Between Life and Death

When someone dies in the village, their family prepares a stack of small bills in denominations of five or ten yuan for the funeral. They call this money "sea offerings."

Grandpa told me there were three kinds of people who must never receive sea offerings: fugitives, mothers and children who die together, and those who die violent deaths.

I used to scoff at all this, until one time I accepted the sea offerings of someone who had died violently...

This novel and its characters are entirely fictional. Any resemblance is purely coincidental. Do not imitate.