It’s too hot to sleep, too humid in this early to mid summer season in this equatorial town.

  Well, maybe that was just Zai’s own justification for staying awake; alongside what was possibly some level of ego keeping him glued to these financial reports collected earlier today by both his wife and him.

  Can’t believe they even let us keep these statements. The Crown Prince thinks to himself as he slowly recounts the numbers on the abacus. Sophia shouldn’t be underestimated when she gets serious.

  Something moves—drifting into the living room like a ghost, silent and inhuman.

  A shadow wearing long silk clothes, that pale skin and gold hair highlighted by the soft blue glow from Unudo sneaking through the ajar door and into this dimly lit section of the home.

  This spirit, taken from the depths of the abyss of the stars above, is so quiet that even the Crown Prince of Tianci, currently sitting on the dining table with nothing but a small lamp as lighting, only notices as her long shadow crosses the kitchen area.

  There are stories told in the Hong-er state and the central ranges of Tianci, those words from parents and village elders speaking of some shadow that stalked the edges of the farm fields and the dark corners of courtyards.

  They called it the Taotie Youying: the Devourer Spirit.

  Taking potatoes from the soil, drying slabs of meat in storehouses; it was a creature of darkness that was quite harmless if fed with the random scraps from dining tables and threshed grain from the fields. A gleamer at heart, that now in retrospect to Zai, was probably some supernatural attribution to cunning rats or the occasional raccoon.

  Or, perhaps, that spirit was a Fourth Princess of the Ensolian Imperium, coming at nearly 1:80 in the morning to search out whatever leftovers remained in the kitchen. Footsteps supernaturally quiet per usual, soft enough that even the snoozing body of Guardsman Mori Fushimi on the nearby sofa isn’t stirred.

  Zai notes that this… creature was wholly not human either.

  Waist length blonde hair crumpled and messy, eyes heavy with dark circles; a midnight raid conducted without the expectation of resistance.

  But the Crown Prince of Tianci was here. In his sleeping robes, a mind still unable to come to terms with letting the night take him with so much work still demanded of him.

  More financial reports to read over, more meta-analysis of the accounting numbers by that wife of his—who was now rummaging through the cabinets in search of a snack. Nearly every single hotel and guesthouse touched by the Syndicate summarized by her in less than two hours; a miracle of forensic accounting witnessed by both his guardsman and himself in that tiny office space.

  Zai Tianci reminds himself that he needs to make sure he can keep up with her, even if it means working at this obscene hour of the night.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  And he watches as Sophia Elise the Eighth mindlessly looks through piles of potatoes and small cans of spices, desperately searching for any semblance of sustenance.

  She really is hungry tonight…

  Something almost akin to pity tugs at the heart of Zai, seeing that ensolian woman try and leverage what little mental energy she had in her search for food pulling this Crown Prince up from the comfortable chair and towards her.

  He whispers as quietly as possible, as not to awaken his sleeping Guardian. “You’re hungry, Sophia?”

  Sophia Elise the Eighth almost jumps like a startled cat, swallowing a yelp before it escapes her throat. Eyes wide, hair disheveled; the usual sense of nobility she carried with her lost on the crumpled, sweat drenched pajamas clinging on her hunched body.

  Gods above she looked even worse up close.

  From the shock comes her usual action: that emotionless stare and cold scowl drawing on her face, the Crown Prince already predicting her words as her usual pride bubbles up. “I’m not hungry.”

  “You’re not?” Zai smiles gently, cutting her down with this new-found weapon of his. “We have some vegetable stock leftover. I’ll make you some ramen, Sophia.”

  There’s anger… or was it excitement on her face. Perhaps a little of both, as Zai somehow follows her internal argument before she relents her answer. “I will not… deny that offer.”

  The Crown Prince of Tianci chuckles in this small victory. “Take a seat on the table, give me a few minutes, it'll be right out.”

  It’s the food of the southerners, of the old exiles from the Apostasy Wars and those who absorbed them. Noodles, broth, and whatever additives that one could salvage; boiled together for just a few seconds for something warm, filling, and most importantly: easy.

  Zai Tianci uses the family recipe taught to the young prince by the very strict and very secretive Guardsman Tsubaki. Perhaps the most esoteric in his entourage of guardians during the Great Starving, that storm rifle-toting rifleman had given Zai this first and only secret on his deathbed—broken shipping crates beneath him, his final words spoken between coughs and laughter, smiling as the fever and sepsis took him away.

  The Crown Prince cooks: cold vegetable broth put into the stoked charcoal oven, a block of deep fried noodles dropped in as it reaches its apex of boiling. Shaved garlic and ginger, alongside a pinch of salt; add the bite of flavor while a small sprinkling of dried pork flakes adds the needed body to this half-meal.

  “Don’t forget kiddo,” Guardsman Tsubaki had said between those wheezing chuckles, blood weeping from his chest wound and onto the clothing of the Crown Prince, “a helping of fat makes the broth stick to your ribs.”

  That was the secret he hid from Zai and Guardsman Mori Fushimi for years, and so Zai follows that legacy with a spoonful of lard and a few drops of toasted sesame oil.

  Ten minutes to cook a single meal, piping hot as he serves it within a ceramic bowl alongside a pair of eating sticks and a spoon.

  A small hesitation as he thinks through his trial and error list of ingredients, a final mental checkup to assure himself there were no items on this Fourth Princess’ hated list of foods. Still, he makes sure to cover his bases. “I hope it's to your liking.”

  This Princess, a Taotie Youying from beyond the Wailing Fang, sniffs the food item like a curious dog. Eyes barely awake, a hand moving towards the utensils in a lazy, indeliberate motion.

  Some part of Zai Tianci hopes that this wife of his was purposefully obfuscating her behavior with a mask of laziness, that somehow this utterly defenseless mess was created from some imperial playbook on the seduction of unwilling male suitors.

  Some part of Zai Tianci hopes, now that she was exhausted and with her guard down, this ensolian woman would just eat with the necessary graces demanded of her by an imperial princess.

  But whatever this play from her was, it was obviously working. And Zai watches, silently and with some apprehension, as Sophia Elise the Eighth just devours the entire bowl of ramen like an animal.