Chapter 623 | The Price of Congee [GT BONUS]

Chapter 623: 623 | The Price of Congee [GT BONUS]

Route 31 dropped me at Halverson and Ninth at 7:58, and I walked the four blocks to Lin’s without missing the door once. I planned to present this to Ophelia as evidence of personal growth. The old man outside the barbershop said something in Spanish about my jacket, the barber laughed at it again, and I accepted that I was now a recurring segment on their morning show.

The bell over the steamed glass door rattled sharp when I pushed through at 8:03, the metal clapper swinging hard enough against the rim to send vibrations down through the doorframe into my palm. The heat inside rolled over me in layers—five-spice first, riding high and bright at the top of the inhale, then old wood soaked in decades of oil vapor and steam beneath it.

The same smell that had clung to my jacket yesterday and made its way up the ridge with me, settling into the fibers deep enough that Felicity spent half of homeroom wrinkling her nose every time I leaned forward to check my notes.

Grandma Lin stood at the industrial range in her green wool cardigan, working a long-handled ladle through a pot that could have doubled as a baptismal font if someone had been so inclined. The surface of whatever was inside moved sluggishly when she stirred, thick and pale, releasing threads of steam that carried ginger and something medicinal underneath.

She turned her head without moving her shoulders and studied me for a span of time that felt measured and deliberate. Her gaze traveled from my face down to the protein bar wrapper sticking out of my jacket pocket like a tiny flag of poor life choices, and her mouth pressed into a line flat enough to cut glass. The ducks hanging in the display window swayed slightly on their hooks, silent witnesses to my impending judgment.

She grunted once.

Grandma Lin ladled congee into a chipped white ceramic bowl, the surface crazing visible under the fluorescent strip lighting overhead. She cracked an egg one-handed into the waiting wok, flipped it once, waited exactly three seconds, then slid the whole thing on top of the congee with a precise tilt of the spatula. The edges of the egg had crisped into brown lace where the oil had been hottest. The yolk sat gold and unbroken in the center, wobbling slightly when the bowl landed.

She pushed it across the counter toward me with two fingers, no ceremony, no comment.

"You eat all of it, skinny boy," she said. "Then you go upstairs and you work."

"I’ll finish every grain, ma’am, I swear."

The first spoonful scalded my tongue hard enough that I tasted copper underneath the ginger, but I kept the spoon moving because stopping would have been an insult to the congee and to the woman watching me like a judge deciding my sentence.

The yolk broke on the second bite and bled gold through the rice. Heat and fat and something that tasted vaguely medicinal.

I got halfway through the bowl before Grandma Lin made a satisfied sound in the back of her throat and turned back to her pot, apparently confident I wasn’t going to keel over and die on her kitchen floor before noon.

The stairs up to the office creaked under my boots the way they always did, announcing my arrival in three-part harmony.

The glitter bat hanging off the Eastside Protective Services sign caught the morning light and threw pink sparkles across the landing in a way that would have looked cheerful if I didn’t know who decorated it.

Nothing inside had changed overnight. The radiator knocked and hissed in the corner near the window. The coffee maker sat cracked on its shelf like a monument to Dralun’s refusal to replace functional equipment. The wall map still had its red pins clustered thick around the river district where most of the calls came from.

Ophelia sat cross-legged on top of her desk, parasol open and angled to shield her from what I could only assume was dust or sunlight or the moral weight of doing her actual job.

Today’s ensemble was black velvet with wine-red lace trim running along every seam, and the corset bodice was laced so tight it turned her chest into two pale curves the square neckline had absolutely no interest in covering.

Black thigh-highs had replaced yesterday’s striped ones, each topped with a tiny satin bow that matched the ones trailing down her sleeves. A garter clasp peeked out where her skirt had ridden up past one knee.

Mr. Stitches sat in her lap facing the door, his stuffing arm dangling and swaying every time she kicked one platform shoe in idle rhythm.

I looked at the ceiling because my survival instinct had gotten me this far and I wasn’t about to ignore it now.

"Eleven thousand likes, golden boy." Her voice came from behind the parasol, flat and unimpressed.

She turned her phone toward me without bothering to look up from the screen, grey eyes still locked on whatever metric she was tracking. "You’re welcome for your brand."

"Is that the drool photo?"

"It’s the Mr. Stitches Found A New Chair photo, and it’s at twelve thousand four hundred as of five minutes ago." She swiped once, and her lip curled. "A verified agency account left a sparkle emoji under it, so now I have to live knowing someone on the Strand has my notifications on."

"You could thank me for the content."

"Minus five for asking." She finally looked up, and her heavy eyeliner made the look land twice as hard. "You’re at negative one hundred thirty-nine, which is a new floor. Mr. Stitches is very proud of you for continuing to dig."

〘Heroine: Ophelia Lin. Temptation Gauge: 5%. Note: The account posted the photo at 6:14 AM. Subject checked engagement metrics eleven times before your arrival.〙

I decided not to share that information with the girl who could make me cry into a gutter with a bat.

Dralun sat hunched over the scanner on the filing cabinet, his WORLD’S OKAYEST UNCLE mug cradled in one claw and his tail wrapped around the leg of the desk. His horns tipped toward the speaker. He hadn’t turned around when I came in, which I took as the dragon version of a warm welcome.

The scanner crackled. A dispatcher’s flat voice came through the static and read off an address at Fourth and Moss, unit three-C, with a juvenile and a possible first manifestation. She added that the caller reported an injured adult and that the nearest licensed response sat fourteen minutes out.

Dralun set the mug down on the cabinet so softly it didn’t clink.

"Belmont, you’re with me on this one." He pulled the black vest off its hook and shrugged into it, and the room got smaller. "Stay behind me. Don’t touch anything in there. If I tell you to leave, you leave."

"No lecture on the stairs?"

"The lecture comes after, if you earn one."