stale smoke curled up from the cheap pipe between my lips. The sun was just peeking over the horizon, casting long shadows across the courtyard. Quiet. Not the peaceful quiet of early morning, but the kind that made your teeth ache, the kind that told you nobody gave a damn about this place.

Yeah, I’d moved again. Again. The ‘That Whatnot Hotel’ had packed up its meager belongings—the few chairs, the slightly less few tables, the eternal pile of dishes someone always forgot to wash—and gotten tossed somewhere new. According to the old man who’d apparently ‘borrowed’ my时空 compass, we’d landed somewhere ‘far out, even for ghosts’. Far out indeed. Nowhere near any town, nowhere near any path. Just… this.

“Gramps, another cigarette?” a voice cut through the stillness.

I glanced over. Little Wang, my adopted kid, five years old in spirit but acting like a teenager. He’d stuck with me through the whole mess, which was more than I could say for most ‘customers’.