After Being Raised by Monsters

Before he turned thirteen, Lin Shuyu thought he had an ordinary but warm and happy family. That changed on his thirteenth birthday, when he came home early and found the family portrait on the wall had disappeared. In its place was a mirror.

In the mirror, his older sister was gathering a heap of red thread and carefully stitching shut the deep cracks in her face with a needle. It looked just like when she helped him mend a doll he'd torn while they were doing crafts together.

In the kitchen, the clean stove had become an altar. Paper ingots burned in the large bronze incense burner on top. His mother wore a sweet smile, her left leg entwined intimately with his father's right leg, while their four hands worked together to place dismembered insects into a clay jar.

The candles on the birthday cake flickered. In a daze, Lin Shuyu took a step backward and felt something soft and sticky under his foot. Squish. Amid the sound of flesh being crushed, his sister in the mirror looked over and smiled at him as she always did.

"Little brother, you're home?"

Lin Shuyu stiffly nodded and lifted his foot.

...He had stepped on half a baby's body.

There was something wrong with his family. Thirteen-year-old Lin Shuyu realized this, but he soon accepted it as fact.

It was just that there was a child crying in the family shrine, who turned out to be his little brother; that he'd wake from a nightmare at night to see his sister holding a lamp of incense oil in the bedside mirror, asking if he was thirsty; that his parents' menu consisted entirely of arthropods; and that the dog which should have died of old age, and which he'd buried in the yard, was wagging its tail at him the next day with a human face.

His family was just a little unusual. It was no big deal. Lin Shuyu calmly thought this as he disposed of a neighbor who had wandered into their yard.

After graduating from university, he received a special email:

[Dear Lin,

After a long period of observation, we have determined that you possess the talents our studio needs. We are now extending a sincere invitation for you to join us. We hope you will consider it.

Sincerely, Linlingling Studio]

Looking at the baffling email, Lin Shuyu inexplicably typed a reply: [Sure. When is the interview?]

"Right now." A porcelain doll had somehow climbed onto his shoulder. Smiling brightly, it answered him in person. "A mirror ghost, a ghost couple, a yin child, and a dog with a human face... Darling, your family sure is interesting."

"So what?" the only ordinary person said calmly. "We are a happy family."

Three days later, a client looked at the young man with a ghost baby hanging around his neck, a dog with a human face on a leash in his hand, and a dark shadow looming behind him. After a long silence, the client couldn't resist asking:

"Master, are those your ghostly troops?"

"No." Lin Shuyu stroked the sunken crown of the ghost baby's head and smiled warmly. "They're my family."

"We're a happy family, aren't we?"

Facing three pairs of chilling ghost eyes, the client shakily gave a thumbs-up.

"Yes, you and your family are truly a model household! Happy! Haha, very happy!"

After discovering that his family members weren't human, Lin Shuyu discovered something else: his coworkers weren't human either.

He took it in stride. It was fine. His life already had plenty of ghosts in it.

...Only, he seemed to be taking it a little too well.

After a certain mission, he stared at the "living being" he'd unconsciously molded from the ground, then touched the dozens of extra eyes that had appeared on his body and fell into thought.

So he wasn't human either.

#If you can't beat them, join them

#Turns out you really do marry into a family just like your own

· Set against a backdrop of traditional Chinese folk horror, with a little gore

· The protagonist is somewhat cold and takes everything in stride, no matter what happens

Theme: Face death with composure.