It wasn’t the best tea he’d ever had, not even close. That’s probably because it wasn’t even tea— the coffee had a sharply bitter sort of taste, burnt, heavy on his tongue with a black flavor to it that outstripped all but the bitterest teas he’d tried. He could feel the subtle thickness of it, from the cream and touch of grounds remnant, a subtle viscosity ever so slightly off-putting. He didn’t like it.

  He drank it anyway, though. His new boss had gotten it for him as a gift, and he knew enough about that sort of thing to be aware that throwing it out or destroying it in a conflagration of burning sunlight would’ve been considered pretty rude, probably. So, he leaned against the wall and sipped the drink in its brown paper cup, and watched the sun rise over the small city park just out in front of the library.

  The chief librarian sipped at her own drink, deeply. “A good morning, no? Janus is running a bit late.”

  He turned to the edge of it, the park— sunlight streaming over the tops of trees and lighting them aglow beneath gentle radiance. It touched some part of him— his mind, his domain… “It’s alright.” He’d seen better sunrises. He’d engineered better sunrises… but there was, he allowed, something just a little special to living in it instead of outside of it. “I’d rate it a six out of ten with allowances for novelty?”

  She cocked her head, squinting at him. “Who rates sunrises?” She shook her head. “Nevermind.” She chuckled. “I get the idea. Hm… I’d rate this one a… seven, or eight out of ten? It’s always the red sunrises that look the best over East Saffron, big surprise.” He just nodded, taking another sip on his drink, trying for a moment to understand the so-foreign perspective of someone who’d spend their entire life in a single city, more or less. “I see you’re the quiet type,” she spoke after a while. “That’s good. I like that sort. Hopefully you’re just as efficient too.”

  He just nodded, once, and didn’t speak. She didn’t continue the conversation either, and for a long moment, the two of them just sat together in perfect quietude. It was an oddly peaceful feeling, to lean against the cool-brick wall, cool breeze ruffling, mortal perception…

  “Lexi! Sorry, I didn’t mean to be late but Aimi made a mess and I had to help—” he paused, choking on air. “You got someone coffee? Are you… have you…” he gulped. “Have you finally started dating someone?”

  The chief librarian— Lexi— scowled furiously. “Of course your mouth runs away from you again. I should have expected as much… Hei Janus, meet Leng Mingtian, your new coworker.” She stressed the last word just a little more than was probably necessary. “You two will be working together from now on, but maybe it’d be for the best for you to show him around?”

  “Oh, um—”

  “And I’m glad I got two coffees for myself.” She grabbed the cup she’d definitely gotten for Janus— and then with a firm about face, stalked into the building, leaving the two of them standing awkwardly together out front.

  The slender man glanced at the library, then over to Mingtian, a faint blush burning at his cheeks. “Sorry about that. I should’ve known that Lexi would never have gotten a date…” he shook his head, blush redoubling. “Anyways. Welcome to the Library, I guess? Well, technically, the 32nd Library of East Saffron, but nobody cares. Sometimes you’ll see kids calling it the Precinct Library, which is also technically true, but…” he shrugged. “It’s not really our job to police what they’re calling the place, much as I’d wish they’d just pick one thing and settle on it.”

  He pushed open the doors, momentarily holding them open for Mingtian to slip in after him. He’d seen it before, when he’d come for the job interview in the first place, but in the morning light it looked… different, just a little. Dusty sunlight caught off rows on rows of bookshelves, a worn carpet and hanging drapes muffling the sound of their footsteps as Janus led him to a small seating area off to the side. They stopped in front of a few dilapidated looking tables— which had clearly seen better days, and yet for all of that, in the way they shone and the solidity of their make, spoke the story of how well they’d been cared for.

  Janus pulled out two chairs, sliding one over to him and collapsing onto his own. “We’ve got an hour or so until we open, so I can at least give you the rundown. That, and Lexi will rip me to shreds if you can’t at least help out on your very first day, the damn taskmaster…” he sighed. “It’s not hard. You understand the sorting algorithm, right?”

  “Of course.” He’d been kicked out of one too many interviews for not. That wasn’t a lesson he’d likely forget soon. “I know all the common sorting systems.”

  “Great! Well, forget about those, we do it differently here.” He even managed to hold a blank face for a moment before cracking up. “Immortals above, you looked so stricken then— no, don’t worry, we follow all the usual methods. We’re not some secret sect or anything, though we do keep the textbooks separate from the other stuff because of how often the students come in. Just remember that they’re not allowed to borrow the books with the red sticker on them— those are to be kept in the library. And absolutely no food allowed— I’m pretty sure whatever crazy power Lexi picked up in Shedding allows her to tell if someone brings food into the library from a thousand miles away.”

