A Waiter's Part-Time Job for the Underworld in the World of the Living

My name is Lin Xiaoman, an utterly ordinary third-year college student who'd vanish in a crowd without a trace.

I'm always short on living expenses, my Huabei bills are hot on my heels, I've failed two major courses, and the girl I have a crush on can't even remember my name. Desperate to scrape together next month's rent, I spotted a strange job listing in a part-time work group: Midnight Sundries, hiring a night-shift clerk, 300 yuan an hour. Requirements: be brave, have no sense of direction, and not be afraid of ghosts.

I thought it was a prank, but decided to give it a try and added the contact. That very night, I was led into an alley with no map pin. The shop had a faded lantern hanging over its entrance. Its shelves held no snacks or drinks, but charms for the dead, incense to guide spirits, sample portions of Meng Po's soup, and even “life-on-credit slips” for ghosts who'd died too young.

The owner was a mysterious figure who always wore a bamboo hat. They told me just one rule: open at midnight, close at three in the morning, and the customers who come in may not be human.

And just like that, I became the shop assistant at a store for the underworld, serving all kinds of “customers” every night: old ghosts weeping as they tried to send New Year's money to their children in the living world, wrongfully deceased souls arriving with IOUs to collect their debts, and mischievous underworld officers trying to switch entries in the Book of Life and Death.

I thought this was just a high-paying part-time job. I had no idea that the moment I stepped through the shop's door, I'd already been swept into a vortex spanning both the living and the dead.

There weren't really that many supernatural forces in this world, until I saw it with my own eyes: paper money turning into gold leaf, lanterns reflecting ghostly shadows, and me, a broke college student, becoming a messenger between the living and the dead!