It’s Better When My Husband Is Dead

Jian Ya has thirty-one husbands. More accurately, he has thirty-one deceased husbands. It all comes down to Jian Ya's nature: he is a symbol of darkness, an omen of death, a little crow spirit just three hundred and seventy years old who brings bad luck to anyone he crosses. Jian Ya has all the hobbies one would expect of a crow. He likes cawing loudly, stirring up trouble, and, most of all, collecting shiny things and sleeping atop gold and jewels. But the truth is, Jian Ya has no power to bring disaster. He can only see the aura of death and decay, and uses it to choose his husbands. This one is so sick he's nearly dead; that one won't last another six months... Jian Ya treasures every one of them. As long as he marries them and takes good care of them for a while, after the funeral, Jian Ya, as the surviving spouse, receives a substantial inheritance. Most of the money goes toward buying shiny things, and what remains is more than enough for Jian Ya to live comfortably among humans. Then, on April 1, 2012, April Fool's Day, a god appeared in the dreams of all humanity, proclaiming that it would grant people's wishes and resurrect all the dead who were still remembered. But people soon discovered that the ones brought back weren't their loved ones. They were terrifying monsters wearing their loved ones' faces. And so disaster struck. Disaster struck Jian Ya, too. His resurrected husbands were circling him like a pack of wolves, watching him hungrily. Never before had Jian Ya realized so clearly: Husbands are better off dead. Mu Si was Jian Ya's first husband, but not his last. The six months he spent married to Jian Ya were the happiest days of his short life. So after Mu Si died, his ghost lingered, hiding nearby to spy on his darling wife for more than three hundred years. He watched Jian Ya turn marriage into a profitable business, collecting a whole stack of documents, from marriage contracts to marriage certificates. Love turned to hatred in Mu Si, and his resentment grew stronger by the day. He wanted to strangle Jian Ya to death, then eat him piece by piece, absorbing him into his own flesh and blood so they'd never be parted. After the divine revelation, the vengeful ghosts returned to the human world, and Mu Si could finally pin Jian Ya beneath him and unleash all the resentment he'd been holding back. Jian Ya struggled with all his might before finally breaking free of Mu Si's strong embrace, frantically racking his brains for a way to survive: “Divorce me from all of them. I'll divorce every last one and be with you alone, okay?” Mu Si's resentment vanished in an instant. He gathered Jian Ya in his arms and kissed him again and again. “From now on, you can burn spirit money for me on Tomb-Sweeping Day, but not for them.” In short, it's a story about a little crow and a wicked ghost joining hands to save the world at the end of the world, while also divorcing all his other husbands. "A Little Crow's Reading Guide" About the characters: A deeply devoted, obsessive, powerful vengeful ghost gong who refuses to leave the world of the living, and a crafty little crow spirit shou who loves shiny things. About the romance: 1v1, with love rivals, but the gong and shou only ever have eyes for each other. The gong's feelings are more intense. About their pasts: The gong is chaste. The shou has had thirty-one marriages, but never consummated any of them. After all, most of his husbands were on the brink of death, and the shou treated marriage as a job. About the story: There are some bloody and frightening descriptions, though I don't think it's all that scary, haha. Mostly it's sweet and romantic, and of course it has a happy ending (0v0). Theme: Even when faced with adversity, people still have the courage to fight back.