“I’m a chef too.”
The reason I hadn’t revealed that my job was chef
had a lot to do with the current situation in Gyeonggi Province.
A situation where human forces had already been unified early on.
If I claimed I’d been active among Gyeonggi’s survivors from the start,
with most humans belonging to a single power, that lie would get exposed in no time.
So in the end, I had to go with this ‘backstory’ that I’d had my reasons and was forced to act alone until now.
And.
Given my current ‘backstory’ of having survived a long time in the Demon Realm,
a job like chef—one that’s established by feeding other people—didn’t fit that at all.
“You’re a chef?”
“Yes.”
Saying that out loud meant I was risking that backstory collapsing,
and my identity getting exposed,
and maybe even ending up dead from a Penalty.
If anyone learned this secret,
then to survive, I might have to personally kill whoever found it out.
I did have a plan.
First, just get permission to use the kitchen.
If I could get inside the kitchen,
and get permission to use the ingredients and equipment there,
I’d be able to make proper food, and then...
through that,
I could shut this guy’s mouth.
If I put my full power into a dish and used the power of my Special Sauces,
silencing the mouth of a man who’d learned my secret would be nothing.
Afterward, if I worked at it and brought the leaders of each branch under my control,
I could then just confine this guy,
or if not that, kill him and be done with it.
“A chef... I’ve never seen another one besides me.”
Looked like chef was just as rare in Gyeonggi Province.
I could see he was shaken.
“Then why didn’t you say so earlier and only bring it up now?”
“It’s not like we’re obligated to tell other people our jobs, right? When you say you’re a chef, you get looked down on sometimes...”
“Ah... that does happen.”
Maybe he’d been treated like that himself.
The man nodded.
“Then what’s your reason for coming here now?”
“I’ve got some personal reasons, and I want to cook something. I was hoping to borrow this kitchen.”
“......Hmm.”
His suspicious eyes didn’t go away.
Even so—
“You’re not exactly the most convincing guy I’ve ever seen, but if you really are a chef... come in.”
He couldn’t kick me out.
The only basis he had to claim rights over this kitchen was that he was a chef.
If I pushed that point,
I figured he wouldn’t have any grounds to refuse.
He stepped aside from the doorway.
I walked past him and went inside.
Judging by his personality, I shouldn’t expect much in the way of proper kitchen facilities.
Just a third-rate thug at a glance.
He must’ve somehow gotten the chef job and used it to claim his rights and seize power in the kitchen,
but I doubted he was managing it properly.
Well, whatever.
First I’d cobble together at least one dish somehow.
Then with that dish, I’d seize control of this guy’s emotions, and after that—
I’d tear apart the kitchen and rebuild it to my liking.
Thinking that, I opened the inner door.
What I saw in front of me was...
“I’ll say this up front, but don’t go touching things at random. Unless you’re ready to put it all back together again.”
Pretty...
unexpected.
Huh. It’s really clean.
Clean and neatly organized to the point where I wondered if this could really be a kitchen in a post-collapse world.
Inside the Wall built by that “Architect,” the environment was livable by apocalypse standards, sure,
but I hadn’t seen a place this spotless since arriving in Gyeonggi Province.
“Let me ask you something first.”
While I was thinking that,
he leaned his body against a kitchen table and looked at me.
“You’re not just someone who cooked a bit before; your actual Awakener job is chef, right?”
“Ah, yes.”
“Really?”
“If you want, I can prove it.”
If he told me to prove it by cooking something, that’d be perfect.
Feeding him that would mean my goal was basically achieved.
“Proof, huh. Yeah, you’ll need to prove it.”
Unfortunately,
what he wanted wasn’t proof through cooking.
“Then tell me the freshness of this ingredient.”
As he said that,
he brought out something white,
covered most of it with his hand, and showed me only the tip.
Figures.
It wasn’t hard to guess why.
“Even if you’re Awakeners with the same job, everyone starts out with different skills. But traits, as far as I know, are the same for everyone who has the same job.”
That was something our unit, where a lot of people awakened, had figured out pretty fast.
