AnYi 安亦

---

The last liquid you drank has turned your protagonist into a superhero. What do your character’s new powers allow him or her to do?

---

The fourth time it happened, Minru finally lost it.

‘Will you stop it?’ she hissed, taking a rattling thermo out of her bag.

‘But I’m bored!’ the thermo protested in a squeaky voice. ‘it’s dark in here! I can hardly breathe!’

Minru didn’t buy it. ‘I’ve put salt in the water like you asked; don’t tell me you can’t manage simple shapeshifting. This is my office, not your Eastern Sea. If you make any more noise during the meeting, our deal is off. I will throw you into the gutters, where you can embrace real darkness.’

‘What deal? There is no deal! You are my ambassador now; you can’t throw me out!’ A tiny head poked out from under the thermo cap. If a horse and a serpent somehow fell madly in love with each other against all odds, their offspring would probably have something like this head; its sea green hide gleamed softly, but its round, golden eyes shined of something shrewd. They stared at Minru, who remained unmoved.

‘Tolerating your chatter is not an agreement to be your ambassador.’ She shrugged. ‘Now get back in there till the meeting’s finished.’

The golden eyes squinted in dissatisfaction. ‘You can’t do this to my honour! I am Man Quan, the Ninth Dragon Prince, god of wind and rain, resident–’

‘Save your CV for the next HR meeting.’ Minru apparently had no mercy or respect for the honour of the Dragons. ‘Oh wait, we don’t have any vacancy for weather forecast gods at the moment. Do you know what this means? It means I’m not interested.’

Man Quan glared mournfully at Minru, before retreating into the thermo. She heard them mutter something in a small voice before the cap fell back into place, which sounded rather like another list of titles and powers that they had been born with.

Minru sighed and put the thermo back into her bag. The meeting was about to start, and people started to enter the conference room. It was one of those long, monotonous review meetings – the department directors dragged on and on, inciting very little interest in the audience with their presentations and even less with the occasional insertion of bawdy jokes. Nobody noticed anything unusual, such as a condensed version of a legendary creature currently hiding in the thermo of an employee. The bolder ones in the back rows had already started scrolling on their phones. Minru looked at the yawning faces around her, finally letting her own mind drift off for a moment.

It had started with some silly romantic notion of her teenage cousin’s. ‘Minru, will you bring me back the beautiful waves of the Eastern Sea when you go on your holiday? It will save me from many a heartbreak if I could own a small bowl of water that he, my one and only love, has once touched.’ The message made Minru cringe to the point that her face looked distorted, as she was perfectly certain this undying love was directed at a pop singer who happened to have filmed an episode of some reality show by the Eastern Sea. Minru didn’t want to encourage such silliness in her cousin, and promptly refused. However, when she was really facing the roaring waves of the ancient ocean, a most uncharacteristic impulse rose in her; the salty air was tingling with something old and thrilling, almost as familiar as kin.

In the end, she took a bottle of sea water from the beach, as well as a chattering pile of trouble.