The Book of Funeral Wails

Shen Que is a professional mourner at a funeral shop south of the city, known as the Three-Cry Lady. Each time she cries, she loses a year of her life. But she doesn’t just weep at the graves of the dead. She draws up contracts for ghosts and collects their debts. Business between the living and the dead all passes through her hands. One night, she was sold off to be wed in a ghost marriage. There was no groom in the wedding hall, only a memorial tablet inscribed with her birth details. She didn’t cry for herself. She cried until the coffin opened. The one who sat up inside was a sixteen-year-old girl, poisoned to death by her own father. “Miss,” Shen Que wiped her face. “Want to do business?” From then on, every page of her ledger grew more dangerous than the last. Until one day, she came across two names that should never have been there: Her parents, dead for eighteen years.