Skills are all different from the moment you awaken,
but traits put everyone with the same job on the same starting line.
In the chef’s case, that meant Cooking Mastery and Dagger Mastery, Fire Resistance,
and—
[Ingredient Identification (Enhanced)]
—Ingredient Identification.
[Pork Fat]
[Freshness – Best]
“Well-stored fat. Freshness is at Best.”
“......So it’s true.”
He’d hidden everything but the tip.
You couldn’t judge it from the visible condition of the ingredient.
And freshness?
That was only a question someone with the [Ingredient Identification] trait could answer.
“I can’t believe it. I thought this was a unique job with no one but me...”
He stepped back, visibly rattled.
The cocky attitude from earlier was nowhere to be seen.
“Fine. You’re right. If you’re a chef, you’ve got the right to look around the kitchen.”
He nodded,
then reached a hand out toward me.
“Let me introduce myself again. I’m Howard Jin.”
“I’m Shin Youngjun.”
“A chef... If you’re a chef, there’s no helping it.”
He scratched his head,
then let out a sigh like this was a hassle.
“Follow me. I’ll show you around the kitchen.”
****
“As you can see, this used to be the restaurant kitchen in a commercial building. I remodeled it myself over time, so it’s got a fair number of proper facilities.”
His attitude was still pretty put-out,
but even so, the fact that I had the same job seemed to give him some kind of camaraderie.
He started giving me a tour of the kitchen.
“Since we’re short on electricity, it’s hard to use everything regularly, but you can assume we’ve got basically everything you’d need for most dishes.”
I was honestly in a hurry,
but I also figured these were facilities I might be using myself soon,
so I quietly listened to his explanations.
“And...”
After a few minutes of rough guidance,
the last place he showed me was—
“This is the food storage.”
The pantry.
And when I looked inside, I couldn’t help my surprise.
“......This is it?”
He gave a wry response.
“Compared to a pre-collapse restaurant’s pantry, it’s pretty pathetic, right?”
The number of different ingredients in there
was way too small.
“Isn’t this... way too little?”
“Yeah, it is. But it can’t be helped. Right now the food you can get is limited.”
In a corner, I could see some assorted canned food.
But there wasn’t much.
Enough time has passed since the collapse, after all.
Most normal food was already stripped clean,
and had gone into the mouths of other survivors long ago.
Any pre-collapse preserved food that was still left now was extremely rare.
So most of the food in here...
“See the fruit over there? That’s from the druid in the Northern Branch. He’s got an ability to grow trees, so he grows fruit and sends it here.”
...was made through self-sufficiency by Awakeners after the collapse.
“For a while, the production dropped off a lot... but this time, for whatever reason, the amount went up. Thanks to that, this pantry got a bit richer.”
So.
Fruit grown by the Northern Branch’s druid, Gang Jaeho, who I’d come here with.
“Oats. There’s a ‘merchant’ Awakener living in the Southern Branch whose ability lets him put goods in and take out equivalent value in food. The problem is, all the food that comes out as payment is those oats... but still, better than nothing, right?”
Oats.
“Fish. Near the place where the Eastern Branch settled, there’s a big river. Most of it’s frozen solid, but... there’s one spot where a group settled and built a Wall, and the part of the river running through there doesn’t freeze as hard thanks to the heat people produce. The surface freezes, but they can punch holes and do a bit of ice fishing.”
“That’s at least a reasonably normal ingredient...”
“Yeah. But as you can see, there isn’t much. We have to cook every last scale, eyeball, and bone to make it worth it.”
A very small amount of fish.
“Next is pork fat. This is the one thing we’ve got in decent volume... that’s produced here in the Central Branch.”
“Here?”
“Yeah. Believe it or not, there are still a few live pigs. After a lot of hell from a bunch of Awakeners working together... they figured out how to cut off just the fat without killing the pig, then regenerate that fat with healing skills to get infinite supply.”
“Cutting off fat only... how do you even do that?”
“Don’t ask me. I think the mages came up with some method... but it’s too complicated, so I don’t know the details either.”
And in contrast to everything else,
the fat was piled up in a massive mound.
