“Have you eaten?”

In daily chatter, that line is a key slid into any lock, a warm steam curling from a kitchen at dusk. You don’t fuss about the answer; you watch the window crack open. From state storms to household dust, the topic can swell like a tide or ripple like a pond, and it’s magic for sewing friendships like red thread through cloth.

Of course, that’s for normies basking in daylight, the sun on their backs and small talk like pollen in the air. A shut‑in otaku doesn’t stroll out to trade words; your 2D crowd clings to their rooms like vines to shade, social anxiety thick as fog.

Ahem.

That’s the usual case. Right now, for Gill, those three words land like a slap of cold rain. “Have you eaten?” tastes like mockery, like hoisting a stone and smashing his own foot, sparks flying on wet cobbles.

Or like lifting a turd and smacking his own mouth, the stench hanging like smoke.

Either works—the point is the sting, a nettle brushed the wrong way. Look at Gill’s face, green as pond scum turning stormy; he can already smell what’s coming like thunder on the horizon.

But Ling is a soft wind wrapped in silk. She’s been kind since childhood, a bamboo shoot bending rather than breaking, and she wouldn’t force anyone to spit flowers made of curses.

“If you haven’t eaten, that’s fine too~”

She brings her palms together in a soft clap over her chest, tilts her head with a spring‑breeze smile, a hint of cute like a blossom peeking from snow.

“It’s meeting time now. No eating while the bell is struck. Once we’re done, Mr. Gill, you can sneak a bite in the shadows, and no one will mind.”

Smiling while scolding—her words are sugar on a knife, honey on a thorn.

Gill’s face isn’t merely dark; the color curdles like a bruise under ice. Green, then purple, then black—stormclouds piling until even their edges blur, ugly as mud churned by hooves.

“You…!”

He wants lightning, but only a spark flickers and dies on his tongue.

“Well now, Mr. Gill must be starving, so hungry even his words fall apart like dry leaves. Please make sure—absolutely sure—you eat after the meeting, or your body will wilt like a neglected plant.”

The hint rings like a bell under the table. It wasn’t just Gill who heard the steel under silk; King Alex caught it too, a chill like shade beneath noon sun.

“All right, Ling, that’s enough. Let’s leave it there and start the meeting…”

King Alex flinched—his heart thrilled like a drum when Gill stumbled, but prudence cooled it like water over embers. Better not drive Gill into a corner; a cornered beast bites, and the room reeks of fur and blood when it does.

Hmph!

Gill knows he’s in the wrong. He flicks his hand like shedding raindrops and drops into his seat with what he thinks is a lordly cut of wind. His boots climb the table again, ankle over knee, arrogance perched like a hawk on a beam.

As the victor in a narrow sense, Ling hides her smile behind her hand, laughter spilling like silver bells through her fingers. Then she sits perfectly straight, poise crisp as a new reed.

“May I know what matter brings all of you to seek this humble girl?”

“Humblest girl” from a tiny imp like Ling has a curious flavor, like tea with a hint of pine smoke, but no one chews on it for long.

“Ahem. Ling, we—this time we wanted to talk to you about… about what you think of humanity’s future?”

King Alex hadn’t meant to ask that; the meeting’s core was a different stone in his palm. Yet when he opened his mouth, another pebble dropped, rippling the surface in ways even he didn’t grasp.

Ling reads the awkwardness like wind reads grass. She knows what could summon three kings to one table because of her, the weight heavy as iron on the lacquered wood. She had prepared a speech, neat as stacked scrolls, but the question flipped them like a gust through an open window.

“Well… I don’t know why I’m the one asked this, but if it must be me, then humanity’s future is like Old Ju’s lost save file—unpredictable as smoke twisting in a draft.”

Old Ju’s lost save file—King Alex, being from elsewhere, doesn’t know the name, but the meaning rings clear as a bell: chaos that can’t be charted.

“Why say humanity’s future can’t be predicted?”

“Because it depends on your weather vane. If you stand fearless and raise blades against the Mystic Realm, there’s only one end—death like winter frost settling overnight. If you befriend us and bind a pact, then your future blooms with possibilities like spring shoots after rain~”

She pauses, a heartbeat like a pebble dropped in a still pond, then puts on a harmless smile, soft as a cat sunning on a sill.

“And since I don’t know which road you’ll walk, how could I pretend to forecast your dawn?”

Arrogant.

The word floats through the minds of the three kings like a dark feather on a draft.

All of them know Ling stands with the Mystic Realm. To speak like this is to place that realm atop a high ridge, looking down like a falcon over fields.

A small nation, they think—a sliver that ‘took advantage’ to split from the Moser Empire, territory no larger than a modest town. A lantern flicker daring to lecture the moon.

And yet she talks as if one word, one thought from the Mystic Realm could snuff them out like a candle pinch.

True, behind the Mystic Realm stand the Elvenfolk and the Dragonfolk, and in the worst guessing, add Daemons and the Beastfolk, shadows crowding like trees at dusk. Even so, must you strut this high, like peaks should bow to hills?

Humanity survived storms like this before; why not again? We dread your thunder but don’t fear your rain. Respect isn’t surrender; wind bends the grass, but roots still hold.

“Hey, little one,” Dorado snaps, voice like a whip crack in dry air. “You really think, with two great races shading you, you can stomp on our heads whenever you please?”

King Alex shares the worry, a chill sliding down his spine like dew from a blade.

“Nono~ it’s not that they’re shading us,” Ling sings, eyes bright as stars caught in a well. “We’re allied with them. There’s a difference, you know?”