Blood Money

For ten years, Shen Guan set up his stall two meters to the left of the third step on the overpass. Fortune-telling cost eighty-eight, reading a situation started at three hundred, and spending the night in a haunted house came with a night-shift surcharge. Ghosts paid in underworld currency, converted at the day's exchange rate. Invoices cost an extra six percent. His phone's notes app held a target: 370,000.

He wasn't in it for the money. His grandfather had left behind a karmic debt, and every month it was deducted from Shen Guan himself: luck, memory, and years of life. Once he saved enough, he could pay it off in one go, pack up his stall, take a civil service exam, and never take another job.

Until one night, he accepted a job he couldn't divine.

He'd saved money for ten years because he wanted to get free. In the end, he spent it all buying a life for a ghost who wasn't allowed to live.

She had been sentenced to death, but he was determined to overturn her sentence.

He didn't perform exorcisms when telling fortunes, and he didn't fall in love when hunting ghosts. He only did business, until one job showed him a price he couldn't afford.