I… don’t remember where I came from. I don’t know who my parents are, or where I was born, or anything. The only thing I know was that I was found in a forest cave, completely feral, covered in bloody animal furs, and clutching my treasure like my life depended on it. That was six years ago…

Ah, I suppose I should introduce myself properly. Nobody knows my name, so everyone just calls me Hain. It’s from an old word meaning “servant”, because that’s what I am. I am the personal servant of the young master of the Zhan clan of Weeping Moon city, Byakuya Zhan, and I have been ever since he found me in that cave six years ago on a hunting trip. To this day, I am still unsure why he took me in. From what I’m told, the elders of the clan were against an unknown feral child being let into the clan at all, much less allowed to become the servant of the clan’s pride and joy, but the Young Master was relentless. He managed to receive tolerance, if not permission, and from then on he practically raised me himself. I owe him everything, and I am honored to serve him. Which, of course, brings us to today’s predicament…

“Hain! Hello? Where are you?”

I shrank further into my hiding spot. There was absolutely no way I could let Young Master Byakuya find me. Absolutely not, no way. It would spell utter disaster for me and, more importantly, the Young Master himself. I must not let that happen, as it is my sole reason for hiding and the fact that my social skills are virtually nonexistent has absolutely nothing to do with it. Oh, who am I kidding? It has everything to do with it. Master Byakuya has somehow managed to get the idea into his five-inch thick skull that I must be lonely serving him all day every day with no time for friends or… well, any sort of social interaction, really. He doesn’t seem to understand that being allowed to repay my debt to him is all I need. Unfortunately, in a way so very like him, the Young Master has decided to solve this perceived problem in the worst way possible.

He’s trying to get me a girlfriend.

I am so screwed.

Like, what even… how does someone even arrive at that conclusion!? “Oh, my eternally cheerful servant who repeatedly says his life is completely fulfilling must be sad, let’s put him into incredibly awkward social situations and see if that makes him feel better”!? No! Way no! I mean, I expected a lot more girls to be around the courtyard since Master is going through puberty and all, but I never expected he would bring them here for me! This is a disaster!

“I found yooooouuu~”

“AAAAH! Oh, um, Young Master, what, uh, brings you here into this, uh, dark and secluded corner where I happen to be cleaning?”

“Mmhmm. And how, exactly, are you cleaning without any cleaning supplies? …You had better not be licking the floor again.”

“O-of course not. I don’t even remember doing that, it was back when I was still feral… I can’t be blamed for that…”

“HAH! You’re way too easy to tease, of course I don’t blame you. Though it was entertaining to watch. Anyway, I have someone for you to meet! It’s a girl named-”

“SorryYoungMasterbuti’mbehindonmycleaningandIreallyneedtogogetsuppliesfromthestoragesoIdon’thavetimerightnowI’mreallysorrygottagobye!”

And with that, I sprinted off like my life depended on it.

******

I watched Hain vanish into a blur and sighed. If it was anyone else I would run after them, but Hain’s simply impossible to catch. His speed is utterly inhuman. The only person who can keep up with him in the entirety of the clan is my father, the clan’s Patriarch and a cultivator of the seventh tier. Even he’s technically slower than Hain; the only way he can catch up is by spamming short-range teleportation. To put it in relative terms, the fastest I’ve ever seen Hain move is when a chipmunk stole a piece of candy from me. Hain somehow managed to cross a fifty-yard distance in less than a second, grab the candy, and go flying off into the distance because he couldn’t stop himself before showing up ten minutes later. How he does it is an utter mystery. Only my father and I know about his real capabilities, of course; everyone else in the clan just thinks he’s incredibly fast for a mortal, but nothing mind-bending. Even Hain himself thinks so. He doesn’t seem to consciously realize how ridiculously fast he gets from one place to another, and just seems vaguely confused whenever I try to talk to him about it.

However, I’m getting off topic here. My name is Byakuya Zhan. I am fifteen years old and I’m Hain’s master and only friend, though he hasn’t seemed to have caught on to the “friend” part yet. My father is the patriarch of the Zhan clan, Tian Zhan, and I am his only child. My cultivation is at the mortal fifth cycle, the highest among my age group. Many people want to get close to me, but I only have a couple real friends, two of which are standing in the garden right now.

“Well, I see you failed miserably. Again.” Yun Zhan laughed at me as I sadly plodded back towards them.

“Honestly… what do you keep telling him to make him run away like that? This is the fifth time. It’s not like we’re going to bite him or anything. We just want to meet him properly for once.” Meiling Zhan sighed at me while giving her older twin brother a glare. “Are you sure he’s more open to socializing now? He certainly isn’t acting like it...”

I grimaced. “Trust me, this is an improvement. He used to just go catatonic at the thought of meeting a stranger. Now he barely even protests! This will be good for him. Besides, why do you think it was something I did?”

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

“Because you’re as dense as a rock. And that’s putting it lightly.” She sighed again. “Okay, since this is clearly caused by something you said, repeat to me EXACTLY what you told him when you first brought up the idea of meeting new people.”

