COZMART: Corner Shop of Visiting Gods

In the interrogation chamber, the White Tiger took the final sip out of his mug.

"That," he said softly, "was what I needed to confirm."

Taeril set his mug down. The click echoed like judgment.

The video feed cut there—no final declarations, no dramatic music sting. Just silence. Lingering, lead-heavy silence.

Eathan stared at the blank screen, heart hammering against his ribs like it was trying to escape his chest cavity. The chill from the monitor hadn't left his fingers.

He swore he felt the cold through the screen.

His eyes twitched toward the still image: Taeril's silhouette framed in the interrogation chamber's low glow. The man hadn't raised his voice once, hadn't threatened, hadn't so much as blinked too hard. Yet, it had felt like watching a predator stretch its claws inside a sealed room. Slowly and deliberately, with nowhere for prey to run.

"…Holy shit," Eathan whispered.

He shuddered once, hard. Was this what they meant by war deity? Because that didn't feel like watching a man. That felt like standing next to the edge of a black hole that had grown bored of pretending to be a star.

He hadn't even noticed the sheen of sweat across his arms until his hand twitched, bumping the cup of room-temperature tea next to him. He blinked down at it, then at his fingers, then at the still frame again.

From somewhere behind him, a voice drawled:

"What's with the cold sweat?"

Eathan's neck snapped around so fast he nearly pulled a muscle.

Across from him, perched lazily on the long couch like nothing was wrong with the world, sat Taeril White. In full loungewear: a casual sage green hoodie and loose cream-colored slacks. COZMART brand perfume lingering faintly in the air, like he'd just come off a five-minute break between stocking rice crackers and reorganizing incense.

Chewie was seated beside him on the rug, disassembling a bladed scanner and eating gummies with surgical precision. Meng Yao stood against the wall with her arms crossed, impassive as ever. Across the room, Li Wei's half-face was projected on a floating call panel near the bookshelf, half-eating a microwave bun while scrolling what looked suspiciously like RealmNet drama.

Eathan blinked.

Once, then twice.

He realized, belatedly, that they were in Taeril's personal office suite.

A private room styled like a quiet mountain teahouse crossed with a minimalist study. Open shelves lined with incense holders, jade calligraphy weights, a couch too expensive to sit on properly. The only glow came from the overhead light dimmed low and the faint burn of enchanted wall runes breathing ambient temperature stabilization.

Taeril tilted his head, a languid smile. "Is it too cold in here? Should I turn up the temperature?"

Eathan opened his mouth, yet managed to squeeze out nothing. His brain was a shattered whiteboard of static. He finally settled on a noise that sounded somewhere between a nervous laughter and a strangled cough.

At his reaction, Taeril gave a look of mild distaste before turning to the others. "Should've warned him not to watch the whole thing in one go."

"Consider it exposure therapy," Li Wei said, around a bite of steamed dough.

Chewie hummed, flicking a shard of sugar off her blade. "He lived."

Meng Yao didn't speak. Just sipped her tea like this was every dreadful Monday.

Eathan finally found his voice, although just barely. "Y-You…" he pointed a shaking finger at the white-haired man, still trying to process the duality whiplash. "You just—interrogated two people into a philosophical breakdown and now you're back here to vibe?"

Taeril blinked, all innocence.

"Well, I am very efficient."

Li Wei made a strangled noise through the call. "You're insane."

"You've said that before."

"I'm saying it again."

Eathan sank further into the armrest like it could protect him from divine nonsense. "I thought you'd gone mad," he muttered.

Chewie popped another candy. "He's been mad."

"But effective," Meng Yao added without looking up.

"I heard that," Taeril said mildly, sipping from a new mug of coffee someone had—unholy timing—just brought in from nowhere. He set it down, gaze shifting back to Eathan. "But now you understand the weight we're working with."

The weight. The true cost of those equilibrium points.

Eathan's fingers curled slightly in his lap. He remembered how it felt—when he'd activated [Node Imprint]—that thread of pure instinct slamming into place. A fraction of a second later, and none of them might've been sitting here.

