The Long Night Hangs Over the City

Suspended City is called a second life. One hundred thousand people went in. Only after entering did they learn that the exit was on the first floor, while they were all on the ninety-ninth.

No one read them the rules. They had to figure them out one by one: die once in the tower, and you won't die. Instead, one person will be taken from you: the one you could never bear to forget. Once you've forgotten them, you can't even say their surname. You can only ask everyone you meet, "Did I forget something?"

Chen Mo is a mortuary cosmetologist who entered the tower to find his missing younger sister. After seven years of helping the dead make their final journey, he's changed jobs here, tidying up the belongings of the dead. He's the only one in the entire tower who has never died, and the only one who can still say a name in full. So people begin begging him to read a list aloud every night and remember it for them. By the stove, a girl keeps the books, converting favors, meal costs, and lives into ticks, one entry at a time.

But the person he's looking for is standing just three steps away, head bowed as she washes dishes. The name above her head is as faint as a wisp of breath on glass. Every night, she washes one more bowl, never asking who it belonged to.

The one hundred thousand people climbing toward the top of the tower aren't all doing it to survive. They're doing it because they want to remember.

This novel and its characters are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is purely coincidental. Do not imitate.