Carbonara
An empty Korean restaurant in the quiet afternoon hours.
An awkward atmosphere hung over the place.
Seated at a table: the android monk and the succubus restaurant owner.
They weren't speaking, but a considerable tension could be felt. That tension, however, was something only Un-rang was experiencing. The gap in their strength was simply too vast. From the boss's side of things, it was more along the lines of, A monk here? How curious~
And sitting between them, shoveling down carbonara tteokbokki: Gong Ryun. Of course, Gong Ryun was mindlessly working his spoon. Still in a dazed depressive state, he was a complete mess.
The carbonara had some of the beef Gong Ryun had caught earlier mixed in. The boss had thrown it in as a special topping, saying there weren't any other customers anyway.
Un-rang was flabbergasted.
This was the shop he'd visited once before with Gong Ryun.
Back then, he hadn't known the owner's true identity and had wandered in by accident. He'd known she was a succubus, but he hadn't realized she was that kind of person.
I should have given Gong Ryun a much firmer warning!!
Un-rang regretted it. He'd naturally assumed Gong Ryun would never set foot in this place again. After all, he'd witnessed the shop owner dunking several mercenaries right before his eyes and been terrified out of his mind.
But who would have thought he'd come back here despite that fear. Un-rang had underestimated Gong Ryun's guts far too much.
How many times had he been here? How often had he visited for him to seek this place out even while depressed and ailing?
"So… Gong Ryun seems to… like this place a lot…?"
Un-rang carefully broached the subject.
"Oh my~~~ Of course~~~ He comes every two or three days~~~?"
"Wh-what…!"
Un-rang squeezed his eyes shut. Even as close as he was with Gong Ryun, men didn't usually keep track of where each other ate every meal (and Un-rang drank nano-beverages anyway), so he hadn't known.
"Why~~~? Is there some kind of problem~~~?"
"…Ah… no… It's just that this friend is rather naive, so I worry… If the wrong ideas get put in his head, it could be serious…"
"Oh my~~~ He's all grown up, what are you so worried about~~~ Everything is his own choice~~~"
"Surely… you haven't been encouraging 'political discussions'?"
"Well~~~ Not yet~~~ But who knows about the future~~~?"
Un-rang was thoroughly unsettled.
This succubus… seeing her up close like this, it was certain. She was probably using some technique to conceal her realm. A kind of camouflage that made her appear weaker than her true level.
And yet she still looked this strong. How powerful was her true ability?
Even now she seemed to be at least Life and Death Realm. At the absolute minimum, Nature Realm. Even just Life and Death Realm would let her handle multiple Profound Realm martial artists of Un-rang's level at once…
The mercenaries who had come in a pack to kill her before had essentially been committing mass suicide. They clearly hadn't known how strong she was. Falling for the reclusive-master cliché of hiding one's power. This was why studying wuxia literature was important.
…A master of this caliber could kill someone with a wave of her hand.
In practical terms, short of things that were excessively illegal, wasn't this the kind of strength that let you do whatever you set your mind to?
Did Gong Ryun even know this?
As that thought crossed his mind, the boss spoke to Gong Ryun.
"So~~~ Gong Ryun~~~ Does the tteokbokki taste good?"
"Yes…"
"Aww, why are you so low-energy today~~~? Eat lots and perk up~~~?"
"Yes, Auntie…"
"……?"
Un-rang nearly had a heart attack.
This madman!!! How could you call someone "Auntie" right to their face!!!!!
This was the result of Gong Ryun's depression making him drop his guard completely.
The tteokbokki shop owner's manner of speaking had always made her seem older, so Gong Ryun had been calling her "Auntie" only in his head. It was like a private nickname — but today, in his dazed state, it had come out of his mouth without passing through his brain.
The succubus boss's aura wavered ever so slightly.
But she soon glossed over it as if she weren't flustered at all.
"Oh my~~~~~~~ Well, Auntie isn't wrong~~~~~ I've lived a long time~~~~~ It's the truth so I don't really mind~~~~~ Still, it's been a while since someone's said it right to my face like that~~~~~ Not easy to do~~~~~ Gong Ryun is~~~ secretly brave~~~? Right~~~?"
"Yes, Auntie."
"Pfft—hahahahaha~~~! Ahahahaha~~~! Well, okay okay~~~~~ You must be in pretty bad shape today~~~? That can happen~~~?"
"Yes, Aunt—"
"Shall we use a different form of address?"
Her eyes were still smiling, but anyone could tell it wasn't a genuine smile.
For a moment, a hint of murderous intent seemed to rise. But within it, one could also sense a Buddha-like patience. After taking three "Auntie"s straight to the face and still talking it over pleasantly without any sign of anger, she truly had a good character.
Un-rang adjusted his evaluation of the succubus boss.
She was a high-level expert with good character. Well, the galaxy had rule of law and morality. He was ashamed of himself for having approached her with hostility just because she was a master.
"Gong Ryun~~~? Even if I am married, that title still doesn't quite fit~~~? Shall we try a different form of address~~~? How about just Boss~~~??"
"Na…"
"Hmm~~~? What was that~~~?"
"Noona…"
"…"
"…"
A brief silence. And then…
"Aww~~~~~~! Noona is way too young~~~! Just call me Boss~~~!!"
"Yes, Noona…"
"That's too much of a stretch~~~ I'm how old and calling me that doesn't even make me feel good~~~ Teehee though by human standards I'm grandmother age, by succubus standards I'm a totally young married woman"
Un-rang wiped his chest in relief.
Now the tension had eased a little.
"But Gong Ryun, why the long face~~~? Did something happen~~~?"
