COZMART: Corner Shop of Visiting Gods

When Luke swung by after their afternoon Algorithms lecture, tossing his arm lazily around Eathan's shoulders, he was practically buzzing with nosiness.

"Ball after school?" he asked, hiking his gym bag higher onto his back. "You down?"

Eathan tightened the strap of his own bag and shook his head. "Busy."

Luke halted in place, a wounded expression on his face. "Bro, you've been busy all week."

Eathan shrugged, noncommittal.

Luke squinted at him suspiciously. "Don't tell me you got a girlfriend."

At that, Eathan gave him a long, unimpressed look, and Luke's eyes widened like saucers.

"No way. Seriously?"

Before he could start clapping him on the back or tossing wedding rice, Eathan groaned and shoved him away by the face. "It's not Emily."

Luke staggered back, affronted. "Hey, no need for violence."

Eathan adjusted his bag again, sighing. "I'm over Emily, alright? And don't worry about it. It's not something a mortal like you can understand."

Luke blinked. "…Did you just call me mortal?"

A beat of silence passed between them.

"You…" Luke leaned forward slightly, lowering his voice like he was uncovering a grave conspiracy. "You didn't fall into an anime phase, did you?"

Eathan didn't dignify that with an answer. He simply waved a hand over his shoulder and kept walking. Luke whirled around and cupped both hands around his mouth.

"Make sure you're free next week, alright? Birthday party! No excuses."

"Course, course," he said without turning back.

He didn't see Luke watching him retreat down the hallway, frowning like he wasn't sure if he should be concerned or scheduling an intervention.

***

The familiar ding of the doorbell greeted Eathan as he pushed into COZMART, the overhead lights buzzing faintly in the late afternoon.

Inside, Taeril stood behind the counter, his cream-white hair slightly mussed, eyes sharp with the familiar edge of paperwork exhaustion. Across from him, perched on the barstool with a tablet bigger than her torso, Chewie was rattling off some numbers.

"Commander Li sent this month's node report. Spoiler alert—it's not pretty."

Taeril sighed heavily, pinching the bridge of his nose like the weight of an entire continent was pressing down on him. "Fantastic."

The moment Chewie caught sight of Eathan walking in, she slapped the tablet shut with suspicious speed and hopped off the stool. The eleven-year-old strode past him without a word, and Eathan blinked, twisting to watch her go.

"Is she scared of me or something?" he asked out loud, bewildered. "I don't bite."

From behind the register, Taeril replied dryly without looking up, "You're loud. And strange. She's just being polite."

"You're stranger than me." Eathan scowled.

"Undisputed."

Only then did Eathan notice something truly odd—no coffee in Taeril's hand.

No half-finished cup steaming near the register. No oversized travel mug propped up against the receipt printer. In the grand hierarchy of COZMART weirdness, this ranked a solid third, just behind the floating receipt talismans and the fridge that sometimes meowed at 2 AM.

"You're… not drinking coffee today?" Eathan asked slowly, approaching like a wary animal.

Taeril muttered something incoherent, reaching for a paperwork file.

"The shop I usually go to got robbed. Temporarily closed." He then added, under his breath, with the weary disdain of a man who'd potentially fought wars and won, "New York..."

Eathan, not noticing the irregularity further, set down his bag. "So what's today's class about? You said we're upping the Education Days?"

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Taeril flipped open a ledger and nodded without looking. "Skill training. Minor Reconstitution."

Eathan brightened. Finally, something useful he could actively use in case someone else decided to grow fangs and stab him again.

As Taeril spoke, Eathan listened attentively—at first.

The man's voice was even, clear, and patient as he outlined the basic theory: how [Minor Reconstitution] repaired minor structural breaks within a set radius; how focus, not brute strength, dictated the success rate. Honestly, compared to Quine Long's lectures—which always somehow devolved into passive-aggressive poetry slams—this was almost soothing.

Until Taeril smashed the table they were using.

Eathan jumped three feet into the air, nearly swallowing his own tongue. "What the hell—!"

Wood splintered. The heavy training table toppled with a crash, taking the corner display rack with it. A bag of banana chips exploded into the air like a firework. Then, without missing a beat, Taeril lifted a hand and—wham—drove it through a nearby patch of drywall, leaving a hole big enough to frame his face like some modern art sculpture.

Eathan whipped toward him, wild-eyed. "And what was that for?!"

Taeril turned to him with the calm patience of a kindergarten teacher explaining how scissors worked.

"Fix it."

Eathan recoiled half a step. "You're insane."

Taeril raised an eyebrow. "And you're wasting time."

There was something sharper in his expression today. A tension underneath the usual lazy smiles. It wasn't anger—not exactly. It was… something heavier. Older. Like the weight of storms pressing down just before the sky split open.

