Chapter Text
In the heart of the tropics, there lies a city. A roaring metropolis of respectable size, though often obscured by its own name on the map.
In the city, there lies a street. A bustling street of Culture and Heritage, boasting a row of old shophouses, their vibrant, almost gaudy, colours punctuated by tall shuttered windows, intricate foliar patterns carved into their panels.
Along this street, there sprawls a sluggish, slow-moving crowd, hampered in its pace by the humid, sweltering heat. Onwards it marches, dazzled by trinkets and wares, bewitched by the musty smell of aged shops and the intoxicating fumes of burning incense.
Amidst this sea of sweat-drenched travellers, floating above the clamour of trade, there hangs a sign.
It is a simple sign of black lacquered wood, embossed with two lines of gold lettering, following the proud tradition of coffee shops in the region. The first line is inscribed in a flowing Chinese script "心在桃源", while the second is written in a smaller, more demure English script "Heart in Paradise".
Look beneath the sign, and one will find a steep flight of wooden steps, framed on both sides by the luxuriant leaves of potted plants, enticing a weary traveller away from the relentless throngs, onward and upward to the promise of rest and refreshment.
As the traveller ascends the stairs, their path is made more precarious by the balancing of pots and urns, each containing a shallow tarn of water, delicately cradling the turgid leaves of aquaphytes. Each footfall produces a chorus of creaks and groans, prompting the traveller also to notice that while all the steps were wooden, they varied markedly in colour tone, as though the owner had tried, but failed, to make them match over the course of repeated repairs.
The higher the traveller ascends, the more they notice a slight breeze in the air, a cool breeze, but a coolness unlike the harsh, biting cold spouting from the ubiquitous air-conditioners in the land. It was a gentler, calmer, more soothing kind of coolness, imbuing an invigorating sort of freshness to the air. As the traveller begins drinking in this fresh breeze, they are greeted by the first fronds of the hanging plants, eagerly reaching out their trailing stems in welcome, forming a curtain at the top of the stairs that needs to be parted with the utmost care.
Then, with gentle curiosity, the traveller finally emerges from the fronds into the premises proper, and realises that the plants that had previously frisked about their person were actually the first of many, many more.
Every inch, every corner, every nook of this supposed eatery that does not house a table or a chair is occupied by a plant, from the tiniest cacti to miniature trees, modest blossoms of every shade, variegated leaves of enticing patterns, gnarly succulents with their otherworldly charm. Even overhead, the beams were laden with dangling vines and unassuming flowers, casting a lattice of shadows amidst the stream of natural sunlight.
In the heart of this lush forest, perched upon a gnarly rattan stool and resting both his elbows on a large barrel that served as a table, his troubled face lit by the bright blue of the laptop screen, Xie Lian gave a deep sigh.
The spreadsheets were…cataclysmically devastating.
The expenditures of his coffee shop so far exceeded the income that no amount of cost-cutting or creative financing could possibly drag it back from the abyss of bankruptcy. To be fair, Xie Lian had always danced on the edge of financial ruin. But this time…
Absentmindedly, he reached out towards the ball of white fur curled up next to him on a low-backed leather bar stool, feeling the warmth radiating from Ruoye's body as he gently stroked the sleeping cat and recounted the series of unfortunate events that led him here.
His troubles started when Mu Qing left three months ago, leaving Xie Lian without a chef. Xie Lian couldn't even blame him for it. It was the way he ran the place. Any other chef would've quit long ago, not tough it out for a good three years, slowly getting consumed by bitterness until he could take it no more.
Then, the customers began leaving, the trickle becoming a flood when Xie Lian attempted to take over the cooking himself, scaring away even their most diehard regulars, who most often described his dishes as "deadly", "fatal" and "not supposed to be purple".
This was soon followed by a stream of resignations from his other staff, many of whom were old faces from his parents' time. He had borne it all with a smile, he understood, he accepted. But the one that really hurt was when Feng Xin left, his childhood friend, his second in command. Xie Lian could still hear the angry words rattling through the stairwell, words that he wished they hadn't exchanged.
He looked up from his laptop, though his hand continued stroking the napping cat, sweeping his gaze slowly across his empty café, deserted even at the peak of lunch hour, and taking in the haphazard jumble of furniture nestled within the tangled mass of vegetation. It was a cataloguer's nightmare, an eclectic circus where no two pieces matched, from leather armchairs with mismatched legs, to (only slightly) lumpy sofas with patched-up seats, to stools of every height and every colour, to tables of every shape and every wood, with even a rickety old writing bureau peeping from behind an especially exuberant ficus.
A nightmare to some, but to him, in his own way, a paradise. A place he had spent three years holding together by duct tape and dreams.
However, now, the money was beginning to run out. Not that Xie Lian ever had a lot, but this time he truly and absolutely had none, not enough even to feed Ruoye for another month. Unless a miracle fell from the sky, it was most likely time to look up the paperwork for declaring bankruptcy.
He gave another sigh and whispered gently to the sleeping cat,
"Oh Ruoye, we're really in it now."
But just as his fingers hovered over the keys, he heard an unfamiliar set of footsteps ascending the stairs. Slow and self-assured. Sounding neither like Feng Xin’s nor Mu Qing's.
A customer's, perhaps? thought Xie Lian, his ears perked in curiosity. But none he could recognize, and there was a faint jingling that followed each stride, like the chiming of small silver bells.
The unknown footsteps intrigued even Ruoye, who was now wide awake and sitting upright, the pair now staring at the entryway with matching expressions of curiosity.
Soon, a tall figure emerged, gently parting the veil of green that hung in sharp contrast to his deep red shirt, tempered in its formality by three buttons undone and rolled up sleeves. His face was framed by tousled, cascading black hair, with a thin braid singled out by the red ribbon woven into its strands.
He surveyed the cacophony of plants and furniture before him with lazy amusement, but his gaze lit up with a sudden hungry intensity when he spotted Xie Lian propped against the barrel, and flashed him a small, crooked smile,
“I hear you need a new chef?”