Chapter 51: Regulars

Author's Note: Start of book 2!

To celebrate, we're doing daily Demon World facts on our discord. Just look for the Daily Facts channel.

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Arthur felt strange about being excited to go to work.

He knew what the day would roughly bring. It was going to be busy, with lots of hard and sometimes sweaty labor. He’d probably get a few orders wrong and break things. But instead of bringing him stress, these were all somehow good problems.

All because he was making people’s days better.

Even weirder, they’ll try to make my day better at the same time. That’s how the Demon World was. Since Arthur had arrived there a few months ago, it seemed like every single person in the demon city had tried in some way to make sure he was happy and successful. It was the kind of place where you found genuinely helpful people, but also a place where you could get de facto adopted by a family before you even had time to worry about long-term accommodations. Here, every wolf, wind, or metal demon did their best to make sure you were comfortable.

On the shoulders of their general habit of kindness, Arthur was able to obtain a class, level a respectable amount, and find himself the full owner and operator of a boba shop. And weirdest of all, things were going pretty well. He had regulars. He was making money. People seemed to like his tea, and returned to get more once they tried it. Slowly and surely, he was starting to believe in the success. It felt real.

When the shop first opened, everything was chaos. He dropped glasses and messed up his own recipes, running here and there like a ball of disordered chaos. A month or so later? He had it all under control. He could enjoy what he was doing and talk to people, getting an idea of what was going on in the city as he worked.

And through it all, from dawn until dusk, was Lily. She had no class, no skills, and no buffs to help her. She just liked the work, and wouldn’t leave for one second. At this point, Arthur was aware nothing would run anywhere near as well without her, and he was thankful.

She was his sister, adoptive daughter, and assistant in a way he had never been able to quite define, their friendship the product of a chance encounter that then found a life of its own until quasi-adoption. It was weird, only tempered by the fact that Ella, the cooking sparrow-demon, had more or less adopted both of them in turn. Still, he had a little person, one who enjoyed nothing better than being stuck to his hip, helping him with everything he did. It wasn’t what he had expected, but it was what he needed.

The city itself was overjoyed to see the little orphan owl off the streets taken care of, Arthur himself was glad to have her around, and the girl herself was pleased to be useful and almost as happy to be loved, even if she never admitted the last part.

“New drinks today?”

“Maybe. I thought we could work on that later.”

Arthur and Lily unloaded their daily supplies from the wagon, organizing them efficiently onto the outside-the-building portion of the tea shop’s counter they used for serving walk-by orders. The first few months of his time on the Demon World had seen him hold back monster waves and cure the ill, so busy to the point where he almost didn’t have time for regular boba-making. Now, they had a routine. Every aspect of opening the store was planned out, down to the granular who-did-what of wiping down dust, getting water boiling, and acquiring the fresh teas and fruits that they needed for their menu.

“I’ll be back with the fruit in a bit. Don’t break the dishes, Arthur.”

“I won’t.” It was a possible lie, and both of them knew it, but she accepted it as he thought about dropping a few more points into dexterity at his next level-up. “Good luck! Be safe!”

Once Lily was on her way to the fruit store, Arthur unlocked the front door and entered.

Locking the doors wasn’t really necessary in this world. Still, he found it difficult to get out of the habit. The higher-than-average security of the shop only added to his surprise when he saw an unanticipated occupant in the shop, one who had apparently come in through the back before falling asleep against the inside of the counter.

Bending down, he used his finger to pull a wisp of hair aside from Mizu’s perfect water-elemental face, watching her blue skin stir as she opened her eyes and saw him there. He had been reliably informed that they were dating, at least in the laid-back, relaxed way that demon youths pursued relationships. He still didn’t know how he had pulled that one off, but Mizu seemed pretty sure about it, and that was enough for Arthur.

“We irrigated our fields to deepen your footprints, aiding our efforts to track your movements.”

“Hi, Mizu.”

She smiled.

“Hi, Arthur.”

“Were you here all night? I told you the well is fine. It’s perfect water, Mizu. You can’t wear yourself out like this.”

“It can always be better.”

“Maybe. And believe me, I know I’m lucky to have weller-optimized water. But I don’t want Onna storming in here and beating me up because her friend’s boyfriend is working her to death.” He looped his arm through hers, helping her stand up. Not that she needed it. In most ways, Mizu was stronger than him, especially now that she had recovered fully from her dangerous brush with the city’s venomous subterranean wildlife.

“Say that part again.”

“What part?”

“Who you are.”

“Your boyfriend?”

Mizu flushed a little, clamping down on his arm a bit harder.

“Make me some tea?”

“Of course. Just give me a moment to unload my new stuff.”

