He opened his eyes in a rustic egg tart shop. It was rather beautiful, with little porcelain tiles on the walls and those little bamboo seats. He rested his arms against the table that he was somehow magically resting on. The table was cold though, and it froze his elbows. He sat upright instead.
But… ah.
Where was he, exactly?
This shop didn't really feel familiar; he didn't think he'd seen it before. So probably not amnesia? And he was the only one in the shop.
He flexed his hands, fingers curling in before uncurling, deftly stretching like a pianist before a concert. It seemed as though his body was completely normal, without any external tampering like knock out drugs or roofies. Perhaps he had been knocked out by brute force, though it would have taken a lot, but it didn't seem to have any long lasting effects. Like a concussion.
There were more important things to worry about though, like those delicious-looking egg tarts on the display. Hong Kong style maybe? With a hundred different flavors too.
Ooh! Creme Brûlée flavored! Maybe getting kidnapped or something wasn't too bad after all, if only he had his wallet.
Wait.
…
Where was his wallet? And his phone?
Well. It did make sense that if there were any kidnappers, they'd take his valuables too.
At least no one was sitting across from him. It was a small table, and it would have been awkward from the close proximity.
POP.
He took it back. Whatever deity was out there must have hated him. A grinning blond kid shot finger guns at him, even though he had somehow just materialized into the seat across the round table.
"Hi!"
Nope. Too much magic bullshit for him. He leaned far, far away from the kid. Who had been talking, although he certainly hadn't been listening. The blond was constantly making large, grandiose gestures as he spoke, sweeping hand movements just as energetic as he seemed.
Ming wasn't that energetic enough for that. In fact, he could tell his social battery was at an all time low. Who knew being near loud people could be so draining?
"Call me Huipao? Anyways, I guess we're partners for this scenario. Have you ever cleared it before?"
What? Scenario? Clear? Partners?
At least he knew that the last one was a definite no. Too loud, too smiley. Too… blond.
"Ah. I guess you aren't very talkative, huh? Any name though? Or I can just call you ge!"
He narrowed his eyes at the blond kid.
A name?
Hmm.
"Ming. You may refer to me as… Ming"
The blondie squinted.
"ming like the classic textbook ming?"
What was he going on about now? What kind of textbook had a Ming in it—
Oh wait, right. The classic Xiao Ming.
"No." He gruffed out. Annoyingly, his voice was scratchy and far too low. Human vocal cords were so hard to manage. Oh no, did he sound mean? Oh dear. Talking was way too hard. What if he messed up again? Best to keep sentences short.
"Ming as in green tea."
That was it. That was all the kid was getting.
That was enough talking to last two more lifetimes.
Never again.
But the blondie didn't take the hint.
He, no, Ming, could feel his blood pressure rising. The chilling cold of the table seeped into his fingers, and he looked down to realize that he had been clenching it for far too long. His knuckles were white, he noticed.
oops.
At least there weren't any indents in the table yet.
He let go, slowly, as Huipao kept chattering.
"Anyways, I've cleared this shop twice now, but it's really annoying how the instance changes each time, right? Oh yeah! I've cleared three main instances now, and I'm a Darklance prospective!"
Ming squinted.
"Is that supposed to mean something to me?"
The blondie acted as if Ming had just insulted his entire bloodline and ancestors, leaning back in his chair and gasping.
"Excuse me?! You don't know the Darklance guild? Wait, are you a newbie? Makes sense I guess, but you're so—"
Tuning the rest out, Ming turned back to look at the shop once more. Where there had once been a fully barren shop, there were now about two to three people per table. He hadn't noticed them come in though.
Teleportation again?
Some people looked like they knew each other. Others? Random strangers, like him and the blond kid.
Honestly, the kid was getting kind of annoying now, chattering on and on about his amazing guild. What was he, a D&D player?
"Any chance you're from LanXing? well, I think the classification for it is something like 102? No, wait, ELX-102 Beta? Or was it 103?"
Ooh, interesting. Different planets. Perhaps everyone here, all of the other players, all came from different worlds. How exciting!
Ming prepared to stand up and rest on the back of his seat. Actually, the seat was really nice. Very aesthetic. Would buy. Maybe he'd ask the owners where they got their chairs.
His home was pretty bleak as of now.
His butt kissed the cushion to go, but the blondie immediately grabbed his arm, a panicked yet confused look in his eye.
"Dude, are you stupid?"
Ming raised an eyebrow back.
"I want-t to go order some egg tarts."
oops. Ming hoped the blondie hadn't noticed the stutter. Social embarrassment could drag him as far down as it wanted, but as long as the other party didn't notice, he was fine.
The blondie looked even more confused now.
"Are you stupid? Did you not read the forum guidelines? Wait, have you not even figured out how to open the forum?"
What forum? What guidelines? Did Ming look like he had his phone?
"What forum?"
The blood drained from Huipao's face.
"Oh no, you are a complete newbie. But they held a quick briefing at the start? When we all entered the instance? Did your system glitch?"
woah. Exposition, much?
"I… do not know. I woke up here."
The kid at least seemed honest; it would be good to play along. He seemed well-meaning too.
Well, it looked as if blondie.exe had stopped working. It would almost have been a funny sight, if Ming's legs hadn't hurt from the half squat, midway off the chair.
Whatever.
He sat back down.
But immediately, a waitress was behind him.
He didn't like her smell.
She was pretty though, bright and bubbly. Dark hair in a bob, and an even darker set of eyes. No light in them at all. How unnervingly beautiful. She leaned at a perfect angle, clearly a customer service veteran. Delicate little hands clasped together, and a pearly smile flashed straight at them. If only that smile reached her eyes, though.
"Good evening, dear guests! Would you like to order anything?"
Ming looked at the blondie. The blondie looked back at him.
…
So much for being a three-time instance clearer.
But the kid looked slightly nervous, even if he still had the stupid grin.
That must have meant there was something wrong with the waitress. Well, he could kind of tell, but it was always good to have confirmation.
The kid was too frozen to speak, so instead Ming lied straight out of his ass. Back ramrod straight, summoning all the effort in the world to say a single sentence. It was a very difficult sentence. A very long sentence.
"Apologies, ma'am. My brother and I were about to order, but our mother said that she'd be here soon and wants us to wait before ordering."
The look in the waitress' eye dimmed, and she seemed rather disappointed. Her smile never slipped though, and she responded in a grating, customer service voice.
"No worries, guest! I will come to take your order when your mother arrives! We need to get the kitchens going anyways, new ingredients will be arriving soon as well!"
She skipped away into the blue doors connecting to the kitchen.
Huh, they kind of looked like the ones in Ratatouille, but a pretty blue instead of red. Maybe there was a magic rat in there too. Ming wouldn't have been surprised.
Huipao's stuttering broke Ming out of his musing.
"Woah. Are, um, are you sure that you're a newbie?"
no answer.
"Tough crowd. How weren't you scared though, didn't you feel the pressure?"
What pressure, was this kid stupid? It was a waitress. Poor thing, maybe he had social anxiety.
"Don't look at me like that, the NPC was probably a ghost!"
Never mind, not a poor thing. Just a rude brat.
The waving from the kid was even more frantic now.
"Look, the others agree with me! She didn't even have a shadow! Her apron had bloodstains!"
Looking around, Ming spotted a couple of people looking at them, nodding.
Idiots.
Huipao looked to the sky, exasperated.
"Okay, I'm calling it quits with you. Confident enough to be a veteran, but you can't even notice that she's a ghost?"
It wasn't as if not having a shadow meant being a ghost. Bloodstains though… maybe she was just a girl with a certain side hobby? Nothing to discriminate against.
