Little Pink Starfish

“Life is so boring… can we get something exciting going?”

“How exciting do you want it to be?” Gao Ling looked at her best friend beside her. “You work overtime every day—how is that not exciting?”

“…Can you not bring up overtime? You seriously have no sense of the situation. Acting like this, someone’s gonna beat you up someday.”

Gao Ling yawned indifferently, her hair messy, with visible dark circles under her eyes.

“How about you? Found a job yet?”

“Nope,” Gao Ling replied. “But I’ve been serializing a comic online. It’s gotten some pretty decent feedback, might be enough to feed me for a few months.”

“What comic? Can I see?” her friend asked.

“The one I showed you the other day—I expanded on it and revised a few things,” said Gao Ling.

She reached out, typed a few keys on her laptop, and pulled up a webpage.

“This is your work?” Her friend leaned in for a look. “Huh… a Yao Ji fancomic? Wait, this is that super popular one going around lately! No way, that’s you?”

Gao Ling didn’t answer. She stared out the window, as if lost in thought.

“Hey, what’s up with you? Why’d you suddenly go quiet?”

“Hm? Oh… nothing.” Gao Ling abruptly turned her head away from the window and pulled the curtains shut with a swoosh.

“Still, your life’s kind of thrilling, huh? Just casually publishing something like this—if you ever go big, remember to sign something for me,” her friend said with a grin.

“Thrilling, huh…” Gao Ling muttered, then suddenly turned and asked, “Hey, have you ever watched an anime where one day, characters from the second dimension suddenly crossed into the real world… and went looking for the mangaka who created them?”

“Uh… there’s really a show like that? Never seen it, but sounds like something I should catch up on. That actually sounds fun. If my anime crush came into the real world, I’d probably lose my mind.”

“Er… you should be more worried about whether your crush would kill you first…” Gao Ling stared at her friend, deadpan. If she remembered right, her friend’s “anime crush” was one of those high-power, mentally twisted types.

“So what happened in that story? Then what?”

“Then… I never finished it.” Gao Ling sat on the edge of her bed, thinking carefully. “But I figured… if life is being controlled by someone, then those with good lives—so-called ‘life winners’—probably don’t hate the author that much, right? Their memories are full of good stuff like friends and family…”

“But for those who suffer…” Gao Ling suddenly paused. “Like the ones whose whole family was slaughtered by their brother, or by pirates, or by some captain… what would they do if they met the mangaka?”

“Massacre, obviously,” her friend joked. “So yeah, take care of yourself, be a kind creator, or one day someone will come after you.”

“Ugh… I’m all alone, and my backstory’s already tragic. On top of that, I’m not even popular yet.” Gao Ling shrugged. “But if someone like that really existed—tragic past, still suffering, and kinda stylish—and suddenly popped into the real world… wow, that’d be an instant explosion.”

“If someone like that did exist…” her friend mused, then suddenly turned and said, “If he showed up in the real world, he’d definitely be my new top crush. What’s up with you today? Why are you acting all mystical?”

“Hmm… I think I’ve fallen into one of those philosophical traps—am I not the fish, or is the fish not me? I’ve started questioning the structure of this world, wondering about its essence. But I know I’m being dramatic, so don’t mind me. Go back to your game.” Gao Ling sipped her tea expressionlessly.

What she really meant was—she’d started wondering about the structure of the relationship between humans and demons. How had peace lasted this long without blowing up? Surely there’s some kind of system behind it. Was the government involved?

And… was Qiu Qiu drawing events based on things that actually happened in real life—or was the world Gao Ling lived in actually inside a comic, and the creator god had just let people peek at the truth?

That second theory was starting to seriously mess with her.

Still, Gao Ling had a big heart. Aside from the occasional existential dread, she was holding up okay.

But if… someone from the second dimension really did exist—someone with a tragic past and a still-miserable present—what would he be feeling right now?

In 2D, these kinds of characters are entertaining. Your whole family gets slaughtered, and people just go, “Yooooo,” and move on. After all, it’s fake, right? No one feels truly bad.

But in real life… if that kind of mass-murder tragedy really happened—it’d probably get covered up. Hidden as some wealthy family’s dark secret.

