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.