Obviously, someone working in a food shop would have food stains on their apron.
A large crack rang throughout the shop.
It looked as if a fat man had yelled at the waitress about not wanting the stupid egg tarts and wanting to leave.
What a strange man; the egg tarts looked positively splendid.
Oh. Then the waitress snapped his neck.
She must have been very strong. Didn't it take over three thousand newtons or something? Wait, Ming should have known this. He'd studied it for a bit in college.
…
Learning was not his strong suit.
Wasn't the waitress just in the kitchen though? But he supposed he did see a dozen people, including him, teleport into the egg tart shop. Maybe she could teleport too? Did that mean he could learn how to teleport as well?! How exciting!
By the time he remembered to focus, both the waitress and fat man were gone, but there was a large, red drag mark leading to the kitchen doors. The front door to the shop had once been fully blue, yet it now had a pretty rose trim. Very red, very pretty.
That was rather ominous, no?
The person the fat man had been sitting across from was making all sorts of weird noises, her shoulders shaking. She looked to be in tears. Ah. She looked young. Her first time seeing a death? It came to all eventually though. The nearby people (veterans?) were comforting her, trying to make her stop panicking. Whatever, at least the noise wasn't too grating.
There was a hushed muttering rebounding from all across the room. In particular, one other corner had a rich man with a very nice watch yelling about his money. Rude! Why'd he get to keep his watch when everything of Ming's was taken away? Favoritism.
Anyways, the rich guy yelled at them for kidnapping him, setting up an elaborate ruse to break him, yada yada. He must have been very rich if he thought it was all for him.
Hm.
Target spotted. Robin Hood plan perhaps?
Before Ming got up again, Huipao tried to stop him once more.
"Are you stupid? Did you not just see the npc snap that guy's neck? We gotta wait and figure out the rules!"
Ming rolled his eyes.
"I know you might not care, but I do! This is a team exercise, if you die, I might die too!"
Some things were starting to become clear though. Blondie had kept talking about instances, newbies, veterans, guilds, and so on. A horror instance with a forum.
No way… Ming had transmigrated?
Amazing!
And into an egg tart shop as well! His favourite dessert!
But.
No money.
No egg tarts.
He mentally deflated into a small puddle of tears.
Pretending not to know anything, about everything, Ming questioned (ahem, grilled) Huipao. He hated talking, but this seemed important enough. Oh well. Maybe he could just get through this… scenario?
"How do you know where we are? How do you know we need to find out the rules? What's the forum?"
Huipao looked like he was about to explode.
Whatever. If he wouldn't answer Ming's questions, then Ming would find someone who would. Eventually.
By then, a couple of other braver people had also tried to stand up. The waitress hadn't come back though. As a single worker, life must have been tough. Surely there were cooks and managers backstage though, right?
Anyways, time to act like a pro.
Ming smiled and walked up to a big congregation of people, all of them looking to be in deep conversation. They looked strong. Maybe if he pretended to like talking, and they liked talking, then they could just carry Ming to victory? It was a nice thought. Not probable though.
But maybe they had money! For the egg tarts!
"Hi there! I've cleared three instances, but not this one. Anyone mind filling me in?"
By scythe, thanks to blondie for giving him the script. Ming screamed nonstop in his head at the victory of not messing up his words.
Until he realized that the whole group was eyeing him in suspicion.
He blinked.
Humans were strange, annoying creatures. Were they not pack animals? Come on, play along! It had been very hard to say all of that in one go.
A clear leader in the group stepped up though.
"apologies. I am Liu Xitong. We are the copper-tier mercenary group, weaver. This is drifter, another freelancer like you."
The leader gestured to the woman beside him, the only one in the group not having a yarn ball emblem. It was a really cute logo though—did they choose it themselves?
Drifter nodded.
"we know that we are in the rule based instance #4238, Restful Resort, sub-story #28, egg tart emporium. Forum guides state that we must find clues to prove the identity of the ghost in order to clear this sub story. It's an investigative type instance."
Hmm. This forum truly did seem useful. Ming would need to grill blondie more on it later.
A man in a hoodie beside Liu Xitong piped up.
"should we try asking her for help?"
He nodded towards the girl who had sat with the late, fat man.
The group began to debate.
No way was Ming going to listen to all of that. He looked around and saw a very nice cuckoo clock behind the counter. The clock pointed at 4:04. How ominous! He loved it already.
Yet, the clock seemed a bit jammed. What a shame.
Should he look through the cashier desk? But that might trigger rules. It was certainly against legal rules. But other than the cashier and tables, that left only the kitchen to ruffle about.
The waitress was still in there though.
Maybe later.
The paintings, perhaps?
Oh, how Ming adored the paintings. Classic Chinese watercolor, yet some with black, some with blue. He knew that he'd had this line of thought many times before, but the owner of the shop was truly a man (or woman!) who knew just how to get to Ming's heart.
Ming tuned back into the conversation. Still nothing interesting, so he asked, "why not just leave?" pointing at the door—the very pretty door, matching the very pretty shop.
The group looked at him like he was an idiot.
Fair, but ouch.
"Ahem. Well. Past experience and forum guides state that opening the door in the resort sub stories never goes well."
Well, at least one person was sympathetic enough to respond. With quite valuable information too! A resort, hmm?
And a resort rife with danger!
Not much though. These people were genuinely overreacting a lot. Nearly twenty minutes in, yet out of the dozen and a half people, only one had died. Barely anything! Even nymph playtimes had a higher casualty rate.
Ming really was hungry now.
He bid the very nice group—the dreamers(?)—goodbye and sat back down at his original table. The blondie was gone, probably off to find his edge-lord clan teammates. Dark-blade? Shadow blade? Shadow-scythe?
No matter. Ming could probably do it himself.
He looked around. All the other people were busy. But earlier, they'd mentioned a forum. And a system.
Hmm.
Trying very hard (and failing) not to feel stupid, Ming whisper-shouted at the air.
"System. System? Forum? Inventory? Quest?"
Nothing prompted a response.
No magic screens.
No magic apps.
Not even the blue one with white calligraphy like last time.
Stupid system.
Stomach growling, Ming gazed mournfully at his egg tarts. Well, not his. That was the main problem. And he had even forgotten to pickpocket that other group earlier! A shame, really.
At this point, Ming had basically given up. Though the shop was amazing, he had no money and no way to eat those egg tarts. According to the other group, he wasn't even able to leave through the door!
So, the only way to leave was to clear the sub-story. How? Ming didn't even have the stupid system to give him quests!
If only it had been the system from last time—that one had honestly been really useful.
Hmm. What could be the goal? It was a small space, so probably not a chase scene. It could have just been to survive for a limited amount of time, but that would have been very boring. What if it was a cooking challenge? Oh dear, please no! Cooking was the hardest thing to do, ever. Hopefully the challenge was something easier.
Maybe to find clues? To catch a ghost? That made sense.
Ooh! Maybe it was like a werewolf game, one of Ming's favorites. Everyone was a villager, but there were werewolves—or in this case, ghosts—and they tried to kill all the villagers. The villagers had to try and figure out who the werewolves were in order not to die.
Ming really liked that game actually, because depending on the amount of people, there might have been extra characters and roles like detective, little witch, cupid, or martyr.
Yep. He should try that first.
But what if there were consequences to guessing wrong? It would probably have been okay, right? Death was a social construct anyway!
Ming got back up and walked to the kitchen doors. The cashier was empty, and the paintings on the walls only had bamboo. No clues in the main sitting area—hand on wood, heart beating excitedly.
