“Don’t let them know you’re still alive.”
After the voice disappeared, Lin Yuqing still had the receiver in her hand.
Her hand was steady, and so was her breathing. Only the heel of her right foot was braced against the chair leg, knocking against it once, then again, making the faintest of sounds.
That was how she used to react when a customer threatened over the phone to find the company and chop everyone up. First, she would flatten her voice and follow the procedure: “I understand how you feel.” Then, once the call ended, she would go throw up in the restroom.
There was no restroom to go to now.
“What did you hear?” Xie Bi’an asked.
Lin Yuqing looked up at him. “You didn’t hear it?”
Nervous shook his head so hard that his tall black hat swayed twice with it.
“The call never connected.” He pointed at the phone, keeping his voice low. “It only lit up.”
The call window on the screen was still completely blank. No number, no time, not even the timer that indicated a connection had been established.
Lin Yuqing put the receiver back. Only then did her fingertips begin to go numb.
“A woman,” she said. “She said I’m still alive.”
Nervous sucked in a sharp breath.
Xie Bi’an didn’t smile. He turned the phone over and inspected the bottom, then followed the phone line all the way to the back of the partition. The gray-white cord drooped into the floor without connecting to any outlet.
“What else did she say?”
“Don’t let ‘them’ know.”
“Who are they?”
“If she’d included an organizational chart, I wouldn’t need to ask you.”
Xie Bi’an glanced at her, his expression reverting to that same lazy, carefree look.
“Could’ve been line noise.”
“The line isn’t even connected.”
“Then the noise is less regulated.”
Lin Yuqing stared at him.
“I want to leave.”
“Sure.” Xie Bi’an tipped his chin toward the iron door at the far end of the office. “Turn left and you’ll reach the Soul Retrieval Division. Turn right and you’ll reach Reincarnation Administration. The former requires a soul-retrieval warrant. The latter requires a death certificate. Which one do you have?”
“I’m alive.”
“Who can prove it?”
“I’m standing right here.”
“People standing here usually aren’t alive.”
Lin Yuqing opened her mouth, but couldn’t come up with a single thing that proved she was alive.
She touched the side of her neck. There seemed to be a pulse beneath her fingertip—or maybe her hand was just shaking too badly. She held her breath and felt again, but the more anxious she became, the less she could tell.
Xie Bi’an didn’t hurry her. He only pushed the blank file back across the desk.
The words no such person on record, stamped right in the center, looked like an obituary posted in the wrong place.
“Without a death record, we can’t send you into the reincarnation cycle,” he said. “Without a mortal-world identity, we can’t put you back there, either. Until the records are sorted out, you can only remain here temporarily.”
“Why do I have to work customer service while I’m here?”
Xie Bi’an pointed at the red stamp on the wall.
This quarter’s case-closure rate has fallen below target. We ask all staff to weather this difficult time together.
“Because we’re short-staffed.”
The answer was so absurd that it actually convinced Lin Yuqing this really was some kind of government office.
She lowered her eyes to the screen. The numberless call from earlier had already disappeared, and the Chen Guochang case that had been on hold had popped back up.
> Abnormal call disconnection. > Please restore service within ten minutes to avoid affecting the rights of the dead.
There were two options below: Reconnect, and Have customer service assume responsibility.
Lin Yuqing didn’t touch the mouse.
“What responsibility does customer service have to assume?”
Nervous said quietly, “It depends on the case. Minor offenses deduct merit points. More serious ones mean taking the dead person’s punishment in their place.”
“What’s the worst?”
“I haven’t seen it yet.”
“Because it’s never happened?”
“Because the people who saw it aren’t around anymore.”
Lin Yuqing closed her eyes briefly and clicked Reconnect.
The phone rang once before Chen Guochang picked up.
“Miss?” the old man asked anxiously. “Where did you go just now?”
“There was a system error. I’m very sorry to have kept you waiting.”
The standard script came out so naturally that Lin Yuqing found it pathetic.
“Mr. Chen, I need to confirm this again. Is this the first time you’ve filed a death appeal?”
“Of course it’s the first time. It’s not like I die every day.”
But seven cases were listed on the right side of the screen.
They began seven days ago, one case created each day at 2:07 a.m. The appellant in all six previous cases was Chen Guochang, and the cause of death, address, and voiceprint match were all identical.
Stranger still, all six cases showed the same status: Closed.
“You’ve let a dead man call in for seven straight days after his case was closed?” Lin Yuqing covered the receiver with her hand.
Nervous leaned toward the screen, his face even worse than it had been when he saw the numberless call.
“That’s impossible.”
“That’s the second time tonight you’ve said that.”
“Before a case can be closed, we have to ask the dead whether they accept their death. As long as they answer yes, their soul enters the escort-to-afterlife procedure. It’s impossible for them to call and file an appeal again.”
Xie Bi’an bent down and opened the recording from the first case.
Amid the hiss of static, an unfamiliar customer-service agent spoke in a flat, toneless voice:
“Do you accept this death?”
Chen Guochang answered, “I accept.”
The second recording had the same question and the same answer.
The third, fourth, and fifth were the same.
Every “I accept” came from the same old man. The voiceprint match showed one hundred percent compatibility. Even the faint breath at the end was identical.
It was as if someone had copied the same sentence six times.
When the sixth recording reached the closing question, half a second of silence suddenly appeared.
The customer-service agent asked, “Do you accept this death?”
After a pause, Chen Guochang said, “I accept.”
But beneath those two words, another very faint voice was layered in.
Lin Yuqing couldn’t make it out. “Rewind that.”
Xie Bi’an played it again.
There was still nothing but a blur of static.
Nervous tilted his head and listened for a long while. “It sounds like electrical interference.”
But Lin Yuqing heard the voice say:
“Don’t trust the case-closure record.”
A chill crawled inch by inch up her back.
Just like the incoming call at 2:14, neither Xie Bi’an nor Nervous had heard it.
A new system notification popped up in the lower-right corner of the screen:
> Case B-0714 reopened. > Investigation deadline: seventy-two hours. > Assigned customer-service agent: Lin Yuqing. > Field assistance: underworld-agent trainee Nervous.
Nervous stared at his name and nearly dropped his mourning staff on the floor.
“Wait, why me?”
“Maybe because we’re short-staffed,” Lin Yuqing said.
She returned Xie Bi’an’s answer to him word for word. It didn’t make her feel any better.
On the other end of the line, Chen Guochang was still waiting.
“Miss,” he asked cautiously, “can I go home today?”
Lin Yuqing looked at the six closed case records. For the first time, she didn’t immediately fall back on the standard script.
“I can’t promise that,” she said. “But I’ll find out first who answered for you the previous six times.”
The seventy-two-hour countdown began on the screen.
Seventy-one hours, fifty-nine minutes, and fifty-nine seconds.
The moment the first second elapsed, the processing results for all six closed cases simultaneously turned red.
> Soul sent into the reincarnation cycle.
All six Chen Guochangs had already been reincarnated.