Midnight Bookstore

Translated by XephiZ

Edited by Aelryinth

It was midnight, and the dim yellow street lights lit up the deserted road. It was very cold, and the wind was sharp as blades.

Zhou Ze was cold. He had no idea where he was, but he was aware of one thing; he was back in his world.

He already died, but he had now returned.

He did not know what to do, and he continued walking forward numbly. He no longer had the mood to think about other things, like the place he had just come back from, the old man that he had tried to save before the crash, the faceless woman wearing a red dress in the lake… and his fingernails.

He had returned. He was supposed to be happy about it, but when someone walked past him, no matter how loud he was shouting, no one could either see or hear him.

He was rejected and isolated from the world.

The people that had never been locked away before would never understand the pain of being isolated. To Zhou Ze, the world was like a cage, covered by a piece of black cloth.

No one could see him, no one could communicate with him. He could not touch anything, and even the wind was passing through his body.

He felt extremely weak. It was not exaggerating to say that he was too weak to even stand up to the wind. In addition to that, he could see some faint light dots dissipating from his body.

In other words, his body was fading away slowly.

Perhaps he would vanish without a single trace in the next fifteen minutes.

He was unsure why it was happening, but he was clear that he did not have much time left.

In the Tale of the Eight Immortals, Li Tieguai’s spirit had entered the body of a man that had died from starvation, and ended up claiming the man’s body.

Zhou Ze also heard stories about ghosts reincarnated in someone else’s body. He would like to do so right now. He was extremely cold, and was panicking, too. He desperately needed a body. He did not even care who the person was.

Humans were extremely selfish in times like this, and Zhou Ze was no exception, and he was almost at his limit.

However, whenever he approached a person, their head and shoulders would start glowing, forcing him to back away. It even inflicted damage on him by speeding up the rate of him disappearing.

He was getting tired and numb. He was waiting for his time, waiting for his end. Since he had already experienced death once, he was able to face death quite calmly this time. Considering the situation he was currently in, the longer he stayed around, the longer he had to suffer.

Squeak…

A shop ahead was still lit up. It seemed to be a bookstore, as he could see rows of bookshelves through the window.

Someone pushed the door open and came out of the shop. It was a man in a sweatshirt. Zhou Ze was unable to see the man’s face as he was wearing a cap. The man looked around him before taking off in a hurry.

Of course, the man could not see Zhou Ze, who was less than five meters away from him.

Zhou Ze did not feel anything strange, but soon after the man left, Zhou Ze suddenly felt warmth coming from the bookstore. A warm aura.

Zhou Ze was confused about where the warmth was coming from, but it was like a man who was about to freeze to death finding a box of matches. Even though the man knew the box of matches was nowhere enough to keep him warm, he would still light the matches up so he could feel the slightest warmth right before his death.

Zhou Ze walked into the shop. His body went through the bookstore’s glass door. He continued forward and went behind a bookshelf.

A man was lying behind the bookshelf.

It was a handsome young man, who seemed to be in his twenties. The air conditioner was on. The man was not wearing much. He was wearing a long-sleeved shirt and a thin jacket.

The man was lying still on the ground, but Zhou Ze sensed warmth from his body. He was like a beggar that had found a bag of gold coins on the street.

The warmth was irresistible, not like Zhou Ze had another choice than accepting it!

Zhou Ze went forward and crouched in front of the young man.

He had no idea how to enter the man’s body, but he understood how to receive the warmth he desperately needed.

He reached out his hand and placed it on the person’s chest.

Zhou Ze saw his fingers slowly entering the man’s body.

It was quite a strange feeling. Unlike the feeling he had when the breeze was passing through his body on the street, it felt more like his body was merging with the man’s body through his fingernails.

Zhou Ze slowly entered the man’s body. The two started to merge into one.

——

“Xu Le! Wake up, wake up now!”

Zhou Ze woke up when someone shoved him. To be more precise, he was startled by it. He saw himself sitting behind the counter of the bookstore. He was initially sleeping on his hands behind it.

“Hey, wake up!” The woman’s voice was extremely sharp and loud. It sounded like she was giving him an order.

Zhou Ze raised his head and looked at the woman… the girl in front of him. The girl was around the age of a high school student. Despite her mature appearence, she seemed rather naive and innocent still.

“Hey, Xu Le, what do you mean by this? So you think you can show your attitude to my parents and my sister now? You didn’t even go home last night! Who gave you permission to do so!?”

-Xu Le? Who’s that?-

Zhou Ze waved his hands in bewilderment and realized how smooth his hands were. The skin of his hands had been callused because he had been practicing how to use the equipment for operation for a long time, but the hands he currently had were the opposite.

“Hey, I’m talking to you!” The girl slammed her palm on the counter angrily.

