Unexpected Events (1)
For the record, this was no ordinary dish.
Shrimp-Free Shrimp Burger
Status resistance rises for one day upon consumption.
Long-term consumption raises base status resistance.
A medicinal dish, no less.
On the surface it was just an ordinary burger—well, ordinary-ish. The real work was hidden inside. The ability that came with the Healer title, layered with everything I had learned in my past life, had gone into the burger sitting right in front of me.
Allergies are status ailments if you look at them broadly enough. I built this around that idea, so there’s no way it’ll trigger one.
And long-term consumption even raised base status resistance. An allergy was still an immune response—still a status condition. Once resistance climbed high enough, a reaction simply wouldn’t fire.
Broadly speaking, it answers every kind of debuff. An allergy is nothing!
She’d have to keep eating it for a while, of course.
“Woooow……!”
With Yeon-hee already making a racket just carrying the plate over, there was no chance she’d stop at one.
I’ll make it for her every time she comes by for a while.
Every day, until her immunity was well and truly fortified. Until she was sick of it.
While I was steeling myself for that, two neatly plated burgers settled in front of Yeon-hee.
“Here you go!”
“Does this taste like shrimp?”
“Of course! Want to try one?”
“Yes!”
Chomp—!
Yeon-hee stuffed as much of the burger into her little mouth as it could hold.
“!!!!”
Then her eyes flew wide, startled. Pure, childlike joy lit them both up.
“I-it’s so yummy!”
“You have to chew what’s in your mouth first.”
“Mm-hm!”
She demolished one burger in no time at all, then sat there staring quietly at the one that was left, as if it still weren’t enough.
“That good, huh?”
“Yeah! Can I have one more?”
“Go ahead. Eat as much as you want today.”
“Yay!”
She snatched up the remaining burger and went at it again with those little chomps. I just watched that cute sight of hers for a moment—
Your cooking has delivered a heartfelt impression.
—when an unexpected notification popped up.
Yeon-hee. You really meant it about the shrimp, huh?
I hadn’t expected her to be that sincere about it.
Luck +1 for one month.
Culinary inspiration rises.
Experience points……
Notifications about rising status resistance and experience followed in a cascade, but none of them mattered as much to me as that heartfelt impression.
This is so good.
It was a moment that meant a great deal to me.
The morning after the company dinner, while I was bustling around the shop getting ready from early on, an unexpected proposal walked through the door.
“Boss!”
“Ha-rang? You’re here awfully early.”
“I had something I wanted to talk about.”
“Hmm?”
“The patty you made yesterday. We both loved it. Yeon-hee even took the wrapped one and ate it first thing this morning. That kid actually finished breakfast, can you believe it?”
“Haha. That’s great.”
I hadn’t expected Yeon-hee to polish off breakfast too. Good news—the boosted immunity was just a bonus.
“Did you come by this early just to tell me that?”
“Half of it, yes. The other half is something else.”
“Then what’s the other half?”
That was when the unexpected proposal landed.
“That patty. What if you sold it?”
“That?”
“Yes.”
Sell it, huh. I knew the flavor wouldn’t drop off. The unit cost was a little high, sure—
That’s still within reason.
Set the price to match and it’d be fine. Put it out and I was confident it would sell. The problem was somewhere else.
“I’m not saying we make it into a full hamburger, exactly. That would take too much work—the kitchen as it stands couldn’t handle it.”
“Right? Adding a whole new menu item right now is definitely too much.”
Ha-rang knew that as well as I did. There were no free hands left in the kitchen. She and Jin-woo might step in someday, but it didn’t look like that day was today.
For some reason, Ha-rang still seems to be hesitating too.
So I waited to hear what she actually had in mind, and she brought a pretty interesting idea with her.
“It’s definitely too much. But when I thought it over, I realized there might be a way.”
“What kind of way?”
“Do we really need to sell it as a hamburger?”
“Hmm?”
“What if we just put the patty out as a fry? Shrimp-free shrimp fritters?”
“!!!!”
Serve only the patty as a fried dish. That was a pretty fun idea.
“As long as the prep is done well in advance, I think it would work. And if we put it out, I have a feeling there’d be demand for it.”
Maybe my reaction lit a fire under her—Ha-rang started talking a mile a minute. It was the first time I’d heard her speak like that.
“If the prep ends up being too much work…… if it’s all right with you, I think I could help with that part.”
“You, Ha-rang?”
“Yes. Um…… it’s not that I’m suddenly hungry for kitchen work or anything. After seeing what you made yesterday, I just started thinking about what I could do to help, and……”
She stood there with her head bowed low. Ah. So she’d gotten this far because she wanted to help me. This was the same woman who had been determined not to set foot in the kitchen, as if it were some kind of crime.
