An Abrupt Beginning

Kim Unhyeon.

A hunter who awakened out of nowhere while cooking monsters just to stay alive.

The class he gained for it was Chef.

Living by pure survival instinct, he climbed past the ranks of ordinary hunters and became a Ranker in his own right.

Then he volunteered for a massive subjugation raid—and a Catastrophe-class monster crushed his entire body.

Through a haze of unimaginable pain, his consciousness slipped away, and he was certain everything was over.

And yet, right now—

Kim Unhyeon's memories were flooding into me, soaking through every corner of my mind and shaking the foundations of who I was.

What the hell am I…?

Had I not died? Or had I died and come back to life?

Reincarnation?

I had no idea.

I was starting to think I'd simply gone insane—

The message floating before my eyes said otherwise.

I wasn't crazy.

"Head home early today. Stop by the hospital, too. As for the workers' comp paperwork… ah, forget it. We'll talk about the complicated stuff later."

"…Yes, sir."

The warehouse manager looked at me with open concern, clearly tangled up over how to handle the situation. I gave him a habitual bow of the head and stepped out of the logistics warehouse.

My vision was still a mess—not because my head was foggy, but because of the messages hanging sharply in the air right in front of me.

Alright. Let's sort this out for a second.

Maybe it was the effect of the skill Calmness. My body kept walking toward my studio apartment, but my mind settled into cool, orderly clarity.

If I wasn't crazy, then I had awakened to a past life.

In that past life, I had been a hunter. Not that it had been a promising career—the world had been falling apart.

A full-blown apocalypse, plain and simple.

I had been one of the last hunters left standing at the end of that world. Survival had been entirely thanks to my class. Out of sheer desperation to eat monsters if I had to, I had awakened—and my class had been Chef.

That class became a lifeline in the apocalypse. Not that it meant I had no combat ability.

In a ruined world, the closer your combat power got to zero, the closer you got to death.

I had enhanced cookware, poisoned enemies with my food—anything and everything. That was how I had survived.

In any case: in a dying world, hunting for a reversal, I volunteered for a Catastrophe-class monster subjugation. Then I died a glorious death. Cause of death: total bodily pulverization.

They say even a dog living at a school for three years learns to recite poetry. After surviving the apocalypse that long, I'd logged my own cause ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of death in my head even as I was dying.

"Haa…"

And so I had woken up—here. Getting smacked by a falling object in a warehouse and awakening to a past life.

Does this even make sense?

No matter how many times I turned it over, it was absurd. I still half-suspected I was losing my mind.

"Some kind of parallel dimension? This place… it's the same Korea, but there are no monsters. No hunters."

Maybe it was the situation itself, but even with Calmness running, I couldn't fully believe it. My head still felt numb.

Click.

In that state, I arrived home. A tiny studio of about two hundred square feet, with a room, a kitchen, and a bathroom all packed into one. Once I was inside, what I had to do was already decided.

Proof of ability.

If I'm not crazy, I should cook something, right?

Finish even a simple dish, and that would settle it—whether I had truly awakened, or whether I had simply lost it.

Let's do this.

The dish I chose was ramen. The simplest cooking I could manage in this little studio.

Rrrrip—

Maybe because my sanity hung in the balance, the way I tore open the ramen packet was downright solemn.

This is a test.

An experiment to determine whether I was insane. Calling a psych evaluation with a single pack of ramen might sound ridiculous—but if I was going to do it, I was going to do it properly.

I poured 550 ml of water into the pot. The moment it boiled, I dropped in the noodles and the soup powder at the same time, then waited for it to come back up.

Cooking was still cooking, even without monster ingredients.

As the ramen bubbled up, the message I had been waiting for finally appeared.

"Oh… it's real!"

So I wasn't crazy after all. That was half the test passed.

Wait a second.

Delusions could be surprisingly detailed. You know the type—to everyone else the guy is clearly unhinged, but inside his own head the whole narrative has perfect setup, conflict, and resolution.

Maybe I've gone so far off the deep end that my brain is just… generating all this automatically? Imagining it?

No jumping the gun. I couldn't call it confirmed yet.

Smack—

I slapped my own cheek hard and forced myself to focus. Then the dull minutes crawled by.

One minute. Two minutes. Two minutes thirty seconds.

More than enough time for the noodles to cook through. Now came the final touch.

A dish isn't truly finished until it's plated.

Plating. Putting it in a bowl is part of cooking! If I was going to cook, I was going to do it right.

I ladled the ramen into a bowl I'd set out ahead of time, scattered sliced green onions over the top, and finished with a dusting of black pepper.

"Ramen with stamina recovery and a healing buff? That's insane."

The messages rang out the instant it was finished. Taken at face value, this would more than heal the head I'd cracked on a falling crate—which would also settle, once and for all, that I was not crazy.

"Hoo… hoo!"

I lifted a bite of noodles with my chopsticks, blew on them, and slurped them straight into my mouth.

The moment they hit my tongue, springy noodles and the flavor they'd fully absorbed slammed into my palate. For something designed by food scientists just to be instant ramen…

Holy crap. Is this even the same ramen I've always eaten?

