Death Sale

The last bus made one extra stop on Longnight Alley. There was a pawnshop at the alley's entrance. Its doors were shut by day, but its lamps burned at night. A voice behind the counter said, “Some things are pawned beyond redemption. So are people.” The night his older sister, Chen Wantang, disappeared seven years ago, she slipped a twin-lens camera into a postbox. On a rainy night seven years later, the camera came into Chen Chaosheng's hands. Its lens cover could never be opened. Only after entering the pawnshop did he learn that his sister hadn't disappeared. She had pawned herself. The pawn ticket listed the item as: Chen Wantang's younger brother, a lifetime of peace and safety. The pawn term was a hundred years. The interest would be paid in years of life and good fortune. At this pawnshop, the clerk took on a job every three days: retrieve a sealed, irredeemable pawn from the Hundred Treasures Cabinet, enter the world of the pawned item, face the rules on the surface, read the original document, and find the clause that had been altered. When the spirit of an item asks its price, do not answer. If the white-robed weighmaster appears, take a detour. Never wipe away tears shed in the world of a pawned item. Chen Chaosheng's golden finger was this: he could see the original document. The price was that each time he looked, a memory of his sister would burn away. First the nursery rhyme, then her birthday, then the song she used to hum. He had to redeem her before he forgot her. But the pawnshop's rules were clear: to redeem a pawn, you must pay an equal price. “What can he give in exchange for these four words: ‘a lifetime of peace and safety’?”