Daily Life Running a Strange Tales Shopping Street

On her thirtieth birthday, You Xing does two things: quits her job at a C-rank urban legend research institute in the central city of the Second Star District, and breaks up with her boyfriend of three years. Not long afterward, You Xing finds a much easier new job: managing an apartment building in the Thirteenth Star District. You Xing: “The pay is almost the same as my last job. I’ve just saved myself thirty years of detours!” After starting work, You Xing discovers that the tenants are all a little... abnormal. Tenant 103 is always clutching their head and searching for it. Every time tenant 250 gets dumped, they hide under You Xing’s dormitory bed and sculpt little curse dolls. Tenant 444 is so obsessed with the regrets they carried to the grave that they keep stuffing dissertation defenses under You Xing’s pillow... You Xing, eight years into her corporate drone career, emotionally steady and determined to lie flat: “Oh, so this is an urban legend apartment building.” The urban legend tenants can go berserk at any moment. For the sake of a peaceful second half of her life, You Xing starts thinking of things to keep them busy. You Xing, wearing a world-weary expression: “It’s good to stay busy!” A week later, You Xing submits a business and development plan for an urban legend shopping street to her boss, the building manager. The building manager gladly accepts. Opening an urban legend shop requires two things: first, explore the target urban legend and obtain a permit to open a shop; second, choose a business that suits the urban legend’s nature and come up with appropriate operating rules. You Xing begins exploring the urban legends possessed by the apartment’s tenants, steadily advancing the urban legend shopping street project. As the shops open one after another, sightings of the urban legend shops start appearing on the human world’s urban legend discussion forum [A yoga studio opened in Building 38. I was being chased by a monster and ran inside in a panic. It was pretty lively in there: over twenty monsters were following the instructor through yoga poses. I gritted my teeth and copied them. After I got out, my friends and family all said I looked thinner. I weighed myself and I’d lost a full twelve pounds!!!] [A bakery opened in the haunted gallery. I was curious, so I went in and bought a few things. Later, a ghost in a painting chased me, but feeding it bread slowed it down, and there was even a chance it would give you a clue to escape. How does that work?] [Can you really go into shops inside an urban legend? Last time I came across a fish cake stall in the Blood Maze. It looked pretty legit. A monster went over to steal some food, and I think it ran into some kind of manager and got beaten into a lump of minced meat. Scared the crap out of me!] [There are managers in urban legends?] As the urban legend shopping street continues to expand, urban legend hunters, the android guild, evolved beings, cyborgs, and other forces in the high-star districts gradually take notice of this unexpected rising power. Counting the two manager salaries that land in her account right on time, You Xing slowly lies flat. “Now, I’d like to cultivate a little ambition!” [Reader’s Guide] 1. Business management plus urban legends, cyberpunk, and wasteland elements. Set in an imaginary future, with no real-life models or realistic logic. This is my own style of urban legend business management, with a mountain of original worldbuilding. Please don’t compare it to real-life situations. 2. The female lead is thirty when she appears and has a romantic history. None of her exes are the endgame. The love interest appears in Chapter One. They’re both romantically and physically inexperienced, with a ten-year age gap. Please consider carefully if that bothers you. 3. The world is harsher than in the Otherworld Shopping Street Management Guide series. The focus is on everyday business management, with some face-slapping and a small amount of horror in the urban legend elements. 4. You’re free to stay or leave. No need to tell me if you drop the novel. 5. No writing advice, please. No ranking checks. (First version of blurb: 2024.4.30. Revised and expanded: 2024.8.5. Screenshots saved. May be revised again before the novel starts.) Theme: No matter when, people can choose to begin a new life