13 Minke Street

Swoosh!

Zhou Xun scooped up a handful of water and splashed it on his face. 

After a while, he raised his dripping wet face and looked in the mirror. Reflected in the mirror was the face of a fifteen-year-old young man.

It had been two weeks, and Zhou Xun still wasn’t used to this brand new face of his. Every time he looked in the mirror, there was a subconscious pause to mentally prepare himself.  

He reached out, pinched his own cheeks, pulling them outwards, and then letting go, leaving two red imprints on his face.

If only he could just tear this skin off in one go, everything in front of him, everything around him, everything that had happened in the past two weeks, would all shatter like pieces of glass, as if waking up from a dream. How nice would that be.

Of course, Zhou Xun also knew this was impossible.

Pah!

Zhou Xun slapped himself in the face.

Even though this face looked a lot like young Leonardo Dicaprio, when Zhou Xun slapped it, he was still merciless, and actually felt a little thrill from it? This slap wasn’t a naive attempt to wake himself up from the dream, but to sober himself up a bit to continue on properly in this dream.

Since he was already here, he might as well accept it.  

Zhou Xun could only comfort himself this way.

Knock knock knock…knock knock knock…

There was a series of knocks on the bathroom door, accompanied by Mina’s concerned voice: “Brother Karen, Brother Karen, are you okay?”

Mina was his cousin, the daughter of his uncle Mason.

And Zhou Xun’s current body also had a name – Karen.

“I’m fine,” Zhou Xun responded.

“Okay.” Mina breathed a sigh of relief outside the door, then asked again, “Should I bring breakfast to your room later, brother?”

“No need, Mina. I’ll come down to eat later,” Zhou Xun said.

Mina was a little surprised outside the door, but immediately responded, “Okay, brother.”

Zhou Xun continued staring at himself in the mirror. Then, he picked up a cold towel and covered his flushed face with it.

He was originally a psychologist with his own private clinic in Jingling City, while consulting part-time for the police department.

During a hostage-taking case, he went as a negotiation expert to negotiate with the hijackers, but there was an accident midway. The hijackers were about to push a little girl – one of the hostages – off the rooftop, and he quickly stepped forward and pulled the girl back. But in the process he fell down the building himself, immediately losing his consciousness.

It seemed like he dreamed strange dreams for a very long time. When he slowly regained consciousness and opened his eyes, Zhou Xun was shocked to find himself not lying in the ICU of a hospital, and the people surrounding him were not doctors, but a group of… ‘foreign strangers’.

The oldest among them was his grandfather – Diss Inmerales. 

Karen was his eldest grandson. Seeing him awake, there was relief in the old man’s eyes…as well as a hint of some indescribable emotions.

His uncle, Mason – who was in his forties – looked happy. 

Aunt Mary, Mason’s wife, smiled at first. And then, her face darkened slightly. And then, she smiled again.

Another older woman who was there was his Aunt Winnie. She was overjoyed and in tears.

There were also three kids. His cousins. 14-year-old Mina, 13-year-old Trent, both of them Uncle Mason and Aunt Mary’s children. Aunt Winnie’s daughter, 13-year-old Chrissy, was standing among them.

And Zhou Xun…no, Karen’s parents had passed away years ago.

That was the situation with this family.

Zhou Xun changed the towel again for a warmer one, covering his face with it for a long time before eventually flipping it off.

In the past half month after waking up, he had spent most of the time lying in bed. It was partly because his body was really very weak, and partly to digest the memories of this ‘Karen’. 

Digesting memories was a very strange thing. It didn’t cause any conflicts or confusion between his own memories and the original host’s. To Zhou Xun, the original host’s memories were like files stored in a cabinet or computer.

He was still Zhou Xun, but if needed, he could think carefully for a bit – much like browsing the internet – and quickly access Karen’s memories.

Anyway, since this was the case, he had to bravely confront this new life.

Zhou Xun had already mentally prepared himself to face his second life with a positive attitude.

Pushing open the bathroom door, he spotted the family’s pet cat, Poe, lazily lying by the windowsill, sunbathing. Seeing Karen, it naturally turned its head back towards the window, its attitude full of arrogance. 

Zhou Xun paused, took a deep breath, and murmured: “From today onwards, I am Karen.”

….

Karen walked down the stairs, from the third floor where his room was located to the second floor.

The Inmerales family lived at 13 Minke Street in the western district of Luojia City, in a standalone villa with a very large garden. 

If judging by his cognition from his previous life, even if Minke Street wasn’t located in the core area of Luojia City, it was still firmly within the second ring road.

