I can see the “karmic debts” people carry.
Numbers hover above their heads, bloodred and glaring: a wealthy businessman who defrauded his bride owes 372 points, a teacher who abused children owes 518, and a hit-and-run driver owes 891. Every point represents a debt of sin left unpaid.
I “settle accounts” for people.
I devise rituals, guide them toward repayment, and collect a fee: years of life, cleanly earned. People call me the “karmic debt accountant” and describe me as a walking judge of the underworld.
Then, on the day I settled accounts for real estate tycoon Zhou Hongwei, I saw my father’s name in his karmic debt ledger.
The “accident” that burned my father to a crisp in a fire twenty years ago had been priced at 1,847 points of karmic debt.
And on my own ledger, the figure in the column for my karmic debt was slowly ticking up from 0 to 1.
That was when I understood
I was a debtor too.
This world of the living was nothing but one vast place for paying off debts.
