Red and White: The Human World’s Song Has Not Yet Fallen Silent

“Take the money for now, but don’t put my name on it.” Liu Xiuqin pressed five hundred yuan onto the counter of Zhou’s shop. Zhou Mancang refused it. The money might be easy to take, but if anything went wrong, it could cost him his little shop. He handled funerals and weddings, and had another skill no one knew about: when he touched an old object, he could see a few seconds of its past. The visions were real, but he might mistake who was in them. A radio that crackled at night, sobbing in a bridal room, a gold watch stopped at 4:27: people came to him about each one, asking him for a definite answer. Mancang first asked who was paying, then checked who had said what. Old customs could put people’s minds at ease, but they could not settle the debts and property of the living. The old ledger cabinet his father left behind was still locked. There were some accounts even he had yet to clear up.