So once you take second-dimension material and place it in the real world… it becomes terrifying.

Gao Ling had never seriously thought about this until the recent chapters of Yao Ji. That was when her thoughts began spiraling.

Maybe it was because she had met someone like that, face to face, once before. He looked like a completely ordinary high schooler—totally not what you’d expect from someone with a blood-soaked past.

People with that kind of backstory… shouldn’t they, like, be more dramatic?

She tried to recall—aside from a few gentle types, most tragic characters did tend to be a bit over-the-top. Was that just a trend? Or had she been judging by appearances too much?

Yeah… maybe her people-reading skills had totally deteriorated after being out of sync with society for so long.

Still… if the things in those comics were true—the tribunals, the piles of corpses…

And she thought again of the one person she’d met before.

If that was really him…

Well, damn. His life really was tragic.

Almost legendary, in fact.

…

Yuan Yuanyuan stared at a flyer in her hand, punching numbers furiously into a calculator.

Tang Shi and Qiu Ling hovered nearby, watching the numbers tick by on the screen.

“Minus 25 yuan or 25% off… which one’s the better deal?” Yuan Yuanyuan muttered, pressing away while scanning the shopping list.

“What are you even doing?” asked Tang Shi, who had just finished exams. She and Qiu Ling had come over out of boredom.

Tang Shi’s parents were never home. No one knew much about Qiu Ling’s family—she’d never brought it up.

Yuan Yuanyuan handed them the list and told them to read from top to bottom.

“Whoa, Boss, are you serious? You’re actually being generous?” Tang Shi said, surprised, knowing full well how stingy Yuan Yuanyuan usually was.

“It’s the New Year—you’re supposed to splurge,” Yuan Yuanyuan said excitedly, flipping through every discount app she could find.

This was her yearly tradition. Every year before New Year’s, she’d go on a massive shopping spree.

Once, years ago, she’d had only a few hundred yuan and a bus ticket. She ended up buying a single pack of gum from a random store. That was the loneliest New Year of her life.

This year, after setting aside essentials, she still had some spending money. She was buzzing with excitement—honestly, she hadn’t done a “buy everything” New Year in ages.

As she calculated and recalculated her shopping list…

“Boss, if I get a good score on my exam, can you buy me a present? I don’t want much, just that cake,” Tang Shi said, eyeing the item on the list with a mischievous grin.

“Scram.” Yuan Yuanyuan instantly perked up, shoving Tang Shi’s head away. “You didn’t even come close to first place and you dare ask for a gift? Score first, then we’ll talk.”

Wait… come to think of it, Tang Shi had never been first place.

Tang Shi looked like she was about to argue when—suddenly, there was a knock at the door.

“Who is it? Who’s out there?” Yuan Yuanyuan called. No answer.

“Liu An, check who it is.” She didn’t look up, still buried in her list.

Liu An stood up, pulled open the curtain, and peeked out. A stranger was standing at the door, wearing just a thin shirt and holding a box.

Who the heck comes out in this weather wearing just a shirt…? Liu An frowned, baffled. He turned back and called, “Boss, it’s someone I don’t know.”

“Not a customer?”

“No. It’s a guy—just a thin dress shirt.”

What the hell? Who the heck wears a thin shirt in the middle of winter? Yuan Yuanyuan glanced at the snowflakes drifting outside.

Sure, people always complained about the ugly clothes she gave Liu An—but at least they were warm. Proof that she had a kind heart.

But this guy? In this weather? What is he, the Little Match Boy?

Tang Shi, curious, also peeked out—and immediately blurted out, “Oh my god, he’s hot.”

“He’s hot? Where?” Yuan Yuanyuan jumped up, scampered to the window, and looked.

She froze.

“Si, Si, Si…” Yuan Yuanyuan stuttered, mouth clumsy, while the others turned to look at her. Tang Shi asked, “Boss… are you okay?”

“I’m fine, totally fine,” Yuan Yuanyuan said as she darted forward, rushed to the door, and flung it open.

Standing there like the Match Boy was Si Qun.

He glanced up at her for a second—long enough for Yuan Yuanyuan to catch his all-too-familiar pathetic expression—then quickly lowered his head again.