It was overwhelmingly intense. Umami and silkiness several times richer than usual—a full-body rush of joy, like tasting some legendary feast.

If I was only this happy over plain ramen because I was insane…

Then maybe going crazy wouldn't be so bad?

On its own, this already felt like it would raise my quality of life. Still, I had to see it through to the end. If this were a fight, I had just landed a critical hit. I needed to finish the rest of the noodles, drain the broth, and land the final blow before the battle was truly over.

Slurp— slurp—

I vacuumed down the remaining noodles with the kind of loud, shameless slurping I normally despised, then knocked back the leftover broth in one shot, scalded palate be damned.

A perfect clean plate.

Satisfaction flooded every inch of me—and with it, the messages.

I didn't really need to read any further. I could feel it in my body.

I'm healing!

A soft current of energy seeped through me along with the full-body satisfaction, wrapping my whole frame and pushing recovery. Most of that energy poured into the spot where the crate had hit my head—and the dizziness cleared.

The instant the full heal landed, I was certain.

"Whoa… this is actually real?"

With my body fully healed, my mind cleared too. I felt the last of my lingering dread melt away.

Right. I wasn't crazy. I had actually gone and awakened.

But why?

I couldn't even begin to guess. A reward for clawing so hard to survive until the very end of my past life? A brutal coincidence? Or maybe some kind of mercy, so I could settle the regrets left over from before?

Don't know. That stuff's too complicated. It involves me, sure… but does it really matter? Doesn't look like monsters are going to start showing up the way they did last time.

I decided not to overthink it. The personality from my past life—the one that coolly moved on from anything that didn't touch survival—seemed to be kicking in. Whatever. Not my problem.

Instead, I took stock of reality and looked ahead.

"Okay. Calm down and think. According to the System, I'm the first person to awaken. And my class is Chef. Hmm. With that…"

I looked down at my two hands. With the power in these hands, my cooking would always taste good. No—it would become good. On top of that, every meal came with buffs. This went past tonic medicine; it was basically a miracle elixir.

Delicious food? Miracle elixirs? Combine those two, and what I needed to do was already decided.

I had to get into the food business.

Anything related to cooking would guarantee my future. So should I go find a part-time kitchen job?

No. I shook my head.

That would take way too long. Hand the kitchen over to someone with zero formal experience, just like that? Not happening. Fast food might be doable, but… do I really have to go that route?

I didn't want the long way around. Immediate returns—that was my style.

In which case…

"Ah! That's it!"

A method that was fast and paid me back right away. I already had one.

For an awakened Chef like me, the food industry was destiny. And the fastest way for someone like me to jump into it was surprisingly close at hand.

Simple, really.

Who says a restaurant has to be a fixed storefront?

All the cash I had on hand ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was twenty million won. With that, I'd burn through every last coin just putting down a deposit on a tiny shop. Renovations? Completely out of the question.

But there was a way to get something that came with its own interior—and that could start selling food that very day.

I dug through the internet for a long stretch, then went straight into a deal. Conveniently, the meetup was nearby.

Standing in front of the truck parked at the transaction site, I said it without hesitation.

"Thirteen million."

"Thirteen is way too low! You know I was aiming for fourteen. You don't get to show up after agreeing to a deal and pull this."

For the record: the thing I was offering thirteen million for was a truck.

"If it had been exactly as advertised, I'd have paid ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠fourteen without a word. But…"

"But what?"

"The condition on this thing…"

I walked up to the truck he'd priced at fourteen million and set my hand on a spot I'd already checked with an appraisal-type sense.

Thud—

The bumper, barely hanging on, dropped straight to the ground the moment I touched it. Not because I'd put force into it. I'd only brushed something that was already clinging on by a thread.

The seller's face twisted. Caught red-handed.

So he knew this was broken.

What a piece of work.

"Look at that. Bumper just fell right off. Even if it's a truck, if you're going to use it for business, you've got to fix it."

"What repairs? You're just parking it and selling food."

"And if the bumper drops while you're serving customers? Someone gets hurt. So yes, it has to be fixed. You don't think that repair bill's going to be cheap, do you?"

"Mmm…"

"So let's make it eleven million."

"The price just dropped another two million in one breath?"

"Want me to check the rest of it? I'm fine walking away and coming back later. I've got a feeling there's more where that came from."

"…Hah. You came here ready for a fight, didn't you. Fine. We'll deal."

"Good. Once we wrap up the remaining steps, I'll transfer the money."

"Alright. And no complaining after the deal's done?"

"Of course not."

The short negotiation wrapped up fast.

Truck repairs? I inspected the condition myself and handled the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠simple fixes with my own hands, drawing as much as I could on my apocalypse experience to make it look presentable. Adding those minor costs, the total I spent came to twelve million won.

The next day I finished the remaining work and filed for a business registration. After that I prepped ingredients and scouted a place to sell. By the third day, I had even secured the operating permit. Every last preparation was done.

"Ready for business."

A food truck.

Preparations for the grand opening of my first shop were complete.