Little Pink Starfish

The smoke in the room suddenly thickened to its densest point, but that was also the last of it.

By the time the head of the Li family looked again, the red-clothed woman was already gone.

Yuan Yuanyuan dashed out the door, patting her chest repeatedly and finally letting out a breath. That last moment had nearly knocked her out—it was just too painful.

There were still many monsters outside. Judging by the crowd, the number didn’t seem to have decreased. While many had left, more had come to gawk, so it remained tightly packed.

Yuan Yuanyuan hurried back to the tavern without doing anything unnecessary. She immediately ducked behind the red curtain and wrapped herself up. The tavern hostess and others had been frantically searching for her, only to see her stumble in suddenly. They quickly got her settled.

Once Yuan Yuanyuan entered the tavern, she instantly relaxed—then blacked out completely, remembering nothing afterward.

…

[Tell me—what exactly happened last night?]
The next day, Yuan Yuanyuan lay in bed, quietly messaging Fat Cat and Black and Red.

She was lying on her back, her face bruised in patches of blue and purple. Her body was smeared with medicinal salves and was being aired out. A fruit platter sat nearby, and she was munching on fruit with one hand while scrolling on her phone with the other, enjoying herself.

The red curtains were all back up. Even though no smoke had been lit since she returned yesterday, Yuan Yuanyuan still felt a sense of security from their presence.

[This isn’t something a little monster like you should be asking about,] Fat Cat replied sternly.

Bull. Yuan Yuanyuan silently rolled her eyes. This shameless guy had probably just waited all night for nothing.

[Don’t give me that. I know what you two were doing,] Yuan Yuanyuan typed. [Next time there’s something this dangerous, don’t drag me into it. I’m not gonna be your scapegoat.]

[…How do you know?] Fat Cat asked warily.

[Come on, did you forget where I work? What could possibly be hidden from me?] Yuan Yuanyuan replied.

She glanced at the time and figured the two of them had probably stayed up all night waiting for her. Unfortunately, neither she nor the Li family head had any intention of giving onlookers a show, so the whole house had been sealed off.

Given how tightly it was locked down, if these two had managed to sneak in, they’d really be something.

After replying, Yuan Yuanyuan tossed her phone aside without even checking for their responses.

They always left her hanging, so now she was going to let them feel what that was like.

But really… Yuan Yuanyuan had never realized until recently that Black and Red was actually Yuan Yingli. Now that she did, it gave the whole group chat a strange vibe—one heir to Seventeen’s legacy, and two of Seventeen’s hardcore fanboys. Could it be that all of Seventeen’s fans ended up in this group chat? What kind of destiny was that?

Then again, thinking back to the time the group was formed, Yuan Yuanyuan suddenly felt at peace with it.

Back then, the comic had barely started. Yuan was still a total side character with a bad reputation. The three of them had met using coded phrases on a forum—out of that huge forum, only the three of them ended up connecting.

It must have been true love… Otherwise, why would they risk so much?

Still, Fat Cat had always been hanging around with Black and Red, yet never appeared in the comic. That alone suggested he was quite the formidable character—maybe he and Yuan Yingli had worked out some plan, one operating in the open and one in the shadows?

No wonder Fat Cat’s intel was always sharp. Though normally he drifted around, lately he’d been sticking to C City… Why? Because Yuan Yingli was in C City. The two of them had been together the whole time—it was only Yuan Yuanyuan who’d been kept in the dark.

Thinking through the entire timeline, it was actually rather complex. Although Fat Cat hadn’t shown up in Monster Chronicles, Yuan Yuanyuan didn’t think he was a simple character at all. Sure, he lounged at home eating cat food, teasing Little Ying, watching TV, reading novels and comics… but he also had a habit of suddenly disappearing and reappearing—Yuan Yuanyuan had noticed that.

If he really was some kind of unsung hero, Yuan Yuanyuan felt she could forgive his rudeness a little. At the very least, she could leave him some cat food.

While waiting for the next comic update, Yuan Yuanyuan also tried probing Si Qun twice about what was up with his hair. She genuinely couldn’t understand why she had such a strong reaction to it, while others didn’t seem affected at all.