"Ah. Allow me to explain. So about once every month or two…"
Un-rang briefly explained about Gong Ryun's depression.
The boss understood readily enough. This was an unorthodox planet full of strange people, and this still counted as a solid young man. More than that, she found it endearing that he'd come for tteokbokki even while depressed.
"Oh my~~~ Our Gong Ryun~~~ Did you like the carbonara tteokbokki that much~~~?"
"Yes, Noona…"
"Aigoo it's not Noona teehee~~~~~~~ Right, the tteokbokki is delicious after all? How good must it have been for you to come seeking it on pure instinct~~~? The carbonara sauce really is spectacular"
"It tastes bad."
"?"
"What kind of carbonara is this… It's completely fake…"
"?????"
"This isn't carbonara… The sauce is… wrong… and the ingredients… have no foundation…"
"…? No… That's because it's fusion cuisine…? I mixed a few things my own way…"
"It's fake carbonara… Like what Mom made…"
"……"
Gong Ryun's childhood home.
An old LED TV in the basement.
If you got a USB from the black market and plugged it into the TV, you could watch dramas.
If you got caught, it was the death penalty.
You had to risk your life to watch. That was why the TV was in the basement.
But USBs were hard to come by, and ones that had a complete series from episode one to the end were almost nonexistent. Most just had fragments of a series, or were collections of a few tantalizingly incomplete episodes from various shows.
On a slave planet where entertainment was virtually nonexistent, even that was a stimulating pleasure.
Gong Ryun recalled his childhood.
The few-episode cut-off dramas he'd watched on TV. Without the beginning or end, he couldn't follow the stories. But just watching was fun enough.
On "rest days" — Sundays when he didn't have to work twelve hours or more — Gong Ryun watched TV. He and his mother would cook, go down to the basement, and eat while watching.
The drama content was really nothing special. Something like a romance drama about a wealthy family. The main couple would go on dates every weekend, eating spaghetti at fancy restaurants. Gong Ryun couldn't understand the content anyway. He was too young, and the world in the drama was too alien to a slave's common sense.
Gong Ryun didn't even know if such a world truly existed.
He thought it was a fake world. So he didn't believe.
Even when his mother said it was a world you could see if you went up into the sky, he couldn't quite believe it.
The other kids his age said adults had made it up. The neighborhood elders advised him not to believe such things.
Looking at the tattered clothes and house and food that made up Gong Ryun's life, the unreality of the drama was plain. The planet's civilization level itself was appallingly low, after all.
Gong Ryun, like most of the planet's people, was more interested in how to work less than in some unreal other world. Which factory was easier to work at, tractor driving was more comfortable, and so on. In other words, a slave's dreams.
A slave's gaze was so low that they dared not even look up at the sky.
A life where the shackles on their feet were the entirety of their vision.
His mother did not want that.
She needed him to know that the world in the dramas wasn't some fantasy land, but truly existed somewhere.
She wanted her son to go up into the sky.
So when she saw Gong Ryun's eyes sparkling as he watched the carbonara spaghetti in the drama, she made a decision.
After rewinding the drama dozens of times, pressing his face to the TV with such wonder and passion as he wondered what that white food could be, one day his mother asked if he wanted to eat it.
Of course Gong Ryun said he did. At the time, that was Gong Ryun's small dream.
His mother was relieved. At least that dream, however small and humble, was not a slave's dream. This small dream could become the beginning of higher dreams.
A few months later, his mother made carbonara.
On that slave planet.
How hard must that have been.
With a body broken from work, she carved out time to track down ingredients.
What she could get, she bartered for at the black market. Ingredients unavailable in the neighborhood, she smuggled in expensively through multiple people from other districts. Leaving your birth neighborhood meant the death penalty, after all.
Just the preparation took months, and the lack of sleep and rest during that process damaged her health.
Yet his mother went about it without any show of hardship.
And in the end, she gathered all the ingredients and made one plate of carbonara.
It was hard to fully recreate from just watching a drama, so a few ingredients were wrong, and some she never managed to obtain, so there were many shortcomings.
The spaghetti noodles were handmade, so they were extremely thick and lumpy, and the ingredient ratios differed from the proper recipe.
It was thoroughly botched carbonara.
But that didn't matter.
To Gong Ryun, that was real carbonara.
Watching her son happily empty the bowl, his mother stroked his head.
She smiled and asked if he believed the drama was real now.
Perhaps from then on, Gong Ryun began to vaguely believe in the world above the sky. He began to imagine what kind of world it might be up there.
That was what his mother had wanted. So she could smile even through the hardship.
The hand stroking her son's head was covered in wounds.
"Mom…… Mom………!"
Gong Ryun burst into tears.
Tears fell onto the fake carbonara tteokbokki.
"Hic……! Mom……! Hngh……! Momma………."
This carbonara resembled his mother's cooking. In the sense that it was nothing like carbonara at all, it brought back the dish his mother had made for him.
"Mom…… Why did you……! Why did you live so hard……! Who am I……!!! Who did I think I was……!!!"
Besides that carbonara, his mother had done so much for him.
So that Gong Ryun would look at the sky. So he wouldn't remain a slave.
Gong Ryun remembered the moment his mother was dying.
His mother, who died of chronic illness and overwork.
If only she hadn't overexerted herself for Gong Ryun. She could clearly have lived longer.
"Why, Momma…!! I only needed you…!! Hic…!"
He could have seen her longer. He should have treated her better.
"Momma…!!! Waaah……!!! Mom……!!!!!!"
The son who was now all grown up cried out for his mother with all his might.