Chapter 2: The First Cup Is Free

Lin Fan learned three things in the sixty seconds after opening his eyes again.

First, fainting from fear apparently didn't count as "leaving the customer satisfied."

Second, the Universal Hospitality System was still very much awake.

Third, whenever the System used the word legitimate, it was about to ruin his day.

He was standing behind the counter. He didn't remember deciding to stand there. His last clear memory was five bandits grinning at him like he was a particularly slow deer, and after that, something in his brain had apparently just skipped ahead to survive first, panic later.

The bandits were still outside. Still approaching. Still armed.

Lin Fan had, somehow, not fainted, not run, and not offered them the deed to the teahouse. Small victories.

The System panel floated in front of him, serenely unaware that its Owner was about to be extorted, robbed, or worse.

[Hospitality Points: 100][Current source: Beginner Hospitality Package.]

Lin Fan tapped it anyway, because apparently his brain needed something normal to focus on while his body prepared to die.

[Hospitality Points are generated through legitimate customers, customer satisfaction, and business revenue.]

"People have to come in, enjoy the service, and pay money," Lin Fan said out loud, mostly to hear a voice that wasn't screaming.

[Correct.]

"How much money?"

[The System does not provide a fixed conversion formula.]

"That is not helpful."

[The System provides hospitality opportunities. The Owner provides hospitality.]

"You sound like a manager."

The System, wisely, did not respond to that.

Lin Fan glanced at the tea section out of sheer desperate habit. Tranquility Tea. Two Low-grade Spirit Stones a cup. Not cheap for a roadside stall — but he had no idea if the tea did anything besides taste nice, and frankly, "nice-tasting" was the least of his current problems.

An idea occurred to him. A terrible, brilliant, entirely reasonable idea.

"What if I charge one million Spirit Stones a cup?"

[Exploitative pricing rejected.]

"I haven't even tried it yet."

[The proposed price is unreasonable for the current product, location, and customer base.]

Lin Fan pointed weakly at the five approaching bandits. "That's my customer base."

[Correct.]

"Then charge THEM a million! They're about to rob me anyway!"

[Exploitation of hostile parties is still exploitation.]

"Whose side are you on?"

[The Universal Hospitality System supports legitimate hospitality.]

Lin Fan opened his mouth to argue further, realized the bandits were now close enough to smell, and abandoned the entire conversation.

There was no time left to negotiate with a glowing customer-service ethics panel.

The tall leader — scar from eyebrow to jaw, hand resting on a saber like it was an old friend — reached the door first. He looked at the four tables, the sixteen chairs, and the terrified young man standing very still behind the counter, and came to the obvious professional conclusion.

Easy money.

He took one step inside.

Lin Fan's survival instincts, honed by years of dealing with customers who threatened to "get him fired" over lukewarm soup, kicked in a half-second before his brain caught up.

"Welcome!" he said, in a voice that cracked slightly in the middle. "First cup is free!"

The bandits stopped.The leader raised an eyebrow. "Free?"

"Grand opening promotion," Lin Fan said, nodding like a man who had definitely planned this and not just invented it out of pure terror four seconds ago. "Please, sit. Anywhere. I'll bring it right out."

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The five men exchanged glances. The leader's mouth curled into a satisfied smirk — the owner's scared, good, this'll be quick — and he sauntered to the largest table like he owned it, which, within the next ten minutes, he fully intended to.

Lin Fan watched them sit and thought, with the fragile optimism of a man clinging to a very thin rope: He likes free things. Maybe he'll leave after one cup and forget the extortion part.

"Five cups," the leader said, not a request.

"Of course," Lin Fan said, already moving.

He ducked behind the counter, hands shaking so badly the kettle nearly slipped twice. The System water heated without fire, steam curling up gentle and fragrant, and for one absurd moment Lin Fan resented the tea for smelling so calm while he was internally composing his own eulogy.

He poured five cups. Carried them over on a tray that rattled with every step. Set them down in front of five men who could, with minimal effort, turn him into a stain on his own floor.

"Drink," he said.

The leader looked up sharply.

Lin Fan heard how that sounded about half a second too late.

"It's — safe," he added quickly. "Probably. I mean it's tea. It's just tea. The label says it calms the mind."

The leader stared at him a moment longer, decided a terrified teahouse boy wasn't worth the effort of poisoning suspicion, and picked up the cup.The other four followed.Five of the most feared men on the road drank in unison.For a few seconds, nothing happened.

Lin Fan hovered nearby, torn between relief and the growing suspicion that something was about to go very wrong, because in his experience, things that started this calmly rarely stayed that way.

The leader swallowed.

"..."

One bandit lowered his cup slowly, staring at nothing.

"..."

Another blinked. Twice. Then a third time, faster.

"Is it too hot?" Lin Fan asked, mostly to fill the silence.

No one answered.

