The Yellow Springs Waterline

A corpse retriever.

This was the job Lu Yin inherited from his grandfather, and a fate he could never escape.

He wore a black raincoat, a pale chin showing beneath the brim of his hat. His gaze was colder than the rain-soaked night.

Tonight's target was a young woman who had thrown herself into the river for love.

They said she'd been underwater for three days.

Lu Yin's hands were steady. His long retrieval pole probed into the water, like an extension of his senses, searching for that unmistakable "weight."

Aboard the little boat, Lu Yin slowly drew back the pole.

Through the torrential rain, he looked at her. His voice was quiet, yet it reached her clearly, cool with moisture:

"If you want to die, fine."

"Just don't die in my work zone."

"Your life is in my hands now."

Shen Yu slumped in the icy rain, staring at the ghostly black figure beneath the bridge. For the first time, she realized that something could be colder than death: the eyes of a corpse retriever.

Lu Yin had already turned away, steering his little boat toward deeper darkness.

He hadn't retrieved a single "corpse."

But he had fished up a living nuisance.