Just imagine, in a second-tier city in the future, owning a standalone villa outside the suburbs…

In his previous life, Karen had only dared to dream of a townhouse, let alone a semi-detached one.

This was also something he was very grateful for now. Transmigration….transmigrating into a family with good living conditions would make things much more comfortable for himself.

If he had transmigrated into a little match-selling boy… Oh goodness, now that would be true suffering.

The Inmerales family’s kitchen and dining room were on the second floor, while the first floor was the work area.

Yes, this was a company, or more precisely, a family workshop. This villa was not only where the family lived, but also one of the means of production.

This family was in the funeral business. The signboard hanging outside read ‘Inmerales Funeral Care Company’.

Grandpa was the boss. In both family life and company operations, he had the final say. He was also a part-time priest in a small church at the end of Minke Street.

Uncle Mason used to work at stock exchange. Aunt Mary was originally a makeup artist with some fame in the industry, specializing in doing makeup for celebrities, and had also played some minor extra roles in a few small movies. 

Their life should have been at the level of the petty bourgeoisie, and they had already moved out on their own long ago.

But because of Uncle Mason’s failed investments, they not only lost their savings, but also their property, and seemed to owe some debts too. In the end, Uncle Mason could only bring his wife and children back home to…fulfill his filial duties to his father.

Grandpa didn’t actually say much about it. But, he soon found an excuse to fire the original driver and mortician.

In Grandpa’s words: the Inmerales family does not feed freeloaders.

Uncle Mason now drove the car, um, drove the family’s hearse, along with the staff Paul and Ron to pick up and drop off ‘VIPs’.

Aunt Mary continued her specialty, still doing makeups, but she no longer had to worry about encountering temperamental celebrities deliberately finding fault, or receiving complaint letters.

Their children, Mina and Trent, were in middle school.

Aunt Winnie used to be an accountant at a small clothing factory. After divorcing her husband over irreconcilable differences, Aunt Winnie brought her daughter Chrissy back home.

Fortunately the Inmerales house was big. Even with ‘VIPs’ living in the basement and the mourning hall on the first floor, there were enough rooms on the second and third floors for so many family members to live together.

Karen and his cousin, Trent, used to share a room. After Karen got sick, Trent went to sleep with Grandpa on the third floor. Additionally, the third floor had a room used as Grandpa’s office.

The second floor also had three rooms – one for the uncle and aunt, one for Aunt Winnie, and one shared by the two girl cousins. 

The atmosphere at home was actually quite good; because of Grandpa’s prestige, no one dared to cause any conflicts under his nose.

When Karen arrived at the dining table, Mina was helping her mother set the table.

Seeing Karen come down, Aunt Mary said sarcastically, “So the young master can finally come down to eat breakfast by himself now, instead of this faithful maid auntie bringing it to him?”

Aunt Mary was this kind of person; she had a sharp tongue and liked to mock people.

At home, other than not daring to offend Grandpa, she would target her husband, her children, her sister-in-law, and Karen with her verbal attacks.

Karen’s face revealed a gentle smile, and he sincerely said, “Thank you auntie for taking care of me these days, so I could recover so quickly.”

In Karen’s memories, although this aunt had an acidic tongue, when she was taking care of him she was no different from his own parents. She had a sharp tongue but also a soft heart.

“Uh…” Not expecting her usually gloomy, taciturn, and eccentric nephew to suddenly speak such polite words so smoothly, Aunt Mary was temporarily at a loss for how to respond. She pursed her lips and said, “Let’s eat.”

“Okay.” Karen sat down at the dining table.  

Breakfast was sandwiches, fried eggs and milk, with some little sausages.

Taking a bite of the sandwich, he slowly chewed. Although he had only been here for half a month, Karen was already starting to miss the duck blood and vermicelli soup with three spoons of spicy pepper.

Just then, a car horn sounded from outside the house.

“Your uncle is back.” Aunt Mary first went to the sink to wash her hands, then untied her apron. “You guys keep eating, I’ll go see if he brought back any ‘surprises’ for me.”

When other husbands returned from being out, the more extravagant ones would bring a ring or a branded handbag to surprise their wives a little. 

But for Aunt Mary, what Uncle Mason brought back was dead bodies.

For Aunt Mary, those bodies that died a normal, natural death were already considered a pleasant surprise. She hated the most those that died abnormally, which were very troublesome to handle.

Karen put down his fork. Subconsciously, he thought of himself as an adult. When something happened at home, he naturally could not continue sitting at the table eating like the kids. So he also went downstairs following Aunt Mary.  

