Chapter 1 — The Sweet Taste After Criticism

Mai stood in the middle of Banh Nang shop at seven o'clock in the morning, holding a wooden patch in her hand, staring at the oven that was making a strange noise as if it had just swallowed a screw. This wasn't the first time this oven had acted out, but it was the first time it had chosen the day she had an order for forty cream puffs for a class reunion to cause a riot.

“Sunny,” she called out, even though she knew the tabby cat named Sunny — the store's unofficial mascot — would never answer, “do you have any miracles? Please teach me.”

The cat, curled up on the windowsill, only opened one eye to look at her and then went back to sleep, seemingly giving the clearest answer possible.

Sun Cake Shop is located in a small alley, the frontage is less than four meters wide, the wooden sign has faded due to the sun and rain over three generations of owners. Mai's mother - Ms. Nga - opened the shop when she was young, passing on the recipe and her playful personality to her only daughter. She is now retired, but "retirement" according to Ms. Nga's definition means stopping by every morning for tea, criticizing her daughter's way of displaying cakes, and then going home.

"I made cream puffs and the filling is so thick, no one will eat it again," Ms. Nga said, standing with her hands on her hips looking at the tray of cakes that had just come out of the oven, the oven was now cooperating again after Mai patted it three times in a way that was both coaxing and threatening.

“Mom, I have forty cakes to deliver in the next two hours, can you leave me alone,” Mai replied, her voice a bit breathless from running back and forth between the oven and the ice cream mixing table.

Linh, the only employee and close friend since high school, appeared at the right moment with two cups of iced milk coffee, plopped on the counter. "I brought coffee to save your life. Drink it and continue dancing."

“Thank you,” Mai said, gulping down almost the entire glass, “without you, I would have drowned in all this buttercream a long time ago.”

"Don't thank me yet," Linh squinted her eyes and pointed to the door, "there's a guest, but it doesn't look like a regular customer."

The man walked into the store wearing a simple white shirt, casual pants, and carrying a small leather bag as if he were on a business trip, not buying a cake. He looked around the shop once, his eyes stopped at the handwritten price list that was slightly smeared with ink, and then at the cake display corner, which was somewhat messy because Mai hadn't had time to clean up after the batch of cakes that had gone wrong.

“Give me an ice cream sundae,” he said, his voice even, neither cold nor hot, the voice of someone he knows making quick decisions.

Mai, in the middle of making a new batch of cakes, signaled Linh to serve. Linh wrapped the cake and gave it to the customer with a professional smile, while Mai took the opportunity to glance at the strange man - tall, with a serious face that was a bit more than necessary for buying a cream puff worth twenty thousand dong.

He sat down at the small table near the window, carefully peeled off the wrapping paper, looked at the cake from top to bottom as if he were appraising an antique, and then took a small bite.

Mai didn't pay any more attention, because at that moment the oven made a suspicious "click" sound, causing her to turn around and deal with it. The last batch of cream puffs finally came out of the oven on time, although there were two slightly burned edges that Mai quickly hid at the bottom of the tray, thinking "the guests probably won't notice".

The strange man finished the cake, stood up, put the money on the table, didn't say another word and then left, leaving a strange feeling in Mai's heart - not necessarily unpleasant, just a bit... being looked at.

“You see,” Ms. Nga smacked her lips from the corner of the counter, "Mom said the filling was too thick but didn't listen."

“Mom, I'm on a deadline,” Mai grumbled, continuing to pack forty cream puffs into boxes, somewhat relieved that she was finally finished before the scheduled delivery time.

The afternoon passed normally like any other day - a few regular customers stopped by to buy breadsticks, an old lady ordered a birthday cake for her grandchild, and Linh sold goods while chatting on the phone. Mai almost forgot about the morning stranger, until Linh hurriedly ran into the kitchen, holding the phone up in front of her face.

“Mai, you have to see this now,” Linh said, her voice trembling.

On the screen is a post that just went up fifteen minutes ago, from an account with a green tick named "Vi Giac Tru", with more than eight hundred thousand followers - Mai knows this account, anyone who works in food in the city knows it, famous for its merciless reviews, which has caused many restaurants to close after one post.

Article title: "Sunshine Cake — when a pretty name can't save the quality."

Mai skimmed through it, her heart beating faster with each line. The article describes in detail the cream puff "the filling is as thick as paste, the crust is soft from being left out in the air for too long, and in particular, there is another cake in the same batch that has burnt edges but is still sold publicly — a sign of an almost non-existent quality control process." Attached is a close-up photo of the burned cake that Mai thought was carefully hidden at the bottom of the tray.

