There Are Demons in Yong'an Alley

There Are Demons in Yong'an Alley

One-sentence summary:

Yong'an Alley has been unsettled lately. Everyone says there's a demon in the alley. They don't know that the demon is the good-for-nothing I raised and protected with my life.

[Poetic Version]

In the thirteenth year of the Republic, there was an unremarkable alley called Yong'an beside Shanghai's French Concession.

At the entrance was the wonton stall where Chen Zhichao had spent years hanging around, begging for meals. At the end of the alley was the lamp that never went out, waiting for Qiu Yingying when she came home late at night.

She was half-demon, singing at the Paramount, and her greatest wish was to save enough money to leave this troubled world and spend the rest of her life somewhere no one knew her.

He was a good-for-nothing with no money and no occupation. His greatest talent was latching onto her, eating her food, spending her money, and showing up whenever she was in danger. Usually, he showed up looking as if he were there to collect her corpse, but at the last moment, with a brick, a stick, or just his bare fists, he would beat the monsters and demons trying to kill her until they were on the ground begging for mercy.

Everyone in Yong'an Alley knew that Miss Qiu kept an utterly useless man.

They didn't know that this useless man had been waiting for her through a thousand years of reincarnation.

They didn't know, either, that there was more than one demon in Yong'an Alley.

One was her.

The other was the name he hid beneath his roguish smile, a name even the Three Realms dared not speak.