Little Pink Starfish

“Where’s your home?”

“Uh… do you need me to call the police?”

Yuan Yuanyuan dragged the girl behind her, feeling like a complete idiot. Covered in blood, she had just escaped the pedestrian street, a crowd of people chasing close behind.

Standing in the middle of the road, she couldn’t even process what she had just done. She stared blankly at the girl beside her.

…Where were the police again?

Yuan Yuanyuan tried to recall the sheer chaos of a moment ago. Her workplace — that little bar — had been trashed so badly, she might not even recognize it anymore. She glanced at her location, pulled out her phone, opened Sogou Maps, and searched for the nearest police station…

The girl beside her quietly watched as Yuan Yuanyuan tapped on her cracked, years-old phone screen, its surface riddled with scratches. She then saw Yuan Yuanyuan’s face light up with sudden realization. Without warning, Yuan Yuanyuan scooped her up and leapt onto a nearby rooftop.

She was thinking: Once this gets tied to human government authorities, those demons probably won’t dare pursue us further.

…

Back home, Yuan Yuanyuan carried an armful of supplies — antiseptics, hydrogen peroxide, purple disinfectant.

She locked herself in the bathroom, peeled off her blood-stiffened clothes, and started dabbing at her wounds with gauze leftover from last year.

Some of the blood had dried and crusted over. She had to slowly peel the clothes off, taking care not to reopen the wounds, then re-disinfect the areas carefully.

Earlier, her blood had smelled… strange. A scent she’d never noticed before. But now that she’d undone her transformation, her usual scent had returned.

When she was done patching herself up, she checked the time — well past dinner.

She’d left just after dusk — her usual shift started as soon as night fell and ended around 2 or 3 a.m. But today, after that epic battle, she’d gotten home earlier than usual — just past 9 p.m.

She got up, still feeling weak and wobbly, tossed the used gauze into the trash, and dragged herself to the kitchen. There she pulled out a packet of instant noodles, two eggs, and a handful of scallions.

While boiling the noodles, she glanced across the street at the bar — from the outside, it looked perfectly normal, as if nothing had happened.

She threw in the seasoning, chopped the scallions, and poured the last of her rib soup into the pot.

I wonder if I can still go to work tomorrow…

As she thought that, she reached into her shirt and pulled out a small jade pendant.

It looked like jade from the texture — holding it up to the light, it glowed smooth and white.

This was a charm Ji Qiu had given her — a traditional demon-world device used to transmit messages. Though normally they used stone. Jade? That was some next-level rich guy stuff.

But Yuan Yuanyuan distinctly remembered — the jade had been red when she first got it.

She shoved it back into her collar, finished her noodles and tea, then ducked into her bedroom. There, she pulled the jade out again.

She hadn’t forgotten what Ji Qiu had said to her earlier:

If you had another identity, what would you do with it?

…She would definitely do some incredibly edgy things. No doubt about it.

Before checking the jade’s contents, she had expected something magical — maybe a hint about Ji Qiu’s future plotlines, survival tips, or some cryptic “you are the chosen one” message. But the moment she read the first line—

…Holy crap, it’s in traditional Chinese characters.

…

“Yuanyuan, something happened at the bar last night. Don’t come in for now. Wait a few days,” Sister Xue told her the next morning.

Yuan Yuanyuan wasn’t surprised. She curled up with her pillow and flopped back into bed.

Wonder if they’ll still pay me this month…

Maybe they’ll deduct repairs from staff wages?

She rolled over, too new at the job to ask such questions.

Maybe… the next chapter of the manga would reveal whether her boss was going to dock her pay?

Her imagination spun off into a bizarre scene of Ji Qiu seriously drawing her boss’s face into the comic with a speech bubble: “Oh dear, the bar’s wrecked — should I deduct some staff wages?”

…Yeah, no. Ji Qiu wasn’t that petty.

The sun rose higher, but Yuan Yuanyuan still hadn’t left bed. She had stayed up until 4 a.m. trying to translate the first few lines from the jade.

To her horror, not only was the text in traditional Chinese, it was also in classical Chinese.

