The Time Rental Shop

A new story is out! Welcome to the serial novel The Time Rental Shop.

At the end of an alley in the old part of town sits a strange little shop. The five faded characters on its wooden sign read “Time Rental Shop,” yet it always glimmers faintly at midnight. What it rents isn’t old stuff, but time. Spend an hour of your lifespan to return to a stormy night in 1998 and deliver an apology you never got to say. Trade three days of your remaining life to glimpse your next birthday in advance and avoid a fatal car crash.

Recently unemployed office worker Lin Mo takes over the shop after his grandfather’s “accidental death.” The strange transactions recorded in the ledger, the old clock forever stopped at 3:17, the qipao-wearing woman who keeps renting the same moment, the mysterious boy who can describe Lin Mo’s dreams… Countless clues weave together, pointing to the truth behind his grandfather’s disappearance. Three hundred years ago, someone borrowed years from the “Time Creditor,” and the price of repayment was to use this shop to harvest more time from others.

When Lin Mo illegally opens a rift in time for the first time, he sees “another self” inside, making a deal with a gray-robed figure. When the future he rented begins to fall apart and the renters’ bodies sprout “time mold.” When black slime seeps through the cracks in the clock and a pair of eyes slowly opens behind its pendulum… only then does he understand: this so-called rental is nothing but a trap set by the creditor, and ever since birth, he has been the “repayment token” his grandfather pledged to Time.

What is the qipao-wearing woman hiding by renting that rainy night in 1998 for the seventh time? Why does the mysterious boy have a clock-shaped mark between his brows, identical to the illustration in his grandfather’s notebook? When the clock strikes 3:17, could the unfamiliar antique that has appeared on the shelf have come from…