Midnight Bookstore

Translated by XephiZ

Edited by Aelryinth

-Did she overdo it?-

Zhou Ze struggled to find an answer to the question. Regardless of whether the little girl was telling the truth, he had no right to question her.

He felt helpless, but it was the truth.

When he heard about someone like him in Chengdu that had tried to serve justice in the living world despite being a ghost from the little girl, he actually respected the man, but it certainly did not end well for the fellow.

If he did not have the right to stand or talk to the person as an equal, what right did he have to question her?

“Boring,” the little girl shook her head, but she soon smiled. “But it’s exactly why I’m fond of you.”

The little girl picked up the storybook and murmured as if she was about to fall asleep, “Of all people that I met, you’re the most aware of your position.”

“…” -Was that meant to be a compliment?-

“I’ll be leaving soon,” the little girl seemed to be worn out.

“One more question… is there any way to overcome the problem of sleeping and eating?” It was the question that Zhou Ze wanted to ask the most.

Apart from those two problems he was suffering from after he had reincarnated by claiming someone else’s body, he had no problem blending in with the living.

“The stability of a modified computer is nowhere as good as the original,” the little girl shook her head. “In terms of sleeping, you can only rest well if an existence from Hell is staying by your side to provide you with a similar environment to Hell. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be able to rest at all. You are from Hell, but you’re trying to live in the living world. You are not acclimatized to the environment in the worst possible ways. However, because of some special traits that you have, you managed to find some ways to help you eat and sleep. The others aren’t so lucky. Some can’t sleep for half a year. It drove them mad in the end, so consider yourself lucky!”

The little girl giggled feebly, “If I don’t go back, you can sleep better by hugging me.”

“…”

“As for eating, even I still can’t get used to eating the food here.”

After finishing the sentence, the little girl leaned sideways and fell asleep. Zhou Ze quickly reached his hand out to support her. He let out a relieved sigh when he saw she was still breathing.

Zhou Ze was once a doctor. He could easily tell that the girl was fine.

The girl was Wang Ke’s daughter. He could not afford to let anything happen to her.

However, to his slight disappointment, the ‘little girl’ did not cause a great scene when she left.

“Shouldn’t she disappear into the ground with a poof? Did she really just go back by just falling asleep?” Zhou Ze murmured to nobody in particular.

It was neither spectacular nor astounding, just like how she drew the rune on his palm. It did not even feel like a ritual, it was not cool enough.

The little girl’s eyes suddenly sprang open and she said, “See ya!”

Zhou Ze was startled. She was pretending to be asleep!

A mist so thick that it almost liquefied burst out of the little girl’s body. Even though the heater was still on, the temperature in the bookstore dropped dramatically.

The door was closed, but a cold wind started blowing in the bookstore. Even the pages of the storybook were being flipped rapidly.

A dark shadow loomed over the place, like the awakening of a savage beast bearing a strong pressure that only the dead could sense.

Zhou Ze’s fingernails elongated after sensing the pressure. He could feel his blood racing inside his body, as if his power was responding to the black mist.

The black mist suddenly disappeared into the ground with a poof, just like he had imagined.

A while later, the mist cleared up, the temperature returned to normal, and the sunlight came in through the window.

A sentence suddenly crossed his mind: Like birds who, having fed, returned to the woods, leaving the place desolate and bare.

{TL Note: The sentence is from the book A Dream of Red Mansions.} 

——

In the evening, Xu Qinglang came in with Zhou Ze’s dinner. He had run out of plum juice, thus he brought bitter gourd juice instead.

“The plum juice is gone, the bitter gourd juice should do for now,” Xu Qinglang said in an awkward voice.

He had completely lost himself in fear when he saw the little girl. He was well aware of how timid and useless he was.

When the little girl was retrieving the souls of his parents, he did not even dare to resist or try to get revenge on the little girl. He simply fell to the floor and begged like a coward.

He even directed his hatred toward Zhou Ze and attempted to poison him.

He had finally gotten over it. It no longer mattered if he was timid; he was just a man who was able to see the dead. He could never find the courage to take on an envoy of Hell.

As a matter of fact, the little girl could have easily punished him for keeping the souls of his parents behind. She could have taken away his lifespan, or even drawn his soul out and imprisoned him in Hell.

However, the little girl simply let him go, like he was nothing but a fart. There was no need for him to keep jumping around, just to get her attention.

The dead could not be revived. What he did was against the rules, anyway.

Zhou Ze finished the meal and placed a thousand yuan in front of Xu Qinglang.

“For the money that I owe you so far, and use the rest as an advanced payment. Let me know if it runs out.”

“Oh, you have money now?” Xu Qinglang let out a smile at last. He pushed the money back toward Zhou Ze and said, “Life is tough. Don’t waste the money, you have a family to take care of still.”

