Send Money in the Living World, Climb the Rankings in the Underworld

My name is Chen Fugui. I died from working overtime.

When I woke up, I was lying on a drab street in the underworld. The ghosts waiting in line beside me told me the Terrace of Looking Homeward was up ahead. Once I drank Granny Meng’s soup, I could cross the bridge and get my place on the roster.

I didn’t drink it. My wife was still pregnant with a child I’d never met, and I wanted to wait a little longer.

Then the Ghost Festival gala began.

The living world was holding a vote for “the ghost most missed by their family.” My granddaughter, who had never even met me, got her whole class to vote. She made me number one.

The prize was a three-story paper mansion that fell out of the sky and nearly crushed me to death.

A paper Mercedes was parked outside, and the living room was laid with braised pork and dumplings. My mother had left a note: “If you need anything, tell me in a dream.”

The other ghosts were stunned.

Granny Meng came over and asked, “Interested in opening a shop together?”

I said yes.

So I set up a stall outside the City God Temple called “Fugui’s Wish Fulfillment Center,” helping ghosts in the underworld fulfill the wishes of the living. An old woman wanted to send a message to her son who had been reincarnated; a girl taking the college entrance exam wanted her father not to worry; a couple who argued every day wanted someone to talk some sense into them.

My granddaughter burned a phone for me in the living world.

The two of us, grandpa and granddaughter, one taking orders in the underworld and the other running errands in the living world, turned our business into the first matchmaking agency between the realms of the living and the dead.

Oh, and now I live in a mansion, with a car, a house, and three employees. I’m something of a big shot in the underworld.

My only problem is that my family in the living world burns through money too fast. We’re running out of room for all the stuff they send me.