Life Does Not Forgive Weakness
The midterms had begun. The lecture hall was filled with the clatter of cooking tools and the sharp sounds of knives at work. I calmly recalled my plan and recipe. After running through it once in my head, I got straight to work.
“?”
“You just eat that.”
First, I removed the useless Dixie. I tossed a bag of popcorn to Ines, who was standing there in a daze. Second, I took the meat out of the bag and drained the water. It had been frozen for several days, but it had thawed on the way to the classroom. Third, I selected the sauce ingredients. The in-game recipe didn’t call for many, so the selection itself was easy. Fourth, I mixed the sauce ingredients in the proper ratios. The game’s vague proportions had forced me to go through endless trial and error before I finally nailed them down. Honestly, it had been an absolute grind, but surprisingly, even if the ratios were slightly off, the high-quality ingredients kept it from tasting bad. This version was simply the best I could achieve using the magic powder as a base in my quest to make it even better.
Fifth, I cut the meat into appropriate sizes. I had no idea what the professor preferred, so I sliced it however I liked. As I was diligently chopping away, the supervising professor drifted closer. Her eyes glowed with an odd light—clearly she was using some kind of magic.
“Hmm—”
Ah, shit. Go away already.
The professor-Bolshevik’s wicked gaze attack (Communist Eye Rape) brought my knife to a halt. I wanted to sprinkle salt on her to drive her off, but I knew it wouldn’t work, so I gave up on the idea. The professor examined the meat thoroughly, then nodded.
“This really is something you caught yourself. The preparation is… well, a bit ambiguous. Did you have a local shop handle the butchering?”
“No. I prepared it myself.”
“Yourself? Where?”
“In the bathroom.”
I didn’t mention that the bathtub and toilet were right next to each other. I had to avoid any disaster that would make her refuse to taste it and cause a seed-spilling catastrophe.
“Hooh. For something done in a bathroom, it’s surprisingly clean. Of course… there are still quite a few rough spots. What kind of knife did you use?”
“My personal blade.”
“So you used your main weapon?”
I nodded. I immediately channeled power into the kitchen knife. The scattering blue particles instantly revealed what it was. Then I slowly sliced the meat. The clean, precise feeling was on a completely different level from before. I hadn’t used it earlier to conserve energy, but now it felt like a waste not to. Finally, I cut with rapid speed.
The professor let out a gasp of admiration.
“Oh… That’s an excellent aura.”
“Thank you.”
She jotted something down on her tablet. From the list I glimpsed when she turned, it looked like the partial score for this section of the exam. It was probably the points related to ingredient preparation. If I had bought the meat from a butcher or had it pre-prepared, I might have lost marks. Realizing how close I had come, I let out a sigh of relief.
Having finished grading one team, the professor walked toward the group behind us.
“What, you bought it from a butcher? You’re disqualified.”
She had barely even looked. And she was still some distance away, yet the cold verdict rang out immediately.
“Y-yes?! N-no, this is really meat I hunted myself—”
“No? What do you mean no? The magical traces from a butcher shop are all over it, and the shop’s stamp mark is still clearly visible.”
“B-but this is—!”
“Do you think I’ve only caught one or two students like you? Even if you finish the dish, you’re getting zero points, so pack your bags and get out.”
Oof. Brutal. The fact that they hadn’t even tried to hide their cheating only made it worse. And so the butcher-shop villain was chased out of the lecture hall with a face full of grievance.
With a grim expression, the professor scanned for her next target and approached the person beside them.
“Did you have the butcher prepare yours too?”
The blade struck another victim. It was clear that more than one or two grades were going to be ruined. Therefore, sixth, I slowly began grilling the meat. I kept the heat low and picked up the vegetables set aside on one side.
Seventh, I sliced the vegetables and made skewers. Three skewers with attractive colors were completed. Eighth, I seasoned them lightly and cooked them a little longer. Once I was certain any parasite concerns were gone, I transferred the meat to a plate.
Ninth, using the oil left in the pan, I rotated the skewers to finish cooking them. I adjusted the seasoning once more, and when they were done to perfection, I took them out.
Tenth, I arranged the meat, vegetable skewers, and sauce on the plate in order. With no special decoration, I pressed the bell to signal that I was finished.
“Hmm?”
The professor, who had been cutting down cheating students, turned around. Her gaze asked where the bell had come from. I raised my hand to show my position. Maybe because it was finished with ten minutes still remaining, her expression softened slightly.
“Zero points.”
“Kieeeeeek!”
Of course, her mood and the current situation were two different matters. With nothing but a difference in attitude, the professor had casually crushed one student’s grade. Then she turned her indifferent steps toward us.
Very calmly, she examined the completed dish. Her expression suggested she was figuring out how to eat it. Honestly, with meat, vegetables, and sauce, the method was obvious. She dipped the meat and vegetables into the sauce in turn, placed them in her mouth, and chewed slowly, savoring the flavor.
“Mm.”
She ate one more of each. Then another. She kept going until an entire skewer had disappeared. She pulled out a tissue and politely wiped her mouth.