The leader's grip on his cup tightened. His eyes had gone somewhere far away — not at the tea, not at the teahouse, but at something that clearly wasn't in the room at all.

An old merchant, kneeling in dust. Hands pressed together. Begging him not to take the last of his goods, not this close to winter.

The leader had laughed, back then. Taken everything anyway, cart and all, and left the man sitting in the dirt with nothing.

At the time it had felt like nothing. One shakedown among hundreds.

Now it sat in front of him with the clarity of yesterday, and it felt, for some reason, enormous.

His face drained of color.

Beside him, the youngest bandit had started to tremble. A village in winter. A little boy clutching a broken bowl, staring up at him with confusion instead of fear, because he was too young to understand why the scary man was taking his family's rice. The bandit had kicked the bowl out of his hands just to make him stop looking at him like that.

His fingers shook around his cup.

The man next to him noticed. "Stop embarrassing yourself."

"I'm not—" His voice broke clean in half.

The first tear landed directly in his tea, which felt, to Lin Fan watching from a safe distance, like an extremely specific and unfair kind of insult to a beverage that had done nothing wrong except apparently unlock repressed guilt on contact.

"Are you all right?" Lin Fan ventured, inching very slightly closer to the counter and, if necessary, the door behind it.

The trembling bandit turned away fast. "Tea got in my eye."

"You were drinking it. From the top. With your mouth."

He covered his face with both hands instead of answering, which Lin Fan personally felt was a very strong non-denial.

The man who'd told him to stop embarrassing himself suddenly inhaled sharp and uneven. His shoulders jerked once. Twice.

"You too?" the trembling one asked, delighted and betrayed in equal measure, already reaching for his sleeve like this was somehow a competition now.

"I'm not crying."

"Your nose is running."

"That is a completely unrelated medical condition."

"You don't have a cold."

"I have several."

He pressed both palms to his face anyway, several completely-unrelated tears escaping through his fingers.

The leader hadn't moved. He was staring straight ahead at the memory of that merchant's family walking away from an empty cart with nothing but the clothes on their backs, and it turned out that particular memory did not need a body count to ruin a grown man's whole week.

"I ruined them," the leader said, to no one. "I didn't even need the money that badly."

The room went very quiet, aside from four grown men crying into their tea like it had personally wronged them.

Lin Fan, who had mentally prepared for threats, violence, and possibly a broken chair or two, found himself completely unequipped for this. There was no restaurant-manager training module for what to do when a bandit warlord has a breakdown over your tea and starts auditing his own life choices out loud.

He considered offering a napkin. He decided against it — mostly because he didn't have any napkins, and partly because handing a sobbing bandit a napkin felt like it might somehow be misread as an act of aggression.

The bandit hiding behind his cup looked up, face wet. "Boss. Stop talking about it."

"How am I supposed to stop talking about it?"

"Drink more tea?"

"Why would that help?!"

The bandit looked down at his own cup with genuine betrayal, like it had lied to him on a first date. "I don't know! It made it worse! I feel like I owe the entire province an apology tour!"

The leader stared at him. Then broke down harder, muttering something that sounded suspiciously like "I should send that merchant his money back with interest."

The fourth bandit — the one who'd twice told everyone else to stop embarrassing themselves — slammed both hands on the table.

"ALL OF YOU. STOP. CRYING."

It echoed off the walls. The other four looked at him, wet-eyed and mildly offended.

He held the silence for exactly three seconds, chin high, the very picture of unshakeable bandit dignity.

Then his lip wobbled.

"I only said that because I'm strong," he whispered, in the exact tone of a man who was very much not strong at that particular moment, and put his head down on the table, shoulders shaking along with the rest of them.

Lin Fan stood behind the counter, watching five of the road's most feared men openly sob over a single free cup of tea like it was the season finale of a very sad drama, and slowly turned to look at the kettle sitting innocently on the counter — the same kettle that had, less than an hour ago, tried to end his career as a biped by landing directly on his own foot.

"...You," he said to it quietly, "have some range."

The kettle did not respond. Kettles rarely do, no matter how many emotional breakdowns they've apparently just caused with lukewarm water and vague guilt.

Lin Fan glanced at the System panel, half-expecting some kind of congratulations.

[Note: crying customers are not, by default, satisfied customers.]

"Oh, come on."

[The System does not make exceptions for dramatic irony.]

"I just neutralized five armed men with a beverage! That should count for something!"

[Noted. Filed under: unconventional.]

"That's not a reward category!"

[Correct.]

Outside, the road remained exactly as empty as before. Inside, the teahouse had made zero Spirit Stones and acquired what appeared to be five new, extremely damp, deeply remorseful regulars.

Lin Fan looked at the leader, who was now quietly composing an apology letter out loud to a merchant who almost certainly could not hear him and probably wouldn't accept the money back anyway out of sheer principle.

"Did I," Lin Fan asked slowly, staring at the kettle like it had betrayed him personally, "brew it wrong?"