Arthur quickly pulled out most of his essentials from the load, stowing the rest on a shelf for alter. Then, happily, he got to work on his first tea of the day. Since Mizu took hers hot, he ignored ice for the moment, brewing a pot of the strongest, most stimulant-pepped tea he carried. It was Mizu’s favorite. Not only that, but Arthur dumped a fair bit of his majicka into the process, driving the pep-ness even further.

A few minutes later, he dumped in some freshly prepared boba pearls and handed it over, knowing she wouldn’t display the slightest hint of being energized even with an entire glass of the stuff. Despite her incredible ability to handle pep, he still wouldn’t have served it to her if it wasn’t for the system smoothing some of the danger out of the way.

Double-Pepped Hot Boba (Lesser)

Your medicinal boba skills take an already pepped tea to new heights, resulting in a drink that can give even high-vitality classes a jolt of energy that stays with them for hours. This effect is dependent on the class’s vitality, activating less powerfully on those with lower vitality stats to avoid potential harm.

One of Arthur’s favorite things about Mizu was her ability to make a silence comfortable. He got deeper into his prep work for the day as she sipped her tea and watched him organize spoons, wipe countertops, prep ingredients, and generally set himself up for the morning rush.

Arthur relaxed into the work, letting the sun from his front windows warm him as he got into the swing of things and soaked up the calm of his beautiful store. It wasn’t just going to be fun day at some point. It already was.

—

“Don’t worry about it.”

Arthur had just got a drink completely wrong. Not the wrong amount of cream, or the wrong tea as a base. He served up a drink completely unlike what was ordered, every single component was different. The only thing that was remotely the same was the fact that the new drink had little demon-world-tapioca balls at the bottom.

His best guess was that he had accidentally made someone else’s order when the rabbit woman ordered her usual high-octane, ultra-pepped sugar blast.

“Sylva, I have to worry about it. I can’t just give you the wrong thing. How are you going to get through the day without the extra pep? You’re one of my oldest customers. Let me make you another one.”

“See, I think that’s why it’s okay. I keep ordering that pep drink, right? And that’s because it was the first order I really remembered the words for. I like how it sounds. But when I drink it, my heart goes…” She held her hand over her chest, pumping it in and out a few times in an exaggerated motion. “Which is okay sometimes, but I think I just got… stuck. Did people ever order drinks that way on your old planet?”

Most of Arthur’s memories of Earth were pretty fuzzy at this point, but he had an answer to that particular question.

“Now that I think about it. Most people found one thing and stuck with it. They’d keep ordering their regular drink. Are you sure I can’t make you something else? Something that you choose yourself?”

“No, it’s okay. I want to try new things. This is as good a place to start as any.”

After Arthur convinced her that the wrong beverage was on the house whether she liked it or not, she went to one of his tables and began reading her book with a smile. There were three other people doing the same thing, all folks that Arthur was beginning to think of as his Tuesday crew, a collection of folks that shared the same general day off and spent it at the boba shop. The fact that it was a festival day didn’t seem to be interfering with their day off routine, or at least the morning part of it.

“Arthur. That turtle is outside.” Lily came in. “You know the one?”

“Mochi with sweetberry boba? And Sourfruit chunks?”

“Yeah. Gross.” Lily grimaced. “How does he drink that?”

“Happily, from what I’ve seen. It’s... unusual. But we don’t judge, Lily.”

“Not even a little?”

“Not even a little,” Arthur said. “I guess you could josh him about it, if he seems like he’s the joshing type.”

“He doesn’t. So I guess no.” Lily scooped up the drink from Arthur as he finished putting it together, then carted it out to the turtle. People liked Lily, and especially liked her serving them. He wouldn’t be surprised to find that some percentage of his customers came to his shop for conversation with her as much as the drinks themselves.

A few hours passed as Arthur’s morning crowd came and went. Suddenly, it was what amounted to his and Lily’s break time, a slower portion of the day after the morning rush in which he was able to wipe up, refresh his stock of prepared boba pearls and tea, and send Lily into the city to bring back food. He never told her what to get. The little orphan girl had spent so much time jealously eyeing food stands during her time alone on the streets that she always had an idea of what she wanted, and those ideas were always better than Arthur’s.

As they munched down on some kind of unbelievably good fried cabbage, noodle, and egg thing, Lily and Arthur discussed the rest of the day.

“So no baking skill at all? After all that work?”

“No. Ella has been giving me projects, and I’ve been working on my own experiments, but the system’s been stubborn about it. And even if I had the skill, I’d still have to level it before it would be much good. I can’t serve customers level one cookies. They’d rebel.”