Paper Gentleman - Chapter 1

Chapter 1

My name is Song He.

That shop at the very end of Funeral Street in the south of the city-the one everyone considers the unluckiest-is mine.

The shop isn’t large, and the storefront is weathered. Only three words are written on the plaque: Song Family Paper.

During the day, passersby go out of their way to avoid it. But once someone in the family actually dies, they all come knocking on my door.

When my father was alive, he used to say that this trade was about eating the food of the dead and earning the money of the living. Whether you can hold onto this bowl of rice steadily doesn’t depend on how skillful your hands are, but on whether you dare to stare into a dead man’s face and recreate it.

I started learning the art of the Paper Craftsman at fourteen.

First, I learned to craft horses, then sedan chairs, and finally, people.

My father said that people are the hardest to craft. If the features are off by an inch, it won’t look like them; if the spirit is lacking by a fraction, it won’t be true. But if you craft them too realistically, it’s easy to attract things that shouldn’t be there.

I didn’t believe him at first.

Until three years ago, when Wen Yan disappeared.

Wen Yan was my fiancé.

That year, he was twenty. He wore green robes, loved cleanliness, spoke slowly, and wrote with beautiful calligraphy. People in the city said he was blessed with good fortune-his family was respectable, and he was a man of status. He shouldn’t have had a marriage contract with the daughter of a Paper Craftsman like me.

Yet, he was willing.

He once came to my shop to order a lantern, saying it was for the academy’s sacrifice to Confucius. I was crafting paper cranes that day, my hands covered in paste. He stood outside the door for a long time, and the first thing he said was, “Your hands are very steady.”

After that, he came often.

Sometimes he brought a bag of roasted chestnuts, sometimes a roll of newly bought paper, and sometimes nothing at all, just standing at the door watching me work. Only after I finished would he slowly say, “I missed you.”

My father thought he was too scholarly, complaining that his speech was as weak as water.

But I knew he had a backbone of iron.

The Wen family thought I brought bad luck and wanted to break the engagement, but Wen Yan was the one who brought the Marriage Certificate back. He said he would come to marry me after the autumn results were posted.

But before the results came out, he was gone.

Not dead.

Just… gone.

That day, he went out to deliver a letter for his teacher and didn’t return by nightfall. The second day passed, then the third, then the seventh. No sign of him alive, no body to be found. In the end, they only found his pouch embroidered with green bamboo on the riverbank outside the city.

The Wen family wept for a few days and then began to build a cenotaph for him.

I didn’t believe he was dead.

I searched for him. I looked outside the city, at the docks, asked at the Charity House, and even in the gambling dens. I even crept into the mass graves in the mountains. I searched for three months and found nothing.

In the end, it was my father who dragged me back.

He said only one thing: “Song He, if you keep looking, you’ll end up losing yourself too.”

After that, I never mentioned Wen Yan again.

But I didn’t forget.

The Gu Family came to ask me to craft a Paper Bridegroom on the ninth day of the seventh lunar month, three years later.

It was the Gu Family’s Old Steward who came. He wore silk shoes and carried a black umbrella; when he stood at the door, not even the edges of his shoes were touched by dust. He spoke very politely, saying that Third Young Master Gu had died suddenly on his wedding night. The Madam was so grief-stricken she couldn’t get out of bed and wanted to arrange a ghost marriage for the young master to send him off with dignity.

I asked, “Doesn’t the Gu Family have a regular funeral shop they use?”

The Old Steward said, “The Madam specifically named you to do it.”

My hands didn’t stop moving as I continued to paint the corners of a Paper Figure’s eyes. “My work is expensive.”

“Money is not an issue.”

“I have rules for my work.”

“Please, go ahead, Miss.”

I looked up at him. “I must paint the bridegroom’s face myself. Once it is finished, no one from the Gu Family is allowed to touch it. I must be the one to personally deliver it to the mourning hall.”

The Old Steward was clearly taken aback.

He likely hadn’t seen anyone stick to such rules before.

But the Gu Family was in a hurry, so they eventually agreed.

That night, the Gu Family sent over the deceased’s birth characters, measurements, and a portrait.

When I spread the portrait out, I felt something was wrong.

Third Young Master Gu had thick eyebrows and round eyes, with somewhat full lips-a face of wealth and status. He didn’t look like Wen Yan at all. But when I picked up the brush to outline the paper face, my hand acted as if it were no longer under my control. Stroke by stroke, it all went toward the likeness of another person.

First, I painted the eyebrows.

The peaks were straight.

Then the eyes.

The corners were slightly elongated.

Then the bridge of the nose, the lip line, and the jaw.

By the time I was halfway through, my back was drenched in sweat. When I put down the brush and looked up at that paper face, my legs went weak.

That wasn’t Third Young Master Gu.

That was Wen Yan.

I stared at that face for a long time.

So long that the oil lamp on the desk crackled and sparked.

I reached out to smudge it, wanting to blur those eyes. But the moment my fingertips touched the paper face, the courtyard gate outside was suddenly slammed by the wind with a loud bang.

I jerked my hand back.

When I looked at the Paper Figure again, those eyes seemed a bit more lifelike than they had been a moment ago.

A chill ran through my heart.

My father had said before that if you craft a person too realistically, trouble will follow.

I pushed the Paper Figure further away, intending to craft a new one.

But my hands shook while cutting the paper, and they shook while applying the paste. The face I made a second time was still Wen Yan. The second time was even more accurate than the first, even including that faint mole beneath the eye.

I finally stopped.

I knew it wasn’t my hands playing tricks on me.

This job… was tainted from the start.