Tea as in Tiger

Groggily, hazily, old man Li woke up.  He thought of himself as Mr. Li, but the world just happened to fit him for an authentic Chinese shop owner who deserved the title of old man.  He had no ancestral roots in China, his family having come over from India one or two generations before he was born.  He hadn't kept in touch much.

People who actually lived in Chinatown knew immediately that he was some sort of impostor, but they didn't want to let out how much of a scam the rest of the area was by outing him, so he kept his shop peacefully, raking in the tourist money and a few commissions for "authentic" "Chinese" "calligraphy" which he ran out of a room on the second floor next to his bedroom.

He was also a heavy sleeper.  The digital clock next to his futon read nine am, an hour after he should have been up, but his alarm clock had not decided to wake him up this morning.  Not exactly a great start to a day, but worse had come for old man Li in the past.  He followed his normal routine, not rushing as he kept his own hours.  A hot shower, hygiene, a slow walk down the stairs to set the tea pot on the stove, a slow walk back up the stairs, dressing up to fit his role as an authentic Chinatown businessman, a slow walk back down the stairs, then relax and drink a cup of tea before opening the shop up.

This routine was going a bit faster than normal, and he got to setting the tea pot on the stove before he realized that his alarm clock was not bugging him at all as usual, which was far enough outside the norm to rouse his curiosity.  He checked the kitchen with little luck.  Nothing turned up in the upstairs.  When he got to the storefront, he found his alarm clock curled up, pouting in front of the door.  Old man Li's alarm clock happened to be a large, astral tiger.

When he had left the family home halfway through highschool, the family tiger, a prideful mark of their noble line yadda yadda had decided following the sane one would lead to a much nicer existence.  He assumed that was it at least.  Astral tiger or not, it still couldn't talk and tended to be as inscrutable as regular housecats.  It ate more than a regular housecat though, which is why old man Li still ran this shop instead of being retired in the country.

Old man Li didn't take long to figure out that something was amiss besides a finicky tiger though, as there was a black dufflebag with two of the display swords sticking out of it sitting in the middle of the floor.  The swords were utter crap, overpriced and prone to snapping in transit.  He had four boxes of them back in storage since they sold like hotcakes.

The fact that there had been an attempted burglary and evidence was left at the scene of the crime was not a problem.  It tended to happen every year or two.  His alarm clock was very good about waking up and finding a free meal out of it.  The strange part was the fact that the cat was sulking instead of the usual deal of holding a severed hand over him in the morning looking proud of itself.  Also, there wasn't any blood on the floor.

And then the tea kettle started whistling and old man Li figured he'd need a cup of tea before he figured any of this out.  It was only sensible.  It was on his return to the shop with a cup of tea that he followed the tiger's gaze up behind the counter to the display only shelf when he realized an old necklace heirloom was missing as well.  It was the one the family had pushed on him back when he was six to "test his chakra alignment."  Supposedly it did something if you had aligned chakras or that type of bullshit.  The only magical thing about him was his tiger.  He didn't really even know why he had kept the necklace, really.  It was a remnant of his past that he held onto to let him know how far he had come.

Still, it might be worth investigating how something managed to outrun his alarm clock.  He sipped his tea, then absentmindedly walked over and scratched the cat behind its ears.  Maybe he'd ask Mr. Kim about it after lunch.