The universe has a sense of humor.
Not the warm kind. Not even the clever kind. The kind that watches you step into a pool you didn't see and then makes sure everyone is looking.
A strip of official paper floated in moonlight like a pale tongue, perfectly still despite the wind. Ink so black it looked wet. Gold edging that screamed authorized. A seal like a cold sun pressed at the bottom.
Bureau of the Unfeeling.
VESSEL No. 875 — Retrieve and Seal.
I stared at the designation long enough for my thoughts to try to climb out of my skull.
Then I did what I always do when I'm about to panic.
I talked.
"That's rude," I said, calmly, as if the document had insulted my cooking. "If you're going to assign me a number, at least choose one with a nicer rhythm. Eight-seventy-five sounds like a tax code."
Bajie made a strangled noise behind me. "Master, that's—That's an arrest order."
"Technically," I corrected without turning, "it's a retrieval notice. 'Arrest' implies I'm being punished for something. 'Retrieve' implies I belong to someone."
I paused, then added brightly, "Which I do not."
The gold line on my wrist tightened under my sleeve, as if it disagreed.
I ignored it.
Ignoring is a spiritual discipline.
Wujing stepped closer, his shadow falling over the paper. He didn't reach for it—wise man. Official documents tend to have teeth.
"Master," he said, voice low, "why would an office from Heaven issue something like this for you?"
"Because Heaven is inefficient," I replied. "It solves problems the way a drunk official solves paperwork: with stamps and threats."
Wukong didn't laugh.
He was staring at the paper like it had crawled out of the mountain on purpose.
His voice, when it came, was almost too quiet to trust. "They're not supposed to use that seal out here."
"That suggests," I said, "that you've met them."
His gaze slid to me. A quick, sharp look—warning. Not for me.
For them.
"I've met worse," he said.
Bajie's voice wobbled. "How is that worse? It's a Bureau. An official Bureau. With gold trim."
"Gold trim doesn't make something righteous," I told him. "It just makes it expensive."
The paper drifted a little closer.
Not with the wind.
Toward me.
As if my number had a magnet in it.
I lifted my hand—not my wrist, not the glowing line underneath, but the hand that had been trained since childhood to handle holy things without flinching. I let my fingers hover a breath away from the document and spoke, clearly, with the kind of diction that makes liars sweat.
"State your authority," I said.
The paper didn't answer, of course. It was paper.
But the ink rippled—ever so slightly—as if something behind it listened.
I smiled.
"Oh," I murmured. "So you can hear."
Wujing's posture tightened. Bajie inhaled like he regretted learning to breathe.
Wukong shifted closer to me—protective, instinctive. The gold at my wrist tugged as if pleased.
I hated that.
I leaned slightly away from him on principle.
Then I spoke again, louder, the cadence of an interrogation wrapped in scripture.
"By whose order is this issued?" I asked. "Name the issuing authority."
The characters on the page darkened. The seal gleamed.
Bajie whispered, "Master… it's paper. It won't—"
"It will," I said, because I could feel the mechanism. The same cold intelligence that had answered my voice in the mountain. The same rule that had made Wukong freeze when I said stop.
Words matter to things that pretend they don't.
The paper shuddered, then a new line of ink bled across the page like a fresh vein:
ORDER: MAINTAIN CELESTIAL STABILITY.
AUTHORITY: DIRECTIVE 0 — EMOTION IS DEVIATION.
Bajie choked. "Directive—what? That sounds like a law written by someone who's never been hugged."
"Some people are proudly un-hugged," I replied.
Wukong's jaw clenched.
Wujing's eyes narrowed. "Directive 0," he repeated quietly. "As in… the first rule."
"Yes," I said, and my mouth went dry. "As in the rule used when they don't want questions."
I looked at my sleeve, at the hidden gold line burning against my skin.
Vessel.
A container.
A tool.
A thing that holds something precious so that someone else can use it.
I heard my own voice in my head, sharp and offended: I do not belong to anyone.
My wrist answered with a tight pulse, almost like laughter.
Bajie's fear finally spilled over into anger—his preferred coping mechanism. "This is nonsense! Master isn't a vessel! He's—he's—annoying, but he's a person!"
"Thank you," I said. "I will treasure your endorsement."
Bajie turned to Wukong, wild-eyed. "Monkey, you know these people, right? Fix it! Bite the paper! Eat it!"
Wukong didn't move.
He was still watching the document, eyes dark, as if he could see the hand holding it from the other side.
Then, slowly, he said, "They found you faster than they should have."
That was not comforting.
"That implies," I said, "that someone informed them."
Wukong's gaze sharpened. "Or that you're already marked."
I raised an eyebrow. "Marked."
He flicked his eyes toward my wrist.
The gold line under my sleeve tightened again, as if it had heard its name.
Bajie let out a small, miserable laugh. "Oh. Of course. Of course it's a mark. Everything is a mark. Why can't it be a coupon?"
"Because Heaven hates discounts," I said.
Wujing's voice was steady, but I caught the tension under it. "Master. What is this 'vessel'?"
I should have lied.
A responsible leader lies when the truth causes panic.
Unfortunately, I am many things, but I am not responsible when I'm angry.
