I wake up. There’s an unfamiliar man leaning above me, eyes wide in relief, holding a toddler. He’s dressed like an ancient chinese cosplayer, with long hair pulled back in a bun and a long hanfu. What is going on? I thought I died. 

“Lin Long, this is your new baby brother,” the man coos to the toddler. “Isn’t he beautiful?”

I realize two things. One, the man is speaking in Chinese, and two, he thinks I’m a baby. Wait. I’m not a baby, are I? I open my mouth to speak, but all that comes out is a cry. A baby’s cry. I realize how big the man seems, and that I’m being cradled by a woman, also dressed weirdly in an ancient chinese outfit. Nope, this is not happening to me. I have not been reincarnated as a baby. 

“What should we call him?” the woman asks. I presume this is my mother. 

“Since he survived childbirth even though we all thought he couldn’t make it, let’s call him Lin Hu, for he has the soul of a tiger,” the man smiles. 

“That’s a perfect name,” the woman-no, my new mother-says tearfully. 

“The Emperor will be proud that the Lin family has a new son to serve the nation,” another man standing next to the door says. He’s also dressed in the same fashion. “I must go now, but I will report to the Emperor about your happy news.”

“Take care,” my father says, before saying something in rapid Chinese that I don’t understand. The man bows, before leaving silently. 

I’m even more confused by now. The Emperor? Is this ancient China? Somehow, instead of being killed by the weird cultists, I’ve landed in ancient China. Wait, am I inside a reincarnation light novel? This is so messed up. I try to say that, but again nothing comes out except a wail. 

The man smiles. “Sleep well, Lin Hu. You must be tired.”

I close my eyes, hoping this is all in my head. It must be a coma-induced fever dream that I’m having in a hospital. The cultist bonked me on the head so hard I hallucinated being a newborn. I tell myself this is all that has happened, and I’ll wake up and everything will go back to normal. 

—-

It doesn’t.

It’s been several years since I landed in Ancient China, and I’ve gotten mostly used to living without my phone, although I still cry in bed about it sometimes during hard days. I have gotten used to speaking ancient Chinese, even though all of it is unnecessarily complicated and not at all like the Chinese I learned in the modern world. Luckily, because of that, my parents don’t think I’m precocious. In addition, the past five years has given me a lot of time to think about my predicament. It seems that whatever was on the stick actually worked and sent me back to the ancient times, although I’m not quite sure what time period it is. If I was sent back in time, it's safe to assume that anyone else caught by the cultists were also sent back, although I’ve yet to meet anyone like me. But I remember the cultist remarking that I would join my ancestors, and there were no other Chinese students in my class. So maybe everyone else got sent back to medieval England or another European country. In any case, I have no hope of meeting them ever again, since I’m pretty sure China didn’t even know Europe existed in this time period. 

“Second Brother!” someone calls from behind me. It’s Lin Long, my brother. He’s two years older than me, but we’re the same height. I wave toward him.

“Father is calling us to his study! It’s going to be exciting!” he exclaims. 

“Watch out,” I tell him, as he’s running straight towards a large rock. Lin Long doesn’t listen to me. He trips over the rock, tries to regain his balance, only to topple headfirst into the koi pond nearby, sending startled fish flying out of the water.

“Are you alright?” I ask.

“I’m fine-” he says, but then trips over his robes, and accidentally steps on a loose floorboard in the walkway, which catapults him right into a gaggle of servants. I rush toward him, trying to contain my laughter.

“Don’t laugh!” he says defensively. 

“Lin Long! Lin Hu! I’ve been waiting for you for a long time!” our father calls from the study. 

“Sorry. Lin Long had an…accident again,” I snicker, earning a glare from my brother. 

We enter his study, which looks less like a study and more like a boxing ring. Our father waits for us, sitting cross legged on the floor. 

“Since you are five, Lin Hu, it is time for you to learn the Lin Family Wugong,” he says. “Lin Long will start with you since he was so uncoordinated that we had to push him back two years.”

“Ughhh, wugong is boring,” I complain. “I don’t want to.”

My father raises an eyebrow. “I doubt you’ll say that if I show you.”

“Wugong is basically kung fu and I’m so bored of kung fu. I had to watch it every year during lunar new-” I break off, realizing I’ve slipped up.

“What?” My father asks, confused, “I’ve never shown you any wugong.”

“Fine, whatever. Show me,” I mutter.

My father stands up and starts waving his hands around in a weird way. This is definitely not the wugong I know. Then suddenly, the loose sheets of paper on his floor start to rise up, as if they’re being lifted by some invisible force or wind. They swirl around, condensing into a point. Father points his hands outwards, causing the paper to slam into the wall, creating a giant hole in the wall. Did he do all of that? Suddenly, I’m much more interested. Father begins floating and does a number of backflips, completely suspended in the air. 

He smiles. “Now do you think Wugong is boring?”

Wait. This isn’t real wugong. This is tv show wugong, the kind found in dramatic light novels where everyone is a cultivator with ki and random magical elements. This is definitely not Ancient China. This is a whole other dimension, with magical creatures and flying wuxia specialists. What kind of spell did the cultists put on me? Even so, it’s fascinating. A world filled with magic sounds much more exciting than boring lectures. Father notices the look on my face.

“Well, what do you say about learning wugong now?” he asks. 

I smile. “I want to.”

—-

And so my wugong training begins. Father teaches Long and I at the same time, but it is soon clear that I am better at it than Long. Long is too clumsy, and never remembers the moves. When we have to meditate to cultivate our qi, he fidgets the entire time.

“You’ll never become a master cultivator like that,” Father reprimands Long.

