For Breakfast Tomorrow, I Want Baozi

The wind died down, moaning as it skimmed the ground, its earlier bone-cutting force gone.

Zhou Yu's back was still shielding her.

He glanced sideways at the match, which had nearly burned down.

"Hey, are you done making your wish? If you don't blow it out soon, I'm letting go. It's hot."

Dania opened her eyes, her eyelashes fluttering twice.

The little orange flame reflected in her pupils flickered quietly.

She leaned forward and took a breath.

Whoosh.

The flame flickered and went out.

A wisp of smoke curled into the night wind and vanished without a trace.

"Done. That's a wrap."

Zhou Yu straightened up, patted down the crumpled front of his work uniform, and pulled a plastic knife from the cake box. He held it over the strawberry cake, sizing it up.

"Birthday girl first. Do you want the piece with the most strawberries or the one with the thickest cream?"

Sigelica rubbed the corner of her eye and turned to see that he was already cutting the cake. Whatever words of emotion had been building in her throat, she swallowed them all.

"Can't you cut it properly? That cake cost three hundred and twenty."

"You're the one who paid the three hundred and twenty. What are you getting worked up for?"

Zhou Yu brought the knife down, put the biggest piece, with three strawberries on it, onto a paper plate, and handed it over.

"Here, birthday-girl special."

He cut two more pieces, shoved one at Sigelica, and kept the other for himself.

He picked up the roasted sweet potato and broke it open with his bare hands. The golden flesh gave off syrupy juices and steam. He put half beside Dania's cake.

"A set meal. Meat and vegetables for balanced nutrition."

Sigelica: (눈_눈)

"Who eats birthday cake with roasted sweet potato? What kind of heresy is that?"

"As long as it tastes good. Look at the colors: one's passionate as fire, the other's gentle as frost. A match made in heaven."

Sigelica: (╬▔皿▔)

"I'm begging you, shut up. Listening to you makes my brain hurt."

Dania paid no attention to their bickering.

She stuck her plastic fork into the cream-covered cake and put it in her mouth. Her eyes gradually narrowed, and her cheeks bulged as she savored it, reluctant to chew.

She forked up a small piece of syrupy sweet potato. The cold sweetness mingled with the hot, and she gave a muffled hum.

A drop of water landed on the cream and spread into a small patch.

A second drop, then a third.

She kept eating, mouthful after mouthful, as big tears rolled down her face, splashing onto the paper plate and the back of her hand. She didn't wipe them away or stop eating, her fork moving back and forth between the cake and the sweet potato.

"Hey, you..." Sigelica froze with her own plate of cake in her hands. "Yaya, why are you crying? Doesn't it taste good?"

Dania shook her head and swallowed hard. The cream and mashed sweet potato mixed together and caught in her throat.

Her voice was badly choked, so nasal it sounded as though water could be wrung from it.

"My wish..." She sniffled, reaching into the plate again and spearing a strawberry with a trembling hand.

Neither Zhou Yu nor Sigelica moved.

She put the strawberry in her mouth and forced out the words, indistinct as she chewed.

"...I want to know what we're having for breakfast tomorrow."

The wind stopped.

Sigelica's hand trembled, tilting the cake plate, but she didn't notice.

After a long while, she turned all the way around, her back to them, her shoulders shaking.

"...You're crazy." She rubbed the back of her hand haphazardly across her face, her voice falling apart. "Who makes a wish like that?"

Zhou Yu looked at Dania.

Her face was smeared with cream, two tear tracks running down it. She was a complete mess.

"Mm, good question."

He set his cake plate on the oil-drum tabletop and pulled the crumpled schedule from his pocket.

Sigelica kept her back to them, her voice still trembling.

"What are you taking that stupid schedule out for again?"

"Implementing requirements, updating the SOP, and closing the management loop."

He pulled off the pen cap and pressed the ballpoint tip to the paper. By the faint light of a distant searchlight sweeping past, he wrote three lines heavily in tomorrow's schedule.

[Item: breakfast.]

[Action plan: go to Old Wang's Bun Shop, outside the main gate of Flamebearers' Academy.]

[KPI: pork and scallion soup baozi, available until sold out. Must get some.]

Zhou Yu: (￣^￣)ゞ

He blew on the ink, which wasn't dry at all, folded the paper, and stuffed it back into his pocket.

"Schedule finalized."

He picked up his plate again, forked a big piece of cake into his mouth, and added indistinctly:

"We leave at seven tomorrow morning. Whoever's late pays."

Dania looked at him, tears still clinging to the tips of her eyelashes, the corners of her mouth straining upward.

She forked the last strawberry on her plate and held it up in front of Zhou Yu.

"This is for you."

"No, you eat it."

"But you just shielded me from the wind."

"Shielding you from the wind doesn't come out of my paycheck. Eat it."

Dania drew the strawberry back, tilted her head and thought for a moment, then turned and held it up behind Sigelica.

"Then does Xixi want it?"

Sigelica's shoulders trembled.

"No."

"Could you two stop offering me things? I don't want to turn around right now."

Dania blinked and looked down at the gleaming red strawberry in her hand.

"Then I'm eating it."

She popped the strawberry into her mouth, her cheeks bulging. The tear tracks hadn't dried, but she could no longer hold back her smile.

She said indistinctly:

"Tomorrow, seven o'clock."

Dania: ( ´ ω ` )

Zhou Yu leaned against the railing. In the distance, a searchlight swept back and forth, stretching and shortening the three people's shadows.

The wind never stirred up the slightest trace of malice again.