Chapter 4: He's Building a Harem, Isn't He?

The next few weeks were a blur of golden ink and increasingly bizarre requests. My quiet, orderly life was officially over, replaced by the chaotic whims of Joshua’s newfound purpose: The "Supernatural Upgrade & Re-Haunting Initiative," or as he called it, SURI. I told him it sounded like a tech support hotline. He told me I lacked vision.

It started with one or two talismans a week.

"Amy, I need one for extreme confidence. There's a ghost in the high school theater department who died of stage fright in the middle of a soliloquy. He just stands in the wings and mumbles Shakespeare."

I brewed a pot of tea mixed with tiger's eye essence, channeled the energy of every great motivational speaker I could think of, and painted a "Flawless Charisma" talisman.

The next day, Joshua sent me a video. A ridiculously handsome guy with a dramatic flair was standing on the school stage, belting out "To be or not to be" with the passion of a Broadway star. He had girls swooning in the (empty) aisles. The only giveaway was his slight translucence and the golden paper talisman stuck to his forehead. He took a bow, winked at the camera, and then floated through the ceiling.

Then came the request for a "Chill Out and Relax" talisman.

"This one's for a poltergeist at the old abandoned warehouse," Joshua explained over the phone, his voice punctuated by the sound of things being thrown around. "He's got major anger management issues! I think he was a disgruntled factory worker. Whoa—he just threw a filing cabinet at me!"

I spent an afternoon meditating and listening to lo-fi whale songs, channeling an aura of pure zen, and crafted a "Tranquil Spirit" talisman.

Joshua's follow-up text included a picture. A serene-looking woman with a gentle smile and a flower in her hair was peacefully meditating, floating about three feet off the ground. The warehouse around her, which had looked like a warzone, was now spotlessly clean. She had apparently channeled her chaotic energy into tidying up. The talisman on her forehead pulsed with a soft, calming blue light.

This was my new normal. Every few days, Joshua would present me with a new "client," and I would create a bespoke, ultra-powerful fortune talisman tailored to their specific spiritual ailment. And every single time, without fail, the ghost would transform.

The grumpy, wailing, or angry spirit would rematerialize into a stunningly attractive human-like form. The gender seemed to be random—the stage-fright boy became a dramatic pretty-boy, the angry poltergeist became a serene zen-goddess. They were all gorgeous, all charismatic, and all sporting my golden talismans like a third eye.

I should have been horrified. This was, on a technical level, a complete bastardization of a sacred art. But I couldn't deny the results. These ghosts seemed... happier. Fulfilled. And they weren't causing trouble anymore.

The real problem started when Joshua stopped letting them go.

Petunia, the OG ghost-turned-CEO, had wandered off to conquer the spectral stock market on her own. But the new ones? Joshua was bringing them home.

His house was perfect for it. It was a massive, slightly spooky mansion his parents had inherited and now used for storage, leaving him to live there alone. It had more rooms than a five-star hotel and probably a similar level of dust.

I went over one Saturday with a fresh batch of three "Boundless Joy" talismans, only to be greeted at the door by the Shakespearean actor ghost.

"Good morrow, fair Amy!" he declared, striking a dramatic pose. "The master awaits thee in the grand parlor."

"Right. Thanks... Hamlet?" I muttered, stepping inside.

The parlor was filled with them. The serene zen-goddess was watering a plant that had definitely not been there last week. A former pirate ghost, who used to just groan about his lost treasure, was now a swashbucklingly handsome man with an eyepatch, teaching a small, timid girl—a transformed weeping ghost from the local cemetery—how to play chess.

They all looked up when I entered.

"Amy! You're here!" Joshua said, jogging over. "Guys, this is the master craftsman herself! The Michelangelo of talismans!"

They all gave me polite, slightly ethereal smiles. It was like walking into a photo shoot for a high-fashion magazine where all the models were dead.

"Joshua, what is all this?" I whispered, pulling him aside. "I thought the point was to help them, not to... collect them."

"I am helping them!" he insisted. "This is Phase Two! Assimilation! They need a safe place to adjust to their new, awesome forms before they re-enter the world. It’s a halfway house for the handsomely haunted!"

I looked around the room. It was weird, sure, but it was also... kind of nice? There was a strange sense of community. The pirate ghost was patiently explaining the rules of chess, and the little girl ghost was actually smiling.

But I couldn't shake a weird feeling in the pit of my stomach. Joshua was being a little too enthusiastic. He had charts on the wall, tracking their "progress." He had assigned them all chores. He was calling them his "tenants."

He was treating them less like lost souls and more like a collection.

"Just give me the talismans," he said eagerly, snatching the fresh batch from my hands. "I've got three new arrivals in the west wing. A headless horseman, a lady who screeches about stolen jam recipes, and a musician who only plays one note on a piano over and over. They're going to be so much cooler in about five minutes."

As he ran off, I watched the scene in the parlor. They were beautiful, they were calm, they were happy. But they all had my handiwork stuck to their foreheads. They were powered by my magic. And they were all living under Joshua's roof, following his rules.

A dark, suspicious thought wormed its way into my brain.

He’s not just collecting them. He’s not just helping them.

Oh my god, I thought, a wave of pure, undiluted cringe washing over me. He’s building a harem, isn't he? A supernatural, ghost-filled, co-ed harem!

The thought was so absurd, so typically Joshua, that it had to be true. And he was using my sacred family art to do it.

Suddenly, this whole operation felt a lot less like charity and a lot more like the plot of the weirdest anime I'd ever seen. And I was the one supplying the magic.