Chapter 3

Once the fighting started, I slid from the golden-hooped staff onto Eldest Brother.

He stopped in the middle of the fight.

He pulled me off his neck. “Who are you trying to strangle?

“Whose side are you on, exactly?

“Walk me through your thought process.”

…On his torso or legs, I’d get hit. His arms were an absolute bloodbath. Only his neck was relatively safe.

I looked up at him pitifully.

I flicked out my forked tongue and licked the hand gripping me.

Please, let me live one more episode. I was so tired of dying.

Eldest Brother was silent for a moment.

Without a word, he put me back around his neck.

I hissed even more enthusiastically.

His hand paused on the golden-hooped staff.

“Stop that terrifying psychological attack…”

“…Oh.”

This demon was rather unlucky. He had no powerful backer and died a fairly gruesome death.

Seeing me stare at the corpse, my brother said, “What? Want to burn some incense for your sworn brother?”

Me: “?”

The fight was over. It was about time for Second Brother’s entrance.

Sure enough, his voice rang out in the distance. “Little Sister! I’ve come to save you!”

Behind him came Tang Sanzang on horseback, with Sha Wujing leading the horse.

The way they ambled along, stopping here and there, it could have been a picnic.

As though they were terrified of arriving one minute too early and actually rescuing me.

When he got closer, Second Brother even said regretfully, “Pity the demon died so fast. If he’d waited until I got here, I’d have shown him a thing or two!”

“Next time, for sure,” I said.

He opened his mouth, then finally said, “But Little Sister, aren’t you a bit too easy to catch…?”

I froze. Tears spilled down my face. Clutching my head, I began to scream and sob. “Please, stop! I’m almost mad with jealousy of you all! Every night I hang in the trees and scream and cry, going, ‘Oh God, oh God,’ while trying to bear the pain inside.”

I cried as I spoke, my voice shaking. “All the feelings and thoughts and dreams I used to have, tangled up in jealousy and regret—my smile is still on my face, but the tears just start falling. Please, stop, stop! However hard or bitter my life gets, it doesn’t make me sad. Only when you say things like that does my heart feel as if a knife is cutting into it. The more I think about it, the more I can’t stop crying. I might as well somersault straight into that river beside the road and die!”

My gloomy, habitually taciturn Third Brother suddenly said, “There’s no need to go that far.”

Those words shattered the last of my defenses. I even forgot to turn back into a snake. I started crawling around them in the shadows, eating hair, shrieking, howling like a ghost, darting up and down the trees, lunging at their faces, throwing a punch! Flying away again, swinging from the trees, twitching, writhing, crawling frantically, jumping onto Eldest Brother’s head, then backflipping off.

Third Brother quietly shrank back. He looked frightened. “Little Sister, you’re actually quite scary like this…”

Second Brother stared at my face, beating his chest in anguish. “Little Sister, what are you doing with a face like that?! I won’t let you do this while looking like that! I’m begging you, at least turn into a snake first…”

Master looked more panicked than he ever did around demons. He sat straight down and began reciting an exorcism sutra.

The White Dragon Horse started stamping and neighing in agitation too.

Eldest Brother sighed, pressing his fingers between his brows. “What did I do to deserve this…?”