He walked in, half expecting the waitress from earlier to pop up once more. But no, the kitchen was also startlingly empty. Clean though.
Ming ran a hand over the metal counters and sniffed at it. A strong sense of iron… because the tables were made of iron. Eh, at least he'd tried.
A hand on his shoulder startled him, and he nearly jumped a foot high into the air. How had he not noticed? Even if sounds were muffled and his eyes were less compound, he should still have been able to hear their heartbeats, no?
It was obviously just because Ming hadn't been paying attention. Right.
He turned back and was face to face with the blond kid once more. Aw, how cute! He was out of his scaredy-cat phase.
Behind Huipao stood two others, people wearing matching wristguards on their right hands. A marker of their shadow lance(?) guild? Though they did look a lot more menacing than Huipao. Bodyguards, perhaps.
That meant Huipao was important! Hopefully money-wise, so he could buy Ming food later. Best to get on his good side. A rich friend was a useful friend after all.
Oops. Huipao had been chattering on this entire time, and Ming hadn't been paying attention. Hopefully nothing important. Tuning back in, he realized that Huipao had just been introducing his teammates, with a brief intro to their abilities.
No way—abilities? Ming positively had to know more.
The serious-looking man was called Fu Bianheng and had a soul-bound item instead of an ability. Very cool. It was a set of double daggers, each with names. Maybe they even had set effects too? Truly fitting for the dark blade guild.
"It's the darkLance Guild!"
The woman was called ZhaoYing, and she was a healer. Very cut-and-dry introduction, and honestly? She looked nothing like a healer. She looked more like she would try to dissect innocent little bugs—somehow even more monstrous than a ghost. Extremely scary, but cool in equal measure.
He scooted away from her a bit. He could also see her amusement from where he was standing, but that was okay. A strategist knew when to reduce risk.
Ming cleared his throat, pretending he hadn't missed the entire set of introductions.
"Well! Good to meet everyone. Very cool knives, very cool healing, very cool… wristbands."
He gave them a thumbs-up, hoping it read as friendly instead of starving and desperate.
Huipao beamed for some strange reason. That kid always smiled. Very scary, almost like the waitress. Did that mean he was a ghost?! Ah, but the others would probably have looked at Ming weird if they knew his criteria for judging ghosts was whether they smiled.
Maybe blondie wasn't the ghost?
Blondie continued.
"So! We were thinking, we should search the kitchen together. Ghost dungeons like this usually hide clues near food prep areas."
Ming brightened.
"Clues? Maybe even edible clues?"
No one laughed. Tragic.
Ooh, more to a tragic backstory! Everyone knew the coolest people had the absolutely worst, most heart-wrenching, absolutely tragic backstories. Maybe having one would increase the coolness of Ming's ability?
That reminded him—he really did need to ask how exactly one went about unlocking abilities. Probably some wishy-washy magic? But Ming didn't have a system. Oh no, did that mean no magic?
Still, the four of them shuffled deeper into the kitchen, past the metal counters and spotless stovetops. The place looked so pristine it felt wrong, like someone had polished away all signs of life.
Ming tapped a ladle. It rang too loudly in the silence.
Fu Bianheng surveyed the room, daggers materializing in faint outlines at his hips.
"No spiritual residue. No traps."
Zhaoying snorted.
"Not here, anyway."
He really wished she would stop sounding delighted at the idea of surprise death.
They spread out, with Huipao poking cabinets, Zhaoying scanning for energy flows, and Bianheng examining the tiled floor like it had committed a crime. Ming, meanwhile, gravitated toward the far corner where a bulky, old-fashioned ice box sat squat and frosty against the wall.
He paused. The iron latch glinted.
"…Was that always there?" he asked.
Huipao blinked.
"What? Of course. It's a kitchen."
"No, no," Ming stepped closer. "There's kitchen appliances, sure, but that's the only thing here we haven't checked. We've gone past everything else, searched, but still not noticed this."
Still, Ming tugged the latch. It groaned open with the slow, theatrical creak of a horror movie prop. Mist spilled out, cold enough to sting. He peered inside, expecting ice, or maybe a ghost chef's leftovers.
Instead, he saw… a ladder.
A ladder leading straight down into darkness.
"Oh," Huipao whispered. "Oh, absolutely not."
He stepped back. Then forward again. The curiosity-to-survival ratio in his brain was probably vigorously malfunctioning.
Bianheng leaned in beside him, expression sharp.
"Hidden access tunnel. Probably the real dungeon."
Huipao paused, then bounced on his toes, excitement poorly concealed. What is up with that kid?
"Secret basement! That's definitely where the sub-story boss is."
Ming's stomach rumbled in protest.
"Can't the boss come upstairs? I'm hungry."
"We clear it faster if we go down," Zhaoying said simply, already conjuring a faint green glow over her palm. "And maybe you'll get food afterward."
Food.
That magic word again.
Ming straightened with sudden resolve.
"Well! Why didn't you lead with that? Into the death-chute we go!"
He grabbed the ladder. The cold bit his fingers, but he pushed past it, climbing down first—partly out of bravery, mostly because if something ate him, maybe it would be too full to eat the others.
He paused and looked back at the group.
They looked back at him.
Ming cleared his throat.
"Shouldn't we ask the others to come too? Strength in numbers, and all that?"
Bianheng blinked.
Ming blinked back.
They blunk at each other.
Zhaoying rolled her eyes.
"Are you stupid or something? First clears of the round get extra rewards. Plus, they can probably find other routes too."
What other routes? The kitchen was, like, the only suspicious thing.
Huipao noticed his confusion and started to explain. The kid was always good at that, at least.
"The paintings had traces of spiritual residue, and the cashier probably would have had spirit money."
Then why'd they go to the kitchen? And how did they even sense the magic residue???
Fine, fine. Ming was here for one reason, and it was not his brain. Actually, he didn't know the reason either.
Eh. Future problems.
Wait. Was Ming here as a sacrifice? Or was he being scouted? Well, one certainly seemed a lot more likely than the other. Hopefully nothing came out of that suspicion!
They climbed down the ladder, and somehow ended up climbing up. Gravity magic, perhaps. They climbed up into a different kitchen, one that had the same layout, but was far, far messier.
Ming wrinkled his nose. There was a strong scent of iron, but sweet and cloying. He ran a hand over the rusted kitchen counters.
It was kind of unsettling, how stark the contrast was between the two kitchens. One was smooth, the other jagged and bumpy. And really dirty.
Oh dear. Now Ming's hand was covered in… sticky fluid. It was dark. Hopefully not blood. It smelled really bad.
…
He was going to lick it.
Tongue out—but Bianheng stopped him with a raised eyebrow.
It was starting to become a pattern: Ming finally doing something interesting, and then a member of the Blackbladeblade(?) guild stopping him.
"You know," a certain blond kid started, "your name is a wee bit short. Any chance we can give you a nickname or something?"
Hmm. If they gave him a nickname, that probably meant no sacrifice.
"sure."
Huipao brightened up significantly.
"How about Ah'Ming?"
Ah'Ming. That didn't sound too bad, actually.
Ah'Ming nodded.
"Great!"
Zhaoying called over from the corner of the room, beckoning them closer. Pointing at the sink, she asked the guild plus Ah'Ming,
"Do you guys remember if the other kitchen had a mirror?"
Nope. Not at all.
Now that he thought about it, Ah'Ming really wasn't suited for this profession. Hopefully he could take a combat one. He was certain that he would be great at fighting ghosts. It probably wouldn't be any harder than fighting normal people, right?
