FPE Chapter 42

The Adorable Creature Restaurant

“Today is August 4th on the solar calendar — and also the Qixi Festival on the lunar calendar.”

Meng Le nervously squeezed her palm. She looked down at her phone screen, where the park’s post from last night was displayed — a short line of text accompanied by images.

vFantasy Amusement Park: First Look at the Dwarf Elf Restaurant!

The accompanying photos showed the completed restaurant at night.

First photo: Beneath a tranquil night sky, two clusters of lush, upright needle palms were separated by a wide cobblestone path. At the end of that path, half-hidden behind a canopy of verdant trees, stood a three-story building. Through its large glass windows, warm-toned light fell softly over oval dining tables, the atmosphere cozy and inviting.

Second photo: Taken from another angle, a cluster of blurred roses occupied one corner of the frame, while the camera’s focal point was the kitchen — a glass greenhouse-like space, perfectly square and constructed entirely of glass. The stove, cookware, and cabinets were all clean and orderly, and freshly washed vegetables had been casually set on the marble countertop, water droplets still faintly visible on the leaves.

Third photo: A corner of the restaurant’s cashier counter, where a menu stand sat atop a coffee-brown surface, bearing the words: Welcome to the Dwarf Elf Restaurant!

In the upper-left corner of the counter hung a charmingly fierce little label — the logo she had designed for Fantasy Amusement Park.

Three simple photos, and Meng Le had already looked at them dozens of times back and forth, so delighted she didn’t know what to do with herself.

After all, this was the first time in her life that she had seen an independently designed work of hers brought to life as a real building. The excitement, pride, and joy she felt were beyond words.

At this moment, she had completely stopped caring about the park’s utterly astonishing feat of constructing and perfectly furnishing a three-story building in two days. Her mind was filled with only one thought: get there in person and see her work with her own eyes.

Ding. The bus arrived at the stop.

The moment the doors opened, Meng Le swept off the bus like a gust of wind and arrived at the park entrance.

The snack stalls and open-air food stands near the park had already begun to open for the day. She waved at the ticketing staff inside the smart iron gate. “Chen Hui, open the gate for me.”

Chen Hui blinked. “Xiao Meng? Why are you here so early? It’s only seven-thirty!”

Meng Le suppressed her excitement. “I want to go take a look at the restaurant early.”

Chen Hui smiled in understanding and opened the gate. “Go ahead!”

Watching Meng Le charge in without a backward glance, Chen Hui turned to her colleague and said, “I heard the boss specially hired a really impressive head chef. They’re coming in at eight. Starting tomorrow, there’ll be dedicated employee meals for us too — we’re really in for a treat from now on.”

Her colleague looked puzzled. “The boss is in the park all day and never goes out. When did he find the time to hire a chef?”

Chen Hui found it strange too, but what did it have to do with small staff like them? The two wondered briefly, then quickly set it aside and focused on preparing for the park’s opening.

Meanwhile, Meng Le had already made it to the restaurant.

Seeing it in person stirred something entirely different from looking at photos. She ran up and down, back and forth, snapping dozens of pictures on her phone, overwhelmed with happiness.

Then she wandered into the kitchen — and discovered something utterly baffling.

The kitchen countertops were at least several dozen centimeters lower than what her blueprints specified. This was a major error!

Meng Le hurriedly called the boss.

“Ah, those countertops,” he said. “I modified the measurements myself after I received the blueprints.”

Meng Le: ……

Her brow furrowed involuntarily. The dimensions she had specified were the most ergonomically comfortable for the human body — standard measurements suited to a normal person’s height and build, as long as the chef wasn’t a dwarf. “Boss, why didn’t you… discuss it with me first?”

The boss’s tone was entirely matter-of-fact. “It was quite late at the time. Besides, I felt the dimensions I changed to were the correct ones.”

Meng Le: ……

She never could have imagined the disaster would be hiding right here.

She pressed her hands over her face in agony, already picturing the scene of the chefs staging a collective strike to protest cervical and shoulder injuries.

Fine. At least the restaurant had been built perfectly. At least there wouldn’t be guest complaints — not for the time being.

With that little episode behind her, Meng Le’s mood calmed considerably, and she mentally prepared herself to step forward and take the blame once the chefs started complaining. What could she do? Such was the lot of a miserable wage worker.