Zhou Ze frowned and rose to his feet. He walked to the mirror beside the entrance and looked at his reflection. It was an unfamiliar face. Hang on, he did see the face before. It was the man that he saw last night.

-Did I claim the man’s body?

“Hey, what are you trying to do? My parents are very angry, my mum is still having a tantrum. I’m telling you, my family has paid for everything that you eat, drink, and wear. How dare you, a live-in son-in-law, show your attitude in my family? What are you trying to prove? If you don’t go back home today, I swear I’ll come here right away to beat you up!”

The girl pretended to raise her hand, but she suddenly discovered that the man that was supposed to be her brother-in-law did not beg for mercy as usual. As a matter of fact, she was intimidated by the look in his eyes.

She quickly glanced at the time and realized that it was already half-past seven.

“Humph, I’ll be going to school first, I will teach you a lesson tonight!” The woman left, panting with rage.

—

Zhou Ze slowly returned to his seat behind the counter. There was an old laptop and a phone beside it.

Even now, he still could not tear his thoughts away from the fact that he had claimed someone else’s body.

He was Zhou Ze, a reputable, young surgeon in Tongcheng. He was an orphan, but now, his identity had changed all of a sudden.

-What did the girl say just then? That I am a…live-in son-in-law? I have a wife, and parents-in-law?-

Judging from his sister-in-law’s attitude and tone when she was speaking to him, his identity as a live-in son-in-law perfectly suited how it used to be in the past.

A live-in son-in-law, also known as matrilocality, would usually be looked down upon by the wife’s family. In the old times, members of society would look down at the man, too. Their status in society was comparable to a criminal’s. During the Han Dynasty, the people that were forced to guard the frontier during the war were mostly sons-in-law that lived in their wife’s parents’ house.

Zhou Ze picked up the phone. It did not have a passcode. He could not tell whether the man was too lazy, or too afraid to set a passcode. Either way, it allowed Zhou Ze to access the man’s WeChat and QQ quite easily.

{TL Note: Both WeChat and QQ are Chinese messaging/social media apps.}

There were only a few contacts in QQ, mostly classmates from high school and university. There was a special list for family, with only a single contact in it. It was the man’s wife.

He opened the chat history, and found it was empty.

-Fine…-

Zhou Ze opened WeChat and tried searching for anything useful. He found the contact of his wife, and the chat history was not empty this time. It was basically Xu Le asking a few questions, such as what they were going to eat tonight, what they would do tonight, how much money he had used to order the stock, how much profit the bookstore had, how his wife was feeling…

His wife’s responses were fairly straightforward and cold. They basically consisted of yeah, got it, alright.

Zhou Ze put the phone aside. The man’s relationships were rather complicated. He suddenly glanced at his hands. His fingernails were perfectly normal.

The old man that came to the hospital before he was involved in the crash, how he escaped from the faceless woman, and how he claimed the man’s body all had something to do with his fingernails.

As Zhou Ze kept thinking about it, he realized his fingernails growing longer and turning black. He could even see a faint, black mist circling his fingernails.

“Phew…” Zhou Ze took a deep breath and closed his eyes. When he opened his eyes again, his fingernails had returned to normal.

—

From morning until midday, Zhou Ze tried to adapt to his new identity. He also felt a lot more accustomed to the new body. He still had not eaten lunch: either he had forgotten about it, or he was not hungry at all.

He was still in Tongcheng. Zhou Ze used to stay in Chongchuan District, but he was currently in Gangzha District. It was not that far away.

—

In the afternoon, Zhou Ze finally let out a sigh and rose to his feet. He had no choice but to accept what had happened.

He went ahead and cleaned the bookshelves. He had to find something to do!

Zhou Ze was alerted when he recalled how the old man had mentioned that someone had found him, and the faceless woman had also said that he would eventually be caught.

He was quite lucky to be given a second chance at coming back to life, thus he was treating it very preciously. He believed it was necessary to adapt to his new identity as soon as possible, so he would not arouse any suspicions, especially from those that were looking for him.

The bookstore was not doing well at all. It had been difficult to sell hard copies of books for quite some time. The bookstore was also not strategically located at the entrance of a school, either.

He even wondered if Xu Le had managed to cover costs with the profit the bookstore was earning.

He finally had a customer around three in the afternoon.

The customer was browsing in the section for primary school kids. He was there for a long time.

Zhou Ze waited a while longer before he finally decided to approach the man and asked, “What genre are you looking for?”

That being said, Zhou Ze was utterly clueless about books himself.

“I’m just looking around,” the man replied.

“Sure,” Zhou Ze proceeded to mind his own business. He was still adapting to his role as the owner of the bookstore.

To his surprise, the man suddenly walked up to him and whispered, “Are you sure you don’t recognize me?”

“What?” Zhou Ze asked.

“I knocked you out with a bat last night, and took your money. I even inspected you carefully, and you weren’t breathing at all,” the man said.