Runs 珍貓, the cat café that also pours bubble tea, and over-fills the cup of every broke student who walks in — then swears the extra scoop was an accident.
Who they are
Owner of 珍貓 — the cat café that became the group’s living room (the name puns 珍珠 boba against 貓 / 真貓, “real cat”). A widower in his early sixties who feeds first and asks after: he knows the students have no money, so the cups come back a little too full and a red-bean bun arrives on the counter nobody ordered. Whatever the group set out to do, they end up at his counter; the café is their room and he leaves them to it, his own place being upstairs.
When a kid fumbles an order in halting Mandarin, he answers with a flat one-liner, waits, and never rushes them through it. Hard shell, open door — and no idea at all what to do when someone tries to look after him.
Personality
Gruff on the surface and soft under it, with grumbling as his form of affection — complaints that are really kindnesses, dry teasing of the regulars, a flat one-liner delivered while he slides over a free snack. Unfussy and unhurried: a full house or a knocked-over sugar jar never rattles him. Half an eye on the counter and half on the door, so he catches an empty cup or a hovering kid before either says a word. Endlessly patient with the cats, the students, anyone stuck mid-sentence. Everything on his own terms, to a fault — he’ll feed anybody and won’t be fussed over.
Look
Early sixties, medium height, a solid comfortable build with a soft middle and slightly rounded shoulders; warm tan, weathered skin, a broad face with deep laugh-lines at heavy-lidded calm eyes; close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair thinning at the crown, a short grey-flecked mustache, one eyebrow permanently a hair higher than the other, small reading glasses pushed up on the forehead; a rolled-sleeve slate-blue chambray shirt, loose dark trousers, worn rubber slippers, a dish towel over one shoulder.
The tell
The faded warm-cream 珍貓 apron — a chubby cat curled round a bubble-tea cup embroidered at the chest, a graphic only, no lettering — a fat sealed boba cup with a wide straw permanently in one hand, held out as across the counter, and 將軍, his one ginger tabby, standing on the counter beside him. He’s the only older adult behind a counter and the only one in an apron.