Different Year, Same Thing (Part 1)

A romantic ambience permeated in every city as it was Chinese Valentine's Day tonight - at least, that was how it went in Hangzhou. Jiu Shaozhang had to close shop at sunset due to the eatery running out of ingredients by then.

Jiu Shaozhang, an elder in his fifties, who named his small eatery at the foot of Mount Chenghuang after himself, sported dark hands riddled with callouses earned from forty-plus years of labour as an apprentice to a professional and a hunched back from leaning over to work. Howbeit, he didn't have a single complaint that he could list. He was over the period where he yearned for fame and riches. That said, he was famous and had enough money to live comfortably.

"Never judge a book by its cover," as they say. His eatery wasn't on a main street, yet business thrived from the moment the sun was out and when the argent moon was out. His offerings, which went beyond providing tea and snacks, rewarding palates with the best butter pancake at the foot of Mount Chenghuang.

There is only one more word in "roast butter pancake" compared to "butter pancake", yet the difference is night and day. Pancakes were a common savoury dish that consisted of unleavened flatbread folded with oil. It is said that the secret lies in getting the bread crispy and adding the perfect aroma of oil. Butter pancakes, however, challenged the norm and are consumed as a dessert.

Jiu Shaozhang's version of butter pancakes were golden and packed to create a drool-worthy artwork of sunlight sprinkled on snow. Every layer of the pancake tasted distinct thanks to the perfect texture, combining a crispy, yet slight chewy, texture and varying temperatures outside to inside. Since Jiu Shaozhang didn't have a name for his signature item, someone decided to name it after a straw raincoat due to its appearance - raincoat pancake.

Jiu Shaozhang left his shifu, who taught him the original recipe, in the dust behind him. After getting married and having a daughter, he opened his small eatery and invented his new recipe. His new recipe then went on to wow everyone in the social hierarchy, earning praise as the pancake to die for.

Jiu Shaozhang was looking to retire at his age and for good reason. His daughter was getting married next year, and his son was growing up; he wanted to be around to see his children marry. To that end, he preferred to close shop early these days and refused to accept guests even though they'd commonly come knocking. Later on, he deemed that the biggest mistake in his life.

As it was late at night, the lights at Jiu Shaozhang's eatery were out. The plaque he hung up on a red string was still there, reflecting the mistake he'd regret for the rest of his life. The people knocking at his door were akin to wild beasts scouring for food a little too soon, yet nobody would've done what they would've - maybe.

Like a plague, the outburst started out of nowhere and seemingly for no reason. Like the victim who had no means of fighting off the virus that suddenly hit them, Jiu Shaozhang had no means of averting the crisis. They weren't inhumane or emotionless. It was just an unbridled outburst produced from their pent-up urges and out of pure malice.

Jiu Shaozhang was sinking in his blood on the ground in front of his home that he spent his entire life building. The culprits had brutally mauled him until he could no longer stand. With the scowl of a man hell-bent on revenge, he roared in a throat voice with his head down.

The barbaric men brought a group of prostitutes with them and declared they were going to take over Jiu Shaozhang's place to set up their utopia. He didn't get to even protest because they wrestled him out of his home. When he pled them, they beat him, wearing condescending simpers, and severed the nerves on the hands he was proud of. He hit the ground before he even realised it, and they whacked his throat so that he couldn't speak. No previous sense of powerlessness could compare to the despair inundating him that night. It eluded him as to how they could be so malicious, yet relish it as entertainment. Alas, it was only the beginning of his nightmare.

From the front of his house, Jiu Shaozhang could hear women moaning and men guffawing. The smell coming from inside the house infuriated him. Jiu Shaozhang's daughter's cries, the sound of the brutes tearing her clothes off drove him towards madness.

Despite the fame of Jiu Shaozhang's dessert, what he was truly best known for was being gregarious and on good terms with everyone he met.

Jiu Shaozhang graduated at twenty-five years old and paid off his debts to his shifu. His skills put chefs from big-named restaurants to shame, yet he stuck with his shifu without asking for anything in return until he was thirty, which was when his shifu passed away. Only after his shifu passed away did he start exploring beyond the recipe his shifu imparted. He led a humble life in his small eatery, waking up before the sun to greet it and running his eatery late into the night as if he was fond of keeping the moon company.

People called Jiu Shaozhang stupid. He wasn't just stupid; he was also a man who never had a change of heart. He fell for his shifu's daughter when she, adorning an ochre robe, treated his eyes to a sweet smile. Honest to a fault, he never let his feelings show, judging himself to be unworthy of her. Merely having what he considered a privilege to exchange a few meaningless phrases with her daily was all he could ask for. Truthfully, she mutually reciprocated his feelings, though he was too dense to notice. Thankfully, his shifu not noticed their feelings for each other when she was twenty and decided to set the two up for marriage.

Jiu Shaozhang's daughter was considered the most beautiful girl, even beyond their city. In the last two years, there were so many men who came to ask for her hand in marriage that people mistook her for running a second branch of his business. He was always grateful that fate handed him such a blessed hand in life until it all came crashing down that night.

That night, Jiu Shaozhang's daughter had her first taste of a man, and it just had to be in such traumatic fashion. Her tears and pleas didn't beget mercy. To the contrary, it stirred on the beast's desire to ravage her. She could never get used to the wicked grin on his face even after three round