“What a disaster,” Tom muttered as he stared at the cake on the table before him.

Shift was over, and Xiaoye had decided to pay Inna, the moh shuvuu currently living with Lucas under witness protection, a visit. It was quite convenient for her, since the Heng Heng Waffles Café, which was run by Lucas’s wife Ella who in turn was Tom’s younger sister, was right next door to the Kyubi Herbal Remedies.

Apparently, Ella had convinced her husband and her brother that they should try and teach Inna how to make pastries during her stay with them, with the Hengs doing the teaching while Tom acts as the ‘poison-taster’, but the moh shuvuu’s first attempt at baking a simple chocolate fruit cake has resulted in what could best be described as a confectionary version of Chernobyl’s Elephant's Foot.

In fact, Tom was not the only one staring at the cake in dismay. Rendal Zhao, the buzzcut-wearing K-9 officer of Shades’s Third Shift and half-elf cousin of Tom and Ella, was also looking disappointed and slightly disgusted.

“God, it looks like someone’s buttocks getting melted,” he complained.

“And it’s so soggy, like lao sai,” Tom added.

“S-Shut up! Don’t insult my hard work! If you don’t eat it, I’ll eat your e-e-eyeballs!” Inna shrieked at them, with Lucas hold the moh shuvuu back as she swiped at the air in front of the cousins with her little arms.

“Now, now, aren’t you two being too harsh with her? It might look hackit, but who knows? It might actually taste good,” Xiaoye commented as she sliced a piece of the cake Inna had made.

“See, the cambion’s nicer than you two, and she tried to arrest me for nearly eating her partner a few week ago,” Inna chirped confidently, but then Xiaoye felt an overwhelming bitterness mixed with rotting durian within her mouth right before she bent over and spat the contents into the bin.

“Hell’s bells, I think I just got exorcised,” she exclaimed while coughing.

“Told you it was bad!” Rendal and Tom said at the same time.

“You meanies!”

“Tom, Rendal, are you two bullying Inna?”

The two cousins immediately sat up straight with nervous looks on their faces as a Chinese woman with long hair held in a barrette walked down the stairs. It was Ella Heng, and until three years ago, she was considered the most beautiful person in the whole of Singapore, until she and Lucas were caught in an explosion from the same terrorist attack that had injured Xiaoye. Ella, who was pregnant at that time, lost both her unborn child and half her sight: Her face, which won her the title of Miss Singapore 2057, was now marred by a burn scar across her right eye which she hides under bandages. But insult her looks in front of the three men currently in the café with Xiaoye and one can expect to wake up in a hospital’s Intensive Care Unit.

“Hi, sis, didn’t know you were upstairs,” Tom greeted.

“Some uncles you two are, teasing your foster niece like that. You should appreciate that she tried to make something nice for you,” Ella chided her brother and cousin gently while taking Inna from her husband.

“Foster niece? Lucas, Ella, you two are really adopting her?” Xiaoye asked.

“Yes. It seems she has always been wandering around after becoming a moh shuvuu. No place to call home, no belongings to cherish, so Ella decided she will live with us permanently,” Lucas replied.

“Seriously, this is supposed to make me warm and fuzzy inside, but the way you say it just gives me the creeps,” Rendal said which caused Tom to groan in dismay.

“Dude, seriously? You know he can barely feel emotions, right?”

“It doesn’t really matter, does it?” Lucas said, his voice ever monotonous as he handed Xiaoye a glass of soda which had been cooled by his freezing touch, at which point Xiaoye noticed that a new scar had formed on the Nobody’s hands.

“You overused your powers again?” she asked, concerned since Lucas’s hands were already badly scarred from frostbite, the backlash of overuse or pushing his abilities too far.

“Minor incident with a rampaging minotaur from two weeks ago, had to flash-freeze one of his legs solid to stop him,” Lucas replied nonchalantly.

“You really got to watch yourself, Lucas. You might end up losing your hands if you keep flash-freezing instead of slow freezing.”

“Seriously, I know you’ve been like this for the last three years, but it’s still weird as fuck seeing your powers,” Tom said.

“Yeah, it’s like the hand of Midas, except instead of tuning things gold, you freeze them solid,” Rendal added.

“It is pretty useful,” Lucas retorted as he turned to attend to the fridge.

“Yeah, it’s much more useful than your slandering mouths,” Inna added.

“Seriously, I need to keep reminding myself that this toddler-sized ten-year-old is freaking ten times older than she looks so that I won’t hesitate to whack her over the head,” Tom retorted.

“Ha! That means I’m your senior and you have to listen to me!”

“Yes, grandma…”

“Little granny nags too much…”

“Okay, that’s it! I’m really going to eat your eyeballs!” Inna shrieked again as she started swiping uselessly at the cousins, who merely fist-bumped each other at having played the moh shuvuu’s words back against her while Xiaoye struggled not to laugh.

“Goodness, you’re both so nasty towards her! I thought she was with us because of witness protection?” Ella asked as she consoled Inna, who folded her arms and pouted.

“Yup, and we live in a neighbourhood where your neighbours include various types of vampires, therianthropes, a clan of gargoyles, migrant Japanese yōkai, Xiaoye herself, a bunch of undead and families of langsuirs and pontianaks in the jungles behind the shophouses… Anyone trying to attack Inna here is probably suicidal.”

“Good thing our shophouses are along the main road. Alex and the others at the butt-end shophouses have been complaining about the pontianaks’ karaoke sessions the last few nights, screaming in the jungles and chasing wild animals despite the langsuirs’ warnings.”

“Actually, I did ask them what was happening, why they were making so much noise in the jungles recently. Guess what the matriarch langsuir told me? Illegal immigrants trying to chop down their banana trees,” Xiaoye explained.

