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."
Zhaoying, once again proving her superiority, kicked him to make him walk forwards.
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.