Ooh, now he hoped that there was a ghost. Time to break out his cutting skills and hope they hadn't completely degraded while Ah'Ming had been stuck in college.
Zhaoying pinched the bridge of her nose.
"I swear," she said, voice echoing unpleasantly off the tile, "this has got to be the stupidest instance I've ever been in. And I've done a sewer dungeon that turned out to be a mimic."
Oooh, mimics? Talk about plot twists. Almost like D&D! Ah'Ming had actually been in a D&D club once. It hadn't really worked out though, since they'd kept trying to kill each other instead of the monsters. Hopefully his new party was better though! The evilevilsword(?) Guild must be competent if they have DPS and healers, right?
Bianheng hummed noncommittally.
"The forum guides," Zhaoying continued, warming up now—oh dear, she seemed to be working up a true rage—"were clearly written by people who either lied, died immediately, or both. 'Kitchen route is optional,' my ass. Optional my foot. Optional like getting stabbed is optional."
Huipao laughed under his breath.
"Maybe they just didn't find the second kitchen."
"Then they shouldn't be writing guides," Zhaoying snapped. "If I see one more post that says 'just follow the obvious clues,' I'm reporting them for misinformation."
Ah'Ming nodded along, even though he wasn't sure what a forum guide was in this context. Earlier, he'd thought it would kind of be like a Reddit post. Was it more like a masterclass?
He was sure that none of this felt optional, though. The new magic world seemed pretty important—just like Silent Hill.
Zhaoying straightened, rolling her shoulders.
"Alright. We've confirmed the mirror discrepancy, the blood…."
She glanced pointedly at Ah'Ming's hand, still faintly stained.
"…and the gravity nonsense. There's nothing else here except bad vibes and tetanus."
She gestured toward the door.
"Let's get out of the murder kitchen. Maybe the inner world egg tart shop is better?"
No one argued.
They pushed back through the doorway and immediately froze.
They were back in the main shop.
Except… not.
The soft, muted blues from before were gone. In their place was a blinding, aggressive red. The walls, the tables, the counter—everything looked like it had been soaked in dye. Well, hopefully dye.
Even the air felt thicker, as if the color itself had weight.
It felt as if the sudden tension in the air could have been sliced with a knife.
Ah. But imagine what else could be sliced with a knife. Pizza. Cake. Egg tarts…
Ah'Ming was so hungry he could have cried.
Oh. Another major discrepancy between the inner world café and the outer world café was that this café was full. Every seat, every standing space, every inch of the floor was occupied by people.
People who weren't… quite right.
They were monochrome, colored only in greys, whites, and deep reds. Very nice reds though. Very burgundy, very bougie. Wait—were ghosts rich?
Anyway, the people had no shading, no depth. They were flat, like cutouts. Their edges were too clean, their movements slightly delayed, like poorly animated puppets.
Paper people.
…
He knew he shouldn't have been, but they reminded Ah'Ming of the summons of one of his favorite video game characters from back home—a certain creature of deceit and cunning. Maybe he should have asked Huipao if his world had a version of that game too.
Ah'Ming swallowed. Another tick against his current party was that there were a lot of paper people here.
Huipao's voice dropped.
"Is it just me, or are there exactly as many of them as there were players earlier?"
Zhaoying's jaw tightened.
"Not just you."
Actually, she had a very nice jaw. If only she wasn't so scary.
Bianheng scanned the room, eyes sharp.
"They're watching us."
He had very nice eyes too. Was it a prerequisite to being kidnapped by this evil adventure game—to be good-looking? Then why was Ah'Ming here? Thinking back, a couple of the people earlier hadn't been that pleasing to the eye. They weren't ugly, just normal.
Hmm.
Back to the main point, though. Were the paper people really watching the party? Probably not.
Ah'Ming turned around to check, to double confirm and triple ensure that the paper people weren't looking at his party.
But… they were.
Every paper face was turned toward the group, eyes simple shapes, expressions frozen in half-smiles and half-blanks. No one spoke. No cups clinked. No footsteps sounded.
Then one of them moved.
A paper person near the counter lifted an arm. The motion was stiff, the bend at the elbow too precise, like a fold being creased. It beckoned them forward. Once. Twice. As if calling over a waiter.
To be completely honest, Ah'Ming was rather jealous of the paper person. He was always too shy to beckon over a waiter. It was like that feeling of when you sat with your phone in a café, hoping that the waiter came to you on instinct, so that you didn't have to embarrass yourself in case you held your hand up for too long without any response.
Uh oh. Ah'Ming was rambling. This was a bad sign.
Calm down, brain. Calm down!
Ah'Ming shifted his weight, nerves buzzing very unpleasantly. To quote a not-so-successful lady on a very successful cooking competition show, he felt full of nerves like that feeling of when you're going to prom with your cousin. Not that he had a cousin. Did he? Technically, they were all siblings, right?
"Uh," Ah'Ming said quietly, "I don't think we work here."
The paper person tilted its head.
Zhaoying clicked her tongue.
"Great. Fantastic. We go from customers, to trespassers, to staff."
Huipao tried to smile, though it didn't quite reach his eyes.
"On the bright side, maybe this means we're not on the menu."
Zhaoying shot him a look.
"Did you not do your homework? Everyone knows this instance is one of the only ones where all the food is guaranteed to be made from yours truly."
The paper figure beckoned again, more insistently now. Around it, other paper people began to shift, their flat gazes tracking the group's every move.
Ah'Ming flexed his fingers, instinctively thinking of knives, of motion, of something solid to cut through.
"Well," he muttered, "guess we'd better see what they're ordering."
The café waited.
They approached the paper figure, with Zhaoying leading the way. As much as Huipao had bragged about being a prospective member of his guild, and that he was being battle-tested, it felt more as though he was just a kid being taken care of by his older sister and brother—
and Ah'Ming now, too.
Every step the group took toward the paper person felt wrong, though, like walking onto a stage where the script had already been written, but only they hadn't been given their lines.
The paper people parted just enough to let them through, bodies sliding aside with the faint sound of parchment rubbing together. That was something else that felt strange. Some were standing, yet others were sitting down.
Up close, the paper person was even flatter than Ah'Ming had thought. Its edges were slightly frayed, like it had been handled too many times.
It lifted a laminated rectangle and thrust it toward them.
A menu.
Ah'Ming leaned in. Symbols sprawled across the surface—some looping, some angular, sharp and soft all at once. None of them matched any language he knew. Not the imperial script, not modern shorthand, not any of the off-world glyph sets he'd seen in electives.
It could have been from one of the others' worlds, but that didn't feel right.
The notion that the monsters were intelligent enough to have their own language was very unsettling. The letters almost hurt to look at, like his eyes kept trying to slide off them.
"It's not ours," Huipao said slowly.
Bianheng shook his head.
"Not any system I recognize."
Zhaoying frowned.
"Could be local to the instance. Or alien. Or…"
She glanced at the paper person's unmoving face.
"…made up entirely by the monsters."
Unfortunately, it seemed as though Ah'Ming's third guess was right. That meant that these monsters were going to be a lot more dangerous than if they were too stupid to have a language.
The paper person tapped the menu. Once. Then again, harder.
Tap.
Tap.
The sound was sharper now, echoing unnaturally. Ah'Ming felt something prickle at the back of his neck.
Then the paper person lowered the menu, seemingly exasperated with its server's incompetence. It shook its head and pointed.
Directly at Bianheng's chest.
Ah'Ming's brain, traitorously unhelpful as ever, supplied a thought completely unprompted.
Heart-flavored egg tarts?
