The tray of mooncakes was glossy, rich and made the entire kitchen smell of lotus paste. They were fresh out of the oven, resting on a cooling rack before they could be eaten. Ling had taken one of her magazines and was flapping it over the round cakes in an attempt to make them cool faster. Next to her, Yao was trying to guess what type of flower each mooncake was printed with. "That one has a peony on it," he said, pointing to a mooncake at the corner of the rack, "and that one next to it is an orchid."

  Vicente was at the sink, cleaning the baking equipment he'd just finished using. "You bought the moulds. Shouldn't you know what flowers are on them?"

  "Listen, I just got the cheapest moulds I could find. I didn't really look at the design, just the price tag." Yao nodded approvingly at the mooncakes. "They still turned out great, though."

  Leon, who'd been washing dishes for the past twenty minutes, took a knife and walked towards the working bench. "Let's hope it doesn't only look good." He picked up one of the mooncakes and promptly put it back down, wincing. "Ow!"

  Ling swatted him in the head with her magazine. "These were in the oven five minutes ago, you idiot. In case you didn't know, that means they're still hot." She started flapping faster.

  A few minutes later, she handed the magazine to Vicente. He waved it over the cooling rack for five minutes more before Leon attempted to pick one up again. This time, it'd cooled down enough for him to hold for longer than five seconds, and he put it down on a plate. He took his knife, poising it over the mooncake. "I'll cut this into quarters, all right?"

  "Cut it into fifths. The extra piece will come in handy."

  None of them had noticed Yao's disappearance. He was standing at the kitchen door with a wide grin, and there was someone half-hiding behind him.

  "Kiku!" Ling ran towards the door, pushing Yao away to tackle their stepsister in a hug. "How the hell did you get here?"

  Kiku nearly fell over from the hug, smiling weakly as she wriggled away from her stepsister. "Trofilos is only fifteen minutes away from my university," she explained. "And don't touch me."

  "The Kiku we left two months ago would never do spontaneous stuff like this," Leon joked. "You sure you weren't replaced by your alter ego or something?"

  She stumbled into the kitchen towards Leon. "No, I can assure you that I am very much myself. Is it really so out of the ordinary for me to want to visit my siblings?"

  "Well, you never visited before."

  Kiku crossed her arms and huffed, "might I remind you, I'm in my third year of university, which is the same thing as being in Hell. I haven't had a good night's sleep in two months and my workload is insane." She pointed to the shadows under her eyes. "Anyways, I heard you had food."

  Vicente gestured to the plate holding the mooncake, waiting to be cut. "Yeah. These are still hot, they just came out of the oven fifteen minutes ago."

  "Are these mooncakes?" Kiku peered at the plate. "I remember seeing some back in Arlingdale when I first moved there, but I've never had any before."

  "Lucky you, then." Vicente picked up the knife and sliced the mooncake into five pieces, handing one towards her. "You visited at the right time."

  Ling took a slice and nibbled it. "It's good," she commented. "Could use a bit more syrup, though."

  "Of course you'd say that." Leon placed the entire piece of mooncake into his mouth. "You could be eating a block of sugar and say it wasn't sweet enough."

  Yao elbowed him. "Don't talk with your mouth full."

  Leon began chewing louder.

  Yao rubbed his temples. "What are you, five?"

  "Mentally, yeah," Ling sniggered. She dodged when Leon tried to kick her.

  Kiku bit off part of her slice, stepping in between the two of them before they could start jostling. "What's happened since you left?"

  "We started this place up, of course, and I think we've been doing okay." Yao smiled proudly. "We've got a few regulars already."

  "I'd love to see you four in action one day," Kiku said. "I bet whatever you serve will be nice."

  "It's decent, I guess." Yao went to the sinks to wash his hands as he continued speaking. "You should see Jia Lin when he cooks. It's like he transforms into an entirely different person."

  Ling wiped her hands on her pants. "He's got someone to impress, see. He met this hot girl in school and now he wants to get into her pants via food."

  Kiku's eyes widened.

  Vicente choked on his mooncake. "I'm not trying to get into her pants."

  "So you admit she's hot?" Ling interrogated.

  He erupted into a coughing fit that lasted all of twenty seconds before Kiku slapped him on the back. "I don't know if I'd use 'hot', but Madeline's definitely attractive." He thought of Madeline laughing, of her working, of her simply talking about the things she was passionate about, and smiled.

  "See, you're totally in love."

  Kiku looked completely baffled. "Who's Madeline?"

  "This girl Ka Lun met who he's head-over-heels for." Leon wiped away the crumbs around his mouth and said, "every time she's around him, he loses his grasp on the English language and starts spewing out the cheesiest stuff ever."

  "I can't believe Vic will be the first out of all of us to get a partner." Kiku stepped out of the way when Yao tried to place a hand on her shoulder. "And I said, don't touch me."

  "What do you mean, you can't believe it?" He protested.

  "Nothing, nothing." Kiku looked at her watch. "I have to get going soon."

  Leon frowned. "Already?"

  "I've got work to do." She reached into her bag, rummaging through the contents in search for something. "And before I go, I got you something." She pulled out a plastic box from her bag and tossed it onto the bench, then a plastic bag. Something cracked inside.

  Vicente picked up the plastic bag. It was filled with kaki no tane, small, crescent-shaped rice crackers flavoured with soy sauce. Kiku must've gotten it from the market where they'd crossed paths last month.

  Ling shook the box, which held savoury-sweet niboshi. "Hey, thanks! We should get you something to bring home, too."

  Kiku shook her head. "It might go bad, and I'd rather not take any food you could be serving the next day. I'll be back tomorrow anyway."

  The four of them walked Kiku to the bus stop, waiting until she got onto the bus and waving at her from the window. When the bus finally rolled away, taking Kiku away, they made their way back to Huang's.

  "I never thought the day would come where I'd find myself missing Kiku," Yao quipped. "If I told my younger self that I'd end up caring for her as much as I did the three of you, he wouldn't have believed me."

  Ling shrugged. "She was the one who got Jia Lin, Jia Long and I out of here. We really do owe her one."

  "You heard him, she'll be back tomorrow." Leon suddenly rushed ahead of them, power-walking so quickly they had to jog to catch up. "We can cook her a proper meal and she can spend Mid-Autumn's with us. Everyone wins."

  "Speaking of Mid-Autumn's Festival, aren't you inviting Madeline over to celebrate with us?" Ling asked Vicente.

  "That was the plan, but if you and Leon are going to be weird about it I won't bring her over."

  "What do you mean, 'weird'?"

  "Acting like we're going to start making out right there and then. Or planning our marriage," he added. "That's really weird."

  "Sure, I guess," Ling said. "Just remember that you can definitely ask her out any time, and she'd say yes, so there's no better time than — "

  "Yeah, I know." They reached Huang's and Vicente pushed the door open. "I'll tell her one day. I'm just not sure when that day will come."