Wandering Spirit Tavern - Chapter 1 - Typhoon

This is a tavern that welcomes wandering spirits.

Occasionally, netherworld enforcers and netherworld officers drop by.

When people die, they become ghosts. Those with clear karmic debts descend to the netherworld¹, where they might reincarnate or end up in hell, but they have a destination.

Those with unresolved debts can only roam the human world.

These wandering spirits, caught between yin and yang, often suffer the scorching hellfire, and every now and then, monks and old Taoist priests give them trouble, making their existence miserable.

The Wandering Spirit Tavern offers them brief respite, though this peace comes at a price.

Typhoon

“300 yuan, all in coins.”

On a typhoon afternoon, Lin You carried a bag of coins, braved the rain for half a street, entered a mall, and found a claw machine.

Insert coin, move joystick, the shiny mechanical claw flew over the ugly dolls, quickly pressed the grab button, the claw flew out, hugged a doll, lifted, the doll slipped from the claw back to its place, the first attempt failed.

Insert another coin, fail again, continue…

The coins in the bag dwindled, the crowd grew, the noise intensified, everyone speculated about this strange woman. Was she venting heartbreak? Or simply crazy?

Lin You didn’t glance at them, her grip on the joystick tightened, her gaze shifted from anticipation to anger, finally morphing into fear.

With the coins nearly gone, the surrounding people quieted down. By now, they no longer cared about Lin You’s identity, only hoping she’d catch a doll. The entire mall’s attention was focused on Lin You and the pink machine before her.

Finally, Lin You touched the last coin in her bag, yet still no doll in sight.

She clutched the coin tightly, her palm and fingertips drenched in sweat.

The small coin slot was right there-should she put her last hope into it?

The claw machine’s soft pink light illuminated Lin You’s pale face, her eyes bloodshot.

“Alright, my luck’s finally run out.”

With that, Lin You pocketed the last coin, squeezed through the crowd, and left the mall.

In the following week, Lin You unsurprisingly discovered her boyfriend had cheated, broke up the same day, her company folded, she lost her job, and nearly got hit by a car while moving her things home. She dodged the car but twisted her ankle.

Limping, braving the rain, she returned home, collapsed onto the sofa without even changing her wet clothes.

“I’m never going out again, even if I die, I’ll die at home.”

Then, a loud bang sounded above her, followed by a splash of foul-smelling liquid.

Looking up, she found the fridge door had blown open-typhoon passing, old building intermittently losing power, the long-ignored milk finally couldn’t hold back and exploded.

The stench filled the entire room, trying to drive Lin You out.

“I’m not going out even if it kills me.”

Amidst the stench, Lin You fell asleep.

The day the typhoon hit, the day she tried the claw machine, was Lin You’s 28th birthday. From that day, she entered an era of misfortune, a fate long foretold, yet Lin You never believed it. She didn’t believe when she sensed her boyfriend’s odd behavior, didn’t believe when her job faced crisis, only when she spent 300 yuan on claw machines and failed did she finally believe.

The prophecy happened when Lin You was 8 years old, the year she met a peculiar woman.

That year, boys at school suddenly became obsessed with marbles, the popular game was hitting marbles, whoever hit the opponent’s marble won. Lin You wanted to play, not because she liked marbles, but because she loved the feeling of winning. Anything with a win-lose outcome, Lin You wanted to play, wanted to win. But the boys didn’t want to play with girls, Lin You had to work hard to find opponents, and because opportunities were rare, she was always nervous and kept losing.

Frustrated, Lin You invented a new game, guessing marbles-holding marbles in hand, let the opponent guess the number, guess right and win, and the winner guesses next round.

Soon Lin You’s game became popular in school, but Lin You herself lost all her marbles the afternoon the game started. Unconvinced, she spent all her pocket money on marbles, then lost again.

Finally, only one marble was left, no way to play.

“How about I let you, this round you guess mine, guess right it’s yours, wrong you give me your last one.” The boy who beat her challenged.

Lin You looked at the last marble, feeling inexplicably wronged, she hadn’t done anything wrong, why lose so much.

“No.” Lin You refused.

That evening, carrying the last marble, Lin You walked home feeling aggrieved, then met that woman.

A very pretty but oddly dressed woman.

“Crying over losing is embarrassing.”

“I’m not crying.”

“Crying and denying it is even more embarrassing.”

Lin You ignored the woman.

“Just win back what you lost, crying is useless, all bets are like this.” The woman started talking to herself.

“Easy for you to say, then you go win.”

“Haha, I’m not interested in your games, but I have a way for you to win, want to try?”

Lin You remembered, she vaguely sensed danger in this, but she really wanted to win, so she stepped into the woman’s trap.

The woman told her she could not only help Lin You win marbles but also give her 20 years of good luck, but after 20 years, Lin You would lose everything.

What “everything” meant, Lin You couldn’t comprehend at the time, her small head only had one thought-tomorrow she must win back all the marbles.

So Lin You followed the woman to a strange house, met some strange people.

This memory had blurred, 28-year-old Lin You found it hard to recall how exactly those people were strange, but she remembered the fear that rose from her heart upon seeing them.

Lin You had thought about running out of that house, but before she could act, the strange woman handed her a drink.

“Drink it and you can leave, cheers.”

Lin You clinked glasses with the woman, drank the awful drink, left the house, then vomited all the way home, and fell ill, couldn’t get better, until a neighbor aunt found an old Taoist priest to cure her.

After recovering, Lin You returned to school, indeed won many marbles, but the more she won, the more uneasy she felt.

This unease accompanied Lin You for many years, during these years, Lin You indeed had smooth sailing. Academics, career, every choice was right, but every time unexpected good things happened, like a job promotion, boyfriend suddenly gifting her… amidst excitement, Lin You always thought of that strange woman from years ago.

Finally, after the claw machine failure, she accepted her fate, feeling oddly relieved.

After sleeping a whole day in the stench, Lin You was awakened by a phone call-her mother was seriously ill.

Quickly packed, bought a ticket home.

On the train, Lin You immediately saw the figure that had long blurred in her memory-the strange woman, unchanged all these years, even wearing the same dark green cheongsam.

The woman also saw Lin You, smiled at her, beckoned her over.

Lin You stood dumbfounded at the door, too scared to move, her mind filled with horror movie scenes of death trains.

Until someone behind her nudged, “Excuse me, could you move?”

Footnote:

1. Netherworld(地府):The Netherworld is a broad concept that refers to the place where all the souls of the deceased reside, including the Netherworld Court and the Netherworld Administration.