It was the day the siblings planned to go back. They sun was shining, the birds were singing, all that cliche stuff. The siblings were all eager and excited, but then Yao brought up a question.
"Shouldn't we bring ma-ma and ba-ba a gift? To show them how much we've grown? It's been, like, 12 years after all."
Kiku nodded. "That makes sense, nii-san."
"Oh, why bother?" Batbayer snapped, "Our old man tried to kill us, and our mom would be happy if we just randomly plucked some flowers off the roadside."
"It's more respectful," Guiying said calmly.
"Like, how about furniture?" Li Xiang suggested, "One of my friends said it was cool."
"Be realistic," Batbayer growled, "We don't even know how to make furniture."
Yong Soo grinned. "Oh, I have a solution! We can go Google it-"
"Google hasn't been created yet!" Everyone else shouted in unision.
Yong Soo looked dejected. Then his expression brightened up again.
"We can go to Yahoo Answers-"
"No, Yong Soo!"
"Bing?"
"It sucks anyways."
"Quora?"
"Aiya…"
"WikiHow?"
"We can't go to any of these," Ngai yelled, apparently having had enough. "Because computers haven't been invented yet!"
Yong Soo was silent for a second. He looked like he was about to cry. Just as Ngai was about to soften up and try to comfort him, Yong Soo spoke.
"What about phones?"
"Aiya!"
As Mei watched her brothers squabble, she felt a strange sense of contentment, which might not be something you usually get when you watched people squabble. Here was her family. She would have older brothers to teach her things, to threaten her first boyfriend, to carry her shopping bags for her…
She decided that she would have to prove her usefulness. But how?
"Well," Mei thought, "While they're arguing, I'll go cut down some trees! Then we'll have wood for when they figure out how to make furniture and start making it."
She was sure that they would figure out how to make furniture. These were her big brothers, after all!
Mei went back into the house and rummaged around the cellar before she found an ax.
"How convenient," She mused.
It was light enough for her, but looked strong enough to cut down a tree. The edge was sharp, which was sorta weird, since it had been sitting at the bottom of a storage cellar for who-knows-how-long.
The wise, mature part of her felt that this entire adventure had been a series of conveniences, and that something bad was bound to happen. But the little girl side of her just wanted to impress her big bros.
Mei went with the little girl side of her.
(Spoiler alert: It was a sucksy idea)