COZMART humd in its usual, stubborn way.
Outside, Maple & 8th was a sar of neon and brake lights, the "OZMART" sign buzzing faintly with the C still peacefully missing.
Inside, Eathan dragged a damp cloth along the instant noodles aisle, sleeves shoved up and wristpad glinting when it caught the light. Cup ran stacked in wobbling pyramids glared back at him, accusing him of rearranging them for the fourth ti today.
Behind the counter, Chewie was perched on the high stool like a goblin at a watch post. She still wore her riding boots, scuffed and dusted with hay; her hair was slightly damp, escaping from a too-hasty ponytail. A convenience-store ran bowl stead in front of her, disposable chopsticks clutched in one hand.
She slurped, frowned, and announced, "Horses are stupid."
Eathan glanced over. "I thought you liked them."
"They're fake, dramatic prey animals," she said, waving her chopsticks for emphasis. "It's like training five-hundred-pound toddlers with anxiety."
"Kind of funny, coming from you."
She paused, noodles hanging from her mouth, then pointed her chopsticks at him with imperial offence. "Watch it, pseudo‑mortal."
Eathan smiled and went back to wiping the shelf. The sound of the fridge rged with the city outside, blurring into a low electric growl. For a few minutes, it was easy—just the rhythm of cloth on plastic, Chewie inhaling ran with alarming concentration, the shop easing into closing ti.
Eathan's wristpad pinged.
He froze, cloth halfway through a circular wipe.
The notification blood in the corner of his vision:
[SSAGE OVERVIEW]:
Weekly recount available!
New ssages: 0.
No new chat bubble. Just a periodic update from the system log.
Eathan's thumb hovered over the notification. For a second he saw the rooftop again—text cascading like falling code, that frantic little ghost stitched out of brackets and panic.
He locked the screen and shoved his arm back into his sleeve. He'd promised himself he would tell soone "soon."
Three weeks had already drifted past "soon" and started circling "coward."
Across from him, Chewie continued to slurp, kicking one heel against the counter leg. A stray noodle slapped the rim of the bowl.
He looked at her, at the empty stool beside him that should've had Taeril's weight in it, then at his own reflection in the glass door, faint and tired.
The words slid out before he decided to speak.
"Mister White is in the Realm of Passing."
The slurp stopped mid‑stream. One noodle dangled from Chewie's mouth.
She stared at him.
"..?"
Eathan inhaled, then kept talking, because if he stopped, he knew he'd never start again.
"On the Westpoint rooftop," he said. "After we closed that succubus‑fey rift three weeks ago. When you almost hit in the face with your fishing rod because I was out of it? It wasn't just spacing out."
Chewie slowly set the bowl down, noodles forgotten.
"I got yanked," Eathan said, "into a… chatroom. Kind of. Not exactly RealmNet."
He leaned his hip against the shelf, fingers tightening around the damp cloth.
"It looked like soone tried to code an interface using duct tape and a nervous breakdown. Wall of encryption on all sides, and in the middle there was this… thing. Tiny ghost. Stitched out of half‑broken brackets and pure anxiety."
His mouth quirked despite himself. "It kept… flickering. Like surveillance was smacking it every second."
Chewie's eyes narrowed, the crimson ring in them dimming to sothing sharp. "And this little punctuation ghost said…?"
"That Bai Hu's core isn't gone," Eathan said quietly. "It's drifting. In the Realm of Passing."
The words sat between them, heavier than the hum of the shop.
Chewie didn't move.
"It said it was 'soone he saved,'" Eathan continued. "Soone who owes him. It kept glitching whenever it tried to say who's hunting him, or who 'they' are. So—redacts, static, you know." He made a helpless motion. "But basically: his core is intact and being hunted. By the sa 'they' that pushed us into that nightmare."
Chewie's fingers curled slowly around the edge of the counter.
"It told ," Eathan said, throat dry, "that it's tracking leak‑signatures. That when the core stops drifting and it can finally fix coordinates… it'll send them to ."
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He gave a short, humourless laugh.
"So I'm supposed to get stronger. Fast. So when they drop a pin on 'White Tiger, lost in the afterlife,' I don't imdiately die."
The fridge humd louder for a mont. Sowhere deep in the rows of drinks, a bottle clicked against another.
Chewie picked up the ran bowl very carefully, as if it might explode.
"And you didn't tell ," she said.
The words were soft. They landed like a thrown knife.
Eathan flinched. "I was going to," he said. "I just—"
"When?" she asked, bowl clinking as it hit the counter. "After whoever hunts down your ghost ssenger and archive them? After you answer the wrong ssage and get flagged as compromised? After the Dormancy Protocol ends and we're all lovingly assimilated into Great Peng's ss of an Area?"
Her eyes flared amber, bright and lethal. For a heartbeat, the eleven‑year‑old vanished, replaced by a warlord that stared out of her small face.
Eathan swallowed, heat crawling up his neck. "I… didn't want it to sound like I was hallucinating?" he tried weakly. "'Hey, Chewie, between classes and horse therapy, by the way, I'm being Dd by illegal emoticon tech support.'"
"…"
At that, the corner of Chewie's mouth twitched despite herself. The fury wobbled; sothing more complicated flickered behind it.
"That's not funny," she said quietly.
"It was a little funny," Eathan said, even quieter.
She exhaled, long and sharp. Shoulders dropped half an inch; the battlefield glare dialled down to child strategist.
Chewie grabbed the ran bowl, tipped it back, and downed the broth in one controlled swallow. She thunked the empty paper onto the counter, chopsticks clacking.
"Fine," she said at last.
Eathan let out a breath he hadn't realised he was holding. His fingers, still clutching the cloth, ached.
