Little Pink Starfish

The current appearance of the Li family head was exactly how he’d looked in his youth. Anyone seeing him now would never connect him to that white-haired old man from last year.

There was a sheet of paper on his desk. He picked it up and studied it for a moment, then chuckled.

“So… there’s a little mouse eavesdropping, huh…”

After a while, he set the paper down.

“Well… whether it’s drawn or not… doesn’t really matter.”

He snapped his fingers, and the paper spontaneously combusted, turning into ashes.

…

“So what does this all mean?” Xiao Ying looked baffled as she stared at Yuan Yuanyuan. “Isn’t this guy the one who argued with Yuan back then?”

“Yeah,” Yuan Yuanyuan replied distractedly while flipping through her things.

“Is he, like, super powerful or something?” Xiao Ying asked. “There was a time when the comic mentioned him a lot… but lately he hasn’t come up much.”

That’s because Fa Ning and his crew had moved on to another location, and Yuan had faked his death, so bringing up the Li family head wouldn’t be helpful anymore. Yuan Yuanyuan thought absently as she flipped through pages.

“Huh?” Xiao Ying suddenly blinked. “Didn’t Yuan disappear a long time ago? I remember even Fa Ning thought he was probably dead. So why is this Li family head still so obsessed with him? Did something happen between the two of them?”

“Mm-hmm, yeah… something did…” Yuan Yuanyuan muttered half-heartedly.

“Don’t be so dismissive, Yuan Yuan-jie.” Xiao Ying puffed her cheeks. “What are you even reading that has you so absorbed?”

She leaned in, only to be confronted by a massive spread of leaves and complex markings that made her head spin the longer she stared.

“Ugh… I’m getting dizzy…”

Yuan Yuanyuan gently pushed the woozy Xiao Ying back onto the sofa and sat down herself with the book. What was this thing? It was the annual record—she’d looked through it last year.

She flipped through from the beginning to the end, then smack—closed the book.

No Yuan.

Not a single mention of him.

What did that mean?

It meant that, in the eyes of most… Yuan was considered completely gone.

Fat Cat was beside her, swatting her with his tail. Yuan Yuanyuan batted it away. She knew full well he and Black-Red had been secretly plotting something lately.

Flipping through the book again, Yuan Yuanyuan thought—at least in terms of her original plan, she had succeeded.

It had been several months now, and there was still no sign of Yuan. In the demon world, that basically meant one thing: he was done for.

The Li family head was one of the rare careful ones. The rest, even those who once supported Yuan, didn’t dare claim he was alive anymore—not even Fat Cat.

Apparently, Fat Cat and Black-Red were planning something again, and the trigger this time was Yuan’s name being absent from the annual record. Yuan Yuanyuan had long since gotten used to the pair acting all mysterious, though she did kind of miss having a cat around to cuddle. After all, Fat Cat had great texture and could even talk—she hadn’t met another cat like him.

Though Yuan wasn’t listed, the woman in red was.

On the same pages where Yuan used to appear, she stood silently, unnamed, faceless—only a silhouette drawn by hand.

…

Yuan not showing up in the annual record had a big impact in the demon world. Even downstairs while she was pouring drinks, Yuan Yuanyuan overheard people whispering about it.

Compared to last year, the reactions this year were totally different. A lot had happened in that time—Yuan had gone from being a traitor to a tragic figure, and tensions between humans and demons had noticeably escalated.

But business at the tavern? Totally unaffected. No matter what, it stayed packed and lively, as if none of this mattered.

Yuan Yuanyuan overheard someone muttering in a corner:

“Looks like Yuan really is dead this time… not a single word about him.”

“Sigh…”

“Alright, shut up. Let’s drink.”

She poured drinks for her guests, then quietly slipped upstairs. The human world and the demon world were connected. Most humans didn’t know demons existed, but even so, the comic had taken on a subtle tragic tone lately.

Even humans seemed to vaguely sense something was off. But unlike the demon world, the human side remained optimistic.

After all… it’s just a comic, right? Bringing someone back to life was easy. Ji Qiu could make it happen with a single stroke of her pen.