That seemed… bad. Kind of gross, actually. Did the instance want them to make egg tarts out of themselves? But Ah'Ming and the others had never made egg tarts before! Or, well, he didn't know if they had, but it was probably unlikely. All he knew was that he, for one, had never made one and didn't know how to.
Bianheng stiffened, hand drifting subtly toward his weapon.
"I don't like that."
Zhaoying stared at the finger, then at Bianheng, then back at the menu.
"Wait. No. Absolutely not. Don't tell me this instance wants us to"
"—cook ourselves?" Huipao finished weakly.
Ah'Ming's eyes widened.
"I don't know how to make egg tarts."
No one answered him.
"Like," he continued, increasingly distressed, "at all. I've eaten them, sure, but I've never baked one. Do you need an oven? Is there custard involved? Because I feel like there is."
But if a normal egg tart used eggs, were the eggs substituted with the heart? Or were the eggs still in, with blood replacing milk? Did normal egg tarts even contain milk?
The paper person pointed again.
More insistently.
Its arm jerked forward, the crease at the elbow deepening, paper whitening with stress.
Around them, the café changed.
The other paper people began to darken, the reds staining into dark red, then red-black, then something deeper. Crimson bled into their bodies like old ink soaking through parchment. Their flat faces warped slightly, smiles pulling too wide, eyes smudging into hollow shapes.
As the vibes sharpened like knives across Ah'Ming's skin, the paper people seemed to be becoming more three-dimensional, more real.
Or were they becoming more ghost-like?
Were the ghosts coming to life, or were they being polluted?
Ooh. Schrödinger's cat, but ghostified. Though he supposed that if the cat was dead, it would probably be a ghost anyway.
Resentment thickened the air.
Ah'Ming swallowed. The scent of iron was back.
Then he thought of the egg tarts.
He swallowed again, but for a different reason.
"Zhaoying," Huipao whispered, "they're getting angrier."
"I can see that," she hissed. "I just don't see a solution that doesn't involve us becoming pastry."
The paper person jabbed its finger at Bianheng's chest again. Hard.
The impact made a papery thud, and the spirit's body rippled, folds shuddering like it might tear itself apart if they didn't comply.
Ew. Kind of like a Karen.
The tension stretched tight, brittle, and it felt ready to snap.
Just as it felt as if something important was about to happen…
CRASH.
The sound came from the side of the shop, violent and sudden. Wood splintered. Red-painted panels buckled inward as something slammed through, scattering paper people like scraps caught in a storm.
The café erupted into motion, monochrome figures tearing and folding away as a new presence forced its way inside.
Ah'Ming flinched, heart hammering.
Whatever had just arrived, it was loud…
…and it definitely wasn't on the menu.
The wall didn't just break.
It opened.
The red-painted panel bulged outward, swelling like a canvas stretched too tight, then split down the middle with a wet, tearing sound. The crack widened, the wood peeling back in ragged strips, and for a horrifying second it really did look like a mouth; it had jagged planks for teeth, and an ominous darkness yawning behind them.
Something gagged.
Then the wall vomited.
People spilled out in a tangle of limbs and blood, hurled onto the café floor as if the instance itself was trying to rid its stomach of something indigestible. They hit hard. One rolled, coughing up something dark and viscous. Another person slammed shoulder-first into a table, snapping it clean in half. Grey dust and flakes of red paint rained down, sticking to skin already slick with sweat and gore.
Oh dear, that didn't seem good. Resilient things that bodies may be, but with that kind of impact? Hopefully they didn't die though. Ah'Ming looked back at Huipao. The kid seemed… a little too fragile as of now to properly handle more death.
Poor kid.
Still a brat though.
The smell hit Ah'Ming a heartbeat later. It was a gross smell, full of rot, incense burned too long, and the sharp copper tang of old wounds ripped open again.
Ah'Ming stared.
They were human. Definitely human. And absolutely not okay.
"Holy-" Huipao choked, eyes huge.
Bianheng had already shifted, daggers half-drawn, body instinctively angling between the newcomers and the team. It was really cool actually, his daggers taking on a pretty golden sheen. The daggers were paired up in design, but with opposite colors, one black with gold trim and the other inverted.
Ah'Ming really, really wanted those cool daggers. They didn't really suite his vibe though, so unfortunately it meant no killing Bianheng to take his weapons.
Actually, if soul weapons were like, soul bonded, would that mean they'd disappear upon their owners death? Best not to ask Bianheng himself, incase he got the right idea.
Zhaoying, on the other hand, froze for exactly one second upon seeing the poor people, long enough to assess the blood loss, then sucked in a sharp breath.
"They're alive," she said. "Barely."
One of them twitched, almost offended by the lack of tact.
But, what use was tact when it seemed as though the guy was going to… decease himself? Ah'Ming was bored. The attitude and feeling of the room was scary earlier, almost enough to get his heart pounding and his blood boiling.
But, someone ruined the script.
Someone came in, and interrupted the fun time.
They were going to die soon anyways, so He wouldn't hold it against them.
There were four of them.
A tall man with his arm hanging at a wrong angle, sleeve soaked through, face ashen. A woman with short hair matted to her forehead, deep claw marks raked across her back as if something had tried to peel her open. What monster could do that? Long claws, a bird or beast perhaps? A third figure lay curled on the floor, shaking, whispering something over and over that sounded like numbers. heh. Ah'Ming could get it. Numbers were scary, super scary.
He barely even passed calculus back in high school, and he dropped any math classes possible the moment he could.
Yet the last person…
She pushed herself upright on trembling hands. A dainty person, with an air of elegance. Every move she made seemed rather graceful, but sorrowful. Similar to a ballerina in the midst of a tragic play.
She was dressed in white and red, fabric torn and scorched, the hem dark with dried blood. Her hair had come loose from its bindings, black strands clinging to her cheeks. She looked like she'd been dragged through a shrine and then set on fire afterward.
A bell was clenched in her fist. A cute bell. A pretty bell.
It was probably magical, with ghost repelling powers?
He wanted to destroy it though.
Ah'Ming's brain, still trying desperately to cope, supplied: Oh. Shrine maiden aesthetics. That's probably important. Very nice though. If only he was a maiden too, then he could get cool items. It was actually rather annoying.
Everyone else had cool aesthetics, with crazy doctor, gruff but affectionate assassin, mage shrine maiden. Where were his cool decorations? Unfair. Refund wanted.
Refund regrettably denied, however.
The paper people had gone utterly still.
Their crimson stained bodies trembled, heads tilting in unison toward the newcomers. The one that had been pointing at Bianheng slowly lowered its arm.
The resentment in the air sharpened.
"Oh no," Huipao whispered. "They're still mad."
Very mad. Understandably, considering the entire Egg tart shop was now in ruins, floors cracked and walled shattered.
Even if Ah'ming wasn't a monster, he was still upset over the ruin of the very nice looking shop. Oh no, would they have to pay reparation money as a bystander fee? Did that exist?
As if to agree, the paper menus began to crinkle. Smiles stretched wider, edges fraying. Chairs scraped softly as the paper people leaned forward, attention torn between fresh meat and unfinished orders.
The shrine-maiden girl sucked in a breath that rattled in her chest.
"Don't…" she rasped, voice shredded raw. Like, uncooked steak raw. "Don't move."
She forced herself to stand.
Her knees buckled. She nearly fell, yet with a light ting-a-ling in the air, the bell rang.
Ling.
The sound was soft. Almost disappointingly so.
But it spread.
The note unfurled through the café like ripples across still water, clear and cold, cutting cleanly through the thick metallic stench in the air. Ah'Ming felt it pass through his skull, down his spine, settling somewhere behind his heart. Very nice. Would recommend, maybe a four and a half star on yelp?
