Chapter 1: The Hunt

Jin noticed a new guest in one of his bases outside the village. It was a red legged cricket, and he had been planning to capture it for weeks on end now. Today, he thought, it must be captured by him.

He knows he’s no match for it if he just charges and tries to catch it. This time, contrary to his nature he decided to try a softer approach. He did his research, he asked some people around the town and formulated a plan and at its center - the cricket’s favourite food - short stranded dancing grass. It was prepared and waiting in a net. The boy was hoping that the cricket would ignore the trap and focus on the snack.

The cricket was unmoving at the moment though, maybe it was sleeping? His previous experience would indicate that no matter how quietly he’d approach it, the cricket would most definitely escape.

It was late afternoon already. He decided to stay despite knowing how much trouble he’s getting in with his mother once he returns.

Jin sat on the ground, looking in the direction of cricket. He was in a semi tall grass, chewing on a blade with furrowed brows, a little anxious inside about the results of the situation. As Jin was looking for a nice new blade of grass to chew on, he heard a rustle behind him. He turned around, but he didn’t see anything, so he decided to stand up. From higher up he noticed a snake. The snake wouldn’t attack him, he knew it well, but it looked like it all looked as if he was going to cross the big and juicy cricket on its path, and Jin had much less hope of the snake ignoring that potential snack.

Jin didn’t think much, he confronted the snake. Snake glanced at Jin, a little surprised, ultimately deciding to change the direction slightly and go around the boy. Around the boy, didn’t automatically mean around the cricket though. Jin picked up his wooden pole and forced the snake into a standoff. He didn’t have much patience for the beast, he swung his weapon and launched the snake far enough away from himself and the cricket, that he wouldn’t need to worry, as long as the snake wouldn’t decide to move in their direction. Jin looked at it for a couple minutes, and confirmed that the snake seemed to have no intention of choosing such a course of action.

This wasn’t the end of Jin’s troubles. One after another, more snakes started coming up. Were all those snakes planning to have some sort of party up here? What was going on? Jin didn’t know, but as time went by, his brows furrowed closer and closer together.

The unceasing flow of snakes was tiring him out, but it stopped as suddenly as it started. Jin was still paying attention and protecting his prey, he was very stiff and as the evening approached the visibility wasn’t getting any better for him. Thankfully, it seemed like snakes decided to hold the meetup in a different part of the mountain.

.

Once the sun was halfway set, the crickets began their evening song. At that moment, Jin also noticed some movement on his target. The cricket looked around, next, it jumped. Not in the direction of Jin’s trap. Jin tensed. He was about to just rush it and try to catch it as he did in the past. But then, the cricket jumped again to its previous position. Perhaps it was only looking around.

Then, the cricket’s seemed to notice something. It was moving its antennas. It turned around with a small hop towards Jin’s trap.

Moments later, to Jin’s delight, it started chewing on the grass prepared by Jin. With a smooth, practiced motion Jin ensnared the cricket with the net. It was too late when it realized its situation. The jumps of this particular cricket could be extremely powerful, but the cricket’s body was too delicate and lightweight to produce the force needed to escape.

Jin was ecstatic. He finally managed to capture it! He had captured his first gusu! He started inspecting it. The cricket gave up on escaping now, and went back to chewing the dancing grass. It must’ve been pretty hungry. The cricket was very big compared to normal insects, 5-6 times bigger, but still could easily fit on top of Jin’s hand. It had a pair of big eyes, its body was brown, except for its hind legs, which were brown-red in color.

It clearly wasn’t very happy about Jin. It snapped at him or kicked him the couple times he tried touching it, but no matter, he didn’t really expect it to love him after being taken captive.

It was getting dark, Jin decided not to prolong the whole endeavor and go back home immediately. He was separated from his home by an hour-long trek, his mother is going to be fuming when he’s back. He didn’t mind though. It’s his first gusu, even if he cannot make it truly his own, selling it will earn him a small fortune.

After a while, the evening turned into a night and as the sun had withdrawn its influence from the skies, the full moon and all the stars had replaced it.