But after reading last issue’s conversation between the Li head and his subordinate, many people had started to feel uneasy. Yuan Yingli’s strange behavior only added fuel to the fire.

[Yuan isn’t… really dead, is he?!]

[Watch your mouth! Can’t believe you said that out loud!]

[No but seriously, Ji Qiu is making me super anxious lately… Something feels off.]

[Right? That Li guy has been acting really weird.]

Yuan Yuanyuan couldn’t help but laugh at the comments. She affectionately called it “small animal instinct.”

There was something mischievous about all this… It was fun scaring people a little, especially when they found it thrilling.

“Yuan Yuan! Bring Si Qun a glass of water!”

“Coming~” Yuan Yuanyuan carried in the kettle, still glued to her phone. Li Zi Jie scolded her as soon as she walked in.

“One day that damned thing is going to kill you.”

“Oh come on, Jie,” Yuan Yuanyuan teased. “Don’t you wanna know what the humans are saying?”

“No. Don’t care,” Li Zi Jie huffed, then a few seconds later wandered back over, asking, “What are they saying?”

“How could Yuan just die like that…” Yuan Yuanyuan read aloud. “He didn’t even make it to the climax…”

“What kind of heartless bastard wrote that?” Li Zi Jie snapped. “He’s not dead! Where’s the body, huh?!”

Yuan Yuanyuan shook her head. Yep—Li Zi Jie was definitely a hardcore Yuan fangirl. She might be even more loyal than Fat Cat. No matter how many times the topic came up, her stance never wavered: Yuan is not dead.

That kind of fanatical faith honestly stunned Yuan Yuanyuan. She’d once suspected Li Zi Jie might be the descendant of some wartime spy… but later dismissed the idea. Jie didn’t seem to know anyone from the spy families.

Today, she wasn’t going upstairs, just helping downstairs—and still reading the comic.

The moment she saw today’s cover, Yuan Yuanyuan froze. It felt like her heart skipped a beat.

Seriously? This guy again?

The giant image of the Li family head plastered across the front—it made her skin crawl. Yuan Yuanyuan scratched at the glass next to her in irritation. That spot… used to belong to Yuan.

Si Qun, nearby, flinched at the sound of her nails scraping, just like a cat who’d had its tail stepped on.

Yuan Yuanyuan flipped open the comic. The tavern was still as noisy as ever. She skimmed the pages quickly—this issue didn’t interest her much given the cover star.

Flip, flip, flip…

Her pace slowed.

The screen showed a two-person spread, the background evoking that classic showdown energy—left vs. right, equals in opposition.

On the left: Yuan.
On the right: the Li family head.

—or more precisely, it was Seventeen on the left. That seemed more accurate.

“Didn’t we agree to meet tomorrow? Why’d you come today? Where’s Si Qun?” Seventeen smiled gently. Honestly, Yuan Yuanyuan thought Seventeen looked way better smiling than she ever did—there was something inexplicably charming about it.

The Li family head looked exactly the same as he did now. No difference at all.

Yuan Yuanyuan stared at him—still so fake, so polished. He even looked that way back then?

He lowered his head and said nothing. Seventeen, at the time, didn’t seem to notice anything wrong. But the readers outside the comic could sense that something was definitely off.

Ah yes, the fragile boat of friendship—so easily overturned. In anime, betrayals between “best bros” were everywhere. Everyone recognized the setup.

Yuan Yuanyuan kept reading and realized: art really does imitate life. These pre-betrayal scenes all followed the same script, no matter the world.

Suddenly the memory scene vanished like mist, and the page returned to the present. The Li family head sat in a room, calmly brewing tea. Serene, composed.

These old monsters really knew how to act cool. And now that he’d reversed his aging and boosted his looks, he was even more convincing.

“Seventeen,” he said suddenly, as if remembering something. He smiled faintly.
“You died at my hands last time…”
“This time, I’ll send you off again.”

Yuan Yuanyuan’s breath hitched. She couldn’t even describe how that moment felt—like all the air had left her lungs.

The crackling of the fire in the hearth brought her back to her senses. Her heart pounded as she recalled those words.

My god… he actually said it out loud.

Just as she expected, the internet exploded. That one sentence was all it took to detonate everything that had been quietly building.