“Not again… I thought those idiots would have figured out by now that you can only get bananas from a local plantation that’s not haunted. Where are they from?”

“She didn’t say. Just that their guts were yummy.”

“No wonder the CID have been pulling disembowelled corpses from the jungles lately,” Rendal muttered.

“Wow, that’s a mood killer. I’m done. Going back to my room, I need to catch up with Deadeye Dhampir’s latest episodes.”

“Shit, Tom, you watch that crappy western?”

“Hey, it’s one of the few American shows without any woke shit in it. Well-written LGBT characters, no unnecessary race-swapping and unbiased opinions about social problems. Now that’s how you write social justice into fiction, not suffocate your audience with self-righteous hypocrisy.”

“He really hates the woke, eh?” Rendal commented as Tom went upstairs with Inna following for some reason.

“So do I. No true social justice warrior would agree with the ideology of the Cult of Woke,” Xiaoye replied, “Hell, I’ve got a funny story from the past: I had this friend, Chinese like myself but an orphan, adopted and raised by an Afro-Scottish family. I think it was during our second year in university. His foster siblings were sporting two strands of dreadlocks each and he wasn’t, and they insisted on braiding one for him despite his worries about being seen as a racist. This American exchange student saw it, took offense and started harassing him, accusing him of appropriating his people’s culture and shit like that.”

“Yeah, dreadlocks are part of their culture. Black students in America had a history of being singled out by teachers for having that kind of hair.”

“Aye, but this one was different. It wasn’t a Chinese trying to copy a style, it was three black siblings not wanting their adopted Chinese brother to feel left out. They were pretty much about to throw hands at that American to defend my friend but I stopped them. Then I told that roaster that we’ll remove my friend’s single stand of dreadlock, but in return, he must remove the tattoo of Guan Yu on his arm, because he was appropriating a Chinese hero and war god as some kind of body art bragging right. Mr I-Am-Offended quickly realized he’s been hoisted by his own petard, mumbled an apology and left as fast as he could.”

“So he kept the tattoo?”

“Nah, my friend has already convinced his foster siblings to remove his dreadlock, so the American got his tattoo scrubbed off since he didn’t want to be a hypocrite.”

“That was pretty dumb of him. He should have checked himself before making that accusation,” Rendal commented.

“At least we don’t have this kind of problem in Singapore. Singaporeans are encouraged to share their racial cultures to build up understanding and trust. This whole cultural appropriation thing in the western countries, though, I don’t think they’re handling it correctly,” Ella added.

“Maybe if they share more and accuse less, they would have solved that particular problem years ago. It’s 2065 and we’re still getting news about this kind of shit from the West. Remember last year when one of our Caucasian locals got accused on social media by Westerners of appropriating Chinese wedding customs? And then it turns out she was getting married into a Chinese family and the groom’s parents were the ones who wanted a Chinese wedding first? Seventeen roasters lost their jobs because they failed to fact-check and got sued for slander,” Xiaoye said with a laugh.

“Yeah, the groom’s family are trillionaires and own a hell lot of companies, including three of the biggest clothing and beverage brands in the States, so I heard. The lawsuit nearly bankrupted one of the biggest social media networks on the Internet.”

“Enough about such things. Xiaoye, your room-mate Felipe, he and his partner still can’t get legally married in Singapore, remember?” Lucas said.

“Aye, that’s true…”

“Singapore has only achieved ninety percent social justice. When we achieve a hundred percent, then we can criticize others about their woke policies, otherwise they'll just pull the gays-can't-marry-in-your-country card on us every time we talk common sense,” Lucas continued emotionlessly as he carefull positioned a delicious-looking salmon steak seasoned with salt, pepper and onion slices on a plate, followed by a side of scrambled eggs and sauteed button mushrooms.

“Oh, hubby, that both looks and smells good! How did you come up with that? We can add this to our current menu,” Ella exclaimed as she stared at Lucas’s creation.

“I just used what’s in the fridge,” Lucas replied.

“You are a cooking genius when you’re not out there chasing down bad guys,” Ella said to her husband before kissing him on the cheek, to which Lucas showed absolutely no reaction, drawing a sigh from Rendal.

“You know, Tom and I had been trying to revert Lucas from his Accursed status ever since he became a Nobody,” the half-elf said to Xiaoye as Lucas watched his wife fuss over the meal he had just cooked, the two almost having forgotten about their guests.

“Yeah, I miss him back during our academy days. Tom was the grouchy guy who hides his emotions, and Lucas was the clown of the group. Always joking around, having fun, warm and kind-hearted, also the bravest among us. He was the ideal police officer. Now Tom had to be the one openly showing emotions to keep his sister from getting depressed while the only expression Lucas can show is a slight frown…” Xiaoye replied wistfully as she recalled her training days with Lucas, Tom and Rendal, along with a few others that formed the clique.

“How long does it take for a Nobody to revert back to a normal human?”

“The most recent Nobody to be reverted back to a normal human was five years ago, way before Lucas became one himself. It took that Nobody’s family almost six years to finally defrost him. We got lucky with Lucas. He’s too kind-hearted, which helped prevent him from going full psychopath after his transformation, otherwise we’ll have another Jack the Ripper on our hands.”

Rendal became silent upon hearing it, shaking his head as he got up from his seat.

“I want my best friend back, man. Tom wants him to make Ella smile for real once more. Even a small smile is enough,” he said softly, a contrast to his usual brash personality

“I know what you mean, Rendal… I want him back too. The real him, not this… This shell.”

“Ajibade’s helping us out with it. He knows Lucas as well as us, and he’s always been a voice of reason. Here’s hoping he can do what we can’t.”

“Aye, I’ll drink to that,” Xiaoye replied as she raised her glass of soda at Rendal, the half-elf nodding in response as the two turned their gaze back on Lucas and Ella…