“This is so hard,” Long replies. “I’m seven! I can’t sit still for an hour!”

“Well, your brother can,” Father rebukes. “Look at that concentration on his face!”

I decide not to mention I was thinking about how many sequels Star Wars had made in the time I’d been in this world. But even though meditation is boring, the rest of wugong is fascinating. I am not strong enough to fly like Father yet, but I have learned a lot. It’s way better than PE classes in the modern world. In addition to wugong, I also receive tutoring from Master Jiang. It’s ridiculously easy with my prior knowledge and photographic memory. Unfortunately, because the class is just me and Long, I have to pay attention since Master Jiang will punish me if I don’t. We learn mathematics, chinese, history and science, and…

“Wait, is that English?” I gasp. Master Jiang has plunked a scroll on my desk containing the letters of the alphabet.

“Wow, you know what that is?” Master Jiang says, impressed. “Travelers from the Kingdom of Anglia come by every so often, and we trade with them, so it’s essential to learn English.”

“Wait, you know England exists?” I ask.

“What’s England?” Master Jiang says blanky. Then he shakes his head. “Anyways, let’s start by learning how to pronounce the letters. Don’t worry if it’s hard, it took me ten years to learn-”

I cut him off by reciting the alphabet perfectly. 

“Woah, you recognize all these symbols?” Master Jiang is surprised.

“Um, I learned it by reading some of the letters my father wrote,” I reply, realizing I’ve slipped up yet again. 

“Huh. So do you know what this means?” Master Jiang asks, writing ‘dog’ in english on my parchment. 

“Yeah, of course I do. It means dog. Give me something harder.”

Master Jiang is delighted, and gives me an entire paragraph to read. Again, I read it perfectly.

“You’re very good at English!” he exclaims. “But your accent is kind of weird. It’s pronounced very well, but it sounds like you’re trying to be cool and rebellious at the same time.”

“Oh, so you want me to fake a British accent? No problemo,” I reply in English.

“Great Sky Gods, you know Espanol?” Master Jiang asks. 

“Well, not really. I learned some of it because it was required for high school-” and I’ve slipped up once again.

“What’s high school?”

“Never mind, I read it from one of my father’s letters.”

Soon Master Jiang is casting praise about my language skills all over the court. Even the emperor’s right-hand man, Cheng Delun, comes to praise me.

“You could be very good in foreign affairs with the languages you know,” he tells me.

This entire time, Long has been fuming silently. Of course I notice it, but there’s really nothing I can do about it without explaining I’m a high school student reincarnated as his little brother. Long is smart too, but he hasn’t learned as much compared to me and he doesn’t have a photographic memory either. So I let him fume. And three years later, he’s still fuming when I perfectly recite an English poem I ‘made up’ on the spot (in reality I was reciting one of Emily Dickinson’s poems). 

“Wow, you’re really a prodigy!” Master Jiang gushes. “Long, you need to work on your inflection.”

“Why do I have to take classes with you?” Long growls as we’re preparing for bed. “I’m two years older!”

“Well, considering I beat you in everything, you still have a lot of improvement to do,” I reply, unable to resist the chance to be snarky. 

“I’ll pass the imperial examinations and become a court official,” Long brags. “ThenFfather will see that I’m better.”

“Whatever. I don’t plan on taking the examinations anyway,” I say. The imperial examinations are a test you take in order to become a member of the court; they are very tedious and require several days. It’s not exactly something I want to spend time studying for. Suddenly, my sister, Lin Yan, runs in. She’s three years younger than me, and very energetic.

“Tell me a story,” she begs, bouncing on the soles of her feet. 

“I’ll tell you a story,” Long offers in a futile attempt to one up me. “Let me see… once upon a time, there was a cool guy who was good at wuxia and learning and also he served the emperor and the emperor loved him. And he saved the world from all the bad monsters. The End.”

“That was so bad,” I snicker. “That’s basically just your fantasy of where you want to be.”

“Yeah,” Yan chimes in. “Second Brother’s stories are much better.”

Long throws his hands up in the air. “Why can’t I be better than you at anything?”

“Settle down,” I sooth him. “I’ll tell both of you a bedtime story.”

After thinking for a while I decided to tell them the story of Twilight. Yes, I know Yan is five, but that doesn’t mean she can’t learn about the literary masterpiece that is Twilight. “Once upon a time, a girl named Bella Swan moved to a small town and met a vampire named Edward…”

“How do you pronounce that?” Yan interrupts.

“It’s an English name,” I explain, repeating her name. I continue on with the story, telling them about how Edward saved Bella multiple times. 

“Wow, your stories are so good!” Yan says sleepily.

“Ughh, he’s telling a story about a vampire! That’s really boring. We all know vampires don’t exist,” Long complains. 

“But fox spirits exist,” I point out, thinking about how Father had just fought one the previous day.

“Of course they exist!” Long rolls his eyes. “But the Anglian concepts like demons, angels, vampires, witches, and whatnot aren’t real. If they were, we would have seen them already!” 

“Alright, alright, it’s time to sleep,” our mother interrupts, poking her head into our room. “Save the conversation for tomorrow.”

“Sorry,” everyone mutters.

“Oh, and Hu? Please don’t make up these weird stories. I’m not sure they're appropriate for five-year-olds, or eight-year-olds for that matter. Edward sounds like a jerk.”

“Hey!”

Mother shakes her head, and leads Yan out of the room, leaving us to ourselves. Stretching back in my bed, I think about what Long said. If the China I landed in has magical cultivation and mythical creatures, what’s to say the kingdom of Anglia, which is basically England, doesn’t have its own mythical creatures? I can’t wait to find out.