****

At eight o’clock, the park opened on schedule.

Auntie Liu, who had by now become one of the park’s most devoted regulars, arrived as usual with her four children to buy tickets and enter.

It had to be said — ever since she discovered Fantasy Amusement Park, Auntie Liu’s burden of childcare had been cut by more than half. Before, she had spent every day running circles around four children, her life stretching out in an endless, exhausting line from morning to night. She had been worn to the bone, her temper growing shorter by the day, her whole person dull and lifeless. But ever since she started coming to Fantasy Amusement Park, a hundred yuan could keep all four children occupied in the children’s area for an entire day, while she went off to relax with the new friends she’d made. After some time, she felt like a different person altogether — even her grey hairs seemed to be growing in more slowly than before.

And so, no sooner had she joined the queue today than an old friend called out to her from behind. The two of them had already arranged to head to Jasmine Town today and try their luck against the three-headed serpent, when the ticketing machine in front of her gave a cheerful ding and produced her ticket.

[Melancholic Female Warrior, your Merit Points are 30, your Merit Leaderboard ranking is 3,108. This is your seventh ticket purchase. Please keep your ticket — you are eligible to participate in the lucky draw upon entering the park.]

“Wow, Melancholic Female Warrior!”

Visitors in adjacent queues turned to look, and upon discovering it was a white-haired elderly auntie, they all broke into warm, good-natured laughter. Someone called out, “Not bad, Grandma — young at heart!”

Auntie Liu was a little surprised herself. In her previous visits, her nickname hadn’t been displayed or announced at the ticketing stage. But just now, as she waited to buy her ticket, she had listened to the occasional announcements ringing out from the neighboring queues and watched the young people with their bright, lively energy — and she had suddenly wished, just once, for her own name to be announced. After all, she wasn’t getting any younger, and many things, if not done now, might never get done. She had even been thinking about asking the ticketing staff to manually set it up for her — and then the machine had simply done it on its own.

The old friend behind her laughed at her. “Didn’t you know? My daughter says this machine can read minds — it knows what you’re thinking!”

This was just a joke the younger generation liked to make, but Auntie Liu, unfamiliar with modern technology, took it at face value. She marveled aloud, “Now that really is impressive! My niece writes web novels for a living, and she’s always complaining that her fingers can’t keep up with her brain. If she had a machine like this, she wouldn’t have to sit in front of a computer getting irradiated all day — she could just lie in bed, think it all up in her head, and the work would be done. No more worrying about her eyesight either.”

Her friend agreed wholeheartedly. “Who wouldn’t want that? Though something like this must be terribly expensive — high technology and all. Ordinary people couldn’t afford it.”

Auntie Liu bought her ticket and entered the park. The overhead broadcast continued on a loop: [Dear guests, starting at 11 o’clock today, the Dwarf Elf Restaurant will officially open for business. The restaurant offers a wide variety of fresh, nutritious meals… The Dwarf Elf Kitchen is open for viewing; guests may enter by scanning their ticket…]

Auntie Liu wasn’t one to browse the internet, but she had heard through word of mouth that the park was opening a restaurant. Beyond finding it more convenient than before, she didn’t have much of an opinion — but her friend remarked, “A park that actually lets guests tour the kitchen? That’s a real guarantee of quality ingredients and hygiene!”

Auntie Liu nodded in agreement. “Makes lunch a lot easier for us.”

The vast majority of visitors that morning shared Auntie Liu’s outlook. They had queued up early to enter, most of them headed to the combat zones to fight monsters and build up their Merit Values, with a sizable portion being families with children, and a small remaining group coming simply to rest and do their morning exercises by the Purple Lake. In most people’s minds, what was there to tour about a restaurant? They’d swing by for a quick look at lunchtime — that was plenty.

Xiao Zhou, however, was an exception.

He was among the first streamers to have live-streamed Fantasy Amusement Park, and with a decent appearance and a pleasant voice to boot, he had successfully broken through to a wider audience on the back of the park’s popularity. He now worked as a full-time park streamer, earning generous tips every day by broadcasting the various magic beasts in the Magic Beast Viewing Corridor and capturing the comic misadventures of visitors in the monster-fighting areas.

