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According to Vietnamese legend, after the sixth Hùng emperor retired, he gave up his throne to his sixteenth son, Lang Liêu, who won the position through what was essentially a cooking competition: whoever brings back the best culinary dish becomes the next king.
According to his fairly recent memory, Kevin Tran became the next prophet of God in his sixteenth year of life. He didn't win his title; he didn't even have a choice in the matter. His name, apparently, had been burned into the mind of every angel at the moment of the universe's creation. Which name—the one his teachers call him or the one his grandmother does—Kevin doesn't know, but either way, he’s been doomed by a measly three syllables.
"You should have named me Lang Liêu," he'd joked to his mom once years and years ago, as his eight-year-old fingers struggled to wrap another bánh tét in banana leaves. "Then, I could cook really really good, and I'd be king."
"But you're going to be president, aren’t you?" his mom had teased. Kevin had nodded, and she’d said, "That's close enough for me."
Maybe if Kevin had been named Lang Liêu, Heaven would know that he wasn’t the right person to be a prophet. They’d know that he didn’t have servants or advisors like the other princes did, that he couldn’t travel to faraway lands and taste strange dishes. They’d know that all he knew how to work with were rice, minced meat, mung beans, green onions, and his own two hands. If Kevin had been named Lang Liêu, some other poor fucker could have been zapped by lightning and kidnapped by Leviathans and demons, and Tran Lang Liêu could be at home with his mom instead of tied up in a warehouse, awaiting torture.
Kevin’s mom told him once that bánh tét’s cylinder shape helps them last longer and makes them easier to eat while traveling; that's why they evolved from the flat shape of bánh chưng. Decades ago, she left Vietnam for Michigan with all of her savings hidden in the bottom of her bag. Before recent events, Kevin barely ever traveled out-of-state, but he still made bánh tét with his mom each year. Maybe all those hours Kevin spent wrapping rice in banana leaves were preparation, spiritual provisions for the long road ahead. Maybe his entire life was just him biding his time until someone needed him to read a fucking tablet.
Kevin’s forgotten the details of most of the legends his mom told child-him before bedtime, but he remembers wanting to be one of the heroes in them. The gods in those legends weren’t absentee fathers; they visited heroes in dreams or in-person. When they arrived, they spoke clearly and directly, not through chicken scratch on stone. Kevin knew where he fit into his mom’s stories: as a child of dragons and fairies; someone who knew to rebel against invading forces, be clever against evil, and be a friend to his community. That made sense; his life now doesn't. Kevin may have been born as a prophet-to-be, but this angels and demons bullshit is a mythos he never wanted to be a part of.
Luckily, he thinks, reading the line in front of him again, he has an idea of how to escape the demons part of his current shitty circumstances. Thank someone for demon-killing spells. He just needs to wait.
Lang Liêu won his dad’s competition by presenting the king with two simple but delicious forms of rice cakes: bánh dày, which were round to symbolize Heaven, and bánh chưng, which were square to symbolize the earth. Nowadays, to make bánh dày and bánh chưng is to thank the heavens and the earth for what they’ve done for you. The demon tablet in Kevin’s hands is both round and square, but the parts Kevin has translated have made it clear that its contents are not about Heaven or Earth. That’s just fine by Kevin. He can understand Heaven and Earth without being a prophet—he just needs rice, minced meat, mung beans, green onions, and his own two hands.