Disclaimer: Characters of Gensoumaden Saiyuki belong to Minekura Kazuya.

My name is Cho Hakkai

Hi, my name is Cho Hakkai. You probably know me as the calm, ever smiling member of the famous westbound foursome that is the Sanzo-ikkou. You probably have heard of my dark past as a mass murderer and a practitioner of that delicious sin, incest. And finally, you might have also caught a few whiffs of the rumors hinting at my more-than-friends relationships with my traveling companions. Well, friends, I write this in attempt to refute those spurious tales and correct the false impressions the world seems to have regarding my serene disposition and tastes in sexual partners. By the time you reach the end of this piece, your rosy picture of me, Cho Hakkai, would have been irrevocably shattered. Supposing this journal would ever be found and read by anyone in the first place.

My apparent role in the group is that of a driver, but I am much more than that: peacemaker, grocery shopper, bill payer, housekeeper… in short, I am the factotum of this crew. Without me, there would be only chaos and no journey. Like this morning, for example, when we were checking out of the inn, I was the person who checked them out. The monk had handed me his credit card just so that he would not have to face the inn manager. And why would you suppose…? I turn to look at the sleeping figure in the seat next to mine. Ooops, the monk in question has just sneezed in his sleep. I guess he knows it when people are bad-mouthing him (even in writing). I wonder how many times he sneezes a day if he knows it every time people bad-mouth him in their thoughts?

Ah yes. Why would Sanzo not want to do the checkout himself? After all, the credit card "belongs" to him. Perhaps I can answer this question better by recounting the conversation between the manager and myself this morning:

Manager: "Thank you very much, honored customer. We do hope that you'll come again, though please tell you friend with the peroxide hair not to sit on the window ledge next time."

I: (smiling and not even bothering to ask the reason why)

Manager: "We do not want to be sued for causing undue blood loss due to nosebleeds and traffic accidents triggered by the sight of a man in tight leather clothing, displaying himself indecently out one of our windows."

I: (mechanically) "Sorry for that."

Manager: "And please inform the occupant of the other room (pointing at Gojyo), I hope it's him, not the kid… Our establishment does provide bins for disposal of used condoms. If every occupant throws a piece of rubber into the toilet, sooner or later, it will be clogged."

I: (looking out of corner of eyes to see if Gojyo was within hearing distance. He was. Good.) "It has always been hard to house-train him, sir."

Manager: "The kid is sweet, though he just ate us out of our supply for this month, including the raw rations and the fodder for our horses. And this morning our staff failed to give some of our honored customers the requested morning calls because your little friend had apparently eaten all of our roosters."

I: (widening smile) "I'm sorry, please include that in our bill."

This conversation, allowing for changes in dialects and nuances, was repeated in every inn unfortunate enough to shelter us for the night. The only exception that brought some color into the sameness of the pattern is the time when Sanzo fell asleep and started to drool on the ledge. That time, the town representative had come in himself to demand compensations for the victims of numerous bull cart collisions and fallen horse riders. And oh, I must also mention the fun we had when a disgruntled "lady friend" of Gojyo's threw him out of his own room, in his birthday suit, before proceeding to march out of the inn with his clothes in her hands. We never found out the reason for this behavior. For all his bad points, that man has always been a lady-pleaser. Perhaps that one was more of an exception than the usual case.

I remember the last (and perhaps the only) time I brought Jeep in for service. I truly regret not accepting the head mechanic's offer of a drink and some magazines in his office while waiting for those guys to finish servicing Jeep. Instead, I had chosen to stand around and watched them on work, as if I was afraid that they would rip me off the moment I took my eyes off them. However, the truth was that, I was worried for Jeep, worried that he might react unfavorably to those unfamiliar hands touching him. The look on the mechanic and his underlings' face is one of the things I will carry with me to my death. Eyebrows lifted and lips whistled in amazement as the men cleaned out Jeep's contents - beneath the seats, under the floor mats, inside the hatch. Magazines featuring women with nothing much on; millions of cigarette butts; unidentified bun-shaped, mould-covered objects; and empty beer cans. Not to mention that some of the magazines had some suspicious gluey substance smeared on them, and that some of the supposedly empty beer cans contained some rank-smelling liquid.

To say I was mortified would be to say that Sanzo was a priest, or that the Bull Demon was a sleeping beauty waiting to be woken up.

Monsters. They are all monsters. And I, Cho Hakkai, had to remain with them for the duration of this journey. How much more can this mind of mine take before it snaps off for good? How many more quarrels do I have to mediate, how many more times do I have to hear the shouts "noisy!" and the gunshots from the monk before I finally wipe the smile off my face, and shove that gun of his up where no sunshine has ever been (and never will be)? I have realized one thing: I have not been let off at all for those murders I have committed. My punishment had only been deferred - for three relatively happy years when I had been living with the lady-pleasing though difficult-to-house-train Gojyo. The punishment had come the moment we met up with the monk and his pet at the start of this journey.

I can hear Gojyo murmur in his sleep from his place in the hind seat. Dream on, my friend, while you still can. A mumble from Goku. You too, my friend, though I bet your dream is a little different in nature from his.

I smile in an attempt to remind myself of the hope that, if I manage to keep those three alive until we have achieved the aim of our journey, the hands of this sinner would the hands that will choke the life out of their body. Oh, how I would love to see the shock on their dying face as they tried to ask: "Why, Hakkai?" I know that even by then, it will never have crossed their mind that all those antiques of theirs, day in, day out, are more than enough to drive a normal guy insane, so what do they expect from an already unbalanced person like me?