Fate Refuses Our Marriage

Fanyu woke with one bowl of cold porridge on the table and a dead man's name still stuck in her throat. Every morning, she had kept the same ritual since his death. One bowl. One bow. One turn of the old key in her pocket. It had helped her survive grief, and it had been stopping something she did not fully understand. Then she was young again, back in a beginner's body with a peak power user's skill still waiting inside it. Her left wrist still held the worn leather wristband he had once tied there. The school term was starting, and one public mistake on the rooftop garden shoved her into a fake match with the one ghost she could not ignore.