Shen Du had known since childhood that there was something wrong with him.
His fingertips could read anything: how many hands had touched a doorknob, how many tears had been shed beneath a pillow, how many cries for help were sealed inside a wall. Because of this ability, people treated him like a monster, passing him from one foster home to another.
Then, at the age of twenty-two, an unsigned suicide note brought him back to his hometown, the funeral home on the west side of the city. It was the entire inheritance left to him by an adoptive father he had never met.
A dilapidated funeral hall, dust-covered cold storage units, and a night watchman who could barely hear.
Shen Du thought it was just the beginning of another abandonment.
Until, on the first night, one of the cold storage doors opened by itself.
The person inside opened their eyes and calmly asked him, "Can you help me find the person who killed me?"
In that instant, Shen Du understood:
He hadn't inherited a funeral home.
He had inherited an entire world of the dead, a world that was alive, breathing, and waiting to be touched.