“Um, okay. Let’s see… I think I said ‘Hain, it must be lonely for you just cleaning all the time and following me around without talking to anyone. You should make some friends sometime.’ And then he said something snarky along the lines of being my servant was enough for him, so I told him ‘You can’t just turtle up in a shell all your life, you need to go out and meet people! I’m not going to die if you’re not waiting on me hand and foot every second of the day. Besides, it’s not like I know everything and have every opinion. You need to talk to people if you’re going to learn about the world. Who knows? You may even enjoy it! You can make friends and have rivals and maybe even get a girlfriend!’ and then I repeated that speech Uncle Yi gave me about finding that special someone to share your life with and-”

I was interrupted by hysterical laughter. Yun was howling so much tears were coming out of his eyes, while even the ever-serious Meiling was snickering a bit.

“What? What did I say?” I asked.

“Pfft… okay, I knew I said you were dense as a rock, but… snrk… this is just ridiculous…” Meiling chortled.

“HAHAHAHAHahahah, hoo boy… oh, I haven’t laughed so hard since the floor-licking thing… But seriously Byakuya, how can you be this dumb? He thinks you’re trying to play matchmaker! He thinks you keep bringing girls over so he’ll fall for one!” Yun choked out. He still looked like he was laughing on the inside, but he barely managed to hold it in.

I was not in the mood to appreciate his efforts.

******

A brief excerpt from Hain’s cultivation journal

This is a massive waste of time. Master Byakuya keeps rambling on and on about qi and bottlenecks and martial arts and dantains and a bunch of other crap I don’t care about. He wants me to start cultivating or whatever for some reason, and I have somehow managed to drag out the patience to humor him. Thank the stars it seems I’m incapable of it. However, since he reeeeeally wants me to at least try, I guess I’ll write down the basics or whatever in this damn journal so I can enjoy burning it later. Cultivation is the act of absorbing qi into your dantain, an organ for storing energy located beneath the navel. If you’re a pedantic moron, you could also call it essence or essence qi or essence of Heaven and Earth or qi of Heaven and Earth or essence qi of Heaven and Earth or chakra or… you know what, I don’t care. It’s all the same thing. Well, except mana, but that’s complicated and not relevant at the moment. Anyhoo, the supposed goal of cultivating is to become immortal, though nobody seems to be able to explain why they want to dedicate their entire lives to extending their life. Seems kind of pointless and circular if you ask me. Oh, and as a side effect, cultivators get amazing superhuman powers that defy nature. Never mind the fact that they’re being wielded by humans and are acquired through completely natural processes, as well as being formed by various parts of nature. Also, cultivators insist they aren’t mortal, despite the fact that they can- and very often do- die. If you haven’t noticed, they tend to have a stick up their I digress. There are twelve cultivation tiers, with ten levels or cycles each. There’s also a mortal tier for non-cultivators. Each tier is more difficult to reach than the last, with the exception of the mortal tier; it’s as hard to reach the first tier from mortal as it is to reach the fifth tier from the fourth. Rule of thumb; the higher a person’s cultivation, the more of an arrogant prick they are. They also become exponentially more powerful with corresponding lifespans to match. Supposedly cultivators at the tenth tier can destroy mountains with a single punch. Fortunately for the mountain ranges of the world, people like that are stupidly rare. The seventh tier is considered enough to lead a clan and to be a powerful force in a city. Sect leaders and academy heads tend to be at the ninth tier. Ancestors and Protectors are usually at the tenth, but we only have one in the entire kingdom who’s supposedly been in seclusion (read: hibernating if not dead) for the past five centuries or so. Lazy bum. Thankfully, I don’t seem to have a dantain, and therefore have no need to worry about this crap! Hmm… I wonder what I’ll do with this journal, though. It’s supposed to keep track of my training methods, but I think I’ll use it to write bad things about other people instead. That sounds fun.

******

I sighed. Internally, of course. I would never sigh out loud unless I intended to hurt someone with the brunt of my disappointment. Sighs are powerful weapons, and they must be withheld until the opportune moment, and not wasted in a meaningless attempt to express my sheer freaking boredom. Oh look, a tree! Oh look, another tree! Awesome! Yay nature! I haven’t been sitting on this wagon looking at the same freaking stuff for the last three days, no siree!

Ugh, even Yuling isn’t around to distract me with her stupid trivia. Apparently some idiotic Reaper Wolf tried their luck with the horses near the end of the convoy and got a face full of swords for its trouble, so they needed a cultivator to purify it before its miasma started luring other monsters to the road. I’m not sure why they needed her to do it but knowing the... subpar quality of most cultivators that get stuck on guard duty, everyone there probably burned all their Qi showing off their ‘profound sword techniques’ for no reason and have nothing left in the tank for cleanup.

Well, whatever. It’s not like I need a bodyguard in the middle of a merchant caravan surrounded by guards barely an hour away from a major city. And then... well, it’s back to work I suppose. Find the idiots, arrest the idiots. Everyone seems to think detective work requires a genius level intellect and the ability to sniff out lies from a mile away when it’s mostly just reading reports and asking people what they saw for a couple hours to build a case against some drunk imbecile who stabbed a guy in an alleyway and ran. Every so often though... someone tries to be clever. They’ve got their perfect little plan with every piece in its place where everything aligns just so, and everything went exactly how they wanted it so they can just plead ignorance and get away with it scot-free.

And I live to rip their little plays apart.

Too bad it’s not happening anytime soon! Oh my stars, it’s another tree! Woohoo! I am having the time of my life here! Not desperate for something interesting to happen at all, not me-

A barrage of arrows leapt from the tree line, one embedding itself five inches from my leg.

...

I freaking jinxed it, didn’t I?