My name is Lu Jiuyuan.
After graduating, I worked diligently.
But every night, just as I drift off to sleep, strange memories surface:
The time clock at midnight is more soul-rattling than the bell at the City God Temple that sends the dead on their way.
As an unyielding corpse who has lived for over eighteen hundred years,
I eventually bowed to the lure of social insurance and a housing fund.
The problem is getting enrolled:
The Underworld has no record of me, and the living world has no trace of my existence.
HR's been looking at me more and more like I'm an undocumented worker.
When I slack off on the clock, sunlight makes my bones ache, so I have to pretend I've been sitting in the air conditioning too long.
Other people bring coffee to work.
I bring an urn of ashes.
After all, keeping my yin energy fresh is essential for an old bag of bones.
My boss is always praising me, saying I “work like I have nothing to lose.”
Little does he know, I've been without that thing for ages.
A difficult client?
I visit them in a dream at midnight and let them experience a graveyard rave. You can bet they'll be polite the next day.
A colleague fighting tooth and nail for sales?
I add a little “yin virtue supplement” to their coffee. They can hit their KPI even while slacking off.
By day, I'm revising the eighteenth version of a PowerPoint in the CBD. The client's demands are harder to fathom than a Taoist priest's talismans.
At night, I go back to my rented room and chow down on funeral-home special: rice mixed with cremated ashes.
The couple next door argues so loudly they're about to shatter the jade talisman that's protected me for a thousand years.
My colleagues say my skin is “so good, you wouldn't think I was alive.”
I'm holding down the bluish wrist bone peeking from under my sleeve.
A thousand years of cultivation can't compete with an attendance bonus. Even the ghosts keep their distance from me.
And yet I still have to fight for the last pork rib in the cafeteria.
Then the new intern spotted the yin energy gathering beneath my desk and asked in a low voice:
“Senior, shouldn't you get a talisman for your workstation?”
Me: “Thanks for asking. I'm applying for workers' compensation on the grounds that my body, such as it is, is being worn down in the living world. Though all that's left is bone.”
Intern: !!!!
Come on!! Come on!! Come on!!