My Years as a Ghost Messenger

I once came across a saying: loneliness is the fate of mankind. Every person is just a passerby in this world, coming from nothing, and returning to nothing. No one can change this destiny, so from the moment we are born, we must begin to learn how to face death.

My name is Zhang Xiaobei. I’m twenty years old this year. My nickname is Tie, because I was frail and sickly as a child. My parents feared I wouldn’t survive, so they gave me this name, hoping to “tie” me firmly to this world.

But from an early age, many strange things happened to me. Some people even said I wouldn’t live past twenty. If I did, it would be by borrowing my parents’ lives, meaning that after my twentieth birthday, my parents would die instead.

So I’m terrified, because my twentieth birthday is just over two months away.

That’s why I’ve been on edge recently. I doubt anyone isn’t afraid of death. People say we should learn to face it, but I’m only twenty—I really haven’t figured out how.

To keep myself from thinking too much, I’ve been taking every overtime shift at the factory, which means I finish work extremely late every night. Especially tonight—when I finally remembered to clock out, it was already 12:20 a.m. The last bus had already stopped running, but I went to the stop anyway, still holding onto a sliver of hope.

To my surprise, I didn’t wait long before the final 321 bus appeared. Normally, the last bus would pass by around 12:10, but tonight it was almost half past twelve.

I didn’t think much of it—maybe there was a mechanical problem, causing t