Little Pink Starfish

For a moment, Yuan Yuanyuan seriously considered packing all her things and jumping out the window to disappear off the grid.

That was her honest-to-god feeling right now. She was truly terrified to keep reading — but she had no choice.

Even though she’d only looked at a single page, she already understood a few things:

First, her wishful thinking was done for. The artist hadn’t lost track of her — he knew that the man in black was her, and he’d even followed her all the way home.

Second… this artist might actually be some kind of tentacled demon. What had happened just this morning was already fully drawn and published by that night. His speed was terrifying.

Yuan Yuanyuan took a deep breath, glanced out at the moonlight, pulled on a thick coat to wrap herself up tightly, grabbed her phone, and left the house.

What the hell even is this.

This is why people shouldn’t stick their noses in other people’s business. The one time she tried to do a good deed, and it landed her in trouble.

She spent barely half a minute skimming through the comic. She didn’t even look at the details.

She was feeling on edge, walking fast, only to open the door and come face-to-face with two people.

“Yuanyuan-jie, you’re going out too?” Xiaoying was in a rush, tugging the friend beside her. “Come on, let’s go check out that alley…”

Yuan Yuanyuan immediately grabbed Xiaoying by the collar and yanked her back. “It’s late! Why aren’t you doing homework? Don’t you remember your parents were out searching all night the last time you went missing?”

Xiaoying was stunned as she was dragged back. “We were just going for a quick walk…”

Her friend looked visibly relieved. She clearly thought Xiaoying was being reckless but hadn’t been able to stop her.

Yuan Yuanyuan looked at Xiaoying’s darting eyes — clearly calculating how to escape her grip.

“Go home. Don’t go out at night, got it?” Yuan Yuanyuan turned to knock on Xiaoying’s door. “Auntie? Auntie? Your daughter’s about to sneak out again, late at night! Don’t let her run around alone…”

“Huh? Xiaoying, where are you going?” came her mom’s voice from inside. Yuan Yuanyuan gave the two girls a little shove into the apartment and shut the door behind them before heading downstairs.

She needed to find somewhere quiet to think.

Yuan Yuanyuan snuck off to a small, quiet café.

She was wearing a loose outfit with a hood — and the hood was now pulled tight over her head.

The face beneath wasn’t hers — it was a completely new one. One she’d never used before.

Though Yuan Yuanyuan could shapeshift, her abilities were only so-so. She could only maintain a few alternate faces. The “man in black” was one. This was another.

She slinked into a corner like a guilty thief, pulled out her phone, and finally sat down to read the comic in full.

“His friends all say I’m being dramatic… but how am I dramatic? I’ve been with him for years! I just want to get married, is that so wrong…”

The comic’s taxi slowly drove into an alley, and Yuan Yuanyuan frowned slightly at the sight.

“Stop thinking about it,” the man in black said quietly.
He looked at the ghost woman floating behind him. Seeing her unresponsive, he reached out and gently took her hand…

This chapter mostly covered what happened earlier that day, just a brief retelling. The rest focused on what the protagonist had been doing lately.

Yuan Yuanyuan read the entire chapter carefully.

At first, she’d been gripped by panic, expecting someone to burst into the café at any second and drag her away. But when she got to the end, she realized something huge:

The artist had deliberately hidden everything related to her true identity.

All of it. Not a single detail exposed.

---

First, about her residence: The artist hadn’t drawn any recognizable locations. He’d kept the car interior as the perspective for the ghost conversation. The scenery outside the window was generic, obscured, barely visible.

Even the last thing she’d said to the driver wasn’t shown — the scene had cut away before that.

Between the alley and home, there were no environmental details — only vague, minimalist backgrounds with a few brush strokes for atmosphere.

Second, her face.

The artist had used her male disguise — the “handsome face” she’d created via shapeshifting, arguably her best one.

Honestly, once it was drawn in the comic’s art style… it looked damn good.

Back when she first learned to shapeshift, she’d modeled her faces after anime characters. This one, in particular, had turned out especially well — so well that when life got her down, she’d stare in the mirror in that face for half an hour to cheer herself up.

Yuan Yuanyuan gnawed on her fingertip, her brain racing. The whole thing was getting weirder. This artist knew who she was, where she lived, everything — and yet chose to cover for her?

Why?

---

“The black-clothed man reappears after a few chapters — what’s he up to?”
“No idea… but he’s so hot!!!! And so gentle too!!!”
“Is this his character arc? I have a feeling this yokai won’t have a happy ending. Lately, authors love torturing these types for tragic drama…”

Yuan Yuanyuan scrolled past the comments, sipped her drink, and kept reading. In this chapter, the man in black had only a brief cameo. The rest was about the main character.

The protagonist — a bit of a naive good boy — was full of justice and idealism.

He came from a well-known sect, though he himself wasn’t a prominent member. Normally Yuan Yuanyuan would have skimmed right past that, but now she was paying attention.

Since he belonged to a prestigious sect in the comic, maybe his real-life counterpart also came from one.

The protagonist wore white exorcist robes — white often denoted status in many famous sects. But he wasn’t important in his own sect either, at least according to the comic.

If Jiqiu treated him the same way he treated her — disguising key information — then the protagonist’s identity had also likely been protected.

Yuan Yuanyuan had originally planned to grab a bag and run. But now she paused. If this “Jiqiu” really knew her identity, there’d be no escaping him anyway.

And now, the biggest threat she’d been worried about — her address being exposed — was no longer a problem.

So what did Jiqiu want?

Was he really… just drawing a comic?

Yuan Yuanyuan was deep in thought when someone suddenly slapped her back hard.

She jumped like a startled cat, nearly leaping out of her chair. She whipped around — it was just a man.

“Oh— sorry, wrong person,” he said quickly, startled by her unfamiliar face. “My bad.”

“…It’s fine,” she replied, waving him off.

She recognized him — a yokai from the area. They’d spoken a few times. But with her current face, he clearly didn’t recognize her.

She was puzzled — why had he approached her?

Her ears twitched. She overheard him back at his table, whispering to his friends:

“I thought it was that wanted yokai… but nope, total stranger.”

“Really? Didn’t you say the back looked just like them?”

“I thought so too, but I took one look at that face — totally real. Not a disguise.”

Yuan Yuanyuan finished her drink silently, stood up, and headed out of the café.

Really that similar?

She’d never realized before. Hearing it now gave her chills.

On the way home, she bought a cup of instant noodles and returned to her apartment.

As she walked, she stared at the trees and buildings around her — everything looked both familiar and foreign.

Just when things were starting to feel normal, she thought, I’ve been dragged into another dead end.

She didn’t know what Jiqiu wanted. She didn’t know what would happen next. Everything felt like a thick fog.

Jiqiu held a knife over her head — she just didn’t know when it would fall.

At her door, she unlocked it with her keys. Xiaoying had already been tamed by her mom, and the hallway was quiet.

She opened the door, looked around the warm, softly-lit home, the streetlight outside casting a soft amber glow across everything.

She walked into the kitchen, boiled some water, and poured it into her noodles. Then she turned on the TV and found some light-hearted variety show.

Sigh… one day at a time, she thought. Let’s just see how long I last.

After all, it seemed like Jiqiu… wasn’t planning to kill her.
At least, not yet.

She finished her noodles with a few loud slurps.

And now a more serious crisis was upon her:

She was out of money.