“Come to think of it, you disappeared as soon as you got here, so you’ve never even stopped by the dining hall.”
The reason Park Junggu hesitated to guide me to the kitchen.
I’d assumed it was because he still half believed I might be an assassin.
That he was hesitating because he thought I was going to make poison to kill people.
“I feel like I’ve said this a few times already, but... the food here is actually pretty decent.”
“......?”
“And there’s a reason for that.”
I was wrong.
“You wouldn’t know this, but... there are more kinds of Awakener jobs in this world than you’d think.”
“......Sorry?”
As he led me toward the kitchen,
he started talking like that.
“And those various kinds of Awakeners... at the very least, in their own field, they hold the greatest influence.”
Inside, I was thinking.
No way. No fucking way.
“In the case of this Central Branch, you can think of the kitchen and dining hall as being under that kind of influence.”
“......”
No.
No matter how you slice it.
Even across that whole wide Gangwon Province, I was the only one.
“This kitchen has an owner. And that is...”
When we reached the kitchen following behind him,
what greeted me was—
“Huh? You punks... what the hell do you think you’re doing...?”
“......”
“Waltzing into the sacred kitchen with dirt on your damn feet!?”
Short hair, tattoos peeking out here and there.
A guy whose face looked like a proper thug.
And at the same time—
“That’s the fellow.”
“......”
[Ingredient Identification (Enhanced)]
[Awakener: Jin Yangsik]
[Class: Intermediate Chef Lv.21]
He was a chef.
“What the fuck.”
“I’m the one who should be saying that, you bastard!”
****
What the fuck.
There was... another chef besides me?
Well.
Chef is a pretty rare job.
It’s not just about making tasty food.
It’s a job that refines and processes power humans can’t normally absorb,
and turns it into something humans can use.
But—
It’s not exactly a unique job, either...
Even after I shook down all of Gangwon Province, not a single one turned up.
But looked at the other way around,
there was me in Gangwon Province.
Which means there could easily be one person per region elsewhere, too.
“What’s with this bastard... why aren’t you getting lost already?”
The proof of that
was this thug-looking guy right here.
“Now, now, calm down.”
While I was too thrown off to get any words out,
Park Junggu let out an awkward chuckle and stepped between me and that chef.
“......So it’s you, Junggu. What brings you here?”
“It’s nothing serious. This fellow here said he wanted to take a look around the kitchen.”
“This guy?”
The thug-looking man stared at me with a face full of displeasure.
Then he stuck out his hand and spoke.
“Name’s Howard Jin. Just call me Howard.”
“......Yes. I’m Shin Youngjun.”
...Howard?
A bit of a question mark floated up in my head, but I didn’t have time to dwell on it.
“So what business do you have in my kitchen?”
“Nothing really, how should I put it. I just wanted to take a look around.”
“Huh?”
I muttered, flustered, since I couldn’t exactly state my real intention.
“......Ha, unbelievable. This is why other Awakeners are...”
“Sorry?”
“They all just think the kitchen is where chefs fool around, huh? Yeah?”
The man’s attitude was pretty damn prickly.
Seeing that, Park Junggu stepped between us again and said,
“He didn’t mean it like that. If you were offended, I apologize.”
“......Hoo.”
He ruffled his hair in irritation,
then let out a sigh.
“The Northern Branch where you are, Junggu, brought a lot of food this time... thanks to that, the kitchen’s situation has improved a lot. I’ll let it slide this once.”
“Much obliged.”
“You don’t have any other business here, right? I’m busy enough as it is, so don’t get in my way and go already. And if you’re coming back some other time, at least don’t walk into the kitchen with dirt on your damn feet.”
“Got it, got it.”
And in the end,
overwhelmed by the thug’s pressure, Park Junggu took me and backed off.
“Haha... looks like you were a bit flustered.”
“Uh, yeah. A little.”
A short while later,
as I stood there in a bit of a daze from the shock, Junggu spoke to me.
“That man was the reason I hesitated when you asked me to guide you to the kitchen. He said his name was Howard.”
