Good morning, Dear Traveler!

Ready to pick back up where we left —

Oh my Great Sage. Did you sleep out here all night? 

What are you babbling on about? Safe? You literally camped out at the mouth of a cave. There could be wild animals living in there!

Worried? Me? Worried about you?

In your dreams. You’re a paying customer. The only thing I’m worried about is getting my tip when this is all over.

Let’s not waste any more time discussing your poor hotel choices.

Let’s get back to the story, shall we?

Sun Ritsu did not know what to do. He glanced back and forth between Anari, who he barely trusted, and the pig, who he trusted would definitely get them caught.

“We have to bring the pig,” he told Anari.

A dangerous noise came from her throat. “That is not happening.”

Ritsu protested, “But he’ll squeal.”

“That’s right! I’ll squeal!” The pig repeated from the back of the room, his voice desperate and shrill.

Anari whipped away from the door; her braids aided her stalk across the room like an ominous cape.

“I can easily rectify that situation.”

Ritsu saw the whites of the pig’s eyes wax in horror.

“Lawful, benign monkey, call back your arthropodal companion!”

There was the sound of a match being struck. Fiery light illuminated that corner of the room. The pig’s pink snout trembled. Ritsu shut the door and tried to make it over to them in time.

With seemingly no effort, Anari hoisted the pig up by the folds of his neck and held the burning match under his chin. “Prepare to be food, pig.”

“Lawful, benign – no, benevolent monkey!”

“Anari, wait!” Ritsu stumbled into the spider. The collision resulted in both the pig being burned and Ritsu’s tips spilling out of his apron pocket in a torrential ker-plunking downpour all across the concrete floor. The ruckus harmonized nicely with the pig’s hysterical squeals.

Anari dropped the pig, the light blew out. She braced herself for Ritsu, but they both wound up on the floor anyway, stacked like a fresh batch of moon cakes.

“Get off of me,” the spider said calmly but, the fuzzy tips of her glamoured mandibles at the base of his neck suggested a strong or else. Ritsu rolled away and absently tried to gather up his loose change. One coin, having landed on its spine and traveled towards the pig, remained perfectly upright.

From beyond the door, there was a shift in conversation. The voices of the trolls paused and then took on curious and demanding cadences.

“We’re dead,” the pig whimpered. “Degenerate ape, you’ve murdered us all – Heeeeaaack!”

Something spherical and fuzzy tumbled past the pig’s tusk and onto the floor. It glistened even in the darkness. The pig groaned and vomited another.

Anari got to her feet and pointed. “Sun, look there. Your pig just gave us a way out of here.”

“Sweet immortal peaches,” Ritsu swore, “those are sweet immortal peaches.”

The pig belched and cleared his throat. “You aren’t –  well, to put it tactfully – the most nimble toad in the pond are you, lawful monkey?”

Anari picked them both up and held them before Ritsu. “Here, eat one. I hear the trolls coming.”

He covered his mouth and shook his head. “Uh, no thank you.”

Anari’s glamour flickered. “It wasn’t a suggestion.” She shoved them into his arms. “Eat the damn peaches!”

The feel of the fruit coated in the pig’s stomach juices yielded a violent reaction in Ritsu. Seconds later he was looking down at the peaches covered in two layers of vomitus.

Anari took a step back and blinked her large, glassy eyes. “Sun, I don’t know what malady of the brain you suffer from, but if you don’t pull it together and eat one of those peaches, those trolls will catch and completely overpower us.” 

“Lawful, benign monkey. Pardon me, but how could you be so impolite in the presence of a lady?”

Ritsu clutched the slimy peaches against his chest. “You did it first!”

The pig regurgitated a third, glistening peach.

Ritsu mirrored his actions. This new cascade did not sparkle quite like the pig’s.

“There they are!”

Four or five trolls fought their way into the spice pantry. They didn’t grant Ritsu the dignity of finishing. Contents were still running down his apron as they dragged him, Anari, and the pig to the center of the restaurant.

Ritsu heard Gong-jon pleading in the background. “Brothers, leave the boar be. He is a valuable ingredient for our future menus.”

The pig grunted as he was tossed beside Ritsu.

Gong-jon wailed, “He played no role in this, you have my word!”

“Silence, insect filth,” the heaviest troll growled. He carried a club in one fist and Anari by the hair in the other. She didn’t fight back, but her body language did not read defeat. Not in the slightest.

The customers looked on with a mixture of intrigue and disapproval. Yet no one moved against the trolls or left the noodle house. Some even carried on with their dinner.

Gong-jon kept his head down as he begged, “Now that you’ve found your spy, can you please take this outside of my establishment? I’ll even let you take the sun clone. Just leave the pig, merciful brother.”

Anari’s captor slammed his club mace against the wall and shoved her to the ground between Ritsu and the pig.

“I said, be quiet!”

Lying beside Ritsu, Anari looked up at the ceiling of the noodle house and asked, “Are you hurt, Sun?”

Ritsu wiped away the leftover vomit with the back of his hand. “I’m okay. You?”

“I wish you had eaten the peach.” Anari closed her eyes and smiled. “But it’s all right. I don’t want to go back to my boss anyway. He’s an asshole. So maybe being clubbed to death will finally let me off the hook.”

Ritsu sat upright, the three gooey peaches still cradled in his arms.

“Hold on.” He glanced at the trolls arguing with Gong-jon. “The Yingchi Bastards want to kill you?”

Anari and the pig sat up and stared at him. They exchanged eye contact with each other briefly before staring again at Ritsu.

Anari whispered, “Did he really just – ”

The pig nodded. “He did.”

“Right, thought so . . . Wow.”

Ritsu didn’t want Anari to die. She was scary and definitely not attracted to him. But in less than an hour, he had spilled hot tea on her, fallen on top of her, and vomited twice in front of her. And after all that, she had asked if he was all right. The girl was about to be sent to the Lake of Ninefold Darkness by trolls and she wanted to know if he was hurt.

Ritsu placed two peaches in Anari’s lap and saved the third for himself.

“Hold these for me?”

While the trolls were still occupied, he used his apron to clean off the peach. 

The pig looked up at Anari. “I’m sure there’s a good reason he didn’t do that before giving those to you.”

Then Ritsu bit down on the glittering peach. A familiar calm overcame him as the taut, fuzzy surface tore and unleashed the sticky, immortal nectar.

The customers looked on. Anari and the pig held their breaths as he chewed. Gong-jon pointed between the trolls and roared, “Stop that clone! He’s got a peach!”

Sun Ritsu swallowed the last of fruit, discarded the pit, and licked the sweet film from his lips.

Then he, Dear Traveler, lost his balance and collapsed before the trolls’ pimpled bare feet. 

Why, Dear Traveler? Well, why else?

He was asleep!