The space on the first floor was very large. In the southeast corner was a small raised platform with three steps, used as the ‘morgue table’ for placing coffins on.

At this time, the family’s two workers, Paul and Ron, were pushing in a stretcher covered with a white cloth.

Uncle Mason didn’t come down. He thought quite highly of himself. Although he had no choice but to work under his father’s authority, he only drove the car and rarely had direct contact with the corpses.

In Karen’s impression, although Uncle Mason was unreliable when it came to investments and had squandered the family’s fortune, in daily life he was a very humorous and amusing person who was very good to his family.

Aunt Mary stepped forward and lifted the white cloth to take a look. She then heaved a sigh of relief.

The body was of a young man. The condition of death did not look frightening. It was just that although the body was lying flat, his face was tilted 90 degrees toward the right side.

“Frozen to death?” Aunt Mary asked again. “On welfare?”

Although it was just early winter now and not truly cold yet, incidents of drunkards or vagrants freezing to death on the streets were already occuring from time to time.

As for being on welfare… there was a special fund office jointly established by the municipal government, churches, charities and other entities. It was specifically to provide those who died without any relatives or friends – that is, no one to pay for funeral expenses – with a dignified funeral. 

The welfare funerals required funeral homes to actively compete for them. Basically divided by districts, with layers of exploitation, what finally trickled down to the funeral home’s hands were profits so meager they could almost be ignored. But it allowed funeral homes to stay in operation. After all, salaries still had to be paid to staff even without any business, right?

Correspondingly, handling welfare funerals was also more relaxed, as there were rarely any relatives overseeing and nitpicking. The bodies only required simple treatment before being placed into the coffin. Then, Grandpa, wearing his priest robes, would stand next to the body, while someone from the relevant government department arrive to take a few pictures and complete basic registration. After that, it could be considered a job well done, and they would only need to wait for the month-end disbursement.

“Yes ma’am, I knew him. His name was Jeff, a poor chap who always lose when gambling. Ah, I’m even more miserable. Every time he went to the bar to gamble, I wasn’t there,” Ron said.

“Ma’am, there’s another one. We have to go to Flower Bay Nursing Home,” Paul said.

Aunt Mary immediately yelled, “Get the nursing home attendants to wash the body first, otherwise don’t bring them back. The old person brought back last time still had crusts of feces on them.”

“Understood, ma’am,” Paul immediately assured.

After that, he and Ron switched to another empty stretcher and went back to the hearse.

Beep beep…

Uncle Mason, still holding a cigarette in the car, honked the horn twice more.

First he called out to Karen: “My little Karen, looks like you’ve recovered pretty well.”

“Yes, uncle,” Karen responded.

“Haha, great.” Then he looked towards his wife and said, “Dear, I want to eat your minced meat pies for lunch when I get back. That’s one of the only two delicacies I love most in this life!”

“Go eat it in the toilet, I’m busy!”

Uncle Mason shrugged, and shamelessly continued smiling. “Oh, that’s my other favorite!”

Aunt Mary couldn’t keep a straight face. She turned her head away as the corners of her mouth twitched.

“I’m off, dear!” Mason started the car and left.

Aunt Mary took two deep breaths, and then reached to push the stretcher.

Karen naturally came over to lend a hand. Aunt Mary looked at Karen but didn’t move.

Karen looked at her puzzledly.

“Karen, you seem a little different from before.”

“Maybe so.” Karen was too lazy to conceal the fact of his ‘transmigration’. Actually, as a transmigrator, this was the least thing he needed to worry about. Who around him would believe his soul had been replaced?

That’s just madness!

“To the basement.”

“Okay, auntie.”

The aunt and nephew pushed the stretcher with the corpse, passing through the first floor hall corner and descending. 

The path to the basement was a ramp, with a flat section midway.

Pushing down, they had to control the speed to prevent the corpse from sliding off.

“It’d be great if this could be fitted with an elevator,” Karen said when they reached the basement. His hands holding the stretcher were slightly strained.

“An elevator? Like those in department stores?” Aunt Mary jeered. “Are you crazy? How expensive would that be!”

The basement only had one floor, divided into three rooms, or functional areas.

One was a storeroom…though it couldn’t really be called a storeroom. It held many items needed by the funeral home, stacked quite neatly.

One was the morgue. There were no corpses inside, and Karen didn’t see any cold chambers either.

Karen also didn’t ask why they didn’t buy a cold chamber, because he believed Aunt Mary would reply: “Are you crazy?! How expensive would that be!”

