And then my mouth betrays me.
“Wait,” I say.
The word escapes before I can stop it. It echoes in the quiet, flour-dusted shop like a gunshot.
Tess’s head snaps up. Her eyes are lethal.
I have just broken Rule Number Two. In front of civilians.
“Leo,” she says, voice low and cold, a warning wrapped in a threat. “There’s nothing we can do.”
“I… I just…” I take a step forward, hands held up, palms dusted in flour. I am not looking at Tess. I am looking at the phone in Maya’s hand.
Because I know that cake.
I know that character.
I know that world.
“I know Aetheria Chronicles,” I say, my voice quiet but alive with something other than misery for the first time in four days. It’s awe. “My God. Is that supposed to be a Level Seven Shadow Weaver? That’s… that’s all wrong. Her mana-scepter is completely inaccurate. The crystal should be obsidian, not amethyst.”
Maya’s head whips up so fast I’m surprised she doesn’t get whiplash. Her tears stall mid-fall. Her eyes go wide with shock.
“You… you know Aetheria Chronicles?”
A rush hits me, the old me, pre-billionaire, pre-optimized existence. The part of me that read things because they mattered, not because they were useful.
“Know it?” I say, and my voice warms as if my body has been waiting for this. “My venture fund was an angel investor in the South Korean gaming studio that adapted it. I read all twenty-three of the original light novels, in the original fan-translated text files.” I can’t help it. I’m already in it. “The anime adaptation is fine, but it completely fails to capture the sociopolitical complexity of Lord Kael’s betrayal. And don’t get me started on the Moon Palace arc.”
Tess stares at me like I’ve just grown a second head.
Gwen pokes her head out of the prep room, expression pure baffled delight.
Maya, however, looks like she has just seen God.
“Oh. My. God,” she breathes. “That’s exactly what I said! The anime nerfed Kael! They turned him into a one-dimensional villain! And the Moon Palace arc? They cut out his entire redemption side-plot with the wolf-spirit! It’s criminal!”
“Right?” I say, stepping forward, broom forgotten, because suddenly the bakery is not my isolation cell.
Suddenly, it’s a room with another living human being who understands this particular obsession.
“It’s lazy writing,” I say, heat rushing into my voice. “They wanted a simple bad guy for the season finale, and they sacrificed the entire emotional core of the narrative to do it.”
“He’s not a bad guy,” Maya says, practically vibrating now, tears completely gone. “He’s an anti-hero. His motivations are complex.”
“It’s the classic utilitarian dilemma,” I say, gesturing wildly with my flour-dusted hands, because apparently, I have decided to die on this hill. “His betrayal saved millions. But the anime just ignores that. And that scepter…”
I lean closer to the photo on her phone.
“That’s the anime scepter,” I say. “It’s purple.”
I straighten, appalled all over again by the artistic crime.
“It’s wrong.”
Maya’s mom looks back and forth between her suddenly radiant, animated daughter and me, this giant, dusty, intensely opinionated nerd in a bakery. Then she looks at Tess.
Her eyes are pleading. “Please?”