Chewie, sugar-obsessed gremlin. Li Wei, chaos consultant. Meng Yao, rabbit-brained death goddess.

Even Taeril—gone.

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Registry forgotten. Name erased. COZMART completely under Quine Long's demonic control.

"...Forty-two point four percent," Eathan said softly.

Taeril's smile faded just slightly at the corners.

"Yes."

The tea in Eathan's cup had gone cold, bland and untouched. He sat stiffly on the couch across from the others, staring—not at the screen anymore—but at the table where the White Tiger himself lounged like he hadn't just detailed a systemic execution plan hidden beneath every node pulse and anchor thread.

Eathan swallowed. "Okay, but… rewind." He held up a hand like he was back in Algorithms discussion. "All of that—forty-two percent, node detonation, registry wipe—that's not just sabotage. That's… it's a killshot."

"Mhm," Taeril murmured, casually swirling the last of his coffee.

"And you knew for sure. That that number—forty-two point four percent—wasn't just a theory?"

This time, Meng Yao answered, her voice cool and precise. "From the disappearance of the old Area 017. Now distributed among Area 007 and 005."

Eathan blinked. "Disappearance?"

"Not audit. Not restructure," she clarified. "Gone. During the Age of Sundering, several sectors collapsed under overload. Official reports blamed rift saturation and local corruption."

"But the numbers," Taeril added lightly, "told another story."

He sat back, expression unreadable.

"I was with the War Council back then. Helped them with review duty here and there. The last log for Area 017 recorded a drop from 42.3% to something I'd never seen before: 'Null Zone.' Two days later, it disappeared from all systems. The registry file was sealed. No memory. No survivors."

"That's…" Eathan's mind reeled. "That's like… getting deleted from existence."

Meng Yao nodded once.

"Exactly. That's when we first suspected the Cloud-Jade Ledger was running a containment failsafe. Something written into the system long ago, hidden even from sector commanders."

"But not from the old Council." Taeril tapped the table with a knuckle, thoughtful.

Chewie, still sharpening the point of a new tanghulu skewer, said without looking up: "It was a cage disguised as a safety net."

And Eathan—

—Eathan could suddenly see the strings connecting across the weeks.

The low-traffic zone Lindon requested on his first assignment. The quiet precision of Zhao Feyan's perfectly timed reports. The Class-A rift that should've been minor, swelling into something unthinkable. And all of it riding on one critical flaw:

No one was watching.

"Wait," he said. "Then the artifacts Lindon planted—they weren't just about weakening the system gradually?"

Taeril's eyes narrowed slightly, his smile sharpening. "No. They were coded to crash the equilibrium in one shot."

He raised a finger.

"One: A Class-A rift breach."

A second.

"Two: Two anchor points redlined at once."

A third.

"And three: A falsified diagnostic stream that concealed it all long enough… for the system to register nothing."

"Because most people," Meng Yao said calmly, "assume system failure is gradual. But with those three triggers aligned…"

Taeril's hand sliced the air.

"It happens in a blink."

Eathan exhaled, puzzle pieces finally coming together into one. The Cryolorn Rift, the Ash-Fanged Warden, and Feyan's soothing false data like a sleep-inducing poison—all together, they had dipped Area 001's equilibrium evaluation to an unprecedented low.

And with the fuse lit on everything at once, had Eathan hesitated—had he not used [Node Imprint] the moment he did—

"Damn," Eathan said, voice low. "That's what it was for. Not just corruption. It was a coordinated attempt at… eradication."

"Mmm," Taeril hummed, a bit too pleased. "Isn't that exhilarating?"

Eathan stared at him.

"…Sir, I mean this in the most respectful way, but you scare the absolute crap out of me."

Chewie nodded from the floor. "He scares everyone."

"Not everyone," Taeril said mildly.

"Everyone smart," Li Wei added through the call.

"But." Eathan leaned forward slightly. "If it was that bad… then that means I kinda…"

Taeril arched a brow.