But this showed that the Inmerales’ business wasn’t actually that big. They didn’t even need to stockpile their ‘goods’ in the morgue.

But looking at it another way, it could also be seen that no matter the era or cultural background, the funeral business…really made some money.

The last room was Aunt Mary’s workspace, where she needed to ‘beautify’ the corpses.

No matter how good-looking someone was while alive, after death they would become very…plain.

Not to mention there were also many who didn’t die a normal death, making the workload even bigger.

For regular welfare cases, simply taking care of the face was enough; there were no relatives to fuss over the rest. However, in larger cases where the family was willing to spend more money for a proper send-off, the entire body required cleaning, including trimming the fingernails. Following this, every aspect, from the coffin and clothing to the priest’s prayers and arrangements at the memorial service venue, could be meticulously organized for you.

Karen helped Aunt Mary push the stretcher into the workspace. Aunt Mary pulled over a chair and sat down, placing an ashtray on the stretcher nearly right in front of Jeff’s face.

Snap…  

Aunt Mary lit a cigarette, took a puff, then slowly exhaled.

Aside from the flaw of being sharp-tongued, Aunt Mary did look very good. Although she was older now, she still looked very charming. Of course, no matter how elegant a woman was, being tricked by her own husband into doing this kind of work, it would be difficult to remain dignified.

Karen stared at the cigarette in Aunt Mary’s hand.

Aunt Mary noticed it. Smiling faintly, she slid the cigarette pack towards Karen.

Karen reached out and grabbed it, pulling one out and picked up the lighter.

After lighting it, he took a puff.

“….cough cough…cough cough…blegh…”

Karen covered his chest and started coughing violently as a strong sense of nausea welled up.

“Hee hee hee, hahaha…” Aunt Mary laughed till tears came out.

This scene wasn’t deliberately acted out by Karen. He was a chain smoker in his previous life, but this body had never been poisoned by nicotine before. Both his body and brain strongly rejected it now, sending out warnings to refuse the foreign toxin.

Aunt Mary put out her cigarette.

First she examined Jeff’s body, confirming there were no other external injuries. Then she tried to straighten Jeff’s face.

She just needed to simply put a bit of makeup on him to finish this job. After the men came back, simply putting clothes on Jeff and sending him upstairs would be the end of it. With this weather, even the preservation process could be skipped.

“Hmm?”

Aunt Mary let go of her hands and said to Karen, “You try straightening it, I can’t budge it.”

“Oh, okay.” Karen put out the cigarette. Reaching out, he held Jeff’s neck with one hand and his right cheek with the other.   

Applying force,

Applying force,

Applying force…

Jeff’s face slowly started straightening.

But what shocked Karen was something that Aunt Mary, who was standing beside him, couldn’t see. While he was applying force to straighten the face, he clearly sensed Jeff’s corpse was exerting force towards the right…

It didn’t feel like you were straightening a dead person’s face; it was more like wrestling with a living person!

This discovery made Karen’s heart sink a little. But just as he was about to let go, he suddenly found the force he was wrestling with had disappeared. No…after he let go, Jeff’s head,

Creak creak creak…

Straightened on its own!

Jeff’s eyes suddenly opened wide.

Staring at Karen, his mouth started twitching frantically, making ‘rustling’ sounds similar to a group of rats gnawing on a plank.

Karen instinctively took two steps back, leaning against the wall.

Right after….

Thud! It sounded as if something heavy had smashed the back of his head.

Karen’s body curled up. His vision also became blurred. But he strongly resisted losing control of his surroundings in this situation. He immediately endured the intense pain at the back of his head and looked up.

In his field of vision was a stretch of red.

Karen staggered backwards.

As he moved back, his field of vision continued widening further. He discovered the red he was seeing was a high-heeled shoe, and above the high heel was an extremely long leg – a white leg. On the opposite side, there was also an equally huge high heel with a leg above it.

He felt like a little mouse, standing at the foot of a person.

Plop…

Karen lost his balance and sat on the ground.

He didn’t know if this was a dream, or a hallucination from his own mental breakdown…

Until,

Splat…

A blob of viscous liquid fell onto him, completely drenching his upper body.

Karen slowly raised his head.

He saw,

Above him,

Between those two huge legs,

Was a woman’s face,

Looking at him curiously and smiling.

At the same time, drool would drip down occasionally from between her slightly parted lips.

Hiss…hiss…hiss…

A snowy, electrical buzzing sound came from somewhere unknown.

A deep, magnetic middle-aged male voice sounded:

“Don’t be afraid. This beautiful, charming lady…is just craving for your body.”