Kung Fu Tea: Resurrection

“This sucks tapioca balls!” the jaded junior exclaimed.

“Hm?” her friend, the sad sophomore, rejoined.

A freezing March wind chilled their bones, but the barren interior that was the shutdown Kung Fu Tea near Stuyvesant gave their souls a coldness that made their spirits shudder and shrivel in a shattered heap. How could the entire student population enable this? Forget the reformation of the SHSAT exam. THIS really was the beginning of the end of Stuy (which is basically the whole world) as they knew it.

A senior, recalling the establishment’s opening three years earlier, knelt down in front of a grave she had erected as a memorial to the place. Recalling the shop’s interior and the memories of her tears giving her bubble tea a sea-salt kick every time she’d tragically failed an exam and wished to drown her feelings in a drink, she took a moment to cry once more.

The senior’s peer took pity on his classmate. Taking out a handkerchief to wipe the tears that were welling in the corner of his own eyes, he lit a candle and placed rejected, wilted Indicator flowers on the makeshift grave. He patted her on the back.

“Let’s go,” he whispered, “to the Jupioca down the street.”

She wailed hysterically and claimed that some eccentric bougie wannabe boba place which really only specialized in poke bowls would never equal KFT’s caliber. Regardless, she let him carry her there in hopes that there would be some subpar boba for sale.

The next morning, Brian Moran made an announcement that there would be an hour’s moment of silence for the tragedy that was the shop’s shutdown. “Closing down this shop was one of the greatest acts of cruel-tea this world has seen. F,” he said. For the first time, people listened to the announcements, each awful word a punch to their heart. Astounded, they sat in their shock for an hour, their minds whirring in contemplation of the cruelty of life.

Outside the shell of the former boba shop, a couple of juniors had sat down next to the shrine. “They can’t close this place down. There are so many memories here. Like the time I got rejected when I asked my crush to come with me to the Big Sib-Little Sib dance. Good times. If only we could find another place for them to stay,” a junior said.

The peer suddenly had a burst of inspiration: “I know! Why don’t we open a NEW Kung Fu Tea in Stuy! Think about it! We can put it in the Senior Bar! We don’t have to lose KFT, our boba can’t be taken away when we walk into school, and we can have it even when we are barricaded in this school! The next time some disaster falls upon this school, leading us to be locked in while the police investigate, we can enjoy some Stuyvesant Sponsored Kung Fu Tea! It’s like a bake sale, but every day!” A loud cheer came from the group.

The next day, members of the Student Union came up to a crowd of students standing near the senior bar. Annoyed that their usual route was blocked, they used their privilege to push their way through the mob and found a hastily rebranded food cart taken from down the street. Duct-taped to it, covering up the pictures of “Chicken with Rice,” was a sign saying “Kung Fu Tea 2.0.”

“Hey, what are you doing?”

“What does it look like? We’re making a new Kung Fu Tea! It’s like it never left. Okay, maybe the ‘tea’ is extracted from flavored JUUL pods, but tea has caffeine, and caffeine and nicotine are basically the exact same thing. They’re both drugs that we use chronically, and they both end in ‘ine.’ But other than that, it’s basically the same, addictive Kung Fu Tea!”

“We didn’t fund this.”

“Oh, but that’s the great thing about KFT 2.0! It’s the only pure thing within Stuy! All proceeds go toward funding this cart. We raised this place back from the dead, and we are going to look GREAT on our college apps. Now, are you gonna buy something or not?”

The student representative shrugged. “You know what? You guys are lucky I miss Kung Fu Tea as much as the rest of you do. It was like Tea’s Tea, but better. I’ll take a medium ‘the crushed souls of freshmen’ boba, please?”

Similar incidents occurred throughout the day. During third period, the school security came to stop the cart, but a large “confiscated Starbucks coffee” flavor swayed them. Rodda John came by under the claim that the cart was draining Talos resources, but it was pretty obvious he was using it as an excuse to get boba and procrastinate on fixing the website. Even Maggio came there under the suspicion that it was running on fossil fuels, but the yummy flavors and biodegradable cups were enough to get her on the side of KFT.

No, the real trouble began the next day, when a couple of second-term seniors working there went on strike.

“We should have control over this place!” Their leader pushed the junior who came up with the idea. “Yeah, maybe you came up with it, but when it comes down to it, we’re the ones cutting classes we would have never attended anyway in order to keep this thing on the road. You wouldn’t last a day without us!”

“Oh really,” the junior countered. “I’d like to see you guys try.”

“Okay, we will. We’ll get another cart and make Kung Fu Tea 3.0! And it will be better than yours in every way!”

B​y the end of the day, the seniors had built a fort out of their college rejection letters with a neon sign saying “Kung Fu Tea 3.0!!!!” Admittedly, the tea was exactly the same, but with a purchase of over $10, you got an egg to throw at 2.0.

Everything spiraled out of control from there on. A group of sophomores wanting to be relevant started a 4.0. And a couple of freshmen, who didn’t really know what was going on but wanted to be a part of it, made a 5.0. (The consensus was that both of those sucked.) By the end of the week, the second floor was covered in tea and food from the massive food fights each establishment would have.

Finally, the student body had had enough of these petty fights. The next Monday, all the members of the respective Kung Fu Teas came to find their stores burnt down and vandalized.

In the middle was a note written on a Kung Fu Tea (original) business card: “Kung Fu Tea Is Dead. And things that are dead must stay dead.”