The Whole Village Holds a Ghost Wedding, but I'm the Only One Who Knows the Bride Is Alive

The whole village is decked out for a ghost wedding, but only I know that the bride beneath the red veil is alive.

My name is Shen Zhili. I am a graduate student in folklore and the last female ceremonial officiant. I was summoned to an old manor deep in the mountains to "wed" a dead young master. On my first night inside, the manor sealed itself shut, and a new notice appeared on the wall: "Rules for the Chen Family Manor's Joyful Funeral":

1. Before the wedding rites, do not look the newlyweds in the eye.

2. Follow the red lanterns. Stop at the white ones.

3. You must drink all the nuptial wine. Do not spill any or leave any behind.

4. If someone calls you by your real name, do not answer under any circumstances within three calls.

Everyone else obeyed the rules to the letter. But when I opened my family's ancestral Book of Rites, I discovered that every one of them was backwards.

Those who followed the rules stayed behind one by one, smiling as they became "servants." I was only there to officiate the ceremony, but I turned around and rewrote the entire wedding in that haunted house.

Others enter rule-based horror stories and run for their lives. I go in to "take care of business" for the supernatural: I turn ghost weddings into rites of peaceful rest, keep vigil for the dead on the seventh night, and escort paper figures through the ghost market on the Night of the Hungry Ghosts. My family's ancient book even comes with snarky commentary, judging everyone with a line like, "This rite is terribly crude."

No romance, no love interests. The female lead is coolheaded and professional, with her wits about her the whole way through. She isn't officiating weddings. She's snatching the living back from the dead, one by one.

But the final rule says: Before the rites are complete, no one may leave this room.

No one told me that for this cursed ceremony to "take effect according to the rites," the one officiant it still needs is me. My name is written right there.