Not Everything Red Is Blood
"If anything feels wrong, or even a little uncomfortable, you really must come back. Do you understand?"
"I got it. Could you please just stop..."
That made seven. Did the nurse never get tired of it? Even while I changed into my own clothes and made for the door, she trailed after me, parroting the same line like a bird that had learned exactly one sentence.
"You absolutely have to come back!!!"
"Ah! I said I got it!"
Only when I finally lost patience and shouted did she retreat, looking thoroughly satisfied. At last I was free of that hell of a hospital.
"How many bowls of porridge did they make me eat in there? White rice porridge in the morning, nutrient porridge at noon, abalone porridge at night... Fuck. Is this what they mean by a porridge fiend?"
Growl... Hunger was filing my temper sharper. For two days the hospital had given me nothing but porridge, and never enough to fill even half my stomach, so what I needed now was food that would actually stay with me.
"Something hearty. What can I eat that will really fill me up?"
I walked along turning the question over, and when a sign came into view down the street, a smile slipped onto my face before I could stop it.
The name alone settled my stomach. Lunch was decided.
"That's the one."
"Oh, come on. What's wrong with gukbap?"
You drown a solid bowl of rice in steaming broth, pile on the ridiculous spread of side dishes they throw in for free, and for about five dollars you can fill yourself right up. At that price...
I stepped into the soup-rice shop riding that hope of a proper meal, and the hope was obliterated from the first second.
"Welco— AAAAAAAH!!!"
The moment I walked in, the part-timer started screaming, and every eye in the place snapped onto me.
"Wh-why is there a corpse in here?"
"H-how's that thing alive? That's one of them zombies or whatever, ain't it?"
If that was the view from across the room, the part-timer right in front of me had no chance at all. Sure enough, they were sunk in panic and showing no sign of climbing out.
"I have a feeling I really shouldn't try to order."
Wistfully, I was right. There was not the faintest hint that this person was going to pull themselves together.
"Emergency services, I have to call emergency services..."
"Oh, for fuck's sake."
Every human I met seemed desperate to ship me off to a hospital. If the part-timer actually got that call through, I was going straight back, no question, and I'd be eating that goddamn porridge for days.
"Yes, emergency? Th-there's someone here who's about to die. Where am I, you ask? Well, it's, uh..."
Sure enough, I hadn't misread them at all. This part-timer would rather feed me porridge than gukbap. I bolted out of the shop and into the empty street before the ambulance could arrive.
"Fuck."
In this condition, anywhere I went I'd get the exact same treatment. A restaurant, a department store, anywhere at all—people would take one look at me and call a hospital on the spot.
"Keep this up and I'll land in a psych ward before a regular hospital. I really am going to lose my mind..."
Even as I thought it, a few passersby were already scrambling for their phones at the sight of me, and I was driven off into a shadowy alley.
"Isn't there some good way? A way to dodge people's eyes. A way to hide how ridiculously sickly this body looks."
And then I found a method that was revolutionary, simple, and cheap.
"Eureka."
If I was going to cover up, I ought to do it properly, but my hoodie was unfortunately at home, so as a stopgap I ducked into a convenience store and bought a mask. I did nearly jump out of my skin when the clerk there took one look at me and reached for emergency services too.
"All right... let's see if this works."
The moment I put the mask on and stepped out onto the main street, I could feel the stares drop off sharply. And no matter how hard I looked, there wasn't a single person yanking out a phone the second they saw me.
"Yeah. This thing works."
Good. With this, I might actually get to eat. Carrying a reasonable amount of confidence, I headed for a different gukbap house from the one I'd just fled.
Perfect. There was no way a name like that tasted bad. Middling at worst. I walked in tense.
"Welcome~ How many?"
"Just one."
"All right~ What'll it be?"
"A large sundae-gukbap, please. The blood-sausage soup."
"Little miss has quite the appetite! You got it, one large sundae-gukbap!"
The server took the order and vanished, and I let out a sigh of relief. To think a single mask made ordinary life possible—this was basically genius. Throw a hoodie on top and I was sure no one would even notice. Coming up with an idea like that, even I had to admit I was impressive. At this rate I could actually live a normal life.
I was still basking in it when the god said something ominous I couldn't quite place.
"No way. It's worked perfectly so far. There's plenty of reason to think it'll keep working."
The god's tone, as if something had already been arranged, left me distinctly uneasy. That unease vanished the moment the sundae-gukbap arrived.
Bubble, bubble.
