Chaobe is a terraced port town on the side of a mountain, full of tea growers and foreign merchants buying and selling in a dozen languages. The tea magnate, Lady Kussho, is an elegant woman who asks for the team's help, and offers them small luxuries and rewards for it. She takes them up the funicular to her estate at the top of the mountain, through a greenhouse full of rare tea plants, and shows them her prized crop, which commands the highest prices in the country while everyone else's tea has been driven down to nothing. The tea trade has grown chaotic, she says. She wants the team to help her unite the town under one business, so that everyone benefits. She asks Kabu what makes a truly excellent cup of tea. He guesses the leaves. 'Oh, darling. The margins.'
The first job is persuading the smaller independent tea farms to negotiate, and several of them agree to become part of Kussho's enterprise. Kabu is proud of it: he talked a small business into becoming part of something greater, and everyone wins. The farms that declined are destroyed overnight by a demon, and none of them had the resources to defend themselves. The second job is infiltrating a tea drying operation and getting its secret recipe. They struggle until Matsu, who has been quietly watching the guards, works out their timing. While they're inside, a demon made of tea leaves tears the drying operation apart, and they only just make it out. Standing in the wreckage, the team realises together that they aren't bringing prosperity to Chaobe at all. They're committing industrial espionage for a tea monopoly.
The more they look, the worse it gets. The whole town is basically part of Kussho's empire already, the last few holdouts can barely make ends meet, and she keeps edging out the competition to fund a mansion at the top of the mountain. Riding her funicular in secret, they spy on her and watch her carry a sealed lacquered box into her vault. They decide she must be the tea leaf demon, and that she's locked her seed in the safe because she understands exactly how valuable it is.
Kabocha, who still sees herself as the leader of the team, plans the heist. She builds it around what each of them does best: her stealth, Matsu's patience and eye for detail, and Kabu's small stature, which gets him into places nobody else fits. After a few failed attempts, they're in. The box doesn't hold a seed. It's full of business contracts proving that Kussho owns almost every tea plot in Chaobe and has been deliberately driving down the price of tea to starve out whoever's left.
Kussho is waiting for them. She watched them break in, and congratulates them on the discovery, and then she turns into the tea leaf demon. In the fight, Kabocha runs out of kunai, throws her arm out toward Kabu, and a razor-sharp pumpkin leaf flies out of her hand and buries itself in the demon. Nobody is more shocked than Kabocha. Kussho chases them into her greenhouse and starts eating her prized plants, and Matsu notices that she grows larger with every one, until she's too big to fit through the door. The team runs for the funicular. Kussho bursts out after them into her prized crop and eats all of it, growing enormous, and when she knocks the funicular the team drops the box and the contracts scatter on the wind. She eats those too. Kabocha throws a pumpkin leaf at the irrigation system, and the water soaks Kussho until she's too soggy and heavy to fight. Kabu harvests the seed.
Lady Kussho comes back to herself having eaten her prized crop, her exotic teas and every contract that held her monopoly together. The merchants and growers of Chaobe start bringing the market back into balance. A grateful Dutch tea merchant presses a solid gold tea strainer into Kabocha's hands and explains its magical properties at length, in Simlish, and the team thanks him warmly and understands none of it. Kabocha thinks the heist worked, so it was right. Kabu isn't so sure, and for the first time he's not sure about her either.
In a short post-script, a shadowy figure comes to visit Lady Kussho. She produces a second lacquered box, identical to the first. This one is full of files on the team: their strengths, and their weaknesses.
OPEN THE BEAT SHEET ▼
- 1The team arrives in Chaobe, a terraced port town full of tea growers and foreign merchants. Lady Kussho, the town's tea magnate, receives them with small luxuries and asks for their help.
- 2She gives them a tour of her estate at the top of the mountain: a greenhouse of rare tea plants, and her prized crop, which commands the highest prices while everyone else's tea has been driven low. She wants to unite the town under one business, to improve the tea trade for everyone. She sings about it, and asks what makes a truly excellent cup of tea. Kabu guesses the leaves. 'Oh, darling. The margins.'
