Eldritch Horror Theatre

His voice was slightly louder than during his earlier conversation with Hake—just loud enough for the people at the counter to hear clearly.

Combined with the direction Fu Qian was looking, it was genuinely hard to tell who he was talking to.

Jean, for instance, who had been expecting him to say something, clearly misunderstood. She stood frozen in shock.

"Pink... but around here, don't expect that kind of expense to get reimbursed.

"And don't say I didn't warn you: Rachel's husband is built like a tank, and he's highly sensitive."

Old Man Hake, on the other hand, was the polar opposite.

Faced with this sudden, absurd turn of events, he merely followed Fu Qian's gaze and actually gave an answer.

"That doesn't surprise me—so what color flowers does Tia like?"

Nodding slightly to show he understood the potential risks of that idea, Fu Qian actually changed his question.

"Tia..."

This time, Old Man Hake's expression finally shifted. He clearly hadn't expected Fu Qian to bring the name up again after their chance encounter earlier.

"There's no risk with her. Unfortunately, I don't know what color she prefers."

It was hard to say how many times he had scrutinized his partner like this by now, but Hake's eyes were filled with a mix of bafflement and marvel toward the young man.

"So, aren't you going to ask what color I like?"

Amidst this increasingly bizarre conversation, Jean met Fu Qian's gaze. The waitress walked past with a slightly stiff gait and, just as stiffly, dropped a "casual" joke in passing.

"No."

Fu Qian, however, treated it as a serious multiple-choice question and shook his head.

...

Anyone else in this situation would have cursed him out.

At least, judging by the expressions on Old Man Hake and the store manager Maggie, that was what they were thinking right before Jean reacted.

Such hostile behavior had faintly crossed the line of a joke. It was bordering on toying with her.

"...Alright."

Yet, something shocking happened. Jean, whose words and actions had shown such bold flair earlier, went through a brief silence. Instead of impulsively grabbing a glass of milk and splashing it in his face, she lowered her head and quietly accepted the answer.

Clearly unwilling to communicate further, she maintained her posture as she hurried past, retreating straight into the kitchen.

Something really was wrong...

Even so, that didn't stop Fu Qian from staring at her ghost-pale face and silently drawing a conclusion.

He didn't have such a twisted sense of humor that he would toy with a young woman's nerves merely for breakfast entertainment.

The provocation was indeed deliberate, but it was for a serious reason.

He had noted a slight contradiction earlier: Jean had made a minor mistake while serving the food. It was an error someone in such seemingly good spirits shouldn't have made.

So, Fu Qian decided to apply a little pressure, using a nonsensical question and a nerve-grating answer to search for cracks in her emotional state.

The facts proved that Jean's state wasn't nearly as good as it seemed. Her reaction just now couldn't simply be summed up as anger or disappointment.

Given Fu Qian's extensive experience with wickedness, he recognized it immediately: she was terrified.

Terrified of what? Right in front of a police officer she knew?

Sure, his own behavior was despicable, but not bad enough for her to project that level of malice onto him, right?

So, maybe her fear wasn't directed at him. Maybe she had remembered something—like the person who was originally supposed to drink that glass of milk?

He wasn't just throwing out baseless guesses; he had a point of comparison.

He remembered how Tina had acted back at his place. When she tried to recall how she had ended up there, for a split second she had also looked as if she'd seen a ghost.

Interesting. This desolate place really wasn't as peaceful as it seemed on the surface.

By applying a little stimulation, Fu Qian had successfully cast a shadow over this fine, sunny morning—and reaped a small reward in the process.

Of course, it wasn't without side effects. While Hake remained silent, the store manager Maggie was already glaring at him. She clearly didn't want her substitute employee getting rattled and losing her motivation right after opening.

But it seemed Maggie was worrying too much. Jean, who had stumbled past without taking any further verbal hits, soon produced a noise full of energy from the kitchen.

Crash—

The sound was incredibly jarring in the silence. It was clearly a piece of tableware shattering.

In fact, the sound was so crisp that it didn't seem like a free fall, but rather something deliberately hurled at the floor.

Although it quickly fell silent again, the surging anger still seemed palpable in the air.

Youth really was full of vitality. Had she bounced back that fast?

As the primary target of that rage, Fu Qian didn't feel the slightest bit of panic.

Hadn't she ever heard the saying about not beating customers without cause? Wait... there actually was a cause. He had provoked her first.

Admitting to himself that his actions meant he wasn't protected by that warning, Fu Qian even heard footsteps coming from the kitchen.

And as if to build the atmosphere, the light inside the diner suddenly dimmed at that moment, as if someone had dragged the rising sun right back into bed.

The curtains had been drawn... Observing from the corner of his eye, Fu Qian quickly explained the change with a much simpler reason.

Although this led to another question: who had drawn the curtains?

There were a full three windows on the diner's wall, yet all of them had been covered by heavy drapes at the exact same time, without a single sliver of a gap to be seen.

At the same time, Old Man Hake, who had been sitting right across from him, suddenly vanished without a trace.

His food and tableware were left behind, proving that someone had actually been sitting there.

However, the liquid inside the clear glass now gave off a strange red hue in the dim light. If it was truly milk, some capillaries must have ruptured during the milking process.

As for his own, Fu Qian looked down in front of him.

The drink he had just complained wasn't cold enough was now freezing rapidly as if under severe cold, so much so that he could see it rapidly flocculating and separating into layers.

As for the source of this severe cold—

"I heard the sound of something shattering... Where is it? Let me clean it up."

The next moment, a voice spoke up right beside him. Looking up, he saw that the waitress Jean had returned, holding cleaning tools in her hands like she was ready to clean up the aftermath.

Her tone and expression were completely normal. There wasn't even a trace of her earlier anger.

Yet, that chill which seemed capable of freezing everything was radiating precisely from her body, so much so that she appeared to be shrouded in an icy mist.

That wasn't even the most eye-catching detail. Amidst the drifting mist, Jean's body was actually covered in fine, dense cracks, with a glass-like frozen red visible within them.

It was as if that crash in the kitchen had been her shattering herself, and she had only just glued herself back together before walking out.

"Did you see it?"

In the blink of an eye, the breakfast spot Hake had recommended had transformed into a ghost realm. Shadows drifted in the gloom as Jean stood by the table, staring down at him from above.

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