Very nice for therapy. Lord knows he needed it. Rest in peace Jane(his other therapist) where ever she was. Well. If she was dead. But she probably wasn't? If Ah'Ming was the one in a different world, did that mean he was the dead one?
The paper people froze mid-motion.
Menus stopped crinkling. Smiles slackened. Crimson stains lightened, bleeding back into pale parchment. One by one, they straightened, movements smoothing out, hostility draining as if someone had turned a valve. All the tension flowed out of them, and they seemed to become a hundred times lighter. Which was very light, because they were made of paper.
Did that mean that they'd be beat by scissors? Very interesting.
Chairs scraped again, a screeching noise across the floor, like chalk on a blackboard, but this time it was as the paper people sat back down.
Peacefully.
Very peaceful.
Unlike Ah'Mings inner turmoil and disappointment over not seeing any cool action.
The paper person nearest Bianheng carefully folded its menu and placed it on the table. Its smile returned to something small and polite.
The café… reset.
Silence crashed down. You could hear a pin drop. Except, you probably couldn't hear, since there was about eight humans breathing and another twenty plus paper people all rustling.
Still, the phrase almost fit because it represented tension.
Very useful in setting the mood.
HuiPao let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. "Oh. Oh thank Haite. Bells. Bells are good."
Who's Haite? Maybe like a deity or something. Ocean themed?
Bianheng slowly lowered his daggers but didn't relax. "That won't last," he said flatly.
The shrine maiden swayed.
Zhaoying was already there, catching her before she could collapse. "Hey. Easy. I've got you."
It was kind of scary, seeing Zhaoying like that. With an almost smile? Stuff like that was gonna
Up close, the injuries were worse. Burns along the ribs. A deep gash at the thigh, wrapped poorly with cloth already soaked through. Her pulse fluttered weakly under Zhaoying's fingers.
"What's your name?" Zhaoying asked, voice steady.
"…Shen Yulan," she whispered. Her grip tightened reflexively around the bell. "Don't… don't let them ring it again. I don't have much strength left."
Ah'Ming blinked. "Ring what again?"
"The instance," Yulan murmured, eyes sliding toward the walls. "It gets angry when you ignore the script."
That was… concerning. But also kind of obvious.
Did she perhaps have an ability where it was a temporary gain, but would make the rest of the instance harder?
The tall man dragged himself closer, teeth clenched against pain. "We came from the banquet hall," he said hoarsely. "I'm Gu Wenhao. That thing…" He swallowed. "Well. We tried the painting route. It… didn't go well. We're down two, the guides were wrong! There were nearly double the monsters!"
Huipao made a small, distressed noise.
The woman with claw marks laughed weakly. "At least paper monsters are honest," she said. "I'm Lin Qiao."
A soft tap echoed.
Once.
Ah'Ming stiffened.
The paper person at their table had lifted its menu again.
Tap.
It smiled politely.
Outside, somewhere deeper in the resort, something rang back.
The bell in Yulan's hand trembled.
"…We don't have long," she said.
Bianheng, quick as never, bowed at the paper person, assured that the group would get right to it, and then dragged everybody to the kitchens. His strides were long and confident, fake as that confidence maybe, and Huipao had to skip slightly to keep up. The others were stuck as body duty, with zhaoying supporting Shen Yulan, and Ah'Ming carrying two people under each arm. They were startlingly light, except the dude with the broken leg had it swaying unnaturally. Good thing he was already passed out, since the pain would have ben excruciating. Bones were so weird.
The last dude limped along.
Once they pushed past the kitchen doors, Ah'Ming dropped the two onto the floor. They groaned, but didn't wake up. He was considering kicking them to see if that helped.
They ended up sitting on the kitchen floor.
Not because anyone suggested it, but because there was nowhere clean left to sit, and the counters were already occupied by injured people, bloody bandages, and one ominously empty tart mold that everyone was pointedly ignoring.
They tried to negotiate on who to sacrifice.
Or maybe that wasn't what the conversation was about. Ah'Ming hadn't really been listening, just watching Zhaoying work with a morbid fascination.
The conversation continued unimpeded, after several frantic, whispered minutes of negotiation, during which Shen Yulan clutched her bell like a lifeline, Zhaoying tried not to punch somebody at the sheer amount of blood loss she was stabilizing, and Ah'Ming paced in tight circles while muttering increasingly unhinged pastry-related theories, no conclusion was gained.
It was really gross seeing Zhaoying work, because apparently her ability was similar to the thought of no pain, no gain. If she stabbed a person while using her ability, they'd heal both the stab wound, and another wound equivalent to that of the stab wound. Wacky, but also really, really bloody.
However, it didn't work with any illnesses, chronic pains or already healed injuries. She probably wouldn't be able to get a job in medicine with a skill like that though. Ah'Ming would imagine not many customers would enjoy being stabbed.
A shame, really, since doing the stabbing was very stress relieving.
"Say, if we," huipao gestured at the four original gang, "are the staff, then what are you guys?"
Shen yulan blinked.
"Thats a good point, honestly. Maybe the rumors of your lack of intellect were overstated after all?"
puffing up like an enraged chicken, Huipao started to needle zhaoying about stopping Yulan's healing, especially if she had enough energy to diss her teammates.
Her friend with the broken leg coughed to make himself heard.
"So. We didn't exactly come here by the rules. Like we said earlier, our route had double the ghosts, and we couldn't handle it. We used an item to escape, bypassing the proper route and coming here early"
Ah'Ming lifted an eyebrow.
"So," Ah'Ming said "tell us about your route."
Gu Wenhao opened his mouth.
Closed it again.
Lin Qiao frowned. Tried anyway. "We came through the—"
Her voice cut off mid-syllable.
Not like she'd stopped talking. Like the sound had been removed.
She blinked, startled, then pressed a hand to her throat. "Ah."
Shen Yulan sighed, exhausted. "System lock," she said. "You can't disclose details about unrelated instances or uncompleted routes. Especially not ones you bypassed."
Bianheng and zhaoying nodded. Gu wenhao made to nod, but had to break off coughing in the middle.
"That's stupid," Huipao said immediately.
"It's consistent," Bianheng corrected. "Otherwise people would meta-game the entire resort."
Gu Wenhao gave a weak shrug. "We can tell you general things. Vibes. Trauma. No maps, no mechanics."
Ah'Ming considered this. "Okay. On a scale of one to ten, how bad was it?"
Lin Qiao stared into the middle distance. "Do you know what it's like when a mural watches you blink?"
"…Eight," Wenhao amended. "Maybe nine."
Huipao squeaked.
Before anyone could ask more, the fridge thumped.
Everyone froze.
The industrial refrigerator at the back of the kitchen shuddered again, door rattling as if something inside had shifted its weight.
Slowly.
Carefully.
Bianheng moved first, dagger already in hand, nudging the fridge door open with the tip of his boot.
Something wet slid forward.
It was a heart.
A real one. Bloody, dark, heavy-looking, sitting neatly on a porcelain plate like it had always belonged there. It pulsed once, sluggishly, then stilled.
Ah'Ming sighed. "I hate this place."
The bell in Shen Yulan's hand vibrated faintly, notifying her that resentment was about to accumulate nearby again.
Outside the kitchen, the paper people began to stir.
Menus rustled. Chairs scraped. The low murmur of discontent rose like a tide.
"They're agitating," Zhaoying said, already pushing herself upright. "Whatever that is…"
"It's an offering," Shen Yulan said quietly. "An emergency fail-safe. The instance provides one if the script is close to collapse."
