[Countdown: 167 hours 50 minutes before dimensional convergence is complete]
6:00 a.m.
“Bing! Why the hell are you up scrubbing the back washing area this early? Did a hardworking ghost possess you or something?”
Mae Wilit’s commanding voice arrived before she did. Her plump figure came stomping through the back door with a coconut-leaf broom in hand. Bing, who had just tossed a bottle of bathroom cleaner into the trash, whipped around, wearing the most (attemptedly) innocent expression of his life.
In front of Bing stood a gigantic aloe vera pot weighing nearly thirty kilograms. He had just squeezed every last bit of his meager physical strength into lifting it and placing it precisely over the “acid drool hole” in the cement floor.
“No, Mom...” Bing replied evenly. His newly upgraded Intelligence (INT) stat of 10 let his brain come up with the most reasonable excuse in a fraction of a second. His heartbeat was normal. There wasn’t a trace of suspicion. “I saw some fork ants making a nest and boring into the cement behind the shop, so I poured bathroom cleaner down there and put the aloe vera pot over the hole. Cut the problem off at the source, you know? Otherwise the floor would’ve collapsed.”
Mae Wilit narrowed her eyes at her son, then glanced back and forth at the plant pot sitting in a place where it clearly didn’t belong before snorting through her nose.
“Yeah, right. You’re always hardworking when it comes to sticking your nose into useless crap. Since when can the ants from your daddy’s house drill through concrete? Go! Quit screwing around and bring the trays of food out to the front. The first customer’s already waiting over there!”
Bing sighed deeply inside. He had escaped one count of destroying his mother’s property and going to jail. He quickly washed his hands and headed out front to serve curry and rice as usual.
The morning atmosphere around Bueng Kaen Nakhon looked unusually gloomy today. Gray clouds hung so low they nearly swallowed the tops of the streetlights, yet the air was hot, muggy, and sticky.
The first customer waiting in front of the glass display case was a working-age man in a wrinkled office uniform and thick-rimmed glasses. He looked like a salaryman who hadn’t slept for three days straight.
“I’ll take basil pork over rice, with one runny fried egg, kid,” the man ordered hoarsely.
“Forty-five baht, brother.”
Bing scooped steaming rice onto a plate and topped it with basil pork. As he reached for the fried egg, his eyes caught sight of something strange.
The light outside the shop shone on the customer, casting him onto the cement floor... but his “shadow” didn’t move in sync with its owner’s breathing. It looked twisted, and if Bing’s eyes weren’t playing tricks on him, the shadow’s head had opened its mouth so wide that it stretched all the way to its ears.
[Ding!] A red holographic System Window popped up in front of Bing.
[Possessing Demonic Particles detected (Rank G monster)] [Urgent Mission: Evil Spirit Purification Mission! This customer’s mind is being controlled by demonic miasma. Stab him through the heart to set him free!] [Reward: 10 EXP]
Bing quickly read the message on the holographic screen, then looked up at the customer and back at the pot of chicken basil pork.
The young man did not draw the enchanted ritual knife tucked at his waist. He simply carried the plate of curry and rice over and set it in front of the customer.
“Your runny fried egg is ready, brother. Would you like some soup too? Today’s pork-bone soup is nice and rich,” Bing asked, wearing the expertly trained smile of a food-service professional.
The man nodded slowly, pulled out a fifty-baht bill, and handed it over. Then he picked up his plate and went to sit at a corner table.
The Heavenly System Window began flashing bright red, accompanied by warning sounds rattling off like a fire alarm.
[Alert! The player is neglecting the Evil Spirit Purification Mission! You are allowing evil to run free!]
Bing ladled soup into a bowl, muttering through clenched teeth so only he and the damn System could hear.
“What evil are you talking about...? The guy paid with a perfectly legal fifty-baht bill. He didn’t even ask for extra cilantro.” Bing shot back at the screen. “In the world of business, as long as a customer pays in full, doesn’t make a scene, and doesn’t break their plate... even if the guy’s the reincarnation of the Abyssal Demon Lord, he’s still ‘God’ to me! Fuck!”
[The Heavenly System cannot accept this logic! A hero’s duty is to suppress the darkness!]
“Then listen up, you piece of heaven...” Bing calmly sliced cucumber onto the next plate. “If you want me to beat a customer over the head with a knife handle while he’s eating, then you’d better pay me ‘business opportunity costs’ too. This plate costs forty-five baht. If the whole customer crowd panics and runs out of the shop, my mom loses at least eight hundred baht. You got a compensation budget for me? If not, shut up and let me make a living.”
The System Window froze for three seconds, as if processing its host’s greed and capitalist logic, before flickering out and vanishing in resignation.
Bing curled the corner of his mouth into a faint smile. Dealing with the Heavenly System wasn’t any different from dealing with insurance salesmen. Just read the fine print carefully and hit back with the numbers. They never had an answer.
He turned to look at the working man, who was wolfing down his basil pork. The misshapen shadow on the floor remained bizarrely twisted, but Bing paid it no mind.
It was ten in the morning, and the day looked more fucked than usual. Birds and crows had begun circling in the sky over Khon Kaen. The community radio Mae had turned on was picking up interference that sounded like soft whispers. But as long as the curry and rice sold out and the electric bill got paid on time... Bing was perfectly willing to keep ignoring the universe’s impending ruin.
At least until the sun went down... when the night-shift hunter could finally start farming stat points for real.