I have a rough idea why she hesitates, but……
How much courage must it have taken for her to bring this up at all? The kind of strength I couldn’t begin to measure from where I stood. The offer meant more to me than I could say. It was the moment she told me, first, that she would step into a kitchen I had always wanted to share.
The best I could do for her was make sure she didn’t get any more embarrassed—and that she never wondered whether she should have kept her mouth shut.
I laughed, big and open.
“I love it.”
“Ah……”
When Ha-rang lifted her bowed head, her eyes were bright. For a second, yesterday’s Yeon-hee seemed to overlap with her.
Ha-rang’s proposal turned out to be a masterstroke.
“I’ll take the shrimp fritters too!”
“I told you we don’t have any.”
“No—the shrimp-free shrimp fritters!”
“Then I’ll have the shrimp ramen!”
“Is this a set?”
“Guess so.”
Shrimp-free fritters. Shrimp ramen. The customers turned the two into a natural set without anyone asking them to. And so the Shrimp Set was born. The two dishes looked more extravagant together than I had expected.
“Woooow……!”
“Insane.”
A massive black tiger shrimp sat at the center, and beneath it, a shrimp ramen loaded with seafood. The bowl was so big it was hard to believe it was a single serving, filling the middle of the table.
“Whoa…… that hits so good and spicy.”
“Right? It’s perfect.”
And the second they tasted it, the shrimp-free fritters waiting beside it were ready for their turn. Even before the first bite, the fritters announced themselves with a delicious aroma that filled the air around them.
Crunch—
Past the crisp shell of the fry, and—
“Ohhh……”
“It’s juicy, and it still tastes like shrimp.”
The golden rule of crisp-outside, tender-inside came together in the mouth. By the time the saliva that had pooled on their tongues started to settle, the customers who had tasted it were realizing something.
“This doesn’t feel like a factory product, though.”
“You’re right. It’s handmade.”
“Whoa…… a handmade snack shop? That’s a new one.”
That this set was a house-only menu you couldn’t get anywhere else. Once that sank in, curiosity was inevitable.
“I’m pretty full, but…… I feel like I could fit one more thing, don’t you?”
“You too?”
“Right? Just one more—the lasagna gimbap, yeah? We originally came for that.”
“Perfect! One roll of lasagna gimbap over here!”
Menus stacked themselves on without any prompting. Two people, three dishes minimum. And for that, we had a pleasant little surprise waiting.
“Here’s the lasagna gimbap you ordered.”
“Woooow……!”
“Um, we didn’t order the soup next to it, though?”
“It’s on the house!”
“Huh? Really?”
“The boss said you were enjoying everything so much he wanted you to have it.”
Service went out right away. The little soup that usually accompanied a gimbap order had been swapped for scrubber-gourd soup, and we added one more touch beside it.
“This is the base broth we use for the Hong Kong ramen—give it a try.”
“This is pretty close to what they serve at that Hong Kong place.”
“Exactly. We’re working from the same base.”
“Whoa……”
“For the record, even with the same broth, they do something different with it over there—so you should try it sometime.”
“Really? We’ll definitely come by!”
“Thank you for the meal!”
We’d given them a natural taste of the Hong Kong restaurant’s broth. That planted more than satisfaction—it planted the expectation of a next visit. A kind of combo going off.
The customers thoroughly enjoyed every dish we had so carefully prepared. Some ordered the Shrimp Set. Some ordered the Lasagna Set.
First-timers mostly go for the specials.
The regulars didn’t fall behind either. Every time they came in, they ordered Freeform Ramen and Freeform Gimbap, and that became its own hook. Each time a different ramen came out, their eyes lit up with curiosity. That look of wonder—what does this one taste like?—and then, as if to bait it further, each ramen’s unique aroma would spread through the room.
Game over.
A picture that all but guaranteed another visit. Plenty of people came, and they ate plenty when they did. Watching it all, I found myself realizing something anew.
My shop’s menu has grown more than I thought.
Freeform Ramen and Freeform Gimbap. We had definitely started with just those two. Add one thing after another, and the variety had gotten considerable. That didn’t mean the unity was gone, though. Not a single dish had stepped outside the frame of snack-shop cooking.
And was that the end of it? Absolutely not.
Inspiration is just surging right now.
Maybe it was thanks to the genuine impression Yeon-hee had given me not long ago. All kinds of dish ideas kept rising in my head. My hands never stopped cooking, and my mind was busy sorting everything out at the same time.
As that frantic lunch rush finally started to wind down—
Huh……? Is that who I think it is?
The back of a customer who had just walked out looked strangely familiar.