Jin was strutting ahead, enjoying both the night and his victory. As he was making good progress towards his home. he noticed that there’s a person lazily waving at him, sitting on a large boulder along the path.

Jin frowned, but kept the pace.

“A perfect night for a stroll in the mountains isn’t it? How did you like my little friends I sent earlier to keep you from being so lonely up there?” Said the boy when Jin was close enough.

“You pushed the snakes my way? I taught them a lesson. They wanted to snack on MY new little friend.“ Jin pointed satisfactorily towards the cricket in his net.

The boy smiled.

“Well, since I sent my friends your way, how about you send yours my way? It’s only fair isn’t it?” - the boy said, still smiling.

Jin sneered.

“Too bad for you, the gusu is mine. I imagine it’s hard for you to swallow seeing me doing my victory lap with it in my hand, but I don’t care.”

“Contrary my friend, you have it all wrong, as always.” - The boy said while his smile transformed into a nasty grin - “It is all the easier for me to just snatch the gusu from you instead of sneaking like a vermin in the grass for the better part of the day!” - he said as he rushed at Jin.

Jin got flustered momentarily and backed off, the other boy had his plan ready though, he threw a stone at Jin not stopping the rushdown in the slightest. Jin managed to deflect the stone with his pole but at the same time the boy jumped at him and both began to wrestle.

“Just let me take the gusu and our business is over here my foolish friend. There’s no need to struggle.” - the boy said, eerily calmly

“YOU--- YOU DIPSHIT, YOU THINK I’LL LET YOU GET AWAY WITH THIS?!”

They wrestled some more, and the outcome has been decided. The boy has wrenched the net from Jin’s hands, at the same time pushing Jin to the side so he himself can start the retreat.

Jin ran after him, but soon he realized that he was left without much of a chance to catch up. He was already too exhausted. He had been trekking over the mountain, found the gusu, stalked and protected it from the goddamn snakes, and finally managed to catch the cricket which only started the trek down the mountain. The other boy clearly had no stamina issues. The schemer was playing a snake charmer. and likely when he couldn’t find any more of his sorry combatants, he just laid in wait. Jin’s frown only got deeper and deeper.

The boy’s name was Bei, and they were peers. Jin hated Bei’s guts. He was about the only person that could get under his skin these days, and Jin knew that Bei was aware of it all too well.

Jin was out of breath, he needed to rest at least a little bit, unless he wanted to risk his legs giving up on him at a particularly difficult spot on the trek back. He did his best to not let the dejection get to him.

“Easy come, easy go.” - he thought as he sighed.

---

His mother was waiting at the gates, with quite a sour expression, and a bundle of long, rough looking sticks in hand. They both knew what was about to happen, so Jin just gave one pleading look to his mother. It was met only with mother’s unyielding glare.

It was worth a shot, but today was clearly not his day.

He walked with his mother to the house as she was leashing out her frustration.

“HOW many times do I NEED to repeat this! I CAN’T believe you’ve done this AGAIN! One day instead of you I’ll find a COLD CORPSE, do you want to ruin your MOTHER?!” She yelled, punctuating every sentence with violence. He’d love to retort that if she doesn’t stop, she might turn him into the very corpse she dreads to see, but whenever he’d think of doing something similarly foolish, memories of past attempts flare up as in his mind, as if his guardian angel was trying to protect him from more harm.

They finally returned home. Jin took a quick cold bath, the cold soothed his burning back. Mother’s efforts have successfully mollified her anger, still Jin had to get by without supper today.

He went to his room and opened the windows, hoping for the night breeze to soothe his pain a bit more. The night was gorgeous. The full moon was visible in all its splendor.

“Maybe that’s why mother was so on edge today.” Jin thought.

The nighttime orchestra of crickets interchanging with cicadas was accompanied by the soft sounds of Guqin. Jin soaked the night’s atmosphere and the music for a better part of an hour.

After he cooled off, his eyes furrowed again in remembrance. He focused his eyes on the silhouette of the boy playing the instrument on a neighbouring rooftop in front of his window. He grabbed a handful of stone pellets at his side and threw them at the boy, who lurched avoiding his surprise attack.

It was Bei.