When the phone rang for the seventh time, Lin Yuqing picked it up.
“Hello, you’ve reached—”
She stopped.
Not because she had forgotten the company’s name, but because she had no idea where she was.
The fluorescent lights overhead were so blue-white that they made the entire row of desks look like a morgue as they flickered on and off. The monitors on the desks were still lit, their screens filled with black windows and white text. In the upper-right corner, a skull rotated slowly. A yellowed notice was taped to the partition:
> Underworld Bureau of Life and Death Administration Death Appeals Center > Nighttime Anomalies Unit > Listening with care to every member of the dead is this bureau’s unwavering service mission.
A red stamp had been placed beneath the notice: **This quarter’s case-closure rate has fallen below target. All staff are urged to stand together through these difficult times.**
Lin Yuqing stared at it for two seconds.
A hoarse old man’s voice came through the phone.
“Hello? Miss, can you hear me?”
Her body returned to work before her mind did. Years of customer-service training allowed her to maintain a polite, soulless tone even when she had no idea what was going on.
“I can hear you. How may I assist you?”
“I want to file an appeal,” the old man said. “They made a mistake. I can’t die yet.”
Holding the receiver, Lin Yuqing slowly looked down at the desk.
A white porcelain cup sat there, a ring of black tea stains collected around its bottom. Beside it was a stack of forms stamped with “soul-retrieval anomaly,” along with a nameplate.
Death Appeals Center—Lin Yuqing.
Job title: probationary customer-service agent.
She didn’t remember applying for this job.
In fact, she didn’t even remember how she had gotten here.
Her memory was like a recording that had been violently cut off. She remembered her name. She remembered sitting in a rented cubicle, taking eighty complaint calls a day. She remembered her supervisor telling her to smile, as if customers could see her through the other end of the phone line. She also remembered how much she hated it when people opened with, “Let me finish.”
But after that, there was nothing but a silent blank.
“Miss?” the old man asked again.
“I’m here.”
A line of text suddenly appeared on the screen.
> Please confirm the appellant’s identity. > Warning: Customer-service agents may not proactively inform the dead of the true cause of death.
Lin Yuqing quickly scanned the procedure chart taped beside the desk.
“Please provide your name, your last complete memory, and the time and cause you believe led to your death.”
“Chen Guochang. My memory…” The old man thought for a long time. “My wife is waiting for me at home to eat dinner. There’s braised pork on the table, and stir-fried cabbage. She always forgets to add salt when she cooks. I have to go back and remind her.”
“And the time and cause of death?”
“I’m not dead.”
“Mr. Chen, to look into this for you, we still need—”
“I said I’m not dead!”
His voice shot up. Sharp static flooded the receiver, like someone scraping a fingernail along the inside of a coffin.
Lin Yuqing instinctively pulled the phone away.
Something moved at the other end of the office.
The person who had been crouched beneath a desk poked out half of a deathly pale face. A crooked black official hat sat on his head. A wooden plaque reading “fieldwork trainee” hung from his chest, and he clutched a mourning staff taller than he was in both hands.
“Y-you answered it?” he asked, trembling.
Lin Yuqing covered the receiver with her hand. “What else was I supposed to do?”
His face grew even paler. “But you haven’t been trained yet.”
“The phone rang.”
“The phones ring here every day.”
“So?”
“Some of them aren’t phones.”
Lin Yuqing decided not to ask what that meant for the time being.
The skull on the screen stopped rotating. Case data began appearing line by line.
> Name: Chen Guochang > Time of death: Seven days ago > Cause of death: Pending review > Case level: B > Appeal number: 07
Her gaze stopped on the final line.
“Can the same person file an appeal seven times?”
The man crawled out from under the desk, his hat nearly hitting the edge. He leaned toward the screen, then immediately backed away after one glance.
“No.”
He raised a hand and pointed to the rules beside Lin Yuqing’s seat. The third one had been written in particularly conspicuous vermilion ink:
> The same member of the dead may file only one death appeal. > If a repeat call is received, one of the calls was not made by the person in question.
On the phone, the old man continued murmuring about the dinner his wife had made.
“She has a bad memory. She’s always forgetting this or that. If I don’t go back, she’ll keep waiting.”
Lin Yuqing looked at “Appeal number: 07,” and a chill gradually crept up the back of her neck.
“Mr. Chen, have you ever called this number before?”
“Before?”
The old man repeated the word in confusion, then gave a soft laugh.
“Miss, today is the first time I’ve died. How could I have called before?”
The screen flickered.
The time of death changed from “Seven days ago” to “Six days ago,” then jumped to “Five days ago.”
Each time it changed, a clear chime rang out from deep inside the office.
After the fifth chime, a long, pale hand reached out from behind Lin Yuqing’s shoulder and pressed the call hold button.
The voice on the phone vanished.
“A duplicate soul on your first day,” a man said behind her. “You’re lucky.”
His voice held a smile, but he didn’t sound as if he truly thought it was a good thing.
Lin Yuqing turned around.
The man wore white clothes that looked nothing like a uniform, the collar loose and open. A string of old copper plaques hung from his waist. Most conspicuous of all was the case file in his hand, its cover printed with her name.
Lin Yuqing reached for it, but he lifted the file out of reach.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Xie Bi’an. Your training supervisor.”
He said it as though he were introducing the most ordinary position in the world.
“Then tell me why I’m here.”
Xie Bi’an looked down at her. His gaze lingered on her face for a moment before he tossed the file onto the desk.
“According to the rules, anyone who comes here is either dead or staff.”
“Which one am I?”
“Right now, it looks like the latter.”
“What does ‘right now’ mean?”
“You’d better see for yourself.”
The file was thin—too thin to look like proof that a person had ever lived. Lin Yuqing opened it. There was no cause of death, no time of death, and no soul-retrieval record.
There was only a blank form and four red characters in the exact center:
> No such person on record
She stared at the words, her fingertips inexplicably growing cold.
“Does ‘no such person on record’ mean I’m not dead?”
“Not necessarily.”
“Then does it mean I’m still alive?”
“Not necessarily.”
“Is there anything around here that you can say for certain?”
Xie Bi’an thought about it, then pointed to the electronic clock on the wall.
“Yes. The night shift ends at six.”
The electronic clock displayed 2:13 a.m.
Before Lin Yuqing could say anything, the phone on hold suddenly lit up by itself. There was no ring, no caller ID, and the call-history field was completely blank.
The underworld-agent trainee beneath the desk sucked in a breath.
The eighth rule on the wall seemed to be retraced by some invisible hand, the ink slowly bleeding into view:
> A phone with no number, no record, and no ring must never be answered.
The electronic clock changed to 2:14 a.m.
The receiver was clearly still sitting in its original place, yet Lin Yuqing heard a woman whisper right beside her ear:
“Don’t let them know you’re still alive.”