Edited – by me
The weather in June was volatile.
The morning funeral procession had been held under a blazing sun, but by noon, it had turned into a torrential downpour.
The cemetery, oppressive and solemn, was crowded with people. A sea of black clothes and black umbrellas created a scene of profound mourning.
Not far away, a group of young women wailed heart-wrenchingly, holding black-and-white photographs and screaming their grief to the heavens.
The young man in the photos had a pair of peach-blossom eyes. Even in black and white, the upward curve of his eyelids hinted at a faint, flirtatious flush. Below his straight, elegant nose were thin, perfectly curved lips that seemed to hold a smile even when still, lifting the mood of anyone who looked at him.
It was a stunningly handsome face.
Right now, the owner of that face was sitting on his own tombstone, his legs dangling and swinging back and forth.
Rain passed right through his body, splashing onto the stone. A mocking smile touched his lips. The feigned grief displayed by the mourners in front of him was far less sincere than the raw, genuine anguish of the fans held back by security outside the gates.
Jiang Ye looked at the crowd, feeling a strange sense of guilt.
Before he died, as a top-tier celebrity in the entertainment industry, he had never quite figured out how he’d become so famous.
It wasn’t unusual to have “girlfriend fans” or “wife fans,” but there was also a whole bunch of “mother fans”—all younger than him—who called him their “baby” and “son” every single day.
This infuriated Jiang Ye, who considered himself strong enough to uproot a willow tree with his bare hands.
He decided to infiltrate his own fandom by posing as an anti-fan:
“Tell me, what do you even like about Jiang Ye? It’s just a face, right? Being handsome might put food on the table, but can it make him your son? Isn’t this just a generational mess that’s totally degrading?”
“…”
“Son! Mommy misses you! Please come back! Mommy wants to see you dance, act, sing—hic—hic—”
“My baby! Heaven is truly jealous of his beauty! My baby had just started getting famous, why is the Old Man in the Heavens so blind? Why must the living bury the dead—”
“Gege, we love you! Can you hear us? No matter where you are, we will love you forever!”
“…”
Jiang Ye’s lips twitched.
Aside from the one who called him “Gege” at the end, the “mother fans” who had fully immersed themselves in the role of raising a child were so deep into the act that their wild, fierce words almost made the security guards laugh.
She had cried herself unconscious.
Jiang Ye looked at the so-called friends and family gathered before his tombstone. In life, he had been an orphan with no father or mother. When he was broke, not a single relative came to his aid. Now that he was famous, a whole crowd had appeared.
There were people from his agency, past collaborators, and even those he’d never worked with—all kinds of people showed up.
Major media outlets were taking photos at the front, their faces masks of grief, heads bowed in silence.
Jiang Ye remained expressionless. All these people combined probably weren’t grieving as sincerely as the few girls who had been barred outside.
When a person dies, they’re just dead.
Any sorrow was merely a lament over the impermanence of life. Tomorrow, when the rain stopped and the sky cleared, he would be forgotten by the world.
Jiang Ye took a few steps forward, wanting to see how the unconscious fan was doing. But after just a few strides, an invisible force in the air bounced him back.
He tried again, but the result was the same.
He tested it in every direction—front, back, left, and right. The boundary seemed to be a circle roughly two meters around his tombstone.
His hand unconsciously brushed against a nearby member of the media. His transparent palm passed through the raised camera and glided across the reporter’s chest.
“I think we’ve got enough shots. This rain is terrible—I feel like I’m coming down with a cold.”
“You’re telling me. This rain came out of nowhere. The temperature drop is brutal, and this place is just… creepy. I say we wrap it up.”
The reporters began packing up their cameras.
Jiang Ye sat perched on his own tombstone, leisurely watching the scene unfold. As the reporters withdrew, the masks of grief slipped, revealing the true emotions beneath.
The one who had wept the most bitterly was his young assistant, Li Xiao Ou, who had been by his side since the very beginning of his career. The young man was sobbing so hard he could barely breathe, his face a mess of snot and tears.
Watching him, Jiang Ye felt a sudden urge to be resurrected for just a moment—so he could leave the poor kid a bit of his inheritance.
As for the others, some were genuinely heartbroken, but their grief didn’t move him.
I guess I was a cold-hearted man after all, he thought.
The rain intensified, now accompanied by flashes of lightning and peals of thunder.