Taken one by one,
none of these were particularly bad ingredients, but...
“This is all?”
“Yeah. Other than this, we use ingredients the Awakeners bring back when they occasionally go out.”
“Come on... Even mountains herbs or something would make things so much better.”
“Haha. That’s a fresh load of bullshit. You really think stuff like that is still out there?”
“......”
This pantry...
was pathetic.
Not a single common vegetable.
“You’re really saying this is all you’ve got.”
“Yeah. Judging from the way you came all this way to ask to use the kitchen, I guess you thought we’d have a lot of food... Did you think the situation would be different in the Central Branch? Sorry, but in times like this, it’s the same everywhere.”
He didn’t mean it that way,
but yeah, the sight was miserable.
“Putting aside the lack of proper vegetables, the meat is way too little.”
“Well, you’re not wrong.”
“In that case...”
On a hunch, I asked,
“Have you ever... considered eating monster meat?”
“What?”
At my words,
the man who’d been casually explaining things suddenly had his face twist up in disgust.
“You little shit... Are you screwing with me right now?”
“Sorry?”
From his reaction,
I could tell right away.
I knew it.
The reason Han Iseo believed monster meat couldn’t be eaten.
Even though this man was a chef,
he’d never... cooked monster meat.
And from the experience I’d accumulated,
that meant this guy wasn’t using even half of the natural potential he had as a chef.
I let out a sigh.
“You never know unless you try, do you? It might actually turn out fine once it’s cooked.”
“You never know, huh?”
From my point of view, it was a light line, something I said intending to teach him.
But Howard’s reaction was different.
“You little shit... what the hell is your problem?”
“......?”
“I squeezed out what little time I had to show you around the kitchen because you said we’re both chefs... and what? ‘You never know, so maybe we should feed people monster meat and see what happens’?”
He scrunched up his face
and glared at me.
“You fucking think that’s something a chef should be saying?”
“......”
He spat the words out rough.
His anger didn’t cool; he kept shouting.
“I figured you’d be at least a half-decent chef since you said we’ve got the same job... but you don’t even have the basics. I feel dirty just from shaking your hand, you bastard!”
“What are you talking about.”
Not understanding this sudden rage, I asked.
He answered in a suffocated tone.
“You ‘never know’? That’s the kind of complacent thinking you cook with?”
“......?”
“Eat monster meat. Sounds nice on paper. You think I never considered it?”
With a look like he couldn’t believe this,
Howard dragged his hand down his face.
“We’ve been short on food for way longer than a day or two. I’m not an idiot. Of course I looked at other meat... at monster meat. But there are tons of cases, people who ate monster meat and ended up turning into monsters themselves.”
“I mean, just because you eat monster meat doesn’t mean you always turn into a monster...”
“No, yeah. You’re right. It doesn’t! But!”
The chef who’d left the worst possible first impression on me.
Howard glared.
“And you’re saying we should feed that kind of untested, dangerous ingredient... to other people?”
“......”
“That’s something... a chef must never do.”
Only then
did I start to understand why he was this pissed.
“Most problems ultimately come from ‘maybe it’ll be fine’ thinking. Especially when it comes to chefs.”
Cooking is something that goes straight into people’s bodies and affects them.
A chef is someone who makes those things.
“If you mess up, it’s a job where you can kill people.”
In reality,
stories about places that mishandled ingredients, served food made from spoiled stock to a child, and caused something irreversible—
those were common.
Even in my position as a field cook.
Every summer, I’d get hit with all kinds of inspections that we needed to check ingredients and kitchen conditions properly.
“Even if the taste suffers a bit. You can’t compromise on ingredients.”
It’s something that seems casual and normal enough,
but if you get it wrong, you can kill people, make them sick.
That’s why
chefs put more effort into managing ingredients than anything else.
And.
After hearing that, I finally really saw something.
The ingredients in here.
I turned my head and looked around the pantry.
The amounts weren’t large.
The variety was pathetically low.
But the condition... every one of them was top-tier.
Not a single one
had freshness below [High].
