Work Text:
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap-tap-tap-tap.
Su Moting, the ghostly master of contentment, was lounging on her favorite divan in her favorite palace, throwing grapes at mortals through a scrying pool. Every person she hit was blessed with peace and tranquility, and felt lightened as the scorching deserts of everyday life gave way to the oasis of serenity they held in their own hearts.
The scrying pool shifted to show a middle aged man with a thinning comb-over snoring loudly beside his buff wife. Su Moting closed one eye, stuck out her tongue, focused the full force of her ghostly powers around the grape pinched in her fingers, and—
Tap!
Like a vengeful pinball, the grape rocketed up the mortal’s left nostril. The man flailed awake, sneezing and snorting and pretty much convinced that he was experiencing a heart attack but definitely feeling pretty zen about it.
“Yes! Ten points!” crowed Su Moting, pumping a fist in the air. “Trick shot, nothing but nose!”
Several minutes later, the chief advisor to the ghost king walked in to find her dribbling an imaginary basketball around the room. He cleared his throat, startling her so badly that she fumbled the ball and sent it pinging off the imaginary backboard.
“Chief Advisor,” she greeted, sketching a hurried bow, “I wasn’t expecting your visit until the quarterly overview next week! Please, sit down and I’ll have my servants get you something to drink.”
He lifted a hand to stop her.
“The quarterly overview was two weeks ago,” he said with the patience of a Buddha. “You missed it. Again. That’s why I’ve taken the liberty of dismissing your staff and repossessing your properties.”
Su Moting went white as a sheet.
“You can’t possibly mean—“
“Yes. You’re being evicted.”
The Chief Advisor took a seat, ignoring the aura of complete and total devastation emanating from her side of the room. He pulled a grape from the abandoned bowl and popped it in his mouth.
“You, Su Moting, have been demoted,” he informed her as he chewed. “Your title of Contentment Ghost has been stripped from your records and replaced. As of this morning when I finally got tired of waiting for you to turn in your report, you are the Complacency Ghost.”
“Do… Do I get to have a different palace?” Su Moting asked weakly.
He nodded, and for a brief moment her heart soared. With a snap of his fingers, they were suddenly standing under a massive, gilded bridge that led to the most opulent palace Su Moting had ever seen in her life. Light spilled from its eaves and music and the smell of delicious food poured out of its opened windows.
“It’s beautiful,” she sniffled, starstruck.
Goodbye old divan, goodbye old scrying pool, goodbye old palace! Su Moting doesn’t need you anymore, she has something much better!
“Yes. That is the palace of the Ghost of Wealth,” said the Chief Advisor. He flicked his sleeves and pointed behind them. “Your palace is there.”
She squinted. “Is it hidden behind that cardboard box?”
The Chief Advisor just gave her a pitying look and turned to go, but she lunged and latched onto his leg before he could disappear.
“Wait! Please, I know I was wrong!” she wailed, “Give me a second chance, I’ll prove I’m worthy of being the Ghost of Contentment!”
“Your post has already been filled by Wang Xiaobao,” sighed the Chief Advisor, continuing over her howl of anguish, “He’ll be moving in and reorganizing as we speak. Your fate is sealed. Unless…”
“I’ll do anything! Anything!”
“Very well. If you want your old job back, you have to complete a research project in the human realm,” he said, then blinked in surprise as the weight suddenly lifted off of his leg.
Su Moting had crawled into the cardboard box.
“You know, this is actually pretty cosy,” she muttered. “And it’s got such good real estate, too! It’s perfect.”
The Chief Advisor eyeballed her doubtfully. After a moment he came to a decision.
“Actually, that research project is mandatory,” he declared, marching over and hauling her out of the box by the neck of her robes. “It’ll be good for you to finally get out of your house. How long has it been since you visited somewhere more exotic than your refrigerator?”
She started counting on her fingers— and kept counting… and counting… and counting…
“Well there you go.”
He snapped his fingers again and they appeared in what looked like the living room of a human apartment. There were two occupants, one man with black hair and one man with bleached hair, and both of them started yelling when the Chief Advisor tossed Su Moting onto their cluttered coffee table like an empty takeout container.
“Su Moting,” boomed the Chief Advisor, cutting through the furious protests of all three, “For the crime of sitting around and doing nothing all day for centuries, and for being an administrative nightmare, you have been charged with helping these two mortals achieve happiness. Your powers will be bound, and you will have two years to complete your task. Should you fail, your soul will be dispersed. Do you understand?”
Su Moting straightened her spine. Show some mortals the meaning of happiness? Pah! She had been doing that for years! This was going to be easy. She nodded resolutely.
“Good. I will check back in with you in one year’s time to assess your progress.”
He turned to go, then paused to fix her with a stern look.
“I expect to see monthly updates on my desk. On time, ” he stressed.
Then he snapped his fingers and vanished with a swirl of light and a gust of wind, leaving Su Moting alone in the mortal realm with two slack-jawed humans.