Chewie tapped the counter with her chopsticks, eyes narrowing in thought.
"That channel is definitely being watched now," she said. "Anything that tunnels through the Cloud‑Jade Ledger's censorship net? Imdiately threat."
"Comforting," Eathan said. "Love that for us."
Chewie ignored him, already pacing ntally.
"The ghost is hiding from soone," she went on. "And that 'soone' is very likely the sa 'they' hunting the boss's core. You get a back‑door connection to a drifting commander? That's not a leak, it's a target."
She gripped the chopsticks tighter.
"If you ntion this ghost to the wrong person—Paladins, Jade admin, half the HQ staff—whoever holds the surveillance keys can trace the anomaly back along the line. Best case, your ghost hacker gets scrubbed and archived as corrupted data. Worst case, they follow the thread, slap a 'compromised' label on you, and lock you up sowhere nice and quiet where you never bother their equilibrium again."
"Wow," Eathan said faintly. "Really helping with my [Humanity] score, thanks."
"Good." She flicked a glare at him. "Fear is a survival stat."
He looked down at the rag. Water had dripped onto his shoes.
"I don't want to handle this alone," he said. The humour dropped out of his voice. "I can't. Not if we're talking about the Realm of Passing. Not if they're already hunting him."
Chewie's gaze softened by a micron.
"I know," she said.
Silence settled, heavy but not suffocating. The fridge humd. A car honked outside, distant and arbitrary.
"So," Eathan said. "We need help."
"Yes."
"But also not help that gets my chatroom informant murdered."
"Yes."
"Your tactical clarity is overwhelming."
She rolled her eyes. "We do triage," she said. "We decide who gets which slice of truth."
He leaned his shoulder into the shelf, watching her. "You're thinking Captain Li."
"Of course I'm thinking Li Wei," she said. "Area 003's already treating you like an unofficial asset. He's got the infrastructure, the clearance, the spreadsheets—"
"—the full spectrum of fatigue," Eathan added under his breath.
"—and he actually likes you," she finished. "For so reason."
"That's debatable."
Chewie stepped off the stool, the height difference between them suddenly a lot less cute than it had any right to be. She stalked down the aisle, snagged the wet rag right out of his hand, and flicked a spray of grey water at his face.
He recoiled. "Hey—"
"You want help?" she said. "We bring the Captain. But we don't drag the ghost into his lap yet."
Eathan blinked water out of his lashes. "We lie to him?"
"We edit," she corrected. "We tell him you're serious about getting stronger fast. That you don't want to be dead weight when we eventually pull ourselves together. We do not tell him you're hosting an illegal god‑adjacent chat channel that Jade surveillance would love to dissect."
"That seems unfair to Li Wei," Eathan said. "He's already babysitting half the Eastern seaboard."
"Uh-huh. So he can yell at you later," Chewie said. "After we rescue the boss."
Eathan rubbed his face dry on his sleeve. "You really don't trust Heaven's eyes."
"Heaven's eyes built the kind of ga that almost cracked half the Council's cores." She gave him a look. "They got interesting visions, sure, but much less interesting priorities."
He didn't have an argunt for that.
Eathan turned, leaning both hands on the shelf now, forehead resting against the cool plastic of instant noodles. Between the rows of cup ran and discounted chips, Taeril White's last smile flashed again—quiet, exhausted, almost fond.
"I keep thinking about what he said," he admitted. "About what he said about… rcy finding him."
Chewie's expression shuttered for a mont. She looked away, toward Taeril's empty stool, then back.
"Good," she said, not asking for an elaboration. "Rember it. Use it."
"Not much of a training plan," he said.
"That's what Li Wei is for."
"You really think he'll have ti to babysit us on top of everything else?" Eathan asked again. "Area 001 is stonewalling, other Commanders are lurking around, Dormancy Protocol is squeezing everyone—"
"All the more reason to move now," Chewie cut in. "Before soone higher up decides you're safer boxed up than running loose in New York with a god in your chest."
The back of his neck prickled.
"You're painting very vivid pictures tonight," he muttered.
"You're welco."
She tossed the rag back at him; it smacked his shoulder with a wet plop. He caught it on reflex.
"You want to pull your weight," Chewie said, voice quieter now. "Then we need advice from Captain Spreadsheet, whose job title includes 'saving idiots from themselves.'"
Eathan blinked. "Captain Spreadsheet?"
Chewie hopped back onto her stool, reclaiming her spot like an emperor retaking a throne.
"Do you know another commander who colour‑codes his stress?" she asked. "He's had your build pulled up on a hologrid since the nightmare ended, I guarantee it. Might as well feed him data on purpose instead of letting him stalk your reports in silence."
The idea should've made him nervous. Instead, it slotted into place with a relief he didn't want to examine too closely. A plan. An adult. Soone who wasn't a glitching ghost or a missing tiger.
A competent, responsible adult.
He turned toward the front window. Outside, the streetlight buzzed over the cracked sidewalk. A drunk guy argued with an invisible opponent across the road. The antique clock over the drink fridge ticked steadily toward nothing in particular.
"Extended Dormancy Day…" he murmured. "Sixty-four, right?"
Chewie's gaze flicked to his wristpad, then back to him. "Three-sixty-five's the deadline," she said. "We either walk in prepared or we get left on the bench."
He exhaled, long and controlled.
"I don't want to be benched," he said.
"Then don't," she said simply.
For a mont, the shop felt smaller and bigger at the sa ti—just four walls, a buzzing sign, and a boy who'd sohow ended up with a god in his chest and a debt in the afterlife.
Chewie swung her legs once, then pointed her chopsticks at him again, gentler this ti.
"Sleep, Eathan," she said. "Tomorrow, we go visit Captain Spreadsheet."
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