"Convenient," Bianheng muttered.
"Disgusting," Huipao added.
They didn't have time to argue.
Bianheng took the plate, jaw tight, and marched it out to the table of the person who ordered it. It wasn't an egg tart, but Ah'Ming supposed that didn't matter. The main paper person rose immediately, movements smoothing as it accepted the heart with both hands.
The café exhaled.
Crimson stains faded. Smiles softened. The hostility drained away like ink washed from paper.
For exactly three seconds.
Then, every single paper person raised their menu at once.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
The sound was deafening.
Ah'Ming winced. "Aw come on."
Egg tarts.
They all wanted egg tarts.
"And not just one," Zhaoying said, peering through the kitchen doors. "They're… all ordering."
Before panic could fully set in, the front doors of the café banged open.
It connected to a dark room, one that remained blurry no matter how hard Ah'Ming squinted. System lock?
People spilled in, very much alive, very much loud.
"WOW," a woman's voice boomed cheerfully, "THIS PLACE SMELLS LIKE TRAUMA AND DESSERT. MY FAVORITE COMBINATION."
She was short. Aggressively so. Bright red hair tied back messily, a coat splattered with stains that might have been blood or sauce or both. A massive cleaver hung at her side, humming faintly with magic.
Behind her were two younger people, both taller, both trying very hard to look unobtrusive. Introverts. Ones that Ah'Ming related to painfully.
"We failed the Cashier route, too many ghosts" the woman announced happily. "Hi! I'm Chef Hongmei. Who's in charge?"
Ah'Ming pointed weakly at Bianheng.
Hongmei grinned. "Perfect. You look stressed. Are we cooking?"
"Yes," everyone said at once.
Her eyes sparkled.
"This," she declared, cracking her knuckles, "is my moment."
The café's stockroom opened like it had been waiting for her specifically. Shelves of magical ingredients revealed themselves; eggs that glowed faintly, sugar that chimed when poured, flour so fine it floated like mist.
What even was this favoritism? Normal people met with gross counters, disgusting beating hearts, and yet when a chef comes in? The whole place cleans itself? Becomes spectacular?
hmm…
Maybe Ah'Ming should become a chef too.
Hongmei took one look and nodded approvingly. "Good produce. Weird vibes. I can work with this."
Her disciples sprang into action.
The boy with glasses crouched immediately, scooping a pinch of flour and rubbing it between his fingers, then tasting it. "High spiritual saturation," he murmured. "Residual resentment, but it's passive. Should bake out."
The girl in the cozy sweater summoned a whisk from thin air, then a bowl, then, after a moment's concentration, a fridge, which she immediately shoved aside to make space. "I'll handle assembly," she said softly.
Egg tarts began to take shape.
Dozens of them.
The kitchen transformed into controlled chaos; heat, motion, clatter, the comforting rhythm of people who knew what they were doing.
Which was why it was deeply unfortunate that another kid about Huipao's age was also put on delivery duty. A lot shorter, a lot more nervous. It was annoying, but understandable. There were over twenty paper people to treat, and for some reason HongMei had insisted on serving three egg tarts each. Thus, many people had to be dispatched.
The newbie held the tray with shaking hands, staring at the paper people who had all turned to look at him.
They smiled at him.
He stepped closer, to the paper person who had originally wanted the heart too. Greedy, much? It's smile twisted even wider, distorting the whole face.
The kid's nerves snapped.
"Y-you're—" he blurted, voice cracking, "you're a ghost!"
Silence fell.
The paper person's smile twitched.
Everyone groaned at once.
That's what you get when you give a newbie a mission, hmm?
The word ghost hadn't even finished echoing when the café began to die.
Not collapse, but melt.
The paper people sagged where they stood, their bodies softening, edges blurring, ink bleeding outward as if soaked from beneath. Faces slid off faces. Limbs lost definition. They all slumped downward, sinking into the floor like wax left too close to a flame.
A random person screamed. Maybe the same kid who started the ghost chase?
"WHY ARE THEY MELTING—"
Probably another newbie. Queens above, how many were there? Before Ah'Ming could propose an answer though…
The floor answered first.
Red bled up through the tiles in branching veins, soaking the wood, turning it fibrous and thin. The solid thump of the café floor softened into a papery crinkle underfoot. With every second, the ground lost its rigidity, becoming layered, pulpy, wrong.
Ah'Ming staggered back. "The floor… the floor is paper."
"No," Shen Yulan said hoarsely, bell rattling uselessly at her side. "It's becoming paper."
He turned to stare at her, incredulous. What was the difference? Was she actually the type of person to try and add drama, at a time like this?
The walls followed.
Shelves wrinkled inward. Tables folded at unnatural angles, creasing along invisible lines. The ceiling sagged like wet parchment, red stains spreading outward from the center like an infection.
In front of everyone except Ah'Ming (since he still didn't have a system), a bright blue screen that contrasted with their blood red surroundings flickered.
Ghost mission ensues.
What is HongZhi?
A harsh beep cut through the chaos.
Above the counter, burned into the air itself in dripping red characters, numbers appeared.
03:00
A timer.
"RUN," Bianheng barked.
They ran.
The floor gave way beneath their feet, sucking at shoes, tearing strips of paper free as they moved. Behind them, the café continued to liquefy, paper people fully absorbed now, their forms reduced to red-stained pulp spreading outward like a tide.
"Hong zhi?! What here isn't red paper???" Huipao sobbed. "WHERE IS IT—"
The paintings.
The paintings were the only thing left in the shop, all else had melted into the beyond.
The walls were lined with ink-and-wash murals, with bamboo forests, over and over, identical stalks bending in painted wind. The paper rot crept after them, seeping from the café doorway, crawling along the baseboards.
The bamboo stalks started to sway, becoming more vivid, more three dimensional with every second that passed.
"Which one?" Ah'Ming gasped.
Yulan staggered, then forced herself upright. "The wrong one," she said. "The one that doesn't belong."
They scanned frantically..
Bamboo. Bamboo. Bamboo…
"There!" Lin Qiao shouted weakly.
It was subtle.
Where the others were forests, this one hid something. Behind layers of bamboo stalks, half-obscured, was a house. Old-fashioned. Low roof. A wooden sign barely visible through the ink—
An egg tart shop.
The painting felt… heavier. Thicker. Like it had more layers than paint should allow.
The timer screamed.
00:37
Bianheng scratched at the mural, the panel falling down, revealing a safe behind it.
It was tall, dark, with a number pad.
"THE NUMBERS," Yulan said. "The date—"
Gu Wenhao's voice cut in, strained but clear. He recited them without hesitation, the numbers the painting route had burned into their memories, the only thing the system hadn't locked away.
The moment the last digit left his mouth—
And the safe opened.
It was pitch black, yet the blackness spread.
They fell forward, Blackness swallowing them whole.
Silence.
Then
They landed inside a small, cramped space.
The air smelled like dust and old sugar.
The walls were bare wood, unpainted, real in a way nothing else in the resort was. In the center lay a low table.
Spread across, as if the person drawing it had just left momentarily, were many sheets of paper, covered in doodles and drawings.
Most prominently, was a single piece of blood-red paper sitting at the top of the messy pile.
A child's drawing.
Two egg tarts, uneven and lopsided, drawn in crayon. Yellow scribbles overflowing crusts too big, too round. The paper was wrinkled, stained dark at one corner with an unidentified substance.
Huipao froze. "…That's it?"
Next to it sat a newspaper.
Ah'Ming picked it up with shaking hands.
The front page was wrong.
