“Lao gong,” my wife whined, “come and give me a hug. Please?”
I thought something was amiss but rushed towards her anyway. It had been so long that she had allowed me to touch her, even if she had uhm, well, performed her wifely duties well enough to satisfy me.
I rushed towards her to hug her and as soon as she was in my arms, she started to transform. Her arms became hairier and she started to smell. I jumped back. It wasn’t my wife! It was a monkey!
“You should have seen the look on your face!” he practically screeched.
“Who are you and what have you done to my wife?”
“Your wife?” the monkey was taken aback. “The old man said that you had bewitched his daughter and she no longer wants to be your wife.”
“But why didn’t she tell me?”
“Do you even listen?”
I kept quiet. The monkey was right.
“You force her to do…things that she didn’t want to do, did you?”
I nodded.
“It’s just not right.”
“You, Pig, you are to come with me,” the monkey said, plucking something from his ear. It was hid cudgel.
Everything came back.
I remembered this creature. He was the one who I had fought in the heavens and had lost to. He had injured me so badly that I could only call to the Buddha’s abode and call for help. And now he was telling me that I had to go on a journey with him and protect this monk? He was kidding.
“You cannot be married to this woman.”
“But we leave each other.”
“She doesn’t love you back.”
That hurt. I winced in pain and staggered back, as if from a blow.
“I don’t believe you.”
I turned my back away from them but the monkey tripped me with his cudgel. He laughed. I had half a mind to show him who was boss but I decided otherwise. I could walk away from this and he would never bother me again. Except—
someone else had entered my house. It was a monk with pale skin holding some prayer beads. He spoke.
“This is a way to atone for your sins. What you did with that girl… all of your lustful sins can be absolved if you lend yourself to this mission.”
I stopped. Everyone knew what I had done. I wasn’t even fit to be in a pig’s body. I wasn’t even fit to live. All right, they had a point. My wife did not want to be with me. If they had not come, what could I do?
“You’re allowed to bring one weapon,” Wu Kong chimed back in. I surveyed my room and grabbed the nine-pronged rake. I used it daily and it would be a reminder of my old life, one where I was almost normal. It wasn’t as good as my own shiny silver blade that I had up in the heavens, but it would do.
“And your given name will be Zhu Wuneng,” the monk said. “Your older brother is Sun Wu Kong.”
“Who wants to be brothers with this…miscreant? This criminal?”
Wu Kong’s eyes narrowed.
“And you’re a—” he raised his fist at me but the monk shushed him.
“You all have to get along,” the monk said. “I am Tang Sanzang, christened by the emperor to bring the scriptures back to India. You are coming with me on this mission.”
I grunted. It didn’t seem like I had a choice. Wu Kong furrowed his brow and stared at me like he was trying to look at what was going on in my body. I sighed. Why were people always doing that to me? It really was my appearance, wasn’t it?
“Wait—I know you. You were Marshal Tianpeng! Hah! You were weak then and you are weak now. What happened to you?”
“Who are you calling weak?” I snarled.
“Stop!” Sanzang sighed, coming in-between us, but Wu Kong shook his head.
“I heard what happened with Chang E, and now this has happened. Why become immortal if you still have worldly desires?”
“I—I—”
“Nothing to say, eh? I beat you up that time, and I could do it again,” he smirked.
“Wu Kong,” Sanzang said.
“But wait, I want to say goodbye to my wife and father-in-law first,” I protested. The fact that I was leaving hadn’t really sunk in yet. I ran back in to say my goodbyes.
*
“And that was how I met my older brother,” I told Ruyi. She was still staying at my place, recovering from the fiasco that was Caleb Tan. I could tell that she was worried about him taking revenge on me, but I had to distract her. After flipping listlessly through Netflix and attempting to watch yet another adaptation about the Monkey King, she had looked at me and said,
“I want to hear it from your point of view.”
That was when I told her my stories.
Now that she had heard some parts of the story, she looked at me and said,
“I guess that explains why your relationship with him is so fraught.”
“What are you, my therapist?”
She shrugged.
“And I think you beat yourself up a little too much. You tried your bes to atone for your sins. You’ve helped me so much today. You mentored me and fought for my place in the company. To me, you’re a good person.”
“Thanks, Ruyi,” I said. I didn’t realise that I needed to hear that so badly.