Don't Touch My Happiness

In New Hais, where anyone can buy and sell happiness, Lin Jue works as a professional “emotion scavenger.” Every day, he collects other people’s leftovers: expired, low-grade feelings that amount to “emotional slop.” He thought he’d keep at this numbingly dull job until retirement, until one day he fished a mysterious psychic crystal out of a heap of scrap. No instrument could analyze it.

The crystal is like a black hole, swallowing every definition, and like a key about to unlock Pandora’s box. Overnight, elite agents from the Emotion Regulation Bureau, the black market’s most ruthless organization, the “Thousand-Faced Illusion,” and the legendary Emotion Revolutionaries all come pouring out of the woodwork for him and his “little trinket.”

“Wait,” Lin Jue said. “What exactly do you want?”

“The true self!” they all shouted in unison.

Lin Jue scratched his head. “So… how much can that fetch?”