Chapter 1 (1/2)

Special thanks to Puissansa from Ainus.h.i.+ for helping out!

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TL: Mikan

TLC: Nanfengmiju, Puissansa

Editor: Ame, Puissansa

Chapter 001: Entering h.e.l.l for the First Time

Summary: A youth never expected that their life would quickly end like this.

I’m a ghost messenger.

Strictly speaking, I still don’t count as an official ghost messenger.

I’ve just completed training, and am currently a ghost messenger on probation. Training lasted for three months because I was often absent-minded during cla.s.s. Whether I’m able to be a competent ghost messenger was something that I'm still very doubtful about. Fortunately, Brother ghost leader told me, that h.e.l.l had to accept over ten thousand dead spirits every day. If I was no good, there are still a lot of people that could replace me, so I didn’t need to feel too pressured.

This is probably h.e.l.l's unique way of comforting someone.

When I was alive, I was very ordinary. I didn’t pa.s.s my high school entrance exams. After I graduated from a vocational secondary school, I immediately stepped foot into the workforce, like a tiny screw of a machine in a huge factory building. To this screw, a day would feel like ten years, as the job was to stick rolled up labels on merchandise. The days off could be counted on my fingers, and my life was just a monotonous cycle of going between home and work. A few blind dates pa.s.sed by, yet in the end I still didn’t have anyone who fell for me. Thus, in one last surprise, my life of exactly twenty nine years ended. Leaving behind my old mother, I arrived at h.e.l.l alone.

When I had just arrived, I honestly thought that I had traveled through time. Because the accident that time was so severe that it scattered my soul, and my consciousness didn’t return for quite a while. When I woke up, I saw that I was lying in the middle of a wooden house with glazed roof tiles. I was wrapped in layer upon layer of white muslin, and a light muslin rainbow colored dress was also placed on top of a bamboo chair, obviously not from the same era that I came from.

After somewhat considering my situation in my heart, I began to think that I had definitely “traveled”. To be worthy of time traveling, the more ordinary you were, the easier it was for you to travel. Like me who was at the height of this kind of complete normalcy, shouldn’t have died so early no matter what. I should’ve been at another s.p.a.ce-time, doing an important activity, and making handsome men of all ages fall for me. Only then could I spend my time until my death gloriously.

Therefore, right when Brother ghost leader walked into the wooden house, I pretended to look at him very blankly, with my first words exactly being: “Who’re you? I seem to have lost my memories.” This is the most c.r.a.ppy but also the most necessary convention in time travel: losing memories.

This was the beginning of everything, though unfortunately it wasn’t my beginning. I didn’t travel dimensions, and I had really died.

Brother ghost leader took a look at me, and with a really really deadpan face answered: “It can’t be. You haven't drank Meng Po's soup[1] yet, right?”

“Meng Po's soup? You can drink Meng Po’s soup in the human realm too?” I asked.

“Of course you can't to drink it in the human realm, but you’re in h.e.l.l now.” He answered as if it was a matter of course.

“h.e.l.l? Didn’t I time travel?” My face was full of surprise.

He finally understood where the “generation gap” between us was. Displaying an understanding smile, he replied, “This isn’t the ancient times, and you didn’t time travel either. You’ve merely died. In accordance to regular procedures, all that happened is that you entered h.e.l.l.”

I was dumbstruck. I merely died. It was just this simple?

He was unconcerned, leisurely taking out a pack of cigarettes from inside his long gown sleeve pouch. After using a cigarette lighter to ignite the cigarette b.u.t.t, he complained to me, “Ever since Honourable Yama[2] became fascinated by Tang dynasty architecture, all of h.e.l.l’s buildings were changed to look like this. I wore this long gown to seek my superior’s favour as well.”

He even comforted me, saying, “You should be relieved. You definitely aren’t the first to think that you ‘time travelled’. Out of the dead spirits of women thirty years old or under from the 21st century, eight out of ten of them would think this is ‘time travel’. If you didn’t mention it just now, I would’ve really forgotten that you also came from the 21st century.”

So it seems that I had actually died. Although at that time I was so embarra.s.sed that I wanted to die once again.

Taking off the s.h.i.+rt and jeans that I wore when I died, I changed into a Tang suit. I didn’t wear that light muslin rainbow colored dress, because it looked really complicated to wear, so I let Brother ghost leader bring a long gown for me to wear instead.

After a period of time, I asked Brother ghost leader, “When can I go get reincarnated?”

Brother ghost leader smiled unnecessarily mysteriously, saying, “This isn’t urgent. I still have important matters to discuss with you. Let’s take a walk around h.e.l.l, and then we'll talk.”

Leaving the wooden house, I discovered that the sky was an overcast grey sheet. It was different from the ordinary dusk – ghost leader told me – if I wanted to see sunny days in h.e.l.l, the odds are the same as seeing the sun rise from the west in the Northern Hemisphere. He had even heard that in Heaven, every day was a sunny day.