"That looks delicious."
I stirred in the house chili seasoning, poured in some cubed-radish kimchi brine, added salted shrimp to set the salt, and lifted a spoonful to my mouth.
Slurp.
"This spicy broth, this salty hit of MSG! If I just send it straight down my— ...hack..."
And I went down the wrong pipe.
"Hack, hack, hack... ghk..."
I rushed to pour water into my cup so I could drink and stop the coughing, but that was enough to draw the approaching server's attention.
"Miss? Is something the matter— KYAAAAAAAH!!!"
No.
"B-blood..."
This is just gukbap broth... radish kimchi and chili paste mixed together, so it only looks a little red...
"It's not blood..."
"B-boss!!!!!!!"
"H-heavens... wh-what in the world is that...??"
I didn't even get time to explain. The server ran off to fetch the owner, and the woman who arrived took one look at me and fainted on the spot.
At this rate I'd be hauled to the hospital as a matched set with the auntie. I had to run before they grabbed me. Otherwise it was the hospital again.
As I burst out of the gukbap house and fled, the god's words from a moment ago came back.
Wait. Don't tell me the god planned this?
In my head, the voice sounded like someone forcing down a laugh.
"Would you mind telling me it wasn't you?"
In answer, the god threw away the usual solemn tone, and a cheap, gleeful voice rang through my skull.
Maybe that isn't a god at all. Maybe it's Satan?
Was it because I'd burned more energy than I'd stored? The hunger I felt now was even worse than what I'd felt in the hospital.
"I'm hungry."
Having tasted only a single spoonful at the gukbap house had amplified the emptiness, and it hit me hard.
"When I get home, I'm ordering something good."
I was clutching my starving stomach and walking when, luckily, a drink vending machine caught my eye.
"I'm hungry, so I'll drink whatever. This is no time to be picky."
I pulled my card from my wallet, fed it in, and scanned the menu for something I could drink without thinking. One slot stood out from all the rest.
"...Honestly, I cannot resist a random gacha."
Click.
CLANG!!
"Well, I'd say that's a decent pull. Lucky me."
Checking the price, it sat in the upper tier even among the machine's drinks. A pretty good pull, I thought, and in my good mood I tugged the mask down a little and drank. Thankfully, it took the edge off the hunger.
"Whew. Thank god. I feel like I might actually live now."
With the hunger eased a little, some of my strength came back, and I started for home again.
"Home, food, then straight to bed."
They said this body was healthy, free of every little ailment, but I still hadn't properly adjusted to it. I'd been through so much exhausting nonsense that all I wanted was to get home and rest.
My body was worn to the bone. Escape from the hospital. Escape from a gukbap house. Escape from a gukbap house again. Three flights on an already exhausted body had worn it down even further.
"I'm starting to fade. Good thing I saved about a mouthful."
I emptied my head and was just opening the tomato juice again when it happened.
"Dude, that's what I'm saying—you shouldn't have gone in there! We lost the team fight because of you!"
"The hell is that my fault? You're the one who botched the engage!"
"Oh, cut the crap, it was your fau—"
Tap.
Splash!
A student coming the other way, mid-shove at his friend, clipped the bottle I was drinking. Tomato juice went everywhere—clothes, mask, and face.
"I'm so sorr— AAAAAAAH!!!"
And of course the two of them took one look at me and dropped straight into panic.
"Blood... from your head all the way down your torso...?"
"This? It's not blood."
Don't make me laugh. Anyone could see this was tomato juice. What were these brats going to do if their eyes were already this bad?
"You idiot! What are you doing! Call an ambulance, now!"
"I said it's not blood. Seriously."
Come on. Anyone could tell this was tomato juice. From what angle did this look like blood?
"Kindly don't fuck with me."
From the gukbap all the way to the tomato juice, all I could think was that this had gone too far. The second I saw the students pull out their phones, I ran for my life, and somehow I made it home.
"Hah... hah... I'm never going outside again."
Body and mind were both spent. I'd stepped out for one quick meal, and this was the streak of misery I got for it.
"From now on, delivery. I'm eating delivery and nothing else."
If I borrowed the power of the hoodie and the masks in this house, I could solve it to some extent. Except I didn't have a mask left for next time.
"Do I have to go out and buy more? No. I'm dead tired today, so I'll go tomorrow. Or should I just buy a mountain of masks and live in here forever?"
"Well, if I play the stock market and mess around with crypto as I go, shouldn't it be fine?"
Oh. Right.