On top of that, every ingredient was meticulously portioned out,
split and distributed here and there, all lined up neatly and clean.
From the way I haphazardly sorted things, I just thought he was someone who liked tidying...
I’d thought there was a high chance he was just a nothing-special chef.
But maybe this man...
“Even so, with just these ingredients, there must be a limit to what you can cook.”
“......If people were truly on the verge of starving to death, then I’d probably test that meat by eating it myself. But up until now, we’ve still been able to get bare-minimum ingredients like this. There was no need to take that dangerous gamble.”
“With these ingredients, it’s impossible to make proper food.”
“Impossible, huh.”
At my words,
he looked me in the face.
“You really think so?”
“......?”
He gave a wide grin,
then turned his body.
“Come to think of it, I’ve never seen you in the dining hall. So you’ve never eaten my cooking.”
“Ah... that’s true.”
“In that case, just wait there.”
A little later,
he headed back to the kitchen
and came out with several dishes.
[Fruit Oatmeal Salad Infused with an Intermediate Chef’s Devotion]
[Fish Fried in Lard Infused with an Intermediate Chef’s Devotion]
[Intermediate Chef’s......]
“Go on, try them.”
Dishes made by wringing everything he could out of those meager ingredients.
And.
When I ate that food, what I felt was...
“Pretty good, right?”
“......Yeah.”
Thug-like appearance, openly hostile attitude.
And according to Junggu, the buffs from his cooking were nothing special.
So of course I’d assumed he’d be a nothing-special chef.
But...
I was wrong.
From what I’ve seen so far, a job that maybe shows up once per region.
He was a man who’d gotten a job that rare.
Of course...
“If I’m going to put something in people’s mouths, I’d rather develop as many ◆ Nоvеlіgһt ◆ (Only on Nоvеlіgһt) different menus as I can with limited ingredients... instead of serving them dishes I’d be afraid to eat myself!”
“......”
“That’s what a chef should do. Saying something’s impossible is just an excuse.”
There was no way
he’d be a nothing-special chef.
****
“Still, I expected better since you said you’re a chef too... Didn’t think you’d be clueless about something this basic.”
Maybe he’d gotten a bit tired from cooking for me.
He stepped back a few paces and dropped into a chair in the corner.
“You said you came to the kitchen because there’s something you want to cook, right?”
“Yes.”
“......Hmm.”
He looked at me with a strange expression,
then continued.
“Let me ask you a few things first. Where did you cook before?”
“What do you mean, where?”
“What restaurant did you work at, I’m asking.”
A restaurant.
If I started talking about the army here, I might just die on the spot.
“It wasn’t exactly famous. You probably wouldn’t know it even if I told you.”
“Yeah? Then you’re a bit different from me.”
“How so?”
“I worked at Kitchen 17. The place Professor Lloyd Park opened... you know it, right?”
Speaking in a tone that assumed I obviously did.
I answered blankly,
“......Ah, yeah, sure, I know it.”
“You would. In terms of skill, he’s at the top, and he’s practically a celebrity, shows up on TV all the time.”
And yet,
inside, I was thinking,
Who the hell is that.
The name sounded vaguely familiar.
But before I became a field cook, I had zero interest in cooking.
Even if it was the name of a famous chef, I didn’t know any.
“Right... So your career’s nothing special. Setting aside how scary you look, you do look young; how old are you?”
“Twenty-three. I’ll turn twenty-four after this winter.”
“You really are young. How long have you been cooking?”
“Two to three years...”
“So you started at twenty. Hm.”
Answering his questions,
I was puzzled inside.
What’s the point of all this?
I wished he’d just hurry up and let me cook.
I’d learned he was a proper chef,
but separate from that, I still needed this kitchen to reach my goal.
And all we were doing was trading pointless Q&A.
Just as I was starting to get irritated—
“Right, if that’s the case...”
Sitting in the chair,
head slightly bowed as he questioned me,
the man raised his head,
grinned, and said,
“Then that makes me your senior, doesn’t it?”
“......”
Stupidly,
only after I heard that
did I realize.
This bastard...
Those questions
had been for sorting out the hierarchy.