"And now," I said to the paper, sweet as poison, "we arrive at the insulting part."
I stepped closer until the document hovered between my face and the night. My voice dropped—precise, cutting, almost gentle.
"You call me a vessel," I said. "Fine. Then tell me what you think I'm holding."
The ink hesitated, as if deciding whether I deserved an answer.
I smiled wider.
"I can do this all night," I assured it. "I am a professional nuisance."
The characters bled again, slower this time, and the air around the paper cooled like ice forming.
CONTENT: EMOTIONAL CORE.
FUNCTION: STABILITY FUEL.
ACTION: EXTRACTION UPON ARRIVAL.
Bajie went very, very still. "Extraction," he repeated, faintly. "Like… removing?"
"Yes," I said. "Like theft with better handwriting."
Wujing's hand curled into a fist. "They want to take… your emotions?"
"They want to take whatever they think makes me unsafe," I replied. "Which is usually the same thing that makes me human."
The mountain rumbled again, deeper now, like it approved of bureaucratic cruelty.
Wukong's eyes flashed. "They won't take anything from you."
A protective statement. Simple. Dangerous.
The gold line on my wrist warmed, as if pleased by his vow. I felt it—felt my pulse sync a fraction with his, like my body wanted to lean into that certainty.
I hated that, too.
"Don't make promises," I snapped at him, sharper than intended.
His gaze cut to mine. "Why?"
"Because," I said, and my voice came out too fast—too much—because talking is what I do when my control slips, "promises are bindings, and bindings are chains, and I've had quite enough chains for one evening."
His expression changed. The fury in him angled inward, focused, attentive in a way that made me feel seen.
"I didn't chain you," he said.
"No," I replied. "But you're attached to the part of me they want to steal, and that makes you a problem."
His eyes narrowed. "Attached how?"
I opened my mouth to answer with something clever.
The paper answered for me.
The gold seal flared.
A thin strand of light—no thicker than a hair—shot from the document straight toward my wrist.
I swore and jerked my arm back.
Too late.
The strand hit the hidden gold line under my sleeve, and the mark on my wrist answered like a bell struck in a silent temple.
Heat spiked through my forearm. Not pain—recognition.
The vow tightened.
Wukong sucked in a breath like someone had punched him.
He staggered half a step, one hand flying to his forehead where the circlet pattern lived.
Bajie screamed, "SEE? SEE? ROMANTIC CURSE—"
"Bajie," I hissed, "not now."
Wujing moved instantly, catching Wukong by the arm before he could fall. Wukong shook him off with a snarl, but he didn't attack. His attention was locked on me.
On my wrist.
On my mouth.
I forced my breathing to steady. Forced my tone into calm, because calm is a cage I know how to build.
"You feel it too," I said.
Wukong's jaw worked. "Yes."
"Good," I said, too briskly. "Then we are equally inconvenienced."
His eyes darkened. "That's not what it is."
"What is it, then?" I demanded, and the anger in my own voice surprised me. "Explain it, since you're clearly the expert on being bound."
He stepped toward me again, pain still in his posture, but something in him refusing to yield.
The paper drifted closer, delighted by conflict.
Wukong ignored it.
"You said my name," he said, voice low, rough. "And it answered."
"I said a syllable," I snapped. "A ridiculous syllable. A—"
I stopped.
Because the gold line on my wrist pulsed like a warning: Don't.
Don't feed it.
Don't speak it again.
Not unless you're ready for what follows.
Bajie's voice shook. "Master. That paper is… doing something."
He was right.
The characters on the page were rewriting themselves, faster now, as if my questions had forced the Bureau to speak more than it wanted. The document wasn't just a notice.
It was a locator.
A contract in motion.
The ink bled into a final set of lines, bold and clean:
TARGET CONFIRMED: VESSEL No. 875.
SECONDARY ANCHOR DETECTED.
DEPLOY COLLECTION AGENT.
Wujing's gaze snapped to Wukong. "Secondary anchor."
Bajie whispered, horrified, "That means… him."
Wukong's smile was not a smile at all.
It was a bared knife.
"So they're bringing someone," he said softly.
The air around us dropped a degree.
The mountain's crack widened, and the smell of ink intensified—ink and cold metal, like an office built inside a winter.
I lifted my chin and did what I do best: I spoke first.
"To whichever agent the Bureau has sent," I said into the night, voice carrying, crisp as a verdict, "I advise you to reconsider. I am not cooperative, and my companions are—"
I glanced at Bajie, then at Wujing, then—unwillingly—at Wukong.
"—unpleasant."
A laugh answered from the fissure.
Not Bajie's.
Not mine.
A voice, smooth as silk and cold as law, slid out of the mountain like a blade from a sheath.
"Vessel No. 875," it said pleasantly, "please do not resist. Resistance indicates emotional activity, and emotional activity is… deviation."
Moonlight caught the edge of something stepping forward—
not a demon's shadow,
not a beast's silhouette,
but the crisp outline of a figure in white robes, holding a brush the way you hold a weapon.
And behind him, floating in the air like a halo made of paperwork, were dozens of blank slips of paper—waiting to be written on.
Waiting to write on us.