you suspended?" Lin Yuqing asked.
"I just know where to slip a rejection slip."
The temporary holding room was located in the employee dormitory behind the Death Appeals Center. The room was tiny, containing only a wooden bed, a desk, and a mirror that reflected no image. Outside the window, the elevated bridge where the headless long vehicle traveled ran directly past. Every few minutes, the gray fog was sliced open by its body.
Nervous hung his spare jacket over the back of the chair. "If you need anything, knock on the wall next door. I live on the third floor below, in the room near the emergency exit."
"Why did you choose the emergency exit?"
"It feels safer."
"Does the exit actually work?"
Nervous thought about it. "I don't know."
He left with his reports. Xie Bi'an stood outside the door without coming in.
"The hospital call," Lin Yuqing said. "You knew it would show up?"
"No."
"Do you know which hospital my body is in?"
"Even if I did, I couldn't tell you."
"Because of the rules?"
"Because the moment you touch information connected to your physical body, your lifeline might drag you back by force. Getting back doesn't mean you'll wake up."
For the first time, Lin Yuqing didn't immediately argue.
"What's the worst that could happen?"
"Your soul returns to your body, but your consciousness gets stuck between the two sides. The underworld can't find you, and the mortal world can't wake you."
"How is that different from now?"
Xie Bi'an looked at her. Only after several seconds did he say, "Right now, you can still ask questions."
He closed the door for her.
The room fell quiet.
Lin Yuqing lay down on the wooden bed, only to realize that souls didn't get tired—or at least, she didn't. She closed her eyes, but her mind still held the red glow of the bus stop, Cai Xiulan's hands putting away the empty bowl, and Chen Guochang's back as he entered the reincarnation cycle.
She rolled over to face the wall.
A regular electronic sound came from inside it.
Beep.
Pause.
Beep.
Like the machine monitoring a heartbeat in a hospital.
Lin Yuqing sat up. At some point, a small red light had appeared on the desk, with a notice from the Death Appeals Center tucked beneath it.
> The mortal-world hospital call has completed conflict-of-interest recusal. > Assigned handler: Pending assignment. > System captured one second of identity-verification audio.
She pressed play.
First came hurried footsteps, followed by the sound of someone shuffling papers. A strange woman spoke from a great distance away:
"Lin Yuqing, twenty-seven years old, forty-ninth day of hospitalization—"
The recording cut off there.
The electronic sound inside the wall rang out again.
This time, Lin Yuqing heard it clearly.
It wasn't interference from the phone.
It was a body that was still alive, answering for her.
## Chapter Terms
- **Underworld registry**: The household-registration data the underworld uses to confirm the identities of souls or resident employees. Anyone without an underworld registry cannot normally apply for a dorm, transportation, or certain daily services. - **Memory meals**: Food consumed by underworld employees to preserve habits from life. Their purpose is not to fill the stomach, but to briefly awaken memories associated with a flavor. - **Temporary holding room**: A room available for short-term use by personnel whose identities have not yet been confirmed and who cannot enter the regular soul waiting area. It must be reapplied for each day. - **Conflict-of-interest recusal**: Customer-service agents may not process death appeals involving themselves or anyone directly connected to them. The case must be transferred to another employee to prevent the death result from being altered or concealed.
> The underworld organization and rules in this work are fictional settings. Some names are drawn from Chinese folk beliefs.