It was the coffee.

Eathan instinctively glanced around for Chewie, but the little girl was nowhere in sight.

That little traitor, he thought bitterly. She bailed the moment the paperwork was done.

Eathan tightened his fists, gritting his teeth. He turned back to the wreckage, his [SYSTEM] HUD pulsing faintly in the corner of his vision.

[Minor Reconstitution].

Right.

Well, it wasn't like things could get any worse.

Probably.

Eathan crouched next to the shattered table, a piece of splintered wood poking his knee as he tried to fit the legs back together like an oversized jigsaw puzzle. Typically, five Qi Tokens would be needed to repair wounds, but he was working with the inanimate casualty; metal scraps were an acceptable substitute.

Grumbling under his breath, Eathan wrestled the mangled table frame into something vaguely resembling a rectangle.

Skill [Minor Reconstitution (Lv. 1)] has been activated!

"What if I can't fix it?" he muttered, prying a bolt loose with his fingers. "I'm not paying for repairs, just saying."

From the counter, Taeril watched him with the lazy interest of a cat watching a fish flop around in a puddle. "If you can't fix it," he said, lifting a hand and letting it flop back down onto the countertop with a soft thud, "it'll fix itself by tomorrow anyway."

Eathan froze, bolt halfway through threading into place. He turned his head slowly.

"...Come again?"

"COZMART resets at 3 AM EST sharp. Every day."

Something clicked violently into place inside Eathan's mind. His mouth dropped open.

"So that's how you fooled me that time!?"

The memory of that first bewildering shift flooded back—the entire storefront pristine again after it had been flattened by the self-centered Azure Dragon. He'd genuinely thought he'd hallucinated it.

"You gaslit me!" Eathan accused, stabbing a finger at him. "That's emotional abuse, you know! I almost thought I was going insane!"

He stormed up to the counter, standing so close that his face was basically pressed up into Taeril's field of vision. Without missing a beat, Taeril smacked his forehead sideways with the flat of his palm.

"That's your fault for being gullible," he said.

Rubbing his head with a wounded scowl, Eathan muttered, "I'm not usually gullible. It's because you were the one who told me!"

Taeril paused at that. His expression, usually amused or absentminded, shifted for a brief second—something unreadable flickering behind those deep obsidian eyes. Then, just as quickly, he looked away, feigning a distracted interest in the broken banana chips scattered across the floor. A faint smile tugged at his lips, so fleeting it could've been Eathan's imagination.

It must be the lack of coffee, Eathan thought, bewildered. The man was acting even slipperier than usual. Before he could push the issue further, Taeril abruptly clapped his hands together.

"Done for today."

Eathan blinked.

"Huh?"

Without elaborating, the man fished his wristpad out of his pocket and punched in a number. He leaned back against the counter, one arm crossed loosely over his chest as he held the device to his ear. Eathan heard a few clipped exchanges he couldn't make out, and then the man hung up, sliding the wristpad back into his pocket with a slap.

"Finish fixing this place before your new mentor arrives," Taeril said, entirely too casual.

Eathan nearly dropped the table leg he was holding. "New mentor?" he echoed.

"Mhm," Taeril replied, straightening out the cuffs of his sleeves. "Li Wei."

Eathan's mind short-circuited.

Li Wei?

The name wasn't unfamiliar. He still remembered it from the night Taeril first half-explained the concept of Areas and Commanders to him. Li Wei was one of the Council of Ten—specifically, the man responsible for managing Area 003, the territory they were standing in.

He gawked at Taeril. "A commander like him has time to tutor someone like me?"

Taeril gave him a strange look, as if genuinely perplexed by the question.

"What do you mean 'someone like you'?" He scoffed. "You're under my care. He cannot not be eager to come."

Eathan gulped hard, realizing with a jolt just how high Taeril's status must be to yank a commander onto babysitting duty with a single wristpad call. Something else occurred to him, and he looked at him with wide eyes. "Wait. You called him just now with a mobile wristpad?"

Taeril stared at him blankly.

"Yeah, because commanders don't use wristpads," he deadpanned. "They use telepathy. Every time they pick a language at random from the world. Draw lots. It's very democratic."

The moment the words left his mouth, he seemed to realize his mistake, because the look Eathan gave him could only be described as serious academic interest.

"Then does that mean you can understand any languages too? Even those of animals?" Eathan said, awe blooming across his face. "Like pigs?"

Taeril's expression flattened. "Yeah," he said without missing a beat, lifting his cupless hand in a lazy wave. "I'm speaking to one right now."

Eathan opened his mouth in outrage, but no words came out. He had been owned.

Again.

And this time, he couldn't even argue.

Eathan huffed and turned back to the half-broken table with the solemn dignity of a man accepting his place in the ecosystem chain.