My name is Chu Yuan, the youngest suture repairman in the city's funeral home.
After three years in the industry, I have sewn up broken corpses and plastic surgery, and I consider myself to have no taboos.
Until my grandfather passed away, he left me a mahogany box, which contained half a yellowed copy of "Folk Customs of the Underworld" and a rusty executioner's ghost-headed knife.
It turns out that grandpa is not only an old barber in the village, but also the last generation of officially recognized "soul caller" - a mysterious profession that specializes in dealing with "folk custom variations".
From that day on, something started to look wrong with the body I received.
After some corpses are sutured, the corners of their mouths will rise unconsciously, as if controlled by some "rules".
Some family members would secretly give me a piece of yellow paper with the words "Don't sew your face, he is still driving down there" written on it.
What's even weirder is that when I wake up, I can always see an ink line mark on the back of my left hand, as if something is measuring my life.
The last page of the notes left by my grandfather read:
"If the roots of folk custom are broken, they will turn into ghosts. I have been guarding it for thirty-eight years, but I can't guard it anymore. Chu Yuan, you have to renew the 'soul calling' for me. That is what our Chu family owes to the whole village."
But I asked all the old people, and no one admitted that there was a custom of "soul calling" in the village.
But everyone looked at me as if they were looking at a dead person.
Until I opened my birth certificate from that year——
The place of birth written on it is not a hospital, but the "mass grave" behind the village that has long been filled in.