Si Qun explained his hair quite thoroughly. He stuttered through an explanation of its function and how to use it.

“Your hair… it has to be shared?” she asked. “This stuff… gets stuck in your throat?”

“No… we burn it,” he replied. “Half for me, half for him.”

…She still felt like this was dark stuff. No wonder—it only affected Seventeen and Seventeen’s successors, and it all involved oral ingestion.

As for her, she had probably been force-fed the hair by that damned psycho. He’d done plenty of crazy things already—this one wasn’t even that outrageous by comparison.

“Why do you two each have to eat half?” Yuan Yuanyuan asked.

“Because… that’s just what we agreed on,” Si Qun said.

…Still didn’t make any sense.

Yuan Yuanyuan felt she couldn’t begin to guess at the logic of two high-intelligence demon monsters, let alone try to understand the mental workings of a half-brained child. The fact he remembered this much was already a miracle. So she could only try to deduce the intentions of Seventeen and Li Si Qun from all angles.

Gu was probably some kind of control tool. Considering Seventeen’s special military role back then, Yuan Yuanyuan thought maybe the military had used Li Si Qun’s hair as a form of control. Though this theory didn’t fully hold up—for example, if Seventeen was being controlled by Si Qun, then who was controlling Si Qun? Still, out of all the ideas she had, this one seemed the most plausible.

There had been way too many tangled events back then. Trying to piece them together alone was tough. Yuan Yuanyuan was satisfied with figuring this much out. The rest would depend on whether Ji Qiu chose to reveal it or not.

Though many monsters showed up that day, few actually knew the full story. The vague mixture of truth and fiction had everyone speculating wildly. What Yuan Yuanyuan told Fat Cat that night wasn’t a lie—she really had heard people in the tavern discussing it. But few could guess the real intention of the Li family head.

Most still thought the head of the Li family had suffered some kind of attack or breakdown, or, like when Yuan Yuanyuan cursed him, assumed he’d just recently gone insane because of Yuan. So he’d staged that whole thing in the comic.

To Yuan Yuanyuan, that kind of thinking wasn’t exactly encouraging. If everyone started playing like that—“Ji Qiu, if you don’t draw me in the comic today, I’ll go eat poop”—uh, okay, bad example.

That’s roughly how things were. On the day the comic updated, Yuan Yuanyuan stared at the comic and tried to guess which parts Ji Qiu would draw and which parts he’d skip. What surprised her was that the conversation between her and the Li family head was almost entirely included—except for one line.

“Why is the head of the Li family so angry?”
The red-clothed woman looked at him with a faint smile, tinged with an indescribable mockery. Her eyebrows and lips curled only slightly, but it still made him deeply uncomfortable.
His eyes instantly turned red. Staring at the woman before him, a fury rose uncontrollably in his chest.
He felt like she was laughing at him—mocking his delusional thinking.
“Was it the sudden realization that things are completely different from what you imagined that made you this angry? Or was it that, after causing such a stir, you didn’t get the answer you wanted and are now throwing a tantrum?”
The red-clothed woman leaned close and whispered in his ear.
The next second, the Li family head suddenly lashed out with knife-like hands, stabbing toward her viciously.

After reading this chapter, Yuan Yuanyuan realized that casual readers would probably have no idea what kind of riddles were being played out in the comic… or might even misinterpret it entirely.

The most common misunderstanding was that, like the monsters, people assumed the Li family head had gone insane. But with clues like “delusional thinking,” sharp readers could tell there were deeper layers of meaning.

And then there was the third sentence Yuan Yuanyuan had said to him… which Ji Qiu had censored.

Ji Qiu didn’t include:
“Or is it… that you realized I’m not Yuan, and that’s why you’re so furious?”
He had left that part out completely.

Had that been drawn in, it would’ve had explosive impact. But by leaving it out, readers ended up guessing the third sentence wildly—and most of their guesses were completely off, even painfully cringeworthy.

Just as Yuan Yuanyuan expected.