I Run a Pawnshop in the World of Strange Tales

The elders often say that the world of the living and the underworld of the dead never quite close together. A hazy gap remains between them. When people die violently with unbearable resentment, unable to take their final breath in peace, their souls cannot fully move on. Their obsessions become trapped in that gap, leaving them stranded in the world of the living. These are debts the living owe the dead. Whether it’s a guilty crime like murder for money or a fateful entanglement stirred up by accident, if no one steps forward to settle the account, its deadly retribution will follow the seam between life and death and cling to the debtor among the living, relentless until death. Follow the ancient antique street south of the city, where the sun never shines, to its very end, and you’ll find a dilapidated pawnshop. A mottled sign hangs on its black-lacquered wooden door, bearing three characters: Ghost Pawnshop. This pawnshop never accepts gold, silver, or precious treasures, nor does it take money in circulation. It deals exclusively in the debts of the dead left behind in the world of the living. Whether it’s a sinister antique stained with blood, a spirit tablet containing an evil ghost, or an invisible, untouchable karmic debt that has nonetheless caused someone’s death, as long as the person involved comes to them, the Ghost Pawnshop can take on the bad debt and redeem the living person’s life.