The Weekend and the Bean Sprout Party
It was the weekend. You know how it is, right? Even when you don't set an alarm because you want to sleep in, you somehow end up waking up at the exact same time you do on weekdays. What’s more, on a weekday, if you turn off the alarm and pull the covers back over your head, you feel like you could drift right back into a deep sleep. But on the weekend, for some reason, once you’re awake, you can’t fall back asleep no matter how hard you try. I hate this body of mine for so stubbornly trying to maintain its average sleep duration......
I took out a single serving of bean sprouts to fix my breakfast and collapsed back onto my bed. Since I didn't have school, I had nothing to do. But I was actually quite fond of spacing out. I wasn't doing anything, but I was capable of doing nothing with such intensity. If one reaches that level, one can achieve something ordinary people couldn't even imagine. That is, the murder of time. A cruel time-slayer on the bed. That was me, Scarlet Evande, another name for the one they call The Time Slayer. Ah, this is what it means to [kill] something. In this moment, I became a heartless person without blood or tears, diligently cutting the throat of time.
‘You cruel thing, you’ll pay the price someday!’
The dying time screamed. But I wasn't the type to worry about such things. After all, the future me would be the one paying the price. The current me was just enjoying the pleasure of this moment to the fullest......
By the time the slaughter of time ended, it was already lunch. Since I didn't have school, I had to eat lunch at home, and as I was taking out a portion of bean sprouts, I felt a sense of dissonance. I don't go to school. I don't meet Sylvia. At that moment, an exclamation mark flashed in my head.
First, I didn't just take out a portion; I took out all the bean sprouts in the refrigerator. I was preparing for an act of luxury that would have been unimaginable to the me of the past. But now, I had not a single shred of hesitation. I grabbed a huge mouthful of bean sprouts with my chopsticks. And then, I shoved them all into my mouth and chewed!
Crunch! The refreshing texture echoed in my mouth! I shivered at the violent yet intense stimulation that I could never feel when I was slowly tasting them one strand at a time. My mouth opened slightly on its own, and a sigh full of satisfaction, "Haaah," escaped my lips. To think I hadn't been able to do something this good until now—I've wasted half my life (three days)! I truly felt alive right now.
I was stupid. I was truly stupid. Why did I only realize such an important fact now? On the weekend, I don't go to school. If I don't go to school, I can't meet Sylvia. In other words, on the weekend, I don't have to pay the "friendship fee" because I don't get to see her! There are eight weekend days in a month. Eight days' worth of friendship fees is a whopping 24,000 gold. Combined with the 6,000 gold I had left, it was a massive sum of 30,000 gold. Thanks to that, my living expenses had increased fivefold. Then, the course of action was decided. I quickly polished off the remaining bean sprouts and dumped the leftover macaron pieces from the fridge into my mouth without regret. As a 30,000-gold asset holder, I didn't need these petty things anymore! Tonight is a bean sprout party!
I arrived at the discount mart to do my shopping. As expected, a thick wallet makes for a relaxed mind; I felt like if Yoon Siwoo greeted me with a smile now, I could ignore him or nonchalantly brush him off with ease.
“Scarlet! Are you here to shop, too?”
Crazy, forget what I said. Is it even possible to run into someone the moment you think of them? Even in a novel, if you met someone this randomly, people would complain about the lack of probability. ......Come to think of it, I ran into him on the way to school last time, too. He probably lives around here; I should be careful from now on......
I sighed inwardly and gave Yoon Siwoo a nod.
“I guess you’re here on an errand. You’re a filial daughter, aren’t you, Scarlet?”
I am a filial daughter, though I have a fire attribute. I quietly replied to Yoon Siwoo, who was smiling brightly.
“I don’t have parents.”
Is it just my imagination, or did I say this not too long ago? He went quiet, so I looked at Yoon Siwoo, and he was frozen with his mouth slightly agape. What is it with this guy? Did I accidentally use a magic spell, Stop!, without knowing it?
“......Sorry. I didn’t know.”
Yoon Siwoo, who had been frozen for a moment, soon apologized with a gloomy face. Why are you so down?
“Don’t worry about it. We’re both in the same boat, not having parents.”
He looked like his mood was about to plummet through the floor if I left him alone, so I said that to him without much thought.
“Huh? How did you know? That I don’t have parents. Did I ever tell you?”
And at Yoon Siwoo’s words, I realized I had made a mistake. A chill ran down my spine. I couldn't tell him I knew because I read it in the novel where he was the protagonist. It was entirely my fault. It’s a standard rule that the protagonist of an academy novel is an orphan, so I ended up saying it as if it were a matter of course. Usually, you know, the kid from some orphanage who turns out to be a chaebol realizes there’s some connection between their parents and that orphanage, and the relationship progresses, right? Of course, that kind of story doesn't appear in The Academy’s Holy Swordsman!
I felt like I needed an excuse, so I just said whatever popped into my head.
