The moon was made of cheese.
This was, Li Wei decided, the single greatest discovery in the history of science.
He took another bite of the glowing, translucent moon cracker Chang'e had given him.
It tasted like starlight.
And a very sharp, very old cheddar.
His calculus class, now safely breathing inside Yang Mode's atmospheric bubble, had cautiously accepted their fate as audience members for a divine soap opera.
They were having a picnic.
On the moon.
With two goddesses who were fighting over their weirdest classmate.
It was definitely better than learning about derivatives.
**
"This is... surprisingly good," Feng Yue admitted, taking a delicate bite of a moon-cheese-and-cracker creation.
Her anger had cooled, replaced by a strange, surreal sense of camaraderie.
It was hard to stay mad at someone when they were sharing their existential-crisis-inducing cheese with you.
Chang'e, her tears dried, beamed. "Right? It's been aging for four and a half billion years. You can really taste the primordial despair."
The livestream, of course, was still running.
The viewer count had ticked over 500,000.
The chat was a frantic waterfall of comments.
[USER: DemonicOverlord_Dave]
MOON CHEESE?! THIS SHOW HAS EVERYTHING.
[USER: Penglai_Phoenix_Fanclub]
Okay, the Moon Goddess is kinda cool. But I'm still Team Phoenix. #PhoenixWaifuForLaifu
Xiao Bai, the fox spirit producer, saw an opportunity.
A new poll flashed onto the screen.
[CHAOS POLL: The tension is high! How should our goddesses settle this?]
A) A dramatic, tearful monologue battle. (12 votes)
B) A passive-aggressive compliment contest. (37 votes)
C) A high-stakes, cosmic cooking competition. (3.2 million votes)
Chang'e's eyes lit up. "A cooking competition!" she declared. "What a brilliant, completely spontaneous idea!"
She looked at Feng Yue, a competitive fire igniting in her lonely, silver eyes.
"My Moon Cheese," she challenged, "versus your Phoenix Flames."
Feng Yue, whose pride was a tangible, cosmic force, stood up.
"You're on," she said, her own eyes blazing with crimson light.
**
The impromptu picnic had just become the universe's hottest new cooking show.
Two divine workstations materialized from pure moonlight.
"Welcome, everyone," Xiao Bai's voice purred from the heavens, "to the first-ever episode of... CELESTIAL KITCHEN BRAWL!"
The viewers went wild.
"Our ingredients," Xiao Bai announced, "will be decided... by YOU!"
A new poll appeared.
[VOTE FOR YOUR SECRET INGREDIENT!]
The options were insane.
Dragon Tears.
Liquid Starlight.
A single, compressed moment of pure, unadulterated joy.
The votes poured in.
**
"Okay," Feng Yue said, her face a mask of intense concentration. "The audience has chosen... liquid starlight. I can work with that."
She summoned a small, flickering flame in her palm. A perfect, controlled phoenix fire.
Chang'e, on the other hand, was struggling.
"Dragon tears?" she wailed. "But they're so salty! It's going to ruin the delicate flavor profile of the moon cheese!"
Li Wei, who was now the official taste-tester, took his job very seriously.
He nibbled on a piece of raw, unprocessed starlight.
"It's a little... sparkly," he announced to the half-million viewers. "And it tastes like... the feeling you get when you find a twenty-dollar bill in an old pair of pants."
A cold, analytical presence surfaced.
Fascinating, Yang Mode's voice echoed in his mind. The gustatory perception of abstract concepts. This requires further study.
He took control, snatching a piece of starlight.
"The molecular structure is unstable," he announced, his voice a flat, scientific monotone. "To optimize the flavor, it must be heated to precisely 3,000 Kelvin to trigger the Maillard reaction, then rapidly cooled to lock in the umami particulates."
He had become, against all odds, a cosmic food scientist.
**
The cooking battle raged.
Feng Yue was an artist, her phoenix flames a perfect, precise tool.
Chang'e was a chaotic genius, her moon-cheese creations defying the laws of physics and good taste.
The aromatic clouds of their divine cooking, a mixture of roasted starlight and emotionally charged cheese, began to drift across the silent, airless sea of the moon.
And it attracted attention.
In the distance, a ripple in the blackness of space.
Then another.
Something was coming.
Something big.
Space dragons.
Three of them. Their scales were the color of nebulae, their eyes burning with the light of dying stars.
They weren't aggressive.
They just looked... hungry.
They had come for the potluck.
**
While the goddesses were distracted by their cooking and the impending arrival of giant, cosmic lizards, a smaller drama was unfolding.
Chang'e's assistants, a legion of small, fluffy, white rabbits, had been dutifully helping her prepare her ingredients.
But they had been watching the livestream.
They had seen the viewer counts.
They had seen the donation alerts.
And they had unionized.
One brave rabbit, holding a tiny, hand-written sign that read "EQUAL PAY FOR FLUFFY LABOR," hopped onto Chang'e's workstation.
He began to speak in a series of squeaks that the livestream's universal translator helpfully subtitled.
[We, the Jade Rabbit Assistant Union Local 5, demand on-screen credit, a share of the spirit stone donations, and a better dental plan.]
Chang'e just stared at her rebellious, unionized workforce.
Her entire celestial life was falling apart, live, for the entertainment of the cosmos.
**
Amid the chaos, Li Wei and Feng Yue found a moment of quiet.
Yang Mode had receded, leaving Yin Mode to his very important job of taste-testing.
He sat on a moon rock, munching on a piece of phoenix-flame-toasted moon cheese.
Feng Yue sat down next to him.
"So," he said, his mouth full. "This is weird."
"That's one word for it," she replied, a small, tired smile on her face.
They sat in silence, watching the Earth hang in the sky.
There was no audience pressure. No cosmic trials. No life-or-death stakes.
Just two people.
And some very good cheese.
"You know," he said, his voice softer than she'd ever heard it. "Back there... when you were yelling at me about the livestream... and you burned down the building..."
She flinched. "I'm sorry about that."
"No," he said, shaking his head. "Don't be."
He looked at her, his eyes clear and honest.
"It was the first time I knew something was real."
"Everything else... the system, the gods, my own brain... it's all a mess. I don't know what's real and what's not."
"But your anger," he said, a goofy, heartfelt smile spreading across his face. "That was real. You can't fake that level of 'I'm going to commit arson'."
She stared at him.
And she laughed.
A real, genuine, and utterly beautiful laugh.
"You're an idiot," she said, but there was no heat in it. Only affection.
"Yeah," he said. "But I'm your idiot, right?"
The question, simple and direct, hung in the air between them.
It was the most important question in the universe.
And before she could answer...
The space dragons arrived.
They didn't roar. They didn't attack.
The lead dragon, a magnificent beast the size of a mountain, simply cleared its throat, a sound like grinding asteroids.
It was holding a glowing, celestial scroll in its massive claws.
It spoke, its voice a deep, rumbling echo that resonated directly in their minds.
The dragon unrolled the scroll.
The divine, golden characters burned in the blackness of space.
[CEASE AND DESIST. ALL UNAUTHORIZED LIVESTREAMING ACTIVITIES ARE HEREBY BANNED BY ORDER OF THE CELESTIAL COURT.]
[YOU HAVE 24 HOURS TO COMPLY.]
[PENALTY FOR VIOLATION: DIVINE COPYRIGHT ENFORCEMENT.]
The livestream chat, which had been happily debating the merits of moon cheese, exploded into pure, unfiltered, revolutionary rage.
đź“Ł [SYSTEM NOTICE: AUTHOR SUPPORT INTERFACE]
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