“It... it caught the whole burnt cake?” Mai stammered, holding Linh's phone, reading it over and over as if hoping the words would automatically change into compliments.

"I think he picked up the burnt cake and took a picture of it," Linh said, her voice both annoyed and unable to help but laugh at the excessive "devotion" of this morning's guest.

Ms. Nga, sitting folding a box of cakes at the corner of the counter, looked over her daughter's shoulder to read the article, was silent for a moment, then sighed. "It's true that the guy who bought the cream puffs this morning is really terrible. I thought he was just a normal difficult customer."

The comments under the article began to increase rapidly - some people defended the small shop, others chimed in to criticize, some even tagged their friends "be careful not to eat here". Mai felt hot all over, not because of the oven anymore, but because of the injustice of being exposed on the unluckiest day of the month.

“Calm down,” Linh said, placing her hand on her friend's shoulder, “after all, it's just a review, tomorrow people will forget.”

"You don't understand," Mai replied, her voice choked up, "our store's revenue has decreased this month. Now add this, I'm sure there won't be any customers next week."

She looked back at the photo of the burned cake in the article, then looked around the shop — the faded sign, the oven that was often malfunctioning, her mother's recipe book on the shelf with a few pages that had yellowed over the years. This is not just a store, this is the only inheritance her mother left behind, something that Mai has tried to preserve for the past three years since the official takeover.

“I have to find out who this guy is,” Mai said, her voice losing its tremor and turning to clear determination, “and hold him accountable.”

Linh looked at her friend, both worried and a little curious at Mai's lightning-fast mood changes. "What are you going to do? Post a duel online?"

“Don't know yet,” Mai replied, eyes wide Still glued to the phone screen, scroll down to see more old reviews of "Vi Giac Tru" - all of them are sharp, uncompromising, but when read carefully, they are... disgustingly reasonable. “But I'll find out who it is first.”

Outside, the afternoon sunlight began to turn yellow, shining through the glass window, covering the cake tray with a layer of warm light, which ironically had nothing to do with the storm that was gradually forming in the heart of the small bakery owner.

That night, after closing the shop, Mai sat in front of the computer in the corner of the kitchen, reopening all the old posts of "Vi Giac Tru" to look for clues. This account was created two years ago, has never revealed its real face or name, only has a short introduction: "Eat the truth, speak the truth, no PR." The profile picture is a stylized silver spoon, with nothing to identify it.

“I've been searching for hours and haven't come up with any clues,” Mai lamented, tapping her fingers on the keyboard unconsciously. “It's as smart as a fox.”

Linh, lying on the old sofa in the corner of the kitchen, scrolling through her phone, suddenly sat up. "Hey, I found this interesting. There's an account commenting under your review, saying 'preparing early next month he has a new video filmed in district 1'. Sounds like a die-hard fan who closely follows his schedule."

Mai turned her chair around and looked over her friend's shoulder. “Let me see.”

Linh handed over the phone, Mai read the comment carefully, then followed the commenter's personal page - a public account, regularly posting check-in photos of restaurants that "Vi Giac That" had reviewed, along with a few comments like "luckily I went earlier than the review photo".

“This kid definitely knows more than he lets on,” Mai muttered, starting to compose a message to ask, even though she didn't have much hope of receiving a decent answer from a stranger on the internet.

Ms. Nga, who was in the back room getting ready to go to bed, stuck her head out the door and saw the two of them still hunched over the screen. "Are you two going to stay up all night investigating this? Go to sleep, you have to sell cakes tomorrow."

“I'm about to find a clue, Mom,” Mai replied, not taking her eyes off the screen.

"For any clue, you have to get enough sleep to have the strength to find it," Ms. Nga said, her voice still a bit humorous even though she was clearly equally worried about her daughter. "Besides, I remember when Mom was criticized once, a customer said that the sponge cake she made was as dry as a desert. Mom was very angry, but then I thought about it again, and it turned out that what she said was right, because I forgot to adjust the oven temperature. From then on, the cake I made tasted better."

Mai paused for a moment before her mother's words. Even though she was still angry, she couldn't deny that there was some truth in that harsh comment - the burned cake was indeed a mistake, it was just that the way "True Taste" chose to expose it publicly was a bit too much.

“Okay, I'm going to bed,” Mai said, turning off the computer, but in her mind she still kept planning for tomorrow - not to get revenge, but to find out who the person behind the strict name "True Taste" was, and why he chose the most unlucky day of the Sunny Cake shop to stop by.