After Clearing Eerie Instances, I Gained an Emotion Bank

“Give me the feelings that make you cry, and I’ll give you money.” Eighteen-year-old Bai Xun walks into a pawnshop with his mother’s critical-condition notice in hand. The shop doesn’t accept gold or silver, but it does take emotions as collateral. His mother urgently needs money to survive! Standing at the counter, Bai Xun pawns all his sadness, fear, and ability to cry, in exchange for ten million yuan. The moment his emotions are stripped away, Bai Xun feels as though his heart has been torn out by the roots. The Emotion Bank: Every emotion pawned there takes human form, trapped in a bottle in the attic, waiting day and night for its original owner to reclaim it. There, Bai Xun sees a seven- or eight-year-old boy crouched on a shelf, crying silently. The boy has exactly the same face as him. His self in the attic is crying. His mother’s life is saved. And he has become a person with something missing inside. To reclaim everything he has lost, Bai Xun begins taking on the pawnshop’s S-rank missions: A half-finished building where thirty-two people have hanged themselves over the past decade… A forgotten nursing home… The remains of a victim of online abuse… An underground emotion black market… An unmarked cemetery… Prisoners of time… Every completed mission brings a hefty cash reward and unlocks a supernatural ability. But when his rival, Song Zhifan, owner of the Guixu Pawnshop, appears before him, Bai Xun learns that from the moment he stepped into the pawnshop, he had already been drawn into the battle to inherit the position of next shopkeeper. The new shopkeeper’s first order of business: reclaim himself. Bai Xun climbs to the attic and tells eight-year-old Bai Xun, “I’m here. Come home with me.” As his emotions return to him, Bai Xun is finally whole again. “Your calm is the most absolute I’ve ever seen. So your attachment must be worth more than everyone else’s combined.”