Little Pink Starfish

Yuan Yuanyuan was curled up on the bed, the fat cat sprawled beside her. Not far away, Xiao Ying was sitting on the floor, half-lidded eyes blinking lazily as she watched the two of them.

Yuan Yuanyuan inexplicably felt a mountain of pressure… How should she put it? It wasn’t until Xiao Ying next door came back that she suddenly realized it was winter break. Life had been so murky and muddled lately that she completely forgot about it.

Xiao Ying had gotten into a school not too far but not too close either, so she rarely came back. But her school let out quite early. With a little over a month—close to two months—until the New Year, they were already on break. Yuan Yuanyuan couldn’t help but feel envious, jealous, and resentful.

Ah… being a student really was the best.

This hit her particularly hard today, as she still had to go to the tavern for her routine check-in, and the mere thought made her feel dead inside.

Xiao Ying was now sitting cross-legged on the floor, happily chatting with the fat cat. Yuan Yuanyuan side-eyed them in silence. Xiao Ying had always seemed fond of the fat cat back in the day… and looking at her now… she still seemed fond?

Yuan Yuanyuan remembered how she had tried so hard to stomp out any signs of puppy love when Xiao Ying was in her final year of high school. But now Xiao Ying was a college freshman… maybe dating wasn’t so out of the question anymore…

From experience, romantic relationships in college had exponentially decreasing success rates. Those who got into relationships kept getting into them, while those who stayed single might very well remain that way forever… Not that Yuan Yuanyuan had any solid data to back this up.

Her imagination started to run wild. If Xiao Ying and the fat cat started dating… it might not be impossible. But there would be a major issue—the fundamental difference in worldviews between humans and monsters.

While Yuan Yuanyuan was in the middle of mentally conjuring a tragic tale about half-monsters caught between the human and monster worlds, completely unwelcomed and utterly miserable, Xiao Ying was over there, intently listening to the fat cat boast… Yes, this was exactly their dynamic: one boasted, the other listened. It was strangely harmonious.

“What are high-level monsters like? Are you one of them?” Xiao Ying asked.

“No, meow, I’m still some distance away from that,” said the fat cat. “But if I did run into one, I could at least escape, meow~”

Just listen to that weird verbal tic… Yuan Yuanyuan continued side-eyeing him. Xiao Ying was clearly being taken in by the fat cat’s bluster. Yuan Yuanyuan quietly grumbled—wasn’t your usual escape method just playing dead? Last time, when you got surrounded by an entire street of monsters, it was Yuan Yuanyuan who had to rescue you.

“Amazing!” Xiao Ying looked at the fat cat with admiration. But let’s take a moment to rant—many people had a terribly simplistic view of high-level monsters thanks to Monster Chronicles, where they were treated like standard-issue tropes. Xiao Ying, however, was the complete opposite. Probably because she actually knew monsters existed, she saw them as extremely complex and treated high-level monsters like pandas—rare and sacred.

To Yuan Yuanyuan, though, while high-level monsters were indeed rare, under the current circumstances, they weren’t that rare. The times had changed. High-level monsters were the baseline now. If you weren’t one, you better have a unique backstory or special power—otherwise, you couldn’t even get involved in the Monster Chronicles narrative.

“Then have you met any of the characters in Monster Chronicles? Have you seen Fa Ning?” Xiao Ying asked excitedly.

The fat cat shook his head. “Never met Fa Ning. Whether he’s even a real person is still up for debate… But I did see Yuan Yingli once, when I was very, very young. Our families were close.”

Huh? Xiao Ying was instantly intrigued. Not just her—even Yuan Yuanyuan perked up to listen.

“When I saw him back then, he already seemed like a loner. Kind of sly and sneaky,” said the fat cat. “We didn’t talk much. He wasn’t popular. The adults didn’t let us play with him…”

“You actually knew Yuan Yingli!” Xiao Ying got even more excited. She scooted closer and asked, “So does that mean… you could be in Monster Chronicles too?”

“Me?” The fat cat’s narrowed eyes suddenly widened. “No no no, I can’t. If I went on there, I’d be a dead cat…”

Actually, if you appeared in Monster Chronicles, who knows—you might find an alternate path to popularity, maybe even catch up to Yuan Yingli. Yuan Yuanyuan stared at them in silence as her mind started drifting again.

Maybe one day there’ll be a comic with the fat cat as the main character…

While Yuan Yuanyuan was completely lost in her delusions, something one of them said suddenly caught her attention. Xiao Ying asked the fat cat if he had ever seen Yuan, and the fat cat nodded and said yes.

Then Xiao Ying said she had too, and started telling a story from a long, long time ago. As she spoke, Yuan Yuanyuan suddenly remembered that stormy night… and the bag of bones that had been forced into her arms… She almost coughed up blood at the memory.

