The lunch rush had passed.
The workers rested with full stomachs.
Trainees stretched under the afternoon sun.
The Emperor—still pretending to be a normal man—was somewhere in the garden patch, ruining his royal shoes in a pile of mud.
But inside the kitchen…
A storm brewed.
Not of people.
Of ghosts.
Fen Yu, the female ghost, sat curled on the ceiling beam like a wilted flower, her translucent skirt torn, hair messy, face swollen from crying. She hugged her knees and continued her dramatic sniffing:
"Hic… hic… I don't want to live anymore… I want to disappear… hic…"
She kept her back to the Empress and her two ghost companions, clearly wanting attention but refusing to admit it.
Wei Rong, the general ghost, stood below her with arms crossed, his stern expression weakening with each sniff she made.
Li Shen, the scholar ghost, kept pushing his glasses up even though they were imaginary, guilt shadowing his face.
The Empress sighed.
