The arrival of our food snapped us out of our stupor. We did the silly thing adults always do, trying to act normal when there was no reason to pretend. The scavenger hunt list had already been minimised into a new folder in our HUD. It pulsed silently just out of my direct line of sight, parked near the bottom of my view like a reminder of things to come.

  I had gotten used to the heads-up display over the last few weeks.

  Had it only been weeks?

  I was not sure anymore. Time did not seem to matter much in this world. Days blurred, and the only things that felt real were exhaustion and the next threat waiting around a corner.

  Still, I had grown accustomed to monitoring my health and mana in the top right of my view, and my gold and status effects in the top left. My hotbar of spells, potions, and skills sat in a neat row along the bottom, followed by stacked folder tabs I could expand with a thought. The mini-map hovered at the bottom right, always present, always pulsing.

  I could open any of it instantly. A thought, a blink, and the world filled with windows and numbers.

  What unsettled me was not the HUD itself anymore.

  It was how quickly we had adapted.

  How easily we had accepted it as normal.

  As Monica started laying down drinks and plates, placing each one in front of the right person without hesitation, I took a moment to watch her.

  She was attractive, yes, but it was not just the obvious kind. It was the way she moved like she belonged here. The ease in her voice. The practiced warmth in her smile. The little pauses and glances that made you feel like you were being noticed.

  It was disarming.

  And it brought back the same question we had been circling since we stepped into The Bay. We had even argued about it in chat while we walked past the stalls.

  Was she an NPC?

  Eva had once told me, back in that 7-Eleven during my first encounter with her, that permanent race changes were possible at higher levels. I had never seen a notification for it, not even as my level climbed.

  But looking at Monica, I could understand why someone would take that option.

  If she was a class at all, she probably had some kind of built-in charm effect. Not mind control, not overt. Just a subtle pull that made people listen, smile, lean in. If you were human and you wanted to survive in this new world, I could see the logic. Choose a form that made doors open for you. Choose something that made people want to help instead of hurt.

  A beautiful elf in a clean café. That made sense.

  But the armadillo-bird vendors outside? The gremlin in the toll booth?

  Surely no human would choose that. Not permanently.

  I had played gnomes and halflings and stranger things across years of tabletop campaigns. I enjoyed it when it was dice and paper and a character sheet I could put away when the session ended. But if the choice was real, if it meant waking up every day with a beak or claws or a hunched back and knowing that was your face forever?

  Yeah. No.

  Not unless the System gave you a reason you could not refuse.

  Farah pulled a scroll from her inventory and cast something on Farisyah. The girl immediately reached for the straps of the face guard.

  All of us reacted at once.

  Chairs scraped. Hands flew up. Shawn half rose from his seat. Siva was already shifting like he was about to dive under the table. I could feel my own body tensing, instincts screaming to get out of the line of fire.

  Jess lifted a hand, palm out, and stopped us cold.

  “It’s a low-level mute spell,” she said, eyes narrowed in mild annoyance at the three idiots she was apparently stuck with.

  Farah did not even look up from Farisyah’s straps. “How do you think she has been eating and drinking these past few days?” she added, rolling her eyes at Shawn, Siva, and me as if we had all collectively forgotten basic logic.

  We froze.

  Then, one by one, we sheepishly sat back down.

  Farisyah unbuckled the guard with the solemn focus of a kid doing something important. She opened her mouth to test it. Nothing came out. She frowned, then shrugged and immediately started wolfing down her pancakes.

  I saw Siva was about to start speaking and I knew him well enough to know he wanted to discuss the item list. I beat him to it and pushed the conversation to chat.

  Chris: Siva, wait. We will discuss the items later. Erm… not in front of the kid.

  Farah: Thank you, Chris. Yes. Please discuss it later.

  Siva: Ok. Eh, wait. You received it too? How about Farisyah? You are not in our party.

  Farah: I know. I think the System lumped me in with you guys because we crossed together. Syah does not have the notifications or chat, so she is fine. On that front, at least.

  We finally started eating.

  And… it was genuinely delicious.

  I did not realise how hungry I was until the first bite hit my tongue. Around the table, the reactions were immediate and completely undignified. Jess went still for a second, eyes widening before she leaned back like she had been personally blessed. Siva made a sound he would deny later. Even Farah’s shoulders loosened as she chewed, finally allowing herself to relax.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Shawn took a sip of his ridiculously overpriced coffee and actually glowed for a second.

  He blinked, stared into the mug like an idiot for a few seconds, then immediately went back in for another sip.

  Then he raised the cup and called across the café, loud enough for half the tables to hear, “Monica! This coffee is amazing!”

  Monica, behind the counter, looked up with a smile like she had been waiting for that exact moment.

  She gave him a wink.

  Shawn nearly dropped his own mug.

  I laughed, because if I did not laugh I was going to start spiralling, and finally steered the conversation toward what I actually wanted to talk about.

  “We need a base of operations,” I said between mouthfuls of egg and sausage.

  I got a few nods immediately.

  “Aren’t there lots of hotels around this area?” Siva asked.

  “Yeah. And they are supposed to be safe rooms, remember?” Shawn added. “Like at the prison.”

  Farah shot us a questioning look, and I realised, belatedly, that she and the New Jurong folks did not have the same reference points we did. Not for this.

