One Saturday morning, Dave got off from a comfortable short nap, took out a piece of matcha cake from the fridge and sat down with a pot of tea behind the reception’s desk. It was still relatively early in the morning and only a few people checked out, so Dave had time to enjoy some early snacks.

 

Or, so he thought. When he was savoring a small bite of the matcha cake, he got a text on his cellphone. When he checked his phone, it was from someone named Amanda.

 

“Hey, Dave, what are you doing?”

 

Dave thought for a while, and then he remembered that Amanda was Caroline’s friend from the other day, when he went to do an exorcism for Caroline’s friend Stacy.

 

“I am just doing my shift at the inn. Why? Is Stacy Okay? ”

 

After a short while, before Dave could finish the next bite of the cake, another text from Amanda came: “Nothing serious, Stacy’s fine. Just wondering how you’re doing. I think I might have some questions about the paranormal. Do you have time to help me with it? We can talk it over coffee.”

 

Dave was a bit confused by this text, he had a gut feeling that something was going on and was implied in the texts, but he was not sure what it was. After thinking about it a little bit, Dave pulled up the numbers of Jianmen, Jason and Caroline, and was about to text them to ask about this weird gut feeling of his.

 

“Hi Dave, good morning.” just when Dave was about to send a text message, Jason’s younger brother Mack walked into the inn: “Is Mr. Yu here? Is my brother back yet?”

 

“No, it will take more time. I’ll be here for another week or so, then Mr. Yu may come back and take over the shifts.” Dave answered: “But I guess if you want to call them they might be able to answer.”

 

“Yeah, it’s fine. I’m just here to check on the inn and … maybe check on you.” Mack pretended to be casual and leaned on the reception’s desk: “How are you doing? You looked tense earlier, what happened? I can’t imagine someone immortal can even be tense.”

 

“Yeah, well, I’m not tense, I just got a strange message from a young human woman I helped the other day. I was doing Caroline a favor, but one of her friends contacted me, and seemed like she was just talking nonsense.” Dave scratched his head and said: “I’m not sure what this means. Can you help me?”

 

“Okay, what you got?”

 

“This.” Dave handed his phone to Mack: “I don’t know what’s happening, why is she asking me for coffee? I can’t make coffee! And there’s no coffee in the inn!”

 

“Dude, she’s flirting with you. She wants you to have coffee with her.” Mack scrolled through Dave’s text conversation with Amanda: “She likes you. Apparently quite a bit, girls don’t just ask you out for coffee like that.”

 

“Huh? Why would she like me? I barely know her and she barely knows me.” Dave appeared even more confused.

 

“Okay, how much do you know about romantic relationships between humans?” Mack asked.

 

“Oh, wow, is this what it is? Some kind of romantic proposition?” Dave appeared to have realized the insinuations from the text.

 

“Well, I’d take it that you don’t know anything about it?” Mack asked.

 

“Yeah. I’m … really not that into romance and human emotions.” Dave started typing on his phone: “Yeah I know just who she should talk to, Franco is the one with the interest in romance, maybe she could...”

 

“Wait wait wait, what are you doing?” Mack immediately slapped Dave’s hand and stopped him from sending a message recommending Amanda to connect with his friend named Franco: “No! She’s interested in you! You can’t replace you with Franco!”

 

“Why? I’m a Depth Dweller, he’s a Depth Dweller. I’m into small things in life in the human world. He’s into emotions and romance in the human world - we’re basically the same!” 

 

“Wow - okay - first of all - don’t you Depth Dwellers have romantic relationships?” Mac scratched his nose and asked: “And secondly - you said you are into the small things in human life, what does that even mean?”

 

“Well - it’s sort of a theme for us.” Dave proceeded to explain: “Well - we’re technically immortal, but if you think about it, we’re really not. We do go through the circles of life, minus the actually dying part, and when we reach the end of one cycle, our existence goes into the void, to be later reborn. Hence the name - Depth Dwellers.”

 

“Okay, that’s… what does that have to do with romance and your thing for little things?”

 

“Well - when we’re reborn, we carry all the knowledge and experience into the void, where the information is stored and secured. When we’re reborn, we sort of need to ‘download’ the information from the void and continue what we wanted to do in the last cycle.” Dave gently explained: “But, life gets really, really boring after just a few cycles. So we eventually started having our ‘thing’ - we just found something we can enjoy and we savor it in our cycles, and we held off downloading the memory for as long as possible. Each Depth Dwellers has a thing for a few cycles, then they may want to move on to another. For me, in this cycle, it’s the small things in life, like these delicious cakes, warm and fragrant tea, working at a minimum wage job, and so on. And I’d prefer if the things don’t have magic or any other kind of supernatural energy involved.”

 

“Wow, thank you.” Mack nodded and couldn’t help but express his gratitude: “So… I understand now. And your lack of knowledge and experience was because you haven’t downloaded the knowledge right?”

 

“Yeah - it’s hard to control what to download. ” Dave shook his head: “That kind of flow of information - even if I started downloading, I may not be able to find the knowledge and experience I need. And if I keep the flow open for too long, things will get really boring for me.”

 

“Understood. So you don’t know much about romance and human emotions. I guess it will suck for Amanda then.” Mack clicked his tongue to show his pity.

 

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