She had one hand on a traditional-to-simplified converter, the other flipping a dictionary. After a whole night, she had barely translated a few paragraphs — her head was spinning.

But she did figure something out: these weren’t just messages from Ji Qiu. They were… instructions for some kind of demonic art?

“When yin soul embraces unity, can it create sound? Acting on behalf of the heavens, returning to infancy…”

Yuan Yuanyuan remembered a few cryptic lines and felt like all her years of education had been wasted.

But the preface was still somewhat comprehensible. It talked about a powerful demon who had written a book documenting his life’s work — a collection of unique demonic techniques he had developed over decades. Phrases like:

“For decades, I have acted as envoy, walking in the place of demons…”

It read like a demon’s autobiography — a life summary filled with secret knowledge. Unfortunately, Yuan Yuanyuan really struggled with all those traditional characters.

Some of the vocabulary gave her pause — especially the character for “blood” (血). Written the same in both simplified and traditional. Short as the text was — maybe a few pages if printed — she counted the word “blood” at least fifty times.

And there were plenty of obscure characters too, like “廗” or “亖” — the kind of stuff that felt like a direct attack on her literacy. Add the classical phrasing and it was a nightmare to translate.

She rolled over again, sighing.

She knew this was probably Ji Qiu giving her a power-up — a cheat code. Because honestly, as a “supporting male character,” she was a total weakling. Ji Qiu’s cryptic words from last night suddenly made more sense:

This identity is mysterious, powerful, and charismatic — it can do things your current self cannot. What will you do with it?

Powerful, mysterious, charismatic… none of which described her current self.

She was a classic weakling — barely understood anything about the demon world. It was only by staying out of trouble that she’d avoided beatings in recent years.

Ji Qiu had given her this jade to study.

The problem was… she could feel something sinister about it.

Deep down, she didn’t trust it.

She felt kind of ridiculous. Back in her cringe-teen phase, she used to fantasize: If someone handed me a martial arts manual, I’d totally train hard and become a master!

But now that a “manual” had landed in her lap… she found herself hesitating. Like, normal protagonists opened a book and read:

“Purest strength, righteous heart.”

But hers started with:

“To master this technique, one must first [redacted]…”

Uh yeah. Any sane person would pause.

Okay, so maybe this wasn’t that bad. But the sheer number of disturbing words — “blood,” “corpse,” “cruelty”…

What kind of twisted mess would this turn her into if she actually practiced it?

She hadn’t even finished translating, but she already didn’t want to go on.

Maybe I’ll sleep on it…

And with that defeatist attitude, she drifted off again.

…

But for some reason, when she woke up that afternoon, she found herself reaching for the dictionary again and resumed translating.

Still because I’m weak, she thought. If I had some powerful aunt, uncle, or seventh cousin teaching me, I wouldn’t be decoding demon grimoires alone at home…

Sure, the text seemed cursed… but it was the only source of demonic knowledge she had. Worst case, she could just read it and not use it. At least she’d learn a thing or two from some ancient demon’s life.

“What does this line mean…? Something about…” She frowned, still translating when she suddenly heard a knock at the door.

She quickly stuffed the jade back under her shirt and peeked through the peephole.

It was Xiao Ying.

She opened the door, and the girl looked up at her, eyes full of mischief.

“Yuanyuan-jie, did you buy the latest issue of Meng Man?”

“Huh? Which one?” Yuan Yuanyuan glanced at her tiny bookshelf. Ever since appearing in the manga, she’d started buying two copies of every issue.

“There’s a little card inside the latest one. Can I have it?” Xiao Ying asked eagerly.

“Sure.” Yuan Yuanyuan walked over, pulled out the issue, and took out the postcard-style insert.

Nowadays, most magazines had these — usually reader surveys or special offers.

“What do you need it for?” she asked as she handed it over. Xiao Ying thanked her and replied:

“This issue of Meng Man is holding an official popularity poll for the characters. You didn’t know?”

“…Huh?” Yuan Yuanyuan blinked.

She stood at the doorway.

“…Huh??”