The problem with Maple Town was that news never stayed news.

It became weather.

By ten in the morning, Dean’s red-shirt situation had turned into a full local event.

By eleven, it had become a customer flood.

By noon, First Branch Café looked less like a business and more like a coordinated social collapse.

“Why are there so many people?” Sam asked, standing behind the counter with a clipboard, invoices, and the expression of a man already regretting consciousness.

Nina didn’t even look up from the register. “Because your husband walked outside looking like a manual labor fantasy with emotional damage.”

Marta set down three cups in a row. “Also the workshop posted a blurry photo.”

From the connected branch screen, Priya appeared with zero shame. “It wasn’t blurry enough. Second Branch got the details.”

Hallie leaned into the screen. “The red shirt is causing interstate-level consequences.”

Sam pinched the bridge of his nose.

The café doors opened again.

Three more customers walked in.

Then two.

Then four.

Then a woman in expensive boots who definitely did not need coffee but absolutely needed to look at Dean Winchester over the rim of a cup for ten minutes straight.

Maple Town had survived literal monsters with less intensity.

Dean, unfortunately, was thriving.

He hated the haircut. He had complained about it six times before breakfast and another four times before lunch. But the rest of the world had made the truly unfortunate decision to disagree. The shorter cut sharpened his jaw, made his eyes look brighter, and somehow made the red work shirt worse in all the wrong ways—broad shoulders, rolled sleeves, dark jeans, boots, smug mouth.

Sam was trying very hard not to participate in this problem.