After hearing Xiao Ying’s story, the fat cat looked genuinely excited, bombarding her with questions about the details and even laughing when she described kicking Yuan out the door… Yuan Yuanyuan began to doubt if the fat cat was a real fan. What happened to loving Seventeen for a hundred years? Is this how you show your loyalty?

“I saw Yuan once too,” the fat cat suddenly said in a slightly more serious tone. It was a tone he often used when telling stories to Yuan Yuanyuan. “It was a long time ago.”

Yuan Yuanyuan tried to recall if she’d ever seen him before. Then it hit her—ah, it was that time. That time when…

“You met him too?” Xiao Ying asked curiously.

“Hmm… how should I put it…” the fat cat trailed off, “It felt… pretty cool? Though he didn’t seem to be in great shape, like…”

The two of them actually started reminiscing together. Yuan Yuanyuan sighed and got up to pour drinks for them, grabbing some extra cups from the kitchen. When she came back, she heard them discussing what exactly that thing was they had picked up back then.

“I touched it,” the fat cat said quietly. “A small whistle, made of bone. I don’t know what kind of bone, but it felt really cold.”

Hearing that, Yuan Yuanyuan suddenly remembered something—right! Where was it now? She’d nearly lost it.

She still didn’t know what the whistle was for, so she’d just tossed it somewhere and forgotten about it. After a bit of mental digging, she finally remembered where it roughly was and sighed in relief. Thank god she hadn’t lost it—she’d have died of embarrassment.

“A bone whistle?” Xiao Ying asked. “What kind of bone? Human bone?”

“Definitely not human. If it were human, it’d be giving off cold energy by now,” said the fat cat. “I actually tried to figure out what it was. Back then, it was quite the commotion. It must have originally belonged to Yuan, and for some reason, it ended up in the neighboring town… then they treated it like a protective talisman. So I think… it might’ve been a tiger tally.”

“A tiger… what now?” Xiao Ying asked, just as another head suddenly leaned in and interrupted him.

“Tiger tally,” Xiao Ying said. “You’ve never heard of that, Yuan Jie? It’s that thing from ancient military history.”

“…I know what a tiger tally is,” Yuan Yuanyuan replied. “But aren’t they supposed to be shaped like a tiger? And split in half… so they can fit together?”

“Monster tools are a bit more sophisticated,” Fa Ning said lazily from the side. “They can’t be as crude as human-made ones. With all the illusion magic monsters use, it’s too easy to counterfeit things.”

Yuan Yuanyuan looked at the fat cat, who now wore an unfathomable expression. “So if something is used as a tiger tally, it must be really special. The material of that whistle must be extraordinary. Can you guess whose bone it was?”

The fat cat’s voice and expression suddenly resembled Hannibal Lecter from Silence of the Lambs. After he said that, Yuan Yuanyuan and Xiao Ying fell into silence. They exchanged a glance and saw something in the fat cat’s expression.

“That bone… was it Yuan’s?” Xiao Ying finally broke the silence.

“I’m not saying it definitely was. Just that it’s a possibility,” the fat cat said. “But no one knows where the tiger tally is now. They say Yuan took it, but after he disappeared… who has it now? Who holds the tiger tally?”

“Could he have been carrying it when he disappeared, and that’s why it vanished too?” Xiao Ying asked.

“Hmm… possible, but not likely,” the fat cat replied. “You have to consider Yuan’s personality. Who knows how many backup plans he left? Would someone like him really carry such a critical item around?”

Wait… wait… Yuan Yuanyuan’s head was starting to spin. She looked at the fat cat and Xiao Ying, who were still talking animatedly, then suddenly got dressed, left the house, and went to an empty field on the outskirts of the city. She dug for a while until she finally unearthed a small box.

She tucked it away, just as it was time to head to the tavern, so she brought it with her.

On the way, Yuan Yuanyuan pondered one question—everyone said Yuan had left behind “plans”… but she really had no clue what those plans were. Which meant… maybe that entire approach was flawed from the start.

But what if someone else—someone still alive—was meant to help carry out those “plans” one by one? The so-called “board the train first, buy the ticket later” strategy?

While Yuan Yuanyuan was busy overthinking, Fa Ning and Yuan Yingli were sitting seriously inside the tavern. The proprietress lounged nearby and said lazily, “Even if you ask me, I don’t know anything… so you might as well head back.”

Fa Ning and Yuan Yingli exchanged a look but stubbornly remained seated. No one moved, and the room was silent.

After a while, Fa Ning suddenly asked, “When is Lord Hongyi arriving?”

“In a bit.”

“Alright,” Yuan Yingli and Fa Ning exchanged another glance. “Then we’ll wait a little longer.”