I Sneezed and Transmigrated to an Ancient Brothel as a Male Attendant

After a single sneeze, I, a modern-educated corporate drone, somehow became the lowest-ranking brothel attendant at the Zuìhong Tower in the Great Sheng Dynasty. Music and singing fill the night, and red sleeves flutter enticingly, but the hierarchy is rigid and people’s hearts are unfathomable. As an attendant, I’ve witnessed the absurdity of the powerful tossing around fortunes and seen the sorrow behind the courtesans’ smiles. I’d planned to keep my head down and get by, but my modern way of thinking keeps turning the rules upside down without warning: I reorganize the accounts with a “membership system,” use psychology to settle disputes among the women, and even nearly make gunpowder to drive rats out of the back courtyard. Then I meet Su Zhi, a virtuous courtesan who offers her art but not her body. She is like a flake of snow falling into a muddy pit, quiet and fragile. I teach her to read simplified characters, and she pours me the first hot cup of tea I’ve had in this unfamiliar era. The unspoken understanding between us becomes the only shore in this corrupt world. But when a powerful man demands her by name and the shadows of the imperial court fall over Zuìhong Tower, I finally realize that the world of pleasure has always been a deadly game. Should I keep hiding and enduring, or fight for her and for the countless other women in this place, to win a future free of shame? Perhaps I transmigrated just so that someone as insignificant as me could sneeze loud enough to shatter an age that devours people.