“…”

“I am a man with more than twenty properties, I don’t care about your petty money.”

“…”

Zhou Ze had the urge to say that he would soon be rich, once he earned the joss paper from the dead and burned them in front of the bookstore. Some idiots would pass by and throw their wallets on the ground like they were Sudhana.

{TL Note: Sudhana, also known as Shancai, means the Child of Wealth. He’s the protagonist in the last chapter of the Avatamsaka Sutra.} 

However, after second thought, he realized that there was no way he could earn enough money to afford more than twenty properties, even if he was to burn a whole car of joss paper, unless an armored cash carrier ended up in an accident in front of his bookstore…

“I’m planning to move my restaurant to somewhere else, what about you?” Xu Qinglang said.

“Where to?”

“Anywhere is better than here,” Xu Qinglang smiled. “I might move to the country, it’s not as developed, but at least I’ll have more customers there.”

“I see,” Zhou Ze said.

“I’ll be going.” Xu Qinglang cleaned the dishes and left the bookstore.

Zhou Ze looked at the rune on his palm while cutting his nails. It was already night, yet there was still no sign of any customers. Zhou Ze was starting to feel impatient. He did not care much before since there was no hope, but now, he finally saw a glimpse of hope of making money.

Why didn’t anyone come yet?

Didn’t she say he was as bright as a light bulb now, bright enough to blind the eyes of the dead?

Did the ghosts lose their way because the light was too bright for them?

Squeak… Two people came in through the door.

One was a girl around Xu Le’s age. The other was in her fifties. They looked like a mother and her daughter.

Zhou Ze knew who the girl was.

She was his first customer after he came back to life. He remembered she was here with a corgi. She left a hundred yuan behind after staying for a while. It was the first income he had made.

However, this time, the girl did not come with her corgi. She had brought her mother instead.

“Sigh, sit here, careful, check if it’s clean before sitting on it,” the woman said to the girl.

The girl leaned forward and took out a piece of tissue to wipe the seat before sitting on it with a dull face.

“Go find a book to read, my child. There’s no problem that can’t be solved, and there’s no hole you can’t cross in life. Get over it,” the woman comforted her.

The girl let out a sigh. She looked dull still. It seemed like she did not listen to the woman.

“Girl, go find a book to read. You will soon forget about the time by reading a book,” the woman was crouching beside the girl as she continued to comfort her. The woman looked as if she really cared about the girl.

Zhou Ze was still cutting his nails. The pair did not bother him.

The girl looked at Zhou Ze and said, “Boss.”

The girl sounded extremely soft and pitiful, like she had just broken up with someone. She looked like she was going to break into pieces in any second.

Any experienced man could easily tell that now was the perfect opportunity to stick a pin in.

“You must be the owner,” the woman looked at Zhou Ze cautiously.

“What is it?” Zhou Ze asked.

“What are you planning to do?” the woman said alertedly, “Child, don’t listen to him.”

The girl fell silent for a while before she said, “I lost Beibei.”

Beibei must be the name of the corgi.

“Lost?” Zhou Ze asked.

“Yeah, I lost her,” the girl’s eyes reddened. She eventually burst into tears as she thought about her beloved dog. “She must have run out of the house when I was cleaning. I wasn’t paying attention.”

“It doesn’t matter if you’ve lost her. We can always buy a new one. Why are you crying?” the woman comforted.

Zhou Ze rose to his feet and went up to the girl.

“What are you doing?” the woman pointed at Zhou Ze.

“You will find her,” Zhou Ze ignored the woman and comforted the girl.

“Mm,” the girl was crying. She wrapped her arms around Zhou Ze.

“You asshole, it was a dog that she lost, not a man, what do you think you are doing!?” the woman acted as if she was about to beat the crap out of Zhou Ze.

“Do you think you have the right to speak here?” A black mist rolled in Zhou Ze’s eyes.

The woman immediately screamed and coiled up in the corner, not daring to say a word further.

“What’s wrong?” the girl lifted her gaze. She had no idea who Zhou Ze was talking to just now.

Zhou Ze let go of the girl. The three lights protecting a person would be the weakest when they were depressed, allowing filthy things to approach them.

Luckily, it was likely that the woman was just feeling lonely. She just liked to nag and talk. She was not trying to do any harm to the girl.

“I posted information about my missing dog on the Internet. I want to find her.” The girl took out her phone and showed a photo of the dog to Zhou Ze.

“Boss, have you seen her around?”

Zhou Ze let out a wry smile. His business was so bad that he did not even have any customers, let alone a dog.

Meanwhile, the woman that was coiled up in the corner blurted out, “I’ve seen the dog before. I’ve seen her in my neighborhood. I couldn’t stay at home while my husband is having an affair with that b**ch, so I went for a walk in the neighborhood. I saw someone walking past with the dog!”