The second shower of the day was amazing.

Arthur had taken two showers on the same day before, but it had always been when he needed both. It was for utility. But this? This was raw hedonism. This was Caligula stuff. He swam in the water for a half hour, then used a small amount of soap, just for the pageantry of it. Just before he got out, he turned the water cold to stop himself from sweating. By the time he dried off with another huge, fresh towel, he felt fantastic.

Arthur chucked his nearly clean clothes onto hangers and put them into the closet. He wanted the full-fresh-clothes experience, but even in a free-energy, no-pollution world he felt kind of bad about sending almost completely clean clothes to be washed.

“There you are.” Mizu’s hair was still a bit wet, and she was in the more casual of her nonwork street clothes, just the sleeveless shirt and skirt Arthur knew as her standard doesn’t-know-what-the-day-might-hold outfit. “I thought you’d take longer.”

“It was mostly just for the feel of it,” Arthur said. “Like when you take a bite of something just to get a taste in your mouth.”

“I know what you mean.” Mizu offered Arthur her hand and smiled. “So, shall we?”

They strolled, In some ways, the capital was a lot like the city where Arthur and Mizu had met. There were businesses, busy streets, and a lot of people Arthur had never spoken to walking around taking care of business he barely understood. That in and of itself was a shock after spending so much time in a town where he knew literally everyone by name and most of them significantly better than that.

In some ways, it was very unlike the original city. The city had districts of a sort, but overall the edges of each different zone tended to blend into each other. In the capital, it seemed like every new street was a whole new environment. This street was restaurants and food carts. The next street was hotels, taverns, and inns. The street after that might have theaters, or residences, or even be the edge of a park.

“It’s so weird,” Arthur said. “I feel like I have choice paralysis. There are so many places I want to go that I can’t choose one.”

“We could see a show. Or buy you a new coat. I know you wanted one.”

“I really can’t decide. You do it.”

“No chance, Arthur Teamaster. What if I choose a place and we don’t have fun?” Mizu frowned. “I don’t want to be responsible for giving you a bad impression of a new place.”

“We’ll have fun. We could have fun sitting on a bench,” Arthur said.

“Doesn’t matter. It’s too much pressure. I have an idea, though.” She reached up and covered Arthur’s eyes. “I’m going to spin you around. When you feel ready, say stop.”

Mizu spun Arthur around, keeping his elbow in his hand while she span with him. After several turns of indecisiveness, Arthur decided randomness was better than dizziness and put a stop to it.

“Here,” Arthur said. “You can take your hand off.”

“Are you sure?” Mizu’s voice had laughter in it. “I could spin you around.”

“No, it’s fine. I made my choice. I’ll live with it.”

Mizu took her hand off. Arthur found himself staring down an alley he had overlooked before, at a small shop with a simple sign. It was the kind of place he would have walked past if he didn’t know it was there. Despite that, half the tables were full. People weren’t ignoring it, even if it would have been easy to.

“No way,” Arthur said. “You cheated somehow. There’s no way this is random.”

“It’s not random. It’s Arthur,” Mizu said. “We had considered that as the slogan for your campaign signs, but you were the only person in town who couldn’t run.”

At the top of the shop, was a simple wooden sign reading The Cup and Kettle, the words set to the side of a simple but elegant carving of a tea leaf.

—

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

The owner of the shop was standing at another customer’s table, having a friendly, quiet conversation. Arthur and Mizu sat down, and only waited a moment before a dog-demon boy just a year or two shy of having his own class walked up to their table.

“Welcome!” he said, brushing thick hair aside from over his eyes. He set a small plate of wafer-like cookies between Arthur and Mizu at the center of the table, then pulled a pad and pencil out of his apron. “Do you know what you’d like? I can help you with the menu if you don’t.”

“What do you have that’s medium-flavored? Spiced, if possible,” Arthur asked.

“Oh, plenty. Pepped, or unpepped?” the dog boy said.

“Mizu?”

“Pepped. We’re going to be walking around all evening. And it’s a while before dinner.”

“Hmm. If you don’t mind a recommendation, I’d try Evening Petals. It’s a house favorite.” The boy pointed up at the shop’s wall-mounted menu, which seemed to have a description of the blend but was just a bit too far for Arthur to actually read. “I like it, anyway. It gets you going.”

