As luck would have it, the baby was a girl.
Huzzah.
Instantly, the twelve brothers exploded with chaos, Kiku hacking things apart with his sword, Yao cooing about how beautiful the girl was going to be (apparently not having gotten the memo that they would all die), Hyung Soo ranting angrily, and Jiaming fuming.
"Why do we have to die for a girl?" Jiaming demanded, "Li Xiang, Cheng and I are the greatest businessmen in all the China! Yao is the finest cook, Kiku is a master swordsman, Choden has the kindest soul, Yong Soo and Hyung Soo have rooms purely dedicated to war medals, Ngai has an indomitable spirit, Guiying has an incredible mind, and Aroon has the friendliest smile-"
Yong Soo burst into tears. "Wow, Jiaming! I didn't realize you thought that highly of us!"
"Shut up!" Jiaming hissed at Yong Soo, before redirecting his attention to the group. "As I was saying before I was rudely interrupted-" He glared at Yong Soo. "A mere girl is worth nothing compared to us! This is an outrage! As vengeance, I vote that we kill every girl that we see!"
"I think you inherited dad's crazy," Li Xiang muttered.
Yao looked disturbed. "But… our dear baby sister…"
"And isn't it rather mean?" Choden added.
Batbayer scowled. "Jiaming is right. We need compensation!"
"But why don't we just kill our old man instead?" Ngai asked, "He's the one who wanted to kill us."
"You make a good point…" Guiying mused, "But for the sake of adding tension and making a longer story, let's just go with Jiaming's plan."
"Okay!" Everybody said, agreeing for maybe the first time ever.
"What shall we do now?" Kiku asked.
"Well," Yao said, "Instead of making like normal people and escaping the country- because our dad is seriously a psychopath- let's wander into the bamboo forest. Maybe we'll find a random, conveniently-placed house or something."
Sure enough, after walking for a couple of hours, the group found a random, conveniently-placed house.
It was large, built in a traditional Chinese style. The walls and roof were painted red, and it was surrounded by a stone wall. As the 12 brothers wandered in, they found a pool with koi fish. Surrounding the house were twelve trees, all different except for two identical ones.
"Wow," Guiying said, "Our lives are getting really weird. Who knows, this might all be a fanfiction written by an author who's on her period that is based off some old European fairy tale, and all of us are actually OCs and characters from a really weird anime."
"Stop breaking the fourth wall!" Hyung Soo snapped, "The readers will think that the author is crazy!"
"Seriously, though," Jiaming said, "Why is there a random house in the middle of the woods?"
"That wasn't the author's fault," Cheng informed everyone. "It was just the way the fairy tale was written. Or maybe the website she read it on got it wrong."
"You are smashing the fourth wall to smithereens!" Hyung Soo howled, "Stop!"
"Okay, okay…" Jiaming muttered, "Relax…"
As the boys wandered closer towards the door, Li Xiang asked a vital question:
"What if this is a trap?"
"For the sake of plot convenience, let's just say it isn't," Yao said, his silky ponytail now with some sticks in it.
Batbayer coughed, pointing towards twelve trees. At a glance, Li Xiang recognized a cherry tree, a plum tree, and a Hong Kong orchid tree.
"What are those?" Batbayer asked tensely
Yao shrugged. "Let's leave them alone. They might be an important plot device."
Batbayer scowled suspiciously at the flowers.
"Whatever they are," He muttered, "I don't like them."