  So I took a minute to explain. Safe rooms. Places the System marked as neutral. Rules about violence and hostility that did not apply the same way inside. The kind of space that let you breathe for a moment without constantly checking for threats.

  Farah listened, brows knitting slightly as she processed it.

  “Okay,” she said slowly. “That should be simple enough then. We are in the heart of the CBD. Like Siva said, there are lots of hotels here.”

  “And that’s the problem,” I replied.

  I pointed at Shawn’s coffee, then pulled the parking slip the gremlin had handed me out of my pocket and set it on the table like evidence.

  “If it costs this much to park, and Shawn’s coffee costs whatever insanity he paid for it, I am worried about what the hotels here are going to charge.”

  “But aren’t safe rooms free in the north?” Jess asked.

  “So was food from the supermarkets,” Shawn said around a mouthful, waving his fork vaguely. “Look at the prices here.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I do not think this place follows the north’s rules. We are all gold rich now, sure, but we do not know how long we are going to be here. If we start bleeding gold on day one, we might regret it.”

  We went back and forth, tossing options around between bites. Hotels. Some kind of office building. An abandoned condo. Something quiet, defensible, and not priced like a tourist trap.

  Then Monica appeared beside our table, silent as a thought.

  “Sorry, boys,” she said, already stacking our empty plates with effortless precision. “I could not help overhearing. You are looking for lodgings?”

  We stared up at her.

  And once again, I felt my ability to speak take a small step backwards.

  Jess was the one who recovered first, because Jess was immune to most nonsense and the rest of us clearly were not.

  “Yes,” she said pleasantly. “Do you know any cheap places around here? We were thinking about the hotels. Are they expensive?”

  Monica laughed softly, and it sounded like wind chimes in summer.

  “Yup,” she said. “I would not recommend the hotels. They are super expensive. Especially in this area.”

  She hesitated, then gave a light shake of her head and a small chuckle, like she was debating something.

  It was a subtle performance. A delicate little pause that made you lean in.

  It worked.

  I could feel it working on the guys at the table, and annoyingly, I could see it working on Jess too. Not the same way, but enough that Jess’s expression softened a fraction.

  “What is it?” Jess asked, like she had picked up on the cue and decided to follow it.

  Monica pressed her lips together, then sighed in a way that somehow still looked graceful.

  “Well… it is ridiculous,” she said, “and I am pretty sure you will not be interested, but I do live in a house. All by myself. My dad left it to me when he passed on, and the second floor is practically empty.”

  She glanced at us, lashes lowered just slightly, like she was shy about offering.

  “I could rent the rooms to you, if you want. You would be helping me out. Waitressing does not pay much.”

  My chat immediately pinged furiously.

  Siva: Yes

  Shawn: Yes. Yes. And yes.

  Jess: You idiots…

  Farah: Seriously you guys?

  I swallowed a laugh, forced my brain back into working order, and asked Monica where she lived.

  “Pasir Panjang,” she replied. “It is a short drive from here. Quieter.”

  Pasir Panjang.

  I knew that area.

  Pasir Panjang was the kind of place you drove through on the way to somewhere else. A stretch that smelled like rain, diesel, and the sea when the wind turned. Where clean glass and neon started giving way to older buildings, service lanes, and pockets of calm you would miss if you did not know they were there.

  It was also famous for its wholesale centre. The kind of place that kept the rest of Singapore fed. Crates. Lorries. Forklifts. Men shouting over the hum of engines before sunrise. And not far from that, the port, with its cranes and containers and the constant movement of incoming and outgoing freight.

  And importantly for us, it had landed houses tucked among the usual housing blocks.

  Not everywhere, not like a suburb, but tucked behind the main roads in small enclaves that still felt strangely normal. Two-storey homes built for families, not tourists.

  A base.

  I looked up at Monica. “A house, as in… landed?”

  She nodded. “Two storeys. Not big-big. But enough.”

  Jess did not look convinced. She looked like she was already calculating the catch.

  “And how much?” she asked, polite, but sharp around the edges.

  Monica’s smile did not flicker. “Direct. I like that.”

  Jess held her gaze. “I have been outdoors for too long,” she said, deadpan. “I would like a house but I would like to know what I’m getting into.”

  Monica laughed softly, then tapped a finger against the stack of plates in her hand like she was doing mental arithmetic. “For you… cheap. Not hotel prices. We can settle on a weekly rate. You can decide after you see it. No pressure.”

  The way she said it sounded reasonable.

  Which, in The Bay, made my suspicion dig in deeper.

  But the thought of a quiet house, a locked door, and walls that belonged to us for more than a night made it sound really nice.

  Monica slid a small slip of paper onto the table. It looked almost old-fashioned against the glow of our HUDs, like she was playing at being human.

  An address, written neatly. Pasir Panjang. A landed estate tucked off the main road.

  Shawn reached for the paper like it might vanish. Jess slapped his hand away before he could.

  “And you meet us there?” Farah asked, voice cautious.

  Monica nodded. “After my shift. Late afternoon. Say 4pm?”

  “We’ll be there,” Jess said, because if anyone was going to make the decision official, it was her. Especially when dealing with Monica.

  Monica’s eyes lingered on our table for a beat, smile still in place. Then she turned and glided back toward the counter.

  I leaned back in my chair and stared at the address.

  4pm.

  That gave us time. Breakfast was over, and we still had an escort quest to finish.

  It was time to get Farisyah over to the Esplanade.