Fu Miaoxue laughed so hard she could barely straighten up. Between laughs she managed to say, “Hahaha I just did the same thing — hahaha these wild bananas are all seeds! Completely inedible hahahahaha!!…”

“If they can’t be eaten, why did you feed one to me?” Du Lai spat out a couple more and wiped his mouth.

To be fair, the banana was actually quite sweet — just almost entirely seeds with very little flesh. One bite was practically nothing but seeds. It really was impossible to eat.

Fu Miaoxue added, “Guess how I found these bananas.”

“How did you find them?” Du Lai asked.

Fu Miaoxue pulled a face. “Guess~”

“Can’t be bothered.” Du Lai picked up his collected salt and started walking back without a second thought.

“You’re no fun at all! You won’t even guess!” Fu Miaoxue huffed and followed after him. “You were so interesting on the ship — how did you end up like this?!”

Du Lai’s footsteps stopped. He spotted the monkey not far away.

Fu Miaoxue immediately broke into a bright grin. “You figured it out now, didn’t you? Alice found them! This morning when I went to fetch water, I found her sitting right under our water pipe drinking! And she had a bunch of bananas with her! Apparently there are wild banana trees on this island — there might be other fruit trees too, ones we just haven’t found yet.”

The monkey chittered and climbed over to cling to Du Lai’s legs, clearly on the verge of going mad from loneliness itself. Spotting a familiar face brought out an almost overwhelming affection.

Du Lai scooped the monkey up and stroked her. “Boba, you’ve lost so much weight.”

Growing up among people and then being abruptly returned to the wild — how could she possibly have adapted?

Fu Miaoxue corrected him firmly, “She’s Alice! Not Boba!”

Du Lai ignored her and let the monkey perch on his shoulder as they walked back. “Boba, you’re so thin I almost didn’t recognize you. Your coat doesn’t look nearly as nice as it did before.”

Fu Miaoxue stood where she was and stomped hard on the ground, glaring at the pair of them in indignant fury. “I said she’s Alice! Alice! Alice!!!”

Du Lai, as though deliberately provoking her, called out loudly: “Boba! Even without Frank, I’ll take good care of you!”

Fu Miaoxue howled in outrage behind him.

Du Lai smiled even more.

……

With a monkey in the mix, their days together gained no small amount of entertainment. Fishing, hunting birds — now they had a companion for all of it. Wild fruit growing high up in the branches that would have been out of reach before could now be fetched with the monkey’s help.

Boba — or Alice — grew noticeably rounder under Du Lai and Fu Miaoxue’s care.

Once their food supply was stable, the two of them would take the monkey and explore in different directions from time to time. When the weather was bad, they’d stay in the shelter to sleep, play five-in-a-row, weave rope, shape clay, or make all manner of small objects.

Living with a monkey did have its inconveniences, though. She was an animal, after all — not particularly clean — and after a stretch of wandering the island on her own, she had developed lice.

Du Lai took Boba down to the water to bathe her and found Fu Miaoxue up on the large boulder laying out clothes to dry. She was always perched somewhere high — when it wasn’t the roof, it was the top of the big rock.

“Were you a monkey in your past life?” Du Lai called up helplessly. “You can hang the clothes just as well down here. Climbing up that high every day — be careful you don’t fall. Come down.”

Fu Miaoxue stood at the top with both arms extended to either side, eyes closed, apparently in a state of deep enjoyment. “It feels so good up here…”

Du Lai watched her even rise onto her toes and felt a flicker of real worry. He climbed up and urged her again, “Come down.”

Fu Miaoxue glanced back at him and said with a grin, “You don’t have to worry — I climb like this at home all the time. I won’t fall~”

Du Lai frowned. “At home if you fall, there’s a whole team of bodyguards and doctors to save you. Out here if you fall, you can just wait to die!”

“What’s got you so worked up.” She gave a displeased huff but finally climbed down anyway. At the bottom, she looked back up at the top of the rock with evident reluctance, and said, “There’s always a breeze up there. It feels like flying.”

—