May Everything Go Your Way

Jiang Baiyuan never imagined that, in the twenty-five years of her life, a ghost would propose to her. It started one night as she was walking home from work and saw a wedding procession. She happened to glance at the groom riding at the front, and tears instantly streamed down her face. Then she went home and found herself being followed. It kept following her for days. On a stormy night, the thing finally lost patience and appeared beneath a black umbrella: Pale skin, long legs, an icy, triangular face... I'll admit you're handsome, but the living and the dead belong to different worlds. She immediately made her position clear: “I'm still young, and you're very handsome too. Why not let yourself move on and get reincarnated? I'll burn incense for you for the rest of my life. How does that sound?” He said nothing. Interesting. She did like people... ghosts... who didn't give up easily. But while she was asleep, the thing actually curled up beside her bed and cried. Its voice was very quiet as it murmured to itself, “My showing up has been scaring you this whole time, hasn't it?” “I'm sad.” “Let's get married soon.” Jiang Baiyuan: ??? When she was little, a fortune-teller said she wouldn't live long and that her romantic prospects were impossible to read. The only thing that looked good was her career line. Rebellious teenage Jiang Baiyuan: “I doubt it.” Jiang Baiyuan, resigned to fate: “I guess I should go see that master again.” How long does it take to guard one person for a lifetime? When Qin Huan first met Jiang Baiyuan, he thought the whole thing was absurd. In his thousand years on the job, she was the youngest bride he'd ever seen. The little girl was still chewing on a warm bun, but her body was cold. One glance was all it took for him to know she was a half-ghost infant. “Being cooped up for too long makes you sick, especially when you've been a grim reaper for over a century,” his colleagues said. Raising a child from the human world would be a good way to pass the long, numb years. At first, Qin Huan thought so too. Without an earthly soul or a human soul, the half-ghost infant couldn't feel hot or cold. She was emotionally numb, knew nothing of love or hate, and couldn't express happiness, anger, sorrow, or joy. She was like a block of wood. But for the first time in his dull, lonely life, there was a living person who needed to be taught everything, even how to love. So he did everything he could to find the earthly and human souls she had never had, and taught her until she was no different from an ordinary person. She was so small that she barely made a mark in his endless lifetime. She was so vast that neither the human world nor the underworld could contain her, and even when her soul scattered, he couldn't catch it. Kneeling before all the gods and Buddhas in the heavens, all he wanted was to beg for her next life: may she be safe and blessed, and may everything go her way. Theme: Live toward the light