Chapter 4

Chapter 4

This is the beauty of being wealthy.

Money doesn’t just make the world go ’round; it can even get a ghost to open the back door for you.

I easily bribed the yin officer guarding the yin-yang passage and took my Ghost Groom back to visit my family home.

It was night. A sickle moon hung high in the sky, and bare tree branches pointed toward the heavens like jagged, skeletal bones.

If a soul wants to linger in the human realm, they must attach themselves to an object.

I pulled Guan Yi along as we drifted into my family’s courtyard. Seeing two mottled moths resting on a window, we both possessed them.

We clung to a lightbulb. Beneath the light, my parents were locked in a heated argument with my grandfather.

“Dad, have you gone senile?” my mother said, her voice filled with distress. “You can’t just arrange a Yin Marriage on a whim! If Ruo Ruo’s spirit is watching from below, you’re only causing her trouble!”

My father stood beside her, sighing incessantly.

“That male corpse belonged to a family who left it here for the funeral preparations. What you did was incredibly disrespectful to the dead, Dad!”

Unfortunately, my grandfather had developed Alzheimer’s two years ago and didn’t understand a word they were saying.

He tilted his head back and looked around, as if searching for something.

It was easy to understand why my parents were so troubled.

My family has run a funeral business for generations. When it comes to things like this, we’ve always been extremely cautious-preferring to believe in the supernatural rather than risk offending it.

My grandfather actually possessed some metaphysical talent; his fortune-telling and divinations were always remarkably accurate.

Right now, on the incense altar dedicated to Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva, photos of me and Guan Yi from when we were alive were placed side-by-side. Red candles flickered before the pictures, which were set upon a red cloth alongside offerings of apples and red-dyed eggs.

The sense of ceremony was complete, just like a real old-fashioned wedding.

I looked over at the male moth at the other end of the lightbulb-Guan Yi.

He was hugging the bulb quietly, the fine fuzz on his antennae shimmering with a faint, ethereal golden light under the glow.

Seeing me look at him, he tilted his head and extended an antenna to lightly brush against mine.

I didn’t know what it was supposed to mean.

But then, I-of all things-actually found an ugly mottled moth cute.

In that moment of dazed distraction, the legs I used to grip the lightbulb loosened. I slipped, and my entire moth-self plummeted straight down into my grandfather’s collar.