“It tastes good.”
The words that followed. The indifferent statement that it tasted good didn’t feel entirely reassuring. Instead, fear surged through me that there must be some flaw somewhere. If it weren’t good, there was no way she would react so stiffly. If I converted it to a score, it would probably fall between seventy and ninety points—somewhere between mid-upper and upper rank.
“Ah…”
Ines seemed shocked by the professor’s words and froze solid. She was so stunned that the popcorn she had been eating fell right back out of her mouth.
“Ugh…”
After thoroughly wiping her mouth, the professor rinsed it with water several times. Then, as if she still had more to say, she looked back and forth between me and Ines.
“But why was only one of you cooking? This is a group exam.”
Because you made the groups this way, obviously only one person cooks. What, do you expect both of us to cook and happily perish together?
Of course, saying that out loud would earn me a furious zero, so I used the answer I had prepared in advance.
“Ah, we had already divided our roles beforehand and agreed to take the test this way.”
“Agreed?”
“Yes. We agreed that my teammate would handle the hunting, transportation, and recipe, while I would take care of the actual cooking.”
Of course, it was complete bullshit. The trash-protagonist Ines had essentially done nothing except the transportation.
“Hmm… Really?”
“Yes!”
Expression management. Expression management. Expression management. The moment I let my guard down, I could lose everything.
“Hey, you eating popcorn over there. Is what he said true?”
“Yessir? Yes, yes! It’s true!”
“Hmmmm…”
Man, she’s picky. There wasn’t even a clause in the announcement forbidding this kind of role division, so I had no idea what she was agonizing over. Even if we claimed we had split the roles, there was realistically no way for them to uncover the truth. At this point, accepting our claim was their only option.
“……”
“If you can’t believe us, you can check the World Gate access records or review the nearby CCTV footage.”
“Hmm…”
She still doesn’t believe us after all that? Tough. She’s really tough. Maybe it was because of that unrelenting gaze, but the professor wrote something on her tablet with a stiff expression. The pen seemed to move very little, which filled me with dread. Zero points? One point? Two points? Or just ten? Scores with few strokes flashed through my mind. In the end, I was sure she was about to deduct points for a reason not even listed in the notice—
“Full marks.”
“Excuse me?”
“Full marks. For both of you.”
Even though the test wasn’t over yet, she casually announced the score. Her confidence was so absolute that it caught me off guard.
“F-full marks?”
Ines was so shocked she shot to her feet. The sight of her marveling, completely unaware that popcorn had spilled across the floor, was spectacular.
“The taste was excellent compared to the ingredients used. Honestly, for a dish made with ingredients that hunters carry into the field, it’s also highly practical.”
She spoke loud enough for the others to hear, as if offering a hint beyond the unfairness of the situation. However, there was less than ten minutes left. There wasn’t nearly enough time to change the dish, and it might have turned into a horrific canned-mackerel sandwich from hell instead.
“Uh…”
“And the person in the back gave you the recipe, right? Where are you from? Central America? The Caribbean?”
“Portugal… though I’m American now.”
“That explains it. The sauce had that regional flavor.”
That’s skull water, though. Ines looked at me with extremely flustered eyes. I gave her a look that said don’t look at me. Then I quietly slipped the ramen soup—filled with the blood, sweat, and tears of corporate PhDs—back into my pocket.
“You seem to have real talent for cooking. Would you like to join our research lab—”
Ines’s eyes trembled violently. I pretended not to notice and started packing my things.
Life Does Not Forgive Weakness
The terrifying grip of graduate school only released us once the exam had officially ended. Ines and I stepped outside, taking some comfort in the fact that we had received full marks.
It was pouring. I opened the umbrella I had prepared and started to walk through the rain.
“Ah, shit…”
Unfortunately, Ines could not do the same. Having dumped all her stats into her inner Dixie power, she hadn’t even brought an umbrella. I briefly considered leaving her behind, but since we were stuck in the same group until finals, it felt too cruel. Remembering the teachings of Jesus, Buddha, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster, I decided to show great generosity.
“Hey, let’s share it and go together.”
I shifted the umbrella slightly and covered her with it, making it clear we would be walking together. She hesitated for a moment, then stepped closer. Since her shoulder was still at risk of getting wet, I grabbed Ines’s arm and pulled her firmly to my side.
“Hic?!”
“Stay still. You’ll get rained on for no reason.”
And so we walked through the rainy streets of Arecibo. Since I followed the usual path to her house, my steps were light. I didn’t need to think about anything in particular, and we didn’t need to exchange any special words.
However, Ines seemed to have something she wanted to say. She kept fidgeting with her fingers and even moved her mouth restlessly. What on earth did she want to tell me so badly?
That was the exact moment the question arose.
“…Pointy-eared shit Westerner.”
The dog-like word choice instantly killed the question. I had heard it plenty of times already, so it didn’t move me much, but a sigh still escaped at the hopeless future ahead.
“What, why?”
“Well… it’s almost dinner time. Want to come to my house and have some ramen?”