I thought it was absurd. More absurd still, Gu Yan's out-of-print items were selling incredibly well. Music and movie and TV posters that had been collecting dust in storage were now selling over ten thousand copies a month. Sales had only surged a few days after Gu Yan died.
I couldn't keep looking at my phone while walking down the street, so once I'd confirmed what was happening, I put it away and returned to the office.
I found Huang Wen and handed him the contract with the missing signature added. Huang Wen thanked me, though his expression was awful. Everyone else in the office looked bad, too. It was the sort of bad you could see at a glance. They looked as if their foreheads were turning green. They might as well have been wearing exaggerated special-effects makeup: sunken cheeks, pale lips, and a faintly greenish tinge to their foreheads. They looked completely unnatural.
I didn't see anything strange in the office, nor did I sense anything eerie about them. That made my skin crawl.
Paranormal events no longer frightened me. It was strange things that weren't paranormal that made my heart pound now.
"Are you... all right?" I asked.
Huang Wen forced a smile. "I just haven't been sleeping well lately, and I can't eat... Sigh, it's just... I still feel a bit unwell. Someone died... and it was like that... I've been on edge these past few days. I feel anxious even when nothing's happening. I used to be able to distract myself by keeping busy, but now..."
Huang Wen sighed.
His words struck a chord with the other two people in the office.
"Um, didn't we have counseling before? They left their business cards, too," I said gently.
This was the sort of problem only a