Song Yuan’s memories had been a little hazy recently. If she wasn’t working for her uncle, she would have been fired a long time ago.
Her pay stub in her hand clearly marked that she was off for a week. This was the middle of summer and the air-conditioning was blasting in the office. She couldn’t help but shiver.
“Amy, you once told me that the safety charm from Nanfeng Temple was particularly effective, right?” Song Yuan snuck over to the front desk and asked in a low voice.
The young woman by the name of Amy turned her head after hearing her and chuckled, “Yeah! Did you really run into something unclean? Then just the safety charm isn’t going to do you much good, you are going to need someone to perform exorcism for you as well.”
Song Yuan was never a superstitious person, but right at this moment, she faithfully jotted down the contact information of the so-called exorcist.
Things had truly been spooky lately. She clearly remembered going to bed in her apartment the night before, but when she woke up the next day, an entire week had gone by. Her parents had tried to call her, but got a busy signal every time. They came to her apartment to look for her, and she wasn’t home! But she was in her own bed when she woke up and she could swear that she never left to go anywhere else! And the worst part was: she didn’t remember anything in that one week’s time!
With her reputation of calling in sick and going traveling with friends in the past, her family just assumed that she only did that to avoid having to go into work and went out to enjoy a week’s time off. Nobody would believe her!
She had sufficient reasons to believe that either she was losing her mind, or that she was being haunted by some sort of evil spirits.
Song Yuan went straight to the exorcist immediately after work. She was finally able to feel better after the exorcist drew her a couple of fulu but there was no way she’d stay in the same apartment anymore. She didn’t even care about her deposit but moved immediately to another new apartment under her name.
Picture: fulu (usually drew in red ink on yellow paper. Used to get rid of evil spirits or to block them from entering specific locations)
Source: 1688.com
In the overall scheme of things, Song Yuan could be classified under the category of Second-Generation Rich (SGR). Her parents ran booths on the street back in their days and that had eventually turned into a clothing company that was very popular at the time. It was said that it's easier to stay together over the difficult days than the easy ones and that couldn’t be more true when it came to her parents. Once they became well off, Mr. Song started to stray. He said he was just having fun and never wanted to get a divorce. Nonetheless, Mrs. Song was the type of woman who refused to be inferior to men even in the business world, let alone in her personal life. She found his transgression unacceptable and demanded a divorce immediately. The court had awarded her the guardianship of their child in light of the child’s young age.
After the divorce, the company split into two and was much less competitive as it once was, but luckily, both of them were well-versed in the business world. Mr. Song switched gears right away and invested in large-scale local supermarkets with sizeable profits, and Mrs. Song stuck with the clothing industry. She had expanded into internet sales a few years ago and business was bustling.
Neither one of them had the time to pay attention to Song Yuan, so the best they could do for her was to compensate her with money.
Song Yuan was terrified and had a friend staying with her for a few months. Finally, when nothing else out of the ordinary had taken place, she slowly felt better.
Translator’s rambling (griping):
What I like BEST about this story so far – thank goodness I get to type a DIFFERENT last name for a change! There are 4,000 Chinese surnames in use today. The top 100 of them make up over 85% of the population and Wang, Li, and Zhang account for over 20% of the population. I am SO over Gu’s, Huo’s, and Cheng’s. >.< Mind you none of them are even in the top 10! (Source: Chairmansbao.com)
Fuyu asked me if she should state somewhere that this was a story that I picked (versus the ones first vetted by her) because sometimes readers might enjoy / want to follow a specific translator’s “taste” in novels. Personally, I think she just didn’t want my fringe pickings to taint her reputation. 😉 In either case, I think that is a lost cause. My “taste” is quite fringe (as suggested by my alias) and, quite frankly, all over the place. So good luck with that. =D