Having followed Fantasy Amusement Park from shortly after its opening right up to the present, he had great faith in the place. He was convinced that the Dwarf Elf Kitchen — which the park had specifically broadcast announcements about, inviting guests to come and visit — must be hiding some kind of surprise. So the moment he went live today, he told his online audience of cloud-visitors that he was heading to tour the Dwarf Elf Kitchen.

The cloud-visitors, naturally, were happy to follow wherever the streamer led.

Xiao Zhou and his friend set off with their streaming equipment. A new signpost had been installed inside the park, indicating the direction of the Dwarf Elf Restaurant.

Following the signs, they discovered the Dwarf Elf Restaurant sat on the eastern side of the Purple Lake. Its expansive floor-to-ceiling glass windows faced the lake’s scenery directly, and before they had even reached it, Xiao Zhou exclaimed, “Eating there must feel amazing!”

Pressing on, they found there were two paths leading toward the restaurant — one that went straight in through the main entrance, and another that looped around the back before arriving at the front door. The latter featured a wide wooden corridor, along which carefully carved decorative patterns were softened by trailing vines of fresh green pothos. The whole thing was built with great elegance — clearly this was the kitchen viewing passage.

Xiao Zhou grinned at his friend. “This setup — it’s a bit like the Magic Beast Viewing Corridor, isn’t it!”

Through the camera, his cloud-viewers could also see the glass wall running alongside the wooden corridor. While everyone was exclaiming over Fantasy Amusement Park’s apparent wealth — even a simple wooden corridor built this beautifully — a strange comment drifted across the barrage:

“Has anyone noticed — that white thing inside the glass room… what is it?”

Once that comment appeared, a flood of similar ones followed.

“I was just about to say — something white walked past! Oh wow, there it is again! And it’s rummaging around in the fridge!”

“Is that a cat?”

“What cat is that big? Has to be a dog. Pretty clean coat though.”

“Holy sh—, is Fantasy Amusement Park going to get exposed on its very first day? A dog that huge rummaging through the kitchen ingredients, and nobody’s stopping it?! Don’t tell me those same ingredients are going to end up on customers’ plates.”

By this point Xiao Zhou had also spotted the animal rummaging in the fridge. Worried about the park’s image, he quickly explained, “I don’t see any staff in the kitchen — the dog probably slipped in while nobody was looking. We’ll report it to the park right now—”

The rest of his sentence caught in his throat.

Because he saw, emerging from a blind spot at the edge of his vision, two more fuzzy little creatures — one carrying a basin, one lugging vegetables.

Ignoring Xiao Zhou and the others filming outside the glass wall, they walked straight up to the preparation counter and got to work: one washing vegetables, one cutting them, the two working in seamless coordination. The grey fuzzy one on the left passed a freshly washed radish over to the orange fuzzy one on the right, who extended a paw — sharp claws flashing with a cold glint — and swish swish swish, the radish was cut into uniform little pieces in seconds.

Meanwhile, the “dog” that had been rummaging through the fridge stood upright, balancing a basin of meat on its fuzzy paws. It extended its own sharp claws — swish swish swish — and chunks of meat flew one by one into the pot. The whole process was… utterly fantastical, like something out of a fairy tale.

Xiao Zhou and his companions stood with their mouths hanging open without realizing it.

The live stream’s comment section went dead silent, as though it had been wiped clean.

Inside the glass kitchen, the hardworking dwarven elves had of course noticed the frozen humans standing outside.

Their fuzzy little mouths moved as they began to confer among themselves.

“Those humans — what are they staring at us for?”

“Probably starving, I’d guess. Poor things.”

“Look at those soft delicate faces — they don’t look like refugees to me!”

“Could they be supervisors sent by the park owner?”

“Why are there more and more of them? Absolutely ridiculous!”

“Exactly! We dwarven elves — are we really the sort of race that wastes food?”

The dwarven elves grew indignant, the curled ears atop their heads bristling upright with full force.

“Brothers and sisters — show them what we’re made of! We absolutely cannot let them look down on us!”

The fuzzy creatures flexed their claws and threw themselves into their work with twelve times the effort!

Since the ingredients here were unlike anything they had ever handled before, the dwarven elves had, in the course of washing them, inevitably tasted a bite or two and exchanged notes with their companions in order to assess the flavors.

From where Xiao Zhou and the others stood watching…

“One of the fuzzies is sneaking tastes!”

“Uwaaah, so cute…”