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 suit 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 owner's death? Best not to ask Bianheng himself, in case 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…