Chapter 63: Cheese Foam Mango
When Su Yao arrived at the bubble tea shop, she instinctively scanned the interior, fully expecting to see Wong Lei behind the counter. She had anticipated a flustered girl wearing a visor, likely messing up an order. It had become something of a pattern.
The girl at the register was a stranger, however. A bored-looking university student with purple streaks in her hair was idly scrolling on her phone.
Huh. Wong Lei’s not here.
The absence was notable and almost suspicious. Was she finally free of her part-time job curse? Had she been fired? More likely, had she moved on to another equally dismal gig elsewhere? Su Yao felt an odd flicker of curiosity for a moment. She dismissed it instantly. It was not her problem.
Mei waved frantically from a small table in the corner. Two giant menus were already laid out. “Over here! I almost caved and got the Taro Bomb Blast, but I held strong for you!”
Su Yao slid into the seat opposite her, casting one last glance toward the unfamiliar cashier. Good for her, she thought, though she wasn’t sure if she meant Wong Lei or herself. One less familiar face to pretend not to recognize.
“So,” Mei said, leaning forward conspiratorially. “Cheese foam mango, yes or yes?”
“Let’s see this ‘insane’ creation first,” Su Yao said, though part of her was already resigned to trying it. Some battles, even against cloying sweetness, were meant to be lost. At least this one stayed clear from anyone’s internal fluids or a dragon’s nest. Small mercies.
Su Yao’s senses, honed by centuries of betrayal and sudden, violent ambushes, remained on high alert despite the cheerful, bubble-gum-pop atmosphere. Her gaze swept the room once more, analyzing every detail.
The floors were clean, but not unnaturally so. There were no underlying notes of blood or spiritual decay. The employees moved with the languid boredom of underpaid students instead of the disciplined precision of cultists or assassins.
Other customers were mostly teenagers on their phones or students staring blankly at textbooks. Their auras stayed dim and still, and their eyes looked perfectly ordinary.
Nothing, she concluded. Her internal threat assessment finally downgraded from ‘probable trap’ to ‘blandly commercial establishment.’ There is absolutely nothing wrong with this place.
It was almost disappointing. After the constant, escalating chaos, the sheer, unremarkable normality of the bubble tea shop felt like a different kind of anomaly. Every agenda stayed perfectly innocent, every ingredient lived in perfect harmony between the tapioca pearls and the lychee jelly. Just overpriced sugar water.
“It’s so ordinary,” she murmured, more to herself than to Mei.
“Right?” Mei chirped, completely misinterpreting the comment. “So cozy! Now, are you going with the mango or are you gonna be basic and get plain black tea? Don't you dare say black tea.”
Su Yao picked up the sticky menu. For the first time in what felt like weeks, the only immediate decision she had to make was a culinary one. It was a bizarre, almost sacred kind of peace. The world outside was still burning, but in here, the only thing that mattered was the ratio of cheese foam to fruit.
“Fine,” she said. The word tasted strangely of surrender. “The mango. If it’s too sweet, I'm holding you personally responsible.”
For now, the greatest threat was a potential sugar crash. That, for a heavenly fox, was a vacation.
The drink arrived in a tall, clear cup, presenting a garish, almost offensive gradient of colors. At the bottom, a lurid yellow-orange puree of mango. Above it, a layer of milky tea. Crowning it all was a thick, frothy, off-white cap of cheese foam, dusted with what looked like matcha powder. It was a visual assault.
Mei watched her, eyes wide with anticipation. “Well? Don't just stare at it like it’s a cursed artifact. Try it.”
Su Yao picked up the wide straw, speared the protective seal, and took a cautious sip. Her divine palate, accustomed to celestial vintages and the subtle flavors of spiritual energy, was immediately overwhelmed.
The first sensation was the cold, slick sweetness of the mango, so potent it felt like a chemical weapon. Then, the bland, slightly bitter tea provided a fleeting moment of respite. The final, bizarre wave hit next: the cheese foam. It was salty, creamy, and rich, a savory counterpoint that had no business sharing a cup with the cloying fruit.
“...Acceptable,” Su Yao declared. Her face was a perfect mask of stoic appraisal. She took another, longer sip. The combination was still absurd, but the initial shock had given way to a strange, compulsive need to experience the dissonance again. “The sweetness is juvenile and excessive, and the savory foam is a conceptual abomination. But, the contrast is, intriguing.”
Mei beamed, clapping her hands. “I knew you'd like it! It’s so weird, right? But in a good way!”
