LinMeili

This is an extra which means it's not canon, but I think it's fun. The Brew Crew Café job is the one Uriel and Sariel set up for Asteria in order for her to have a job when she first arrived at Kraej City. Klara is a new POV character.

Klara

She’s a devil, that’s what she is.

She looks like an innocent little lamb with fluffy hair and big, soulful eyes, but she’s no naive girl child from the countryside.

I know she’s having an affair with two of the most dangerous men in Kraej City, probably the world. There’s gonna be bloody murder when they find out that they’ve both been played for a fool by this slip of a girl.

I should have known right away that there was something fishy going on.

I mean, a book café in East Thuesen? That’s like selling non-alcoholic beer to gangsters. Most people here probably haven’t even heard of coffee. The beans are imported from the Locketerre Isles, and one cup costs more than a week’s pay for most of the people here. I thought that at least the books might sell, but that was before I saw them. There’s no one here who would buy outrageously expensive art books.

That’s just too bad because I like it here at the Brew Crew Café. Due to the lack of customers, I have very little work to do, but I still get paid twenty-five credits an hour.

She comes in here to “work” whenever she wants to, which is not a lot. She spends the time leafing through the books and drinking coffee. Her name is Asteria and she’s friendly enough.

When the staffing agency hired me, they clued me in that there would be a special part-time employee who was allowed to set her own schedule. She would help out with whatever she wanted to, which, I was given to understand, meant I wasn’t to ask her to do any real work.

I bet her salary is higher than mine, too. It’s a sinecure, was what I thought, probably for a bored wife or mistress who wanted to get out of the house sometimes and be able to tell people that she works in a book café.

When I saw her for the first time, I thought that my initial assumption was all wrong. The agency guy’s wink-wink, nudge-nudge routine had given me the impression that this female employee was the boss’ mistress. I had imagined either a glamorous high-society type with coiffed hair or a cheap tart wearing too much makeup and a too-tight dress. Instead, what I saw was just a very ordinary girl. I might have figured that she was the boss’ daughter or niece, but her clothes and shoes were cheap.

It was only by chance that I even noticed that something was up. I blew my first paycheck at the biggest casino uptown, and as I was leaving with barely a credit to my name, I happened to see Magnus Kraej and his bodyguards.

The boy was only eighteen this year, but he had been groomed from birth to succeed his father Dierk as CEO of Kraej Company. I recognized him right away because his face was always in the news and gossip columns. He was exiting a store with a gift-wrapped package in hand.

The next day, a package exactly like that was delivered to the Brew Crew Café. It was for Asteria, of course. I thought it was just a weird coincidence.

A few days after that, two thug-like people entered. I tried to tactfully suggest that they were in the wrong place but, to my surprise, they ordered fancy coffees from the menu with barely a look at the prices. Minutes later, a teenaged boy came inside.

It was Magnus Bloody Kraej!

He was wearing a very good disguise. Most people probably wouldn’t have realized it was him since he had a wig and contacts on, but the package and Kraej had been on my mind, so I recognized him instantly. The two goons must be his bodyguards. I played it cool and took Kraej’s order, pretending that I knew nothing.

The girl went over to sit on his table, and they started chatting. I didn’t bother straining my ears to listen, but I still caught bits and pieces of their conversation. They were going to an amusement park. Asteria was going on a date with Magnus Bloody Kraej.

I don’t get it. Asteria was pretty, but Kraej could have anyone he wanted. Why was he even interested in this perfectly ordinary little girl?

That’s all well and good. So she nabbed the world’s most eligible bachelor. The problem was the boss.

I thought for a while that Kraej was the boss, but one of my friends was a real estate agent and my damnable curiosity made me ask him to find out who was really behind Signal Brews, the shell company that owned the Brew Crew Café. He told me that Commander Uriel owned the book café and that he also paid the rent on the place that Asteria was living in.

Commander Uriel, the S-class EL and Magnus Kraej.

That’s one hell of a combination. Now I’m abso-bloody-lutely sure that this will not end well. Neither one of them would enjoy being made a laughingstock of.

You know what the worst thing about this is? I often see her around the neighborhood with a cute blond soldier. Why can’t she just stick with someone like him?