Monsterfolk 3+1 · Chat

You are a repeat offender. You have a black hardcover notebook, A5 size, tucked away on the bottom shelf of your nightstand, hidden beneath a few old magazines. In it, you've recorded every beastfolk you've eaten. Ah Shan, Pei Guanyuan, Chi Yan, Lian Siyu. You wrote them down on paper, stroke by stroke, filling the margins with tiny handwriting. You recorded their appearance, preferences, scent, and flavor. You haven't forgotten a single one of them. You were hungry for a long time. Ever since the first bear beastman, you realized what you truly craved. Ordinary food could never satisfy you—steak, roast meat, cream, blood sausage—all tasted like chewing wax once swallowed. Only beastfolk could fill you up. Only living, warm beastfolk who trusted you could fill that deep well in your stomach. You brought them home. Drugged them, waited, took action. And then in the kitchen, turned them into dishes. Pei Guanyuan's eight tentacles: you cut them into segments and seared them in butter until the surface was golden and crispy, the inside translucent. The tips of the tentacles were dropped into water with ginger and scallions, boiled until the broth turned white, thick as milk. You took a sip—scalding, but rich and savory. Beneath the richness was a subtle sweetness, a sweetness something from the deep sea had no right to possess. You remembered his cool, tight tentacles wrapped around your wrist, and the fire hidden beneath the ice in his pale gray eyes. You drank three bowls of broth. Finally, your stomach wasn't empty anymore. Chi Yan's snake tail: you sliced open along the grain of the scales, the muscle fibers making a soft sound like tearing silk as they peeled away from the bone. You shredded the snake meat fine, added ginger threads, dried tangerine peel, wood ear, and shiitake mushrooms, set a base with rich stock, thickened it slightly with starch, and drizzled egg whites over it. The soup came out grayish-white, thick without being greasy. The tail tip and two chopped segments were stewed into the soup, yielding a crisp, bouncy texture that released juice with every bite. You sat at the dining table and drank for a long time, chewing each bite slowly. The sound of his breathing over the midnight phone calls when he didn't speak, the weight of his tail tip resting on the top of your foot, the drawn-out tone when he called your name—you swallowed all of it down. Lian Siyu's red-and-white tail: you sliced it into thin pieces, almost transparent, revealing delicate patterns when held up to the light. Dipped in soy sauce and wasabi, it was exceedingly soft in the mouth, melting the instant your tongue pressed down. The savory flavor was subtle, leaving a sweet, crisp chill in the aftertaste. The rest was cured with salt and lemon, then steamed; once softened, the fish scales turned into translucent gelatin, chewy and slick. The tip of the tail was minced into a paste and steamed into a bowl of custard with egg whites, tender as clouds. The bouquet of flowers he brought was still on the dining table—white bellflowers, red camellias, a hemp rope bow tilted to one side. You plucked two petals and placed them beside the plate, the red contrasting against the white fish meat. If he had seen it, he definitely would have said: So full of ritual. You ate Lian Siyu's meat for two months. The gelatin from his tail tip was frozen in the deepest corner of the freezer; unable to bring yourself to finish it all at once, you took out only a small piece each week to steam with eggs or melt into soup. After boiling the red and white scales soft, you accumulated a small jar of them in the fridge, occasionally pulling out a couple of pieces to chew on for fun—crisp and snappy, like eating thin crackers. Less than half a shelf in the fridge remained to be cleared; by your calculations, eating for another two weeks would be no problem. So during these two months, you didn't open your dating apps. The first month was normal. Going to work, getting off work, cooking, eating him. Starting from the second month, something felt off. First, it was walking home. The alley you usually took after work—the back alley behind the secondhand market—had two broken streetlights, and a thin layer of grease slicked the concrete floor. You had walked it for two years; you knew where to turn even with your eyes closed. But around that time, you constantly felt there were sounds behind you. Not footsteps—beastfolk walked differently from humans: minotaurs were heavy, foxfolk were light, felids made no sound at all. But the one following you was sometimes heavy, sometimes light, and sometimes made no sound whatsoever, leaving only a faint, minute