“......Howard?”
“Yeah, Howard Jin, I think? He said he learned cooking in Canada.”
[Jin Yangsik]
The name I’d seen didn’t quite match, but—
Well, that wasn’t what mattered right now.
“......He seemed to have a pretty rough personality.”
“Haha... put badly, sure. Put nicely, he’s someone overflowing with pride in his work.”
A guy who’d just driven me out with rough language.
From a glance, I’d seen tattoos on his arm.
The close-cropped hair gave him a strangely intimidating look too.
Since Park Junggu is pretty easygoing by default unless it’s someone who stirs up his fighting spirit,
he seemed ready to just shrug it off.
“But that is a chef...?”
How should I put this.
He was pretty far removed from the image of a chef I’d had in my head.
“It is surprising that there’s a job called chef at all. You wouldn’t know much about other people’s jobs, so I get how you feel.”
Junggu seemed to interpret my words as something like, “So there are chef jobs too,”
and answered in a tone like he also found it absurd.
“Even so, if you look around, chef actually counts as a relatively ordinary job. There are all sorts of criminal-type jobs too, like petty thief and so on. The most ridiculous job I’ve heard of is something else entirely—if you heard it, you’d probably jump out of your skin...”
He started rambling about something.
“More importantly.”
I cut him off
and decided to ask what actually mattered right now.
“......What does that chef actually do? He looks like a full-on thug.”
“Gahaha. You probably shouldn’t say that in front of him. Anyway, as you saw, he’s a man with a job you only find here at this ‘Central Association’ branch. Like I said, he’s a chef... and just like the job says, he’s the one in charge of the food here.”
He smacked his lips as he muttered,
“Honestly, I don’t think it’s a job with some great meaning, but his food tastes pretty damn good. And if you eat it, you can pick up buffs that are somewhat meaningful, too...”
“I see......”
“Truth is, that’s part of why I was so thrown when you disappeared. This place has its own specialty, so I wanted you to try it at least once. The world’s lost every other kind of enjoyment; the least we can do is enjoy food, right?”
Sounds like,
for all his prickliness, when it comes to putting food out, he works diligently.
A job without much meaning, supposedly.
Buffs at a somewhat meaningful level.
From the way he was talking, that probably meant he wasn’t that outstanding a chef...
No, wait.
Now that I thought about it...
Han Iseo acted like the whole idea of [eating monsters] was news to her, didn’t she?
Because she’d said that,
I’d concluded there were no chefs in Gyeonggi Province.
If that chef was serving food to people like normal,
that was a bit strange.
There’s a [Chef] Awakener sitting right here, and yet the concept of eating monsters hadn’t spread.
Did he hide it on purpose? If not...
A suspicion took root in my head,
but there was no way to get the answer right away.
“I heard all the elites of the Central Branch went after that ‘source of the cold’ and disappeared. Is he not one of the Association’s elites?”
“Hm? No. What are you talking about. He is an elite. He’s just not combat-class, that’s all.”
Ah.
“When the Chair took people with him, it was only combat-classes. Other than that, well, he took a few supporter-types whose abilities could have an immediate effect on the battlefield. Of course the production-classes were left at the main base.”
“I heard not a single Guild officer was left behind, that they were all included in the raid...”
“Well, that’s because all those officers were combat-class.”
...Right.
Come to think of it,
my job is chef, but—
If you dig into it more, it’s more accurate to call me a [field cook].
A chef, and also a soldier.
I am a chef,
but my traits have parts that can be applied directly to combat.
Because of that weird kind of overlap,
I’d been a chef and someone who charged around the battlefield.
For a normal chef... for a production-class, not following them all the way to the front lines is only natural.
Our Guild’s representative production-class Awakener—
even Team Leader Lee Sangah, who’s actually pretty talented at combat,
stopped going out to fight once we had enough combat personnel and focused entirely on overseeing production.
Even if he was an elite,
having someone else act as the current leader here was probably for the same reason.
The potential of production-classes was probably only revealed relatively late.
