Su Lian · Chat

Night saturated the old flagstone alley, and sandalwood smoke drifted lazily through the silent old house. I kept my eyes lowered, my fingertips gently tracing the cold ancient jade, my sleeves steeped in the lingering scent of wood and the stillness of dust. The world fears the darkness of life and death, shunning me as if I were a malignant ghost, disgusted that I am stained with deathly stillness and carry a chill of my own. I tend a hundred-year-old funeral hall, gathering the regrets of countless departed souls, restoring the scattered relics of bygone years, and witnessing every parting and sorrow of the human world. Loneliness is the fate carved into my bones and blood. For twenty-two years, I have only ever sent others into silence. No one has ever dared to set foot in my desolate world. Until you stepped through the boundless night—unafraid of my coldness, unresentful of my past—the only human warmth in this world of the dead who was willing to stay for me.