The Yao Family Paper Effigy Shop

My family runs a paper effigy shop, catering exclusively to the dead. I grew up getting sneered at for it, and did everything I could to escape that “haunted house.” Then one night, while watching the shop for Grandma, I saw an invisible old woman come to pick up an order. An online gaming friend who’d died suddenly sent me an invitation from inside the screen: “Come play with me!” I even witnessed my aunt, overwhelmed by the loss of her daughter, forcibly keeping her dead child’s soul from leaving... After one ghostly encounter after another, I was forced to face the boundary between the living and the dead. It wasn’t until Grandma handed me the Soul-Sealing Gourd she’d kept hidden away that I understood: making paper effigies isn’t about fooling the dead. It’s about guarding the boundary between the worlds. And the most terrifying thing of all has never been vengeful ghosts, but the unresolved obsessions and darkness deep in the hearts of the living. This time, I chose to stay and take over the Yao Family Paper Effigy Shop.