Tales from the Curio Shop

My name is Chen Musheng, and I run a little shop in the old district where I repair antiques. Other people judge antiques by how much they're worth. I judge them by whether they're "clean." That's what my grandfather taught me. He vanished without a trace ten years ago, leaving behind a pile of unfinished repairs and one warning: "Don't touch the redwood vanity." Only later did I learn that every old object brought into my shop concealed a story that was better left untold. The figure in the mirror, the drawer that opened by itself in the middle of the night, the clock in the corner that started chiming on its own... None of them were ghosts, as it turned out. They were the schemes in people's hearts that they dared not expose to the light.