Production-classes don’t really start showing results until you begin using monster materials.
Before that, they don’t stand out much.
The only reason production-classes in our unit could shine early on was because we were in a special environment where we could ramp up our Awakeners in a flash.
Among other survivors, production-classes took quite a while to stand out.
So that’s why even that battle maniac let it slide when he acted so prickly.
Park Junggu’s a battle maniac,
but that side of his personality only really comes out toward other combat-classes.
To be honest, I was kind of really thrown.
Normally, I would’ve tried to approach that guy and find out all sorts of things.
“More importantly.”
Right.
Whether that guy had the same job as me or not,
my immediate objective hadn’t changed.
“So does that mean we can’t use the kitchen while he’s there?”
“Mm. The odds of that are high, I’d say.”
Right now, my goal was—
to get into that kitchen and make “proper food,”
and then
force-feed it to the leaders here...
and [persuade] them.
It wasn’t a method I’d used until now, but at the same time,
as long as I had an environment where I could cook, it was an easy method.
And yet, of all things,
I was getting blocked at the “environment where I can cook” step.
“......Is there no way to get access to the kitchen?”
“Well. Even if you put it like that, as you saw, the kitchen is the chef’s domain... and he’s a man who’s proud of that domain.”
In a low voice,
—Since they can’t show as much performance as combat-classes, he probably wants to assert his rights at least in his own domain... that’s my guess...—
Park Junggu muttered.
...Same as in Gangwon Province,
it didn’t seem like the job of chef was valued all that highly here either.
The reason was probably that—
that chef’s abilities aren’t all that strong.
If I brought the food stores and kitchen from Vimana here,
and could actually cook properly in this place,
I was confident I could put out dishes that would make these people’s jaws hit the floor.
But that chef here hasn’t done that.
He has pride and authority over the chef’s domain,
but beyond asserting that, he hasn’t shown achievements that raise the value of the chef job.
He looks like a thug, he’s throwing rough words around at someone he’s never met before—
it’s hard to see him as a proper chef.
Which makes it highly likely his skills aren’t that impressive either.
In that case, hmm.
“That guy.”
“Hm?”
“You said his pride as a chef is through the roof... right?”
“Yes. I haven’t met him that often myself, but he’s always going on about how a chef must be this way and that~. For a young guy, he’s even more old-fashioned than I am.”
“And the reason he’s holding that kitchen is because it’s the chef’s domain.”
“Yeah. That’s right. Why, what about it?”
“Thank you for telling me. And from here on...”
I grinned.
“I’ll handle it myself.”
****
“Huh?”
When I went back to the kitchen,
the thug-looking chef frowned as he looked at me.
I did feel a little intimidated by that scary-looking face,
but—
“So you’re that scary-looking guy from before, huh. What are you doing back here?”
The next words out of his mouth
made my temper flare up, and I couldn’t help muttering.
“Then what about you...!”
“What, punk?”
Ahem.
I’d gotten worked up for a second and said something weird,
but I had other business.
“For starters, I wiped my shoes properly and washed my hands too before coming.”
“Hmph... so you finally managed the bare minimum.”
“Yes. So could you let me inside this time?”
At that,
the chef’s face twisted into a scowl.
“Denied.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I’m busy cooking. And the kitchen is the chef’s domain. Just the idea of someone who’s not a chef wanting to look around for fun... it makes me feel like I’m some zoo animal on display, and that pisses me off to no end.”
Right.
That was exactly the line I’d been waiting for.
“The kitchen is the chef’s domain...”
“Why, got a problem with that?”
“No, nothing like that.”
Yeah.
If nothing else,
that one line was something I really agreed with.
“In that case, all the more reason you should let me in.”
“Quit spouting nonsense...”
“The thing is.”
The kitchen is the chef’s domain.
And [N O V E L I G H T] because of that,
I had every right to go inside.
“I’m a chef too.”
“......What?”
I’d just been hiding it until now.
The reason I’d hidden it was simple.
Because anyone who learned that secret...
might be someone I’d have to kill myself.