Seeing that the situation had wound down, the crowd dispersed.
The vast cemetery was left with only a few exhausted mourners, scattered before other tombstones, weeping out of sheer exhaustion.
When Jiang Ye had first appeared here in this state, he had expected to meet many of his own kind.
Strange, he thought.
He waited for reincarnation, utterly bored. In this body, he couldn’t touch a thing, go anywhere, or see anyone. No one could see him, and he couldn’t touch anyone either.
He had no idea when he’d finally face the King Yama and cross the Naihe Bridge. (TLN: a famous mythical boundary in Chinese folklore and religion that souls must cross to enter the afterlife and face reincarnation)
He looked up at the sky. Who doesn’t miss the world of the living?
But life and death were decided by fate, and there was nothing he could do.
The sky gradually darkened until the pitch-black horizon met the pouring rain, which showed no sign of stopping.
Jiang Ye was starting to get anxious.
Mainly, he was terrified.
Despite his usual boisterous and loud-mouthed demeanor, he was actually the biggest coward. He was afraid of the dark, afraid of thunder, and afraid of ghosts.
Now, he was even afraid of himself.
Staring at the gloomy, desolate cemetery, devoid of a single soul, he found he didn’t miss the world of the living at all.
He just wanted to be reincarnated. Whether it was Heaven or Hell, some immortal or demon had to come and take him away.
He didn’t want to be a lonely, wandering ghost, scared half to death.
Having died once, he couldn’t endure any more torment.
Psychological terror was far more frightening than the physical changes he’d undergone.
The rain lasted until midnight.
The thunder roared and crashed, constantly testing the limits of Jiang Ye’s resolve—and threatening to scare him to death all over again.
Jiang Ye felt there was no greater joy than seeing a living person in a cemetery in the middle of the night.
I hope this grieving relative’s headstone is close to mine, he thought. If they stay and mutter for a while, it’ll be like keeping me company.
Then he saw the tall, slender figure stop right in front of his own headstone.
The man was very tall.
Sitting atop his headstone, Jiang Ye looked up and could just see the man’s jawline hidden beneath the umbrella. The lines were perfect—a young, handsome man.
Jiang Ye had grown so bored he’d even started studying the man.
After a moment, Jiang Ye assumed he was reading the photo and name on the headstone. But one minute, five minutes, ten minutes… twenty minutes passed, and the man remained motionless, still standing before the grave.
The same Jiang Ye who had been praying for someone to come just a moment ago now felt a chill of dread. Surely no one comes to cemeteries at this hour to rob graves, right?
The rain fell harder, as if the sky had sprung a leak, pouring down in a relentless deluge.
Thunder crashed in his ears, and Jiang Ye flinched in terror.
The man standing before his headstone finally moved.
The nose, the eyes, the face—all of it made Jiang Ye, who considered himself the most handsome man in the world, instantly leap down from his own tombstone.
It wasn’t because the stranger was too handsome.
It was because—what was Xie Yan, the business prodigy who had shocked the world and later become a viral sensation for his looks, doing standing in front of his grave?
Jiang Ye waved his arms frantically in a futile attempt to get his attention.
He kept flailing before the man, trying to tell him, Hey, Big Boss, you’ve got the wrong person!
But all his frantic jumping and waving froze as the man before him sank heavily to his knees.
The business titan, praised by the global media and admired—and feared—by all in the corporate world, simply knelt before Jiang Ye’s grave without a word, without warning.
The man stared at the photo on the headstone, his eyes filled with an unfathomable, crushing sorrow.
His tall, straight frame—hailed by the outside world as the perfect physique—seemed to buckle under the rain. He braced his hands on the ground before the tombstone and buried his face.
Even without seeing his face or expression, Jiang Ye, whose acting experience had given him a strong sense of empathy, could feel a wave of intense despair.
It came from the man before him.
The man kneeling before his own grave.
Ela ~~ Hey Lovely Readers! So I am posting this short novel in Rainbow Reads! Hope you will enjoy. I edited / worked on it a long time ago. My style has of course changed now. I also am translating the first 3 chaps to have continuity. I will make edits to the novel to just update the style and bring to my current way of editing/ translating.
Thank you to Rainbow for giving me the space to join and share with you all.
Just a fujoshi who got into editing and translation