“Just, you look like it.”
Yoon Siwoo muttered, "Is that so?" and looked confused. Come to think of it, it wasn't a wrong statement. If you have that face and that kind of ability, you have to be missing parents to keep the balance! Plus, that guy had tons of money because Lucy, the ego dwelling in the Holy Sword of Humility, told him the locations of ruins filled with valuable items. Comparing him to myself, I suddenly felt bitter. I don't have parents either, so why am I broke and have such mediocre abilities? It seems like this world really is the one that doesn't have parents. Man, that’s damn unfair. How are people who weren't born with a silver spoon in their mouths supposed to live?
I felt annoyed, so I waved my hand at Yoon Siwoo, who was still staring at me blankly, gesturing for him to get lost. Yoon Siwoo looked at me for a moment with a puzzled expression, then paid for the items overflowing in his shopping basket and left the mart. Just looking at it, the items in Yoon Siwoo’s basket seemed to cost more than my monthly living expenses, which gave me a sense of relative deprivation, but I shook my head and pulled myself together. Don't be jealous, Scarlet! You’re playing your own duel—no, you’re doing your own shopping!
I struggled to tear my eyes away from the meats that were tempting me from afar, and picked up the items I had intended to buy one by one. First, a small 500ml bottle of cooking oil. When you cook, having cooking oil changes the number of dishes you can make. Simply put, it’s safe to say there isn't much you can cook without it. And it was absolutely necessary for the dish I was going to make today. The price was 1,500 gold.
And the thing I wanted to buy most today. A small 300g bottle of oyster sauce. Oysters are an ingredient that people either love or hate, but for some reason, oyster sauce made from them is almost universally liked. It adds such a decent flavor that it makes even simple things feel like a real dish. Instead, the price is a little bit expensive. The price was 3,500 gold.
And I picked up one, no, two bags of 300g bean sprouts. I’m not someone who trembles over a mere thousand gold anymore! I thought, but my hand was trembling as I picked up the sprouts. ......It can't be helped. I’m someone who tried to survive a month on 7,000 gold, and now I’m spending 7,000 gold in a single day. It’s only natural that what I’m doing feels like massive overspending. But for the sake of today’s bean sprout party, I decided to pay this much willingly. It’s the weekend tomorrow anyway, so it should be fine to buy a little extra. It’s a bean sprout Flex.
I coolly took out my student ID with my index and middle fingers and paid for the items. Since I spent 7,000 gold, my remaining living expenses were 23,000 gold. It was a large sum that would allow me to eat quite well if I only ate bean sprouts for the remaining period. I wouldn't have to worry about going hungry for a while.
I returned home, took out what I had bought, and prepared to cook. I put one bag of bean sprouts in the fridge and opened the other. I grabbed a handful of sprouts from the bag, rinsed them clean under running water, and drained them. I turned on the gas stove, placed a pan on top, and drizzled in the cooking oil. Then, I added the drained bean sprouts. As the sprouts wilted from the rising heat, I stirred them quickly with a spatula. The savory aroma of the sprouts sizzling in the oil. It was already guaranteed to be tastier than blanched sprouts, but the real deal started now.
I added my secret weapon, the oyster sauce. My mouth watered at the smell as the oyster sauce soaked into the stir-fried sprouts. It would be even better if I had something like sesame oil, but this would be delicious enough. I plated the finished dish. Oyster sauce stir-fried bean sprouts. As anyone who has tried it knows, this is a real rice thief. Of course, since I didn't have rice right now, it was safe to call it just a "thief."
I picked up a chopstick-full of the sprouts, which were glistening with a coating of oil and oyster sauce, and put them in my mouth. Along with the texture of the sprouts, which still had a crunch even after being stir-fried, the salty and savory taste coated my mouth. To express it in one word, it was a nostalgic taste. It was a dish my mother often made because bean sprouts were cheap and plentiful. When I first ate it and said it was delicious, she made it so often that I complained I didn't want to eat it anymore. Honestly, I thought I was sick of it, but now that I’ve been dropped in a place like this, it was the first thing that came to mind.
One bite. Two bites. I was eating the stir-fried sprouts while thinking that, when suddenly, a drop of water fell onto the plate. What is this? The moment I thought that, water started falling onto the plate in droves. My first thought was that I had to protect the stir-fried sprouts, so I quickly moved the plate away. I looked, and the place where the water was coming from was my eyes. Water was pouring out like I’d turned on a faucet.
“Damn it, why is this happening......”
I tried to stop it, but my eyes seemed to have gone haywire and wouldn't stop tearing up. I laughed because this situation was so absurd. That my first thought while crying was to protect the stir-fried sprouts. Fortunately, thanks to quickly moving the plate, not much of my tears got into the food. I just sniffled and giggled because I didn't think the tears would stop for a while, and slowly ate the stir-fried sprouts, which were a bit saltier than before. It was probably because it was so delicious that I was crying. It was just so delicious.