Su Yao continued to drink, analyzing the flavor profile with the detached focus of a scientist studying a new, mildly fascinating toxin.
For a few minutes, there was only the bizarre, saccharine peace of a cheese foam mango drink. It was, she had to admit, a uniquely effective form of escapism.
The bizarre, saccharine peace was shattered by the shop’s door flying open with a dramatic flourish. Kayo stood in the entrance, transformed.
Gone was the casual, lazy otaku. This Kayo wore a hyper-stylish, pastel-colored streetwear outfit. Her hair was in perfect twin tails. She held a glittering selfie stick, a phone mounted on the end, and a professional-looking ring light materialized above her head, casting a perfect, flattering glow.
“Hello, my beautiful little snacc-attacks!” she chirped into the camera. Her voice was a full octave higher than usual, dripping with artificial sweetness. “Your girl Kayo is here on the streets, bringing you the most aesthetic, the most mouth-watering, the most spiritually resonant bubble tea reviews you've ever seen! We're chasing vibes and flavors today, my darlings!”
She swept into the shop. The bored cashier stared in bewilderment. Kayo’s eyes scanned the room and instantly locked onto Su Yao and Mei.
“Oh! And what do we have here?” she exclaimed, zooming in with her phone. “Two early adopters! Let’s get their hot take! Don't be shy, lovelies, tell the Kayo-Krew what you're sipping on!”
Mei, ever eager to be part of the action, grinned and held up her drink. “It’s the cheese foam mango! It’s so good!”
Su Yao simply stared. Her own drink was frozen halfway to her lips. Her expression was a flatline of utter disdain.
Kayo leaned in. The ring light illuminated Su Yao’s unamused face. “And you, mysterious beauty with the killer resting fox face! What’s your verdict? Is this a slay? Or is it a nay?”
Su Yao took a slow sip, never breaking eye contact with the camera lens. “It is a beverage,” she stated. Her voice was dangerously calm. “It contains calories. The end.”
Kayo let out a tinkling laugh. “So enigmatic! The people love a mystery!” She turned the camera back to herself. “You heard it here first, Kayo-Krew! A tentative, moody endorsement from the local cryptid population! Now, let’s see if this place has the ~aura~ to back up the hype!”
She began flitting around the shop, filming the menu, the tapioca pearls, and dramatically reacting to everything. “O-M-G, look at the texture on these boba! The viscoelasticity! It’s giving, ancient river pebbles polished by time! The vibes are immaculate!”
Su Yao watched the performance. The last of her peaceful escape crumbled into dust. She turned to Mei. “I'm leaving.”
“But you're not finished!” Mei protested.
“I've lost my appetite,” Su Yao said, standing up. The cloying sweetness of the drink was now completely overpowered by the even more cloying presence of her cousin live-streaming for an audience of what she could only assume were equally deranged mortals.
As she passed Kayo, who was now doing a dramatic close-up of a lychee jelly, Su Yao leaned in and whispered. Her voice was a razor blade wrapped in silk. “If my face is in your video, I will replace all your manga with tax legislation.”
Kayo winked at the camera. “And that, my darlings, was a dose of authentic local color! So spicy! Remember to like, subscribe, and manifest good vibes!”
Su Yao stepped back out onto the damaged street. The sounds of the ongoing dragon-related crisis suddenly felt more serene than the bubble tea shop. Some forms of chaos, she decided, were far less tolerable than others.
She had barely taken ten steps from the bubble tea shop when a university student, so thoroughly drenched she looked like she’d been pulled from a lake, stumbled into her path. The girl’s hair was plastered to her face. Her clothes dripped a small puddle onto the cracked sidewalk.
“Excuse me,” the girl sniffled, wiping water from her eyes. “Have you seen my brother?”
Su Yao stared at her. A single eyebrow slowly rose. “What does he look like?”
The girl blinked, as if the question required immense mental effort. “He has two eyes, one nose, and two ears?”
Su Yao’s stare intensified into a flat, unblinking deadpan. The description was so useless it circled back to being almost artistically incompetent.
“Fascinating,” Su Yao said. Her voice was drier than the dust in the dragon’s wake. “That narrows it down to approximately several billion individuals. Did he possess any other notable features? A face, perhaps? The standard number of limbs?”
The girl just looked more confused in her soaked state. “I don’t know. He’s just my brother!”
“Have you informed the police?” Su Yao asked. Her tone was utterly devoid of empathy, treating the query as a purely logistical step.
“The police?” the girl repeated. Her voice trembled. “They're all busy with the giant lizard and the water people!”