Eathan hesitated. "Helped? Like. Actually helped?"

The smile Taeril gave him was lazy, unreadable. "That would depend," he said smoothly. "Do you want your reward in karma, tea privileges, or… tax deductions?"

"Wait, rewards are real?"

"No," Chewie deadpanned.

"Yes," Meng Yao said at the same time.

Li Wei frowned from across the screen. "…You guys really need to get your admin files sorted."

"Tell Zhao Feyan," Chewie said sweetly.

Eathan paused. "…Uhm. What happened to them?"

The mood in the room cooled again, just slightly.

"Zhao Feyan and Xu Lindon are currently in detainment," Meng Yao said. "Internal review under Cloud-Jade protocol. They will not be transferred outside Area 001 jurisdiction for now."

"No trial?"

"None required," Taeril said. "Not yet. If the Department of Oversight demands one, we'll comply. Until then… they remain our responsibility."

"And HQ?" Eathan asked, glancing between them. "How are they taking it?"

Taeril gave a soft, amused sound. "Like all soldiers do when they realize the person beside them could've pulled the pin."

Eathan swallowed.

It wasn't melodrama. It was reality.

He'd eaten with Lindon. Fought beside him. He still remembered the man sipping milk tea, dryly commenting on stabilizer software like it was any other job. Only now did Eathan realize what that job really meant.

But just as the weight started to settle into his chest again, Chewie flicked a candy at his forehead.

"Ow—what?"

"You helped," she said simply. "That's enough."

Taeril stood, stretching slightly. Like a tiger waking from a nap. "Rest up," he said over his shoulder. "This was just one trap. There will be others."

Li Wei scoffed through the call. "Gee, thanks for the morale boost."

"You're welcome," Taeril replied. Then, just before he stepped out, he paused.

"Forty-two point seven, by the way."

Eathan blinked. "What?"

"That was our lowest dip. Remember that. You closed the rift at exactly the last second."

He looked back, and smiled—not lazy, not mocking—but something quietly genuine.

"Good work, Eathan."

Taeril's hand was already on the door panel when he added, almost as an afterthought, "Also—take the next twenty-four hours off."

Eathan's brain hiccupped. "Wait, what?"

The White Tiger glanced back, expression somewhere between indulgent father and HR manager forced to remember labour codes. "You have dark circles so big they're dragging down the building's fengshui. Go. Sleep. Eat something that isn't emergency ramen. If I see you near a rift marker before sunrise, I'll dock you… negative overtime."

"Negative overtime isn't a thing—"

"It is if I invent it." Taeril's eyes fluttered softly. "Shoo."

Behind him, Li Wei bark-laughed through the holo-feed. "Congratulations, intern—the White Tiger just gave you the mythical paid day off. Frame the timestamp."

"Enjoy it." Chewie offered a solemn nod, the way one might salute a fallen comrade. "Tomorrow the universe resumes trying to kill us."

Meng Yao slid a fresh clearance badge across the table toward Eathan—gold letters reading REST DAY — LEVEL-ALL ACCESS SUSPENDED. "I locked your intern credentials until 12:00 PM the following day. Cafeteria access still available. Consider it medical quarantine."

Eathan stared at the badge, then at the three immortals conspiring to make him nap. For one absurd second his eyes stung.

"…Thanks," he muttered, stuffing the laminate into his pocket like contraband hope. "I'll, uh, go practise extreme horizontal meditation."

Taeril's mouth twitched. "Do that. And don't forget—forty-two point seven."

The door slid shut behind him and video chats ended, leaving Eathan blinking in the quiet office, reward badge warming his palm like proof he hadn't imagined the last week.

A free day in Area 001. With no rifts, no mole drama, no existential maths. He released a breath he'd been holding since forever and allowed himself a tiny grin.

Commander White was not someone who coddles his people—that was what Meng Yao had said about the daunting White Tiger.

Maybe, he thought with a smile. But apparently, he still knew when to let his intern close his eyes.