“Where do you get your blends?”

“Oh, dad makes them. He does a big trip every year to get tea and ingredients, then blends them himself. He’s been working on them since… well, forever. Mom complains that he spends too much time on it.” The boy realized he was probably talking too much and cut himself off. “It’s good, anyway.”

“We’ll take it. A pot for two people.”

The boy nodded and walked back behind the counter, filled a kettle, and put it over the heat. Arthur was surprised to see that they used a wood fire here. As far as he knew, there was no real reason to. The water was separated from the smoke by a thick layer of cast iron, so it wasn’t like it knew the difference. And wood fires, for all their good qualities, were harder to control. Magic heat was nothing if not even and consistent, and Arthur wondered what benefits they could possibly be getting from raw fire.

After a few minutes, the shop’s owner ducked behind the counter as well. The boy had everything ready to go, but the man checked all the measurements with a trained eye and sensitive hand before brewing the tea himself. Watching him, Arthur felt like he finally knew what he looked like when he watched water boil and judged the best moment to remove the leaves from the steeping process. It was a focused face, one that paid as much attention to each and every pot and cared about the quality of the tea that was set in front of the customer.

Arthur knew the tea was going to be good before it even arrived. As the shop’s owner went back to making his way through his small-talk rounds, the boy brought the teapot over and poured a cup for both Arthur and Mizu. Arthur held the cup under his nose and sniffed, breathing in as much of the powerful spice aroma as he could, before taking a sip of the still-scalding-hot-tea.

“Oh, careful, sir!” The boy started forward, then stopped when Arthur failed to wince or express pain. “Never mind, looks like you got it. Cook class?”

“Yup.” Arthur didn’t expand on that. There was no reason to blow his cover as a teamaster if it had even a small chance of ruining his and Mizu’s date. It certainly couldn’t have made the tea any better. The cup of tea he was drinking was about the best he had ever had. It blew his own brews away, so clearly superior that he wasn’t the least bit ashamed to admit it. He looked up at the shop’s teamaster, glad that he was at least a few decades older. Arthur had the benefit of plenty of time to perfect his class and catch up, which was great because there was a lot of catching up to do. The tea was, without exaggeration, perfect.

“Wow,” Mizu said. “I’ve had tea at shops in the city, but…”

“Yeah. This is a whole different class of thing.”

The tea Arthur made was a different animal than what a pure tea shop made. Between the boba, the cream, the sugared syrups and whatever accessory ingredients Arthur happened to be using, the quality of his tea was a much less load-bearing part of the entire recipe. His class was very specifically for making boba tea, which was both more specific in some ways and more general in others as compared to a basic, hot-tea brewing class. Even so, this was better.

“It’s better than your tea. The tea part, I mean,” Mizu said. “No offense. There’s this flavor in there that’s just great. I can’t place it.”

“No offense taken.” Arthur took another sip of the tea, activating Food Scientist and rolling the tea around on his tongue to get a better picture of how the blend was constructed. He almost immediately found the flavor Mizu was talking about. It was like a needle of flavor cutting faintly through the rest of the brew, distinct but not overpowering. He had been through enough flavors in his own research and development that he recognized it almost immediately. “That taste is Blister Root, I think. It’s hard to use. I haven’t been able to make it work myself. It’s always too strong.”

Across the room, the shop’s teamaster heard the word Blister Root and snapped his head up, his long, shaggy hair flying back as he did. “Treit, you just got boring. Someone just understood something about my tea.”

“Really? Don’t waste time here then. You were getting pretty dull yourself.” The customer reached for his pot of tea and refilled his glass. “Do give the wife my love, anyway. We can talk tomorrow.”

The teamaster nodded, clapped his friend on the shoulder, and hurried across the shop. Arthur shot an apologetic look at Mizu, who just smiled, shrugged, and went back to eating a cookie between sips of tea.

“Did you just say Blister Root? Are you an alchemist?” The teamaster put his hand on the teapot, flaring a bit of majicka as he did. “No, that’s Evening Petals. It’s the only blend I have that uses that herb. How’d you pin that down, son?”

“I have some skills for that kind of thing. I’m a cook class.”

“I believe it, but that’s not enough. That Blister Root is buried in that blend. You’re a teamaster, aren’t you? Here to steal my recipes. I know how it is.”