Headlines half-printed. Names missing. Dates reduced to blank lines. The next pages were worse, entirely empty, sheet after sheet of nothing, as if the story had been erased mid-print.
Until one page.
Only one.
It was fully inked.
It told the story of a couple who bought a small village storefront. Of recipes brought from home. Of egg tarts made by hand, sold cheaply, shared with neighbors. Of a child who waited after school, drawing behind the counter.
Of a sickness.
Of paper offerings.
Of ghosts that stayed because they were fed.
Ah'Ming swallowed. "So that's what the shop is made of."
Zhaoying whispered, "What about Hongzhi?"
The name moved the air.
The drawing trembled.
Hangmen rolled her eyes, yelling out and completely breaking the chilling atmosphere.
"HONGZHI IS THE NAME OF THE CHILD WHO'S SHOP WAS DESTROYED BY THE RESORT"
There was a soft ding, before…
White.
Everything dissolved.
Sound vanished. Weight vanished. Time vanished.
As everything faded away, Ah'Ming reached out, grabbing the newspaper.
It seemed important, like something to keep.
In the nothingness, a woman's voice spoke. Soft. Tired. Close.
"Did you come to eat… or to remember?"
The question echoed, unanswered, as the world held its breath.
The next thought he had was about how bright it was, making his eyes hurt.
////
Ah'Ming opened his eyes.
White.
Not bright white, since there was no light source, no glare, no shadows, but an endless, flat expanse of nothing, like the idea of color rather than the thing itself. Although he said it wasn't bright, it still rather was. The ground beneath him was solid without texture. He could feel it, but only barely, as if sensation had been turned down a notch.
He was alone.
"Hello?" His voice didn't echo.
Of course it didn't.
He sat up slowly, half-expecting pain, blood, paper cuts, just something. There was nothing. No café. No teammates. No blood-stained drawing. Just him, suspended in a blank in-between. At least he still clenched the newspaper in his hand
"…Great," he muttered. "Either I'm dead, or this is a tutorial."
Right on cue, a soft ping sounded.
A translucent blue panel flickered into existence in front of him. Finally! A system! Maybe one that could tell him what was going on?
It was the same one as before… maybe run by the same core? But then again, in all media, the system usually looks the same. Maybe it was a different system. Hopefully not.
The panel was still there though.
It hovered politely at eye level.
|WELCOME TO THE BROADCAST
Ah'Ming froze.
"…The what."
The panel helpfully continued, text scrolling smoothly as if this were the most normal thing in the world.
|You have been selected to participate in the Broadcast.
|Participants will engage in dangerous, unpredictable, and entertaining activities for the viewing |pleasure of higher-level beings.
|Perform well. Be interesting. Be memorable.
|Exceptional conduct may be rewarded.
A pause.
Then, almost cheerfully:
|Try to be entertaining! Maybe they'll give you tips.
Ah'Ming stared.
He stared so hard his eyes started to hurt.
"…Are you serious," he whispered. "This is— this is a reality show?"
He shook his head.
"No, no. a livestream. Like ___, where they play video games. Except my life is the video game. Darts."
The panel did not answer.
Instead, it shifted, shrinking slightly, and a new option blinked into existence beneath the text.
|OPEN MAIN PAGE
His finger hovered.
"I don't consent to this," he said weakly.
His deal had nothing to do with a live stream, and so far, nothing had been very interesting. For the queen's sake, there hadn't even been any bloodshed.
The button pulsed.
He sighed and tapped it.
The panel unfolded outward like glass petals, rearranging itself into a full interface. At the center floated a three-dimensional figure.
It was him.
Full-body avatar. Same face, same messy hair, same stupid expression. He turned as the avatar turned, movements synced perfectly. When Ah'Ming raised a hand, so did it.
"That's unsettling," he said.
Text populated the space beside the avatar.
|NAME: Ah'Ming
|RACE: Human (?)
Ah'Ming squinted. "Question mark?"
|Talent: null
"I just haven't unlocked it yet!"
|SAN: 100
|HEALTH: 100
"Oh good," he muttered. "So this thing thinks I'm fine."
|STRENGTH: EX
|AGILITY: EX
"…Excuse me?"
|INTELLIGENCE: B
"…Hey."
That one actually stung a little.
He stared at the stats, heart beginning to pound, not from fear, but from the creeping realization settling into his bones.
This wasn't a hallucination.
This wasn't the instance.
Finally… something interesting.
This was something above it.
A soft line of text appeared at the bottom of the panel, almost like an afterthought.
Note: Certain attributes may not manifest consciously.
Audience engagement pending.
Audience.
Ah'Ming swallowed.
Somewhere… somewhere beyond the white, beyond the resort, beyond the paper café, things were watching.
Evaluating.
Waiting to see what he would do next.
"…Okay," he said to the empty space, voice thin but steady. "Fine."
If this was a show…
Then he really, really hoped his teammates were still in the cast.
////
The blue panel flickered.
Then popped back into place with an almost cheerful ping.
|VIEW EVALUATION?
|☐ YES ☐ NO
Ah'Ming stared at it.
"…I already know this is going to hurt my feelings," he muttered, and tapped YES anyway.
The panel dissolved, replaced by a large, bold letter floating in front of him.
|EVALUATION: B
"…That's it?" he said. "After all that?"
More text scrolled in beneath it.
TOTAL VIEWS: 20,036
LIKES: 4,384
His stomach twisted.
Twenty thousand.
That was… that was a lot of people. Hopefully people. Unless… ghosts? But… what were the higher level beings?
Before he could process that properly, comments began to populate the space, sliding past like a feed he very much did not want to read. All of them explaining why he got his evaluation.
|"MC panics too much, but kind of funny."
|"Why didn't he realize the café was paper earlier? Missed foreshadowing."
|"Good instincts, poor execution."
|"Stats say EX strength but he acts like a wet cat."
|"Would've been S-rank if he cried more when the ghost reveal happened."
|"Mid. Teammates carried."
Ah'Ming's eye twitched.
"…I hate you," he informed the empty white space. "Collectively."
More text appeared, clinically neutral.
|EVALUATION NOTES:
|— Demonstrated adaptability under narrative pressure
|— Provided internal commentary with moderate entertainment value
|— Failed to fully capitalize on emotional beats
|— Survival maintained; escalation avoided
"That's all critique," he said flatly. "There's no praise here."
The comments kept scrolling anyway.
Still… somewhere between wet cat and mid, something settled.
They weren't gods.
If they were, their feedback wouldn't sound like a comment section arguing about pacing and character arcs.
They sounded… human. Petty. Nitpicky. Way too familiar.
That almost made it worse.
Another panel snapped into place, cutting off the comments mercifully.
|ACCEPT REWARDS?
|☐ YES ☐ NO
He didn't hesitate this time.
"Yes."
The panel chimed brightly.
|REWARDS ACQUIRED!
Text stacked rapidly, one line after another.
|+40 POINTS
|+$350
|ITEM: RESORT NEWSPAPER
|ITEM: CHILD'S DRAWING
|ITEM: BOX OF BONE MARROW EGG TARTS
Ah'Ming stared at the last one.
"…I'm going to choose to believe that's not human," he said firmly. "For my own sanity."
The rewards slid away, neatly filed somewhere he couldn't see.
One final panel appeared, overly enthusiastic, complete with a little star icon.
|KEEP TRYING! WORK HARD!
He squinted at it. "Don't patronize me."
The panel did not apologize.
Instead—
The white space dropped out from under him.
Ah'Ming yelped as the world inverted, the panels shattering into blue light as gravity returned all at once.
The last thing he saw before everything went dark was the star icon winking cheerfully.
He was kicked straight out.