Borrowed Fire in the Mortal World

On the seventh day after his death, Shen Jin borrowed a flame from a strange old man, and his heart began to beat again.

The price was taking over an old shop that opened only at midnight and helping the dead who came to its door fulfill their last wishes. Each task he completed bought him seven more days of life. Each time he used the flame, he lost a memory from his life as a living person.

A girl waiting for a stop the last bus would never reach, a mother who cooked every night in a building slated for demolition, and an obituary bearing his own name... Shen Jin gradually discovered that these seemingly unrelated requests all pointed to a fire from nineteen years ago.

And the flame he had borrowed was leading something back into the world of the living.

When the last of his memories burned away, he finally remembered: the person who started the fire back then had a face exactly like his.