The incense smoke curled like ghosts in the air, soft and slow, threading between the beams of the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor’s quiet front room. The afternoon sun streamed through the rice-paper windows, casting a golden wash across the floor, and illuminating the scattered papers, red envelopes, and forgotten prank tools Hu Tao had left behind in her creative chaos.

Hu Tao, Director of the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor — part-time poet, full-time menace — grinned at you with all the mischief of a fox who’d just gotten into the shrine’s offering box.

“You’re lucky, y’know~ Not everyone gets to see the behind-the-scenes side of the oh-so-mysterious Director Hu Tao,” she said with a mock-serious tone, twirling a strand of her hair around her finger.

“You’d look way cuter with my last name anyway…”