- 3Job one: persuade the smaller independent tea farms to negotiate. Several agree to join Lady Kussho's enterprise, and Kabu is proud of what feels like a win-win. Overnight, the farms that declined are destroyed by a demon they had no way to defend against.
- 4Job two: infiltrate a tea drying operation and get its secret recipe. They struggle until Matsu, who has been watching the guards' timing, finds the gap. While they're inside, a demon made of tea leaves destroys the drying operation and they barely make it out.
- 5TURNING POINT — The team works it out together: they aren't bringing prosperity to Chaobe. They're committing industrial espionage for a tea monopoly. The whole town is basically Lady Kussho's empire already, and the last holdouts can barely make ends meet.
- 6Riding her funicular in secret, the team spies on Kussho and watches her carry a sealed lacquered box into her vault. They decide she must be the tea leaf demon, keeping her cursed seed in the safe because she knows how valuable it is.
- 7TURNING POINT — 'Blade and Will': still seeing herself as the leader, Kabocha plans a heist around the team's strengths: her stealth, Matsu's patience and observation, and Kabu's small stature. After a few failed attempts, they're in.
- 8CRISIS — The box in the vault holds no seed. It's full of business contracts proving that Kussho owns almost every tea plot in Chaobe and has been driving down prices to starve out her remaining competition.
- 9Kussho meets them in the vault. She watched them break in, and congratulates them on the discovery, and then she turns into the tea leaf demon.
- 10TURNING POINT — Mid-battle, Kabocha runs out of kunai. She throws her arm out toward Kabu, and a razor-sharp pumpkin leaf flies from her hand and embeds itself in the demon, to her own shock.
- 11Kussho chases them into her greenhouse and starts eating her prized plants. Matsu notices that she grows larger with every one, until she's too big to get through the door. The team escapes to the funicular.
- 12Kussho bursts out of the greenhouse into her prized crop and eats all of it, growing enormous. She knocks the funicular, the team drops the box, and the contracts scatter on the wind. She eats those too.
- 13TURNING POINT — Kabocha throws a pumpkin leaf at the irrigation system and douses Kussho until she's too soggy and heavy to fight. Kabu harvests the seed, and Kussho is human again, having eaten her own crops, her exotic teas and her contracts. The monopoly is gone, and the growers and merchants start to bring the market back into balance.
- 14TURNING POINT — A Dutch tea merchant gives Kabocha a solid gold tea strainer and explains, at length and in Simlish, what it does. The team thanks him warmly and understands none of it. Kabu walks down the mountain wondering whether the ends really did justify the means.
- 15CRISIS — Post-script: a shadowy figure visits Lady Kussho, who produces a second lacquered box, identical to the first. This one is full of files on the team, their strengths and their weaknesses.
SUPPORTING CASTLady Kusshō · Foreign Traders▼
ART DIRECTION — Lady Kussho's greenhouse at the top of the mountain: rare tea plants under glass, the funicular track dropping away toward the port below. Kussho, half-transformed into a towering demon of tea leaves, reaches for another plant while Kabu, Kabocha and Matsu run for the funicular car. A pumpkin leaf is still spinning in the air from Kabocha's outstretched hand.
The Port of Kobe opened to foreign trade in 1868, and for a decade or so nobody could agree on what it was actually for. Yokohama had silk. Kobe tried silk too and mostly failed. Eventually it found its footing: assembling, processing, and selling Japanese green tea to North American buyers. British merchants organized most of it. They built godown warehouses and tea-firing facilities along the waterfront and employed large numbers of Japanese day laborers through the busy season. American demand drove the market; British capital ran the logistics. American merchants, strangely, were barely present in Kobe at all.
The geography did the social sorting. Chinese traders settled near the port in Nankinmachi. European merchants and diplomats climbed the slopes of Mt. Rokko, building their mansions in Kitano-cho with views over the harbor and, below it, everything they controlled. They processed the tea, set the distribution terms, and called that refinement. The people who grew the tea were further down the mountain.
There's a detail the Kobe histories tend to downplay: much of the green tea that left the port as 'authentic Japanese' had been re-fired and re-processed in the dockside warehouses, often by Chinese artisans using methods designed to match what Western buyers expected the tea to taste and look like. The product at the top of the chain was more constructed than it appeared. It usually is.