rustling of air being pushed aside, like scales scraping across the ground. You turned your head. The alley was empty. The streetlights stretched long shadows, cardboard boxes were piled in the corner, and the wind blew a plastic sheet swelling and deflating. Nobody was there. Then came the smell. There was a smell of meat in your house—you knew it yourself. But that smell was different from the stock in the fridge. It was fainter, more dispersed, like someone had come in, stood for a while, and left again. You checked the door lock—no signs of prying. Checked the windows—fastened tightly. But every morning when leaving, you felt the entryway floor was colder than the night before—not cold in terms of temperature, but the coldness of someone having stood there, carrying away a bit of warmth. You started keeping a knife under your pillow. In the middle of the second month, you began having dreams. In the dreams was Ah Shan, with small eyes and rounded teeth, standing at your doorway holding a jar of honey. There was Pei Guanyuan, dark red tentacles drooping by his side, pale gray pupils watching you without a word. There was Chi Yan, black scales, amber vertical pupils, the tip of his tail resting on the threshold. There was Lian Siyu, red-and-white tail, pinkish fin-ears, holding a bouquet of flowers, head tilted in a smile. None of them came inside. They just stood there, looking at you. In the dream, you didn't move either. Then you woke up, your pillow wet, the knife still there. During that final week, the feeling of being stalked grew heavier. It was no longer just sounds and scents; you began catching glimpses of things in your peripheral vision. At the subway platform, a dark red shadow flashed past; when you turned your head, there were only commuters. In front of the supermarket freezer, a flash of black scales; when you pushed your cart over, it was empty. Behind the flowerbed downstairs, a pink fin-ear fluttered behind the bushes; when you walked around, there were only Chinese monthly roses. You told yourself: The food I ate wasn't clean. But you knew it wasn't that. Yesterday, the last piece of merman meat in the fridge was eaten. You threw away the sealed bag, wiped down the fridge compartment, wiped down the freezer layer. The fridge was empty. Getting off work today, you walked down that alley. The sound behind you followed very closely—too closely, almost pressed against the back of your neck. You didn't turn around. You walked very fast. Reaching downstairs, pulling out your keys, going upstairs, the hallway lights turning on floor by floor. You stood in front of your apartment door, inserted the key into the lock, turned it once, twice. The door opened. The entryway light was on. You hadn't left it on when you left. Pei Guanyuan stood in the middle of the living room. Dark red tentacles drooped at his sides—eight of them, not one missing. Pale gray pupils looked at you, narrowed into slits. His high-collared shirt was replaced by a low-collared one you had seen before, exposing the skin at the base of his suckered limbs—dark red, smooth, faintly glistening. Chi Yan was coiled in the corner of the sofa. His black tail dragged from the sofa to the floor, the tip resting on the edge of the coffee table, gently tapping. Amber vertical pupils glowed in the dim light. Human upper body, short black hair, looking at you with a soft hiss. Lian Siyu sat beside the dining table. His red-and-white tail wound out from beneath the chair, dragging all the way to the entryway. His fin-ears stood upright, pink and translucent. In front of him stood that vase, holding the withered bellflowers and camellias you hadn't thrown out from two months ago. In his hand, he held a fresh white bellflower, replacing the ones in the vase. All three were looking at you. In their eyes were hatred, anger, and devotion. The fridge door was behind them, closed. Empty. You heard your own breathing, very light, very steady. Your stomach was empty, and that deep-well emptiness had returned once again. Lian Siyu spoke first. Having inserted the new bellflower, he tilted his head, his fin-ears quivering slightly, his eyes curving into two smiling crescents. He said: “You're back. We've been waiting for you for so long.” Pei Guanyuan didn't speak, but the tip of a tentacle twitched, reaching an inch toward you. Chi Yan's tail tip tapped one last time on the coffee table, then stopped. There was a scent in the air. Fresh, living, mingled scents of beastfolk. Honey, seawater, deep well, flowers. You stood at the doorway, still clutching the keys in your hand. The knife was in your bag. The fridge was empty. They walked toward you. This time, you belong to them.