Ah. Right. Su Yao had almost forgotten about the ongoing multi-layered apocalypse. Filing a missing person’s report was probably low on the authorities’ list of priorities when a Kaiju and a dragon were having a turf war.
“Then your search is as efficient as your description,” Su Yao stated, preparing to step around her. This was the girl problem.
“Wait!” the girl cried out. Desperation cracked her voice. “He’s dangerous! Something’s wrong with him. After our mom died, he changed. He became obsessed. All he talks about now is vengeance!”
Su Yao paused. The word “vengeance” had a certain professional resonance. “Vengeance against whom?” she asked. Her tone was still flat.
“Against Nuwa!” the girl blurted out. Her eyes were wide with a mixture of fear and confusion. “And all her servants! He says it’s their fault, everything is their fault!”
For a long, silent moment, Su Yao stared at the sopping wet girl.
“Do you have any idea,” Su Yao finally said, each word dripping with glacial patience, “how little that narrows it down?”
The girl blinked, uncomprehending.
“Nuwa,” Su Yao continued, “is a foundational celestial goddess. Her ‘servants’ range from the clay figurines she first created to the entire celestial bureaucracy she helped establish. That includes, by some interpretations, most of East Asian civilization and several thousand years’ worth of spirits, demigods, and random mortals who have ever made an offering at a shrine.”
The girl just stared, looking even more lost.
“Your brother has a grudge against a conceptual framework. He might as well be seeking vengeance against ‘gravity’ or ‘the color blue',” Su Yao elaborated. Her exasperation began to show. “It isn’t a viable targeting parameter.”
“But he’s my brother!” the girl wailed, as if that changed the fundamental illogic of his quest.
“And he is now a needle in a haystack the size of a cosmology,” Su Yao replied. “My advice? Find drier clothes. And a new brother. This one sounds defective.”
With that, she walked away, leaving the dripping girl on the sidewalk. Internally, a new alert had been tripped.
Another one with a grudge against Nuwa. First the Deep Ones, now this random mortal.
It was a pattern, however faint. In her experience, coincidences were just connections waiting to be uncovered. This brother wasn't her problem, but the sudden prevalence of anti-Nuwa sentiment very well might be.
Su Yao walked away. The girl’s sobs faded behind her. That dripping child’s brother couldn't be the Deep Prince, right? she mused internally. No, that fool is currently contained in a gourd on Director Hao’s desk. Unless he has a hitherto unknown talent for theatrical crying and terrible descriptions, it’s not him.
Just then, her phone vibrated. It was a text from Zhang Wei.
Zhang Wei: The Jiao Long is moving. It’s heading for the coastal industrial park. The false Seimei is mobilizing his cultists to make a stand there.
Su Yao’s lips curled into a slight smirk. Perfect. Let the reptile and the impostor wear each other out.
She was about to type a reply when a massive shadow fell over the street and looked up to see the immense, serpentine form of the Jiao Long gliding through the air overhead. Its passage whipped up a gale that threatened to tear the roofs off buildings.
“Insects! You dare defile my nest!” It let out a deafening roar that shook the very pavement. “I will drown this blight in the oldest waters!”
A moment later, a brilliant, golden binding array flashed in the sky several blocks away, striking the dragon’s flank. It fizzled out with a sound like frying bacon, leaving only a faint smudge on its iridescent scales.
The false Seimei’s amplified voice boomed out, laced with strained confidence. “Fear not, citizens! This ancient evil will be purged by the light of—”
The Jiao Long swatted its tail and the entire block where the voice originated from vanished in a cloud of dust and debris.
Su Yao snorted. “Idiot.”
Her phone buzzed again, this time with a call from Kayo.
“Did you see that?” Kayo squealed, sounding like she was watching a particularly entertaining sports match. “He totally whiffed it! His credibility is taking more damage than the city!”
“His usefulness, however, remains,” Su Yao said, watching the dragon continue its path of destruction toward the coast. “He is drawing its ire perfectly. Let them fight.”
“But it’s so boring from here!” Kayo complained. “I'm streaming the whole thing, but the chat is getting restless. They want a better show. Should I go cause some problems for the Wild Hunt? I found their backup headquarters. It’s a casino.”
“Stay out of it,” Su Yao ordered. “Why have you suddenly become a streamer? When did this happen?”
“Because Osakabehime is one now!” Kayo’s voice was full of indignant energy. “And she’s getting all the subscribers!”
“Who is Osakabehime?” Su Yao blinked.
