In the kitchen, Lu Menge stood before the stove wearing an apron. Two tomatoes and two eggs lay on the cutting board. The tomatoes had been bought at the market, the eggs swiped from the cafeteria, the salt bought on supermarket sale, and the oil was peanut oil. The wok was iron, the spatula wooden, and the stove an induction cooker. Everything was normal. There was no Star Dou Great Forest blueberry jam, no dragon clan specialty sent by Di Tian, nothing that did not belong in a human kitchen. Little White Tiger crouched on the windowsill, standing watch with its tail swaying lazily. Lu Menge cracked the eggs into a bowl, beat them apart with chopsticks, and added a pinch of salt. She washed and chopped the tomatoes, her knife work neat and the pieces evenly sized. She followed the cafeteria chef's instructions exactly—hot wok, cool oil; oil at seventy percent heat; pour in the egg mixture. With a sizzle, the eggs rapidly puffed up in the hot oil, their golden edges curling. Stir-fry, then set aside. Add more oil, toss in the tomatoes, cook out their juices, return the eggs to the wok, and stir-fry evenly.
Then the food in the wok turned blue. Not light blue, not blue-violet, but an absurdly saturated blue, as though someone had scooped the noonday sky straight into the wok. The pieces of egg were blue. The tomato chunks were blue. Even the sauce was blue. Lu Menge lowered her head to look at that expanse of azure in the wok, her hand holding the spatula suspended in midair, her face wearing an exceptionally rare blank expression. She turned off the heat, set down the spatula, braced both hands against the counter, and stared at the blue substance in the wok in