  Mingtian glanced down at his coffee, back up at Janus, then down at his coffee again. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  “Your funeral.” He sighed. “Well… this is the reading room. The front reading room— there’s the other one in the back of the stacks which is pretty popular with the more studious kids, and then that other one on the second floor that only the social recluses like.” He stood, stepping into the bookshelves, careful not to knock into anything. “Fiction works are up here in the front, children’s literature to the left, sciences in the back and on the second floor, textbooks in the back back, next to that second reading room, and cultivation texts are in Lexi’s office.” He pouted. “I can’t believe that I’m not allowed to even look at those. I swear, the system’s so archaic…”

  Mingtian raised an eyebrow. “You’d definitely start cultivating if you had a manual, wouldn’t you?” He’d stated it as a pretty leading question, but it was an actual question, far more than Janus probably realized. Their society was so different from the sects and peasantry of his past, and he wasn’t even totally sure how it organized itself. Lexi, for example— she certainly wasn’t an outer disciple of the local sect or anything, but she’d still, somehow, gotten access to a cultivation manual. Except Janus hadn’t? It was weird.

  The slender man just sighed, grimacing. “You’ve got me there. I mean, though— who doesn’t want to be a cultivator. Vast celestial power! Immortality! Anything a man could ever want at the tip of their fingers… it’d be a dream come true to even reach shedding, but I don’t think I’ll even get there.”

  He shrugged, gently spreading out his spiritual sense as they walked, getting an impression of the books as they passed. “Not my dream.” It was even the truth. He’d already achieved all of that, and had enough presence of mind to know it wasn’t quite as awesome as advertised. “I just want to be a librarian.” They had an almost comforting aura, the ranks on ranks of tomes, most of them old enough to have absorbed an impression of the hundreds, thousands of mortals who’d read them. Veiled as he was, it was all he was able to get from them in the brief glance as they passed.

  “Really?” Janus looked… skeptical. “Not even for the extra lifespan?”

  A good point, he supposed, pausing in his inspection of the library around them to consider it. The idea of a finite lifespan was so… foreign to him. He couldn’t even die when he was killed, so… he supposed his perspective was a bit too far removed to truly understand the mortal’s plight.

  Then, again… “what’s even the difference? Immortals aren’t gods. For every step they advance, there’s always some other immortal there, some other resource— holding them back from true liberation. We can only find that in sidestepping the problem entirely.” That, at least, he remembered clearly— the endless rat-race, in which he’d only found release in his pursuit of immortal smithing and formations-work.

  Janus just hummed for a second, nodding his head. “That’s a pretty interesting way of thinking about it.” For a moment, silence… “did you know any of them? Like actually know one of them. A cultivator.”

  Mingtian didn’t respond for a long moment, thinking through how to respond to that, before he simply nodded. “A brief acquaintance.”

  “I’ll take your word for it then.” Finally, they stepped into the back reading room, shoved between bookshelves at the very back of the building, sunlight streaming through narrow windows looking out on a brief little patch of greenery and a wide road beyond it. “The students like it here because it’s a lot closer to the academy. That building—” he pointed outside the window, at a significantly larger complex across the road, bordered by a chain-link fence utterly incongruous with its stately, antiquated architecture— “there, our very own 32nd precinct’s Preparatory Academy.” He smiled fondly. “I actually graduated from there almost a decade ago. Upper middle of my class, so I didn’t even get to go to the university, but still— for this precinct, and for how much of a hassle I was as a kid? I’m proud of those scores.”

  “I take it the 32nd Precinct is not the most… affluent of the precincts, then?”

  Janus gave him a confused look, and Mingtian belatedly realized that— yes, obviously. He should’ve known that already. “Where are you from, even? Lexi didn’t mention that.”

  “Outside.” He paused, then elaborated— “not outside the Precinct; from outside the city.”

  “Oh! That’s cool! Ca Cao provincial?”

  “Mainland, actually.”

  “That’s even cooler! I’ve heard so many things about the mainland, you’ve gotta tell me about it at some point.” Given that he was lying through his teeth about that, he’d really have to do some research if he didn’t want to be caught flatfooted. “Don’t worry about it, too— I also moved to East Saffron as a kid, so I totally get being a bit bewildered by all the city’s idiosyncrasies.”

  Oh? Interesting. “From where?”

  Janus scowled at that. Actually, angrily scowled. “From Beixian Port. Imperial bastards…” he shook his head, muttering something under his breath that was probably profane. “Sorry. I don’t like to think about that. We got out before the worst, but still… it doesn’t bring up good memories.”

  Mingtian nodded in understanding, not understanding at all. Another thing to look into in the future, this Beixian Port. Maybe he’d pay it a visit in his off time.

  “Anyways. Enough about that grim topic… just make sure the kids aren’t eating snacks in here— they like to come on their lunch break, but no matter how much they try and sneak it, food is absolutely not allowed in the library.” He glanced again at the cup of coffee in his hands, very, very meaningfully, and Mingtian kinda got the point. “The upstairs is pretty much the same, and the third floor’s just office space. Though—” he grinned for a second— “you do get an office. One of the very few perks of the job. I’ll leave you to it?”

  “If you must.”

  Janus squinted at him for a moment, then just shrugged. “Alright? Bye then? I’ll see you around.” And with that— amongst the towering bookshelves and sunlight, touched against his domain, and hanging with their streaming brilliance, shafts of light, so many little motes of dust… he was alone.

  Typical.

  My favorite kind of tea, coffee.

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