“A nine-tailed fox from Japan! A hikikomori! She never leaves her castle, she just plays video games and streams from her room!” Kayo explained, as if this was the most obvious rivalry in the world. “If she can gather that many subscribers without even leaving her house, just imagine how many I can get by actually traveling and doing things! I'm going to be the top streaming celestial beast!”
Su Yao pinched the bridge of her nose. The world was being assailed by a primordial flood dragon. Her cousin was engaged in a petty ratings war with a reclusive Japanese fox spirit. “Your priorities are, as ever, a transcendent marvel,” she said. Her voice was flat. “Don’t interfere with the Wild Hunt. I don't need you starting a second front because of subscriber envy.”
“Fine, fine,” Kayo sighed dramatically. “But my chat is demanding I go investigate that one crying wet girl you just talked to. They think she’s a new ‘waifu’ candidate.”
“Wait,” Su Yao said. Her voice was laced with pure disbelief. “How is that dripping girl a ‘waifu candidate'? Explain.”
“Because she’s barefoot!” Kayo chirped, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
Su Yao stared into the middle distance, as if seeking patience from the cosmos. “That explains nothing.”
“That explains everything if you're a Soulsborne player!” Kayo retorted. Her tone implied Su Yao was uncultured. “Bare feet, tragic backstory, probably levels Vigor. The chat is going wild. They've already nicknamed her ‘The Drenched Maiden’.”
“The depths of mortal degeneracy never cease to amaze me,” Su Yao stated flatly.
“Oh, please! You think this is degenerate?” Kayo laughed. The sound crackled through the phone. “Let me tell you about real degeneracy! As Da Ji, I had the Emperor building a ‘Lake of Wine’ and a ‘Forest of Meat’ for our banquets.
“We held parties where courtiers had to chase naked servants through a heated maze, and I invented a new punishment called the ‘Bronze Pillar’ where people were roasted alive for my amusement. I once made him execute a minister just because I wanted to see if his heart had seven apertures like a sage's! That, my dear, is degeneracy. These mortals with their barefoot waifus are just amateurs.”
Su Yao could almost hear Kayo’s proud smirk. “Your nostalgia for past atrocities is as charming as ever,” she deadpanned. “No wonder Nuwa punished you. You were a celestial punishment, a beast of collapse assigned to end a dynasty. Instead of a clean, efficient execution of your divine mandate, you prolonged the suffering for your own amusement. You were a terrible employee.”
“Ha! And you're any better?” Kayo shot back. Her voice dripped with mock offense. “You vanished for centuries, had the entire celestial court wondering if you'd finally been done in, only to resurface as a glorified, alcoholic party host! At least I was honest about my destructive hobbies!”
“My circumstances were entirely different,” Su Yao replied. Her voice was cool and unwavering. “That path was imposed upon me by betrayal and a divine curse. Your ‘hobbies’ were voluntary indulgences.”
“Okay, fine! I'm a terrible person,” Kayo admitted with a dramatic huff. “The one time I ever tried to be genuinely decent, that sanctimonious Seimei exposed my true nature to the entire court, and I ended up with my head on a pike. So much for trying to turn over a new leaf.”
“Your fleeting attempt at decency was likely as self-serving as your atrocities,” Su Yao replied. Her tone was devoid of sympathy.
“Wow, harsh! And hypocritical!” Kayo fired back. “We're all selfish at our core! Even Kuzunoha, Seimei’s beloved saint of a mother! The moment her fox nature was discovered, she abandoned her human family and fled back to the wilds. Her love for them was lesser than her desire to survive. Don't pretend you're above it.”
A soft, muffled laugh suddenly crackled through the phone line. Kayo’s voice instantly shifted from ranting to alert. “Wait, who was that? Osakabehime? How are you listening to this? This is a private call!”
Osakabehime’s voice, calm and lightly amused, came through clearly. “With my ears, obviously. Your streaming setup is leaking audio into the public channel again. You really should check your privacy settings.”
“Wait, so you were listening! Then you have to admit I was right about Kuzunoha, right?” Kayo demanded. Her voice was sharp with insistence. “She was scared of being killed for what she was, so she ran. Just like you're so scared of dying you never leave your house! It’s the same thing!”
“Of course, I'm scared of dying,” Osakabehime replied. Her tone was utterly unruffled. “Who isn't? It’s a rational response to a dangerous world. Staying in my castle is a perfectly logical risk-management strategy.”
“Enough,” Su Yao cut in. Her voice was like ice. “This philosophical debate is irrelevant. Osakabehime, if you're so bored, perhaps you can make yourself useful instead of eavesdropping on private calls.”