The recipient on the package was definitely my younger sister, and the address was correct, too. The sender was a warehouse in the suburbs of Minqing, and the name of an online store was listed. The item description was a long string of text: "Penguin's Summer by Bai An, includes Penguin stickers + Penguin chibi planner, free shipping, in-stock comic picture book, cute-style manga."
The name "Bai An" immediately caught my eye. It stood out to me more than anything else.
I carried the package upstairs, calling my sister as I climbed.
She hung up and sent me a message saying she was still in class.
I had no choice but to message her and ask what this was about.
A little while later, she sent me a link to the product.
The product page had been edited in a riot of colors. Black-and-white, round little penguins appeared again and again. They were probably the main characters of the comic. From the excerpts I skimmed, it looked like a gag comic in four-panel strips. I scrolled down the page and finally found the author's information after a string of introductions and promotional ads:
"Bai An, a picture-book comic artist under Mengmiao Animation, is known for his cute art style. His work is humorous and witty, and extremely popular. He has a million followers on social media and is an online celebrity ranked among the top three most popular comic artists."
For a moment, I wasn't sure whether I was just being paranoid.
The name "Bai An" made me so sensitive because the old man who kept a Green-faced Ghost and clearly had bad intentions was also named Bai An. Ye Qing had killed him—that was confirmed both by Ye Qing's own admission and by what I had witnessed with my