Chapter Two - The Customer Who Always Comes Back

Mira Solace had discovered Moonlight Crumbs by accident, or at least that's what she told herself.

The truth was, she'd been following a smell — something soft and sweet and wrong in the way that made her heart ache like hearing an old song you forgot existed. That first night, she only meant to pass through the alley on her way home from yet another disastrous drinking party where she didn't know anyone and stayed too long out of sheer stubbornness.

But then came the scent.

Warm butter and honey and something sharper beneath it — a bright, fleeting note, like the memory of standing barefoot on warm sand. Mira followed it the way stray cats follow open cans, until she stood in front of a crooked shop with a half-lit sign and a tired man staring at her through the window.

She hadn't stopped coming back since.

Tonight, the paper bag crinkled in her hands as she walked. The cookies inside were still warm — Elias always handed them over like that, no matter how much she teased him about the risk of getting sued for burning someone's tongue. Mira didn't care. She liked that they felt alive somehow, like they were still breathing out the last of their secrets.

She bit into the storm-gray cookie first.

Salt bloomed on her tongue, sharp and clean, followed by something darker — black sesame, maybe, or burnt sugar, but underneath it all, there was a taste she couldn't name.

It tasted like… the moment before you cry, when your throat tightens and you decide not to.

Mira slowed her steps, staring down at the half-eaten cookie like it might explain itself if she looked hard enough. It didn't, of course. Cookies don't talk back.

But the thing was — this wasn't the first time.

Every visit, it happened. Whatever mood she dragged into that bakery at night, Elias' cookies reflected it back at her, sharper, clearer, and somehow always true. It was freaky. It was comforting. It was the only thing in her life right now that made any sense.

By the time she reached her building, the yuzu cookie was already gone too, and her fingers were sticky with glaze. She wiped them on her jeans before fumbling for her keys.

The cookie wizard was getting too good at this.