A Glass of Soju and Some Pork Belly After Work
A Glass of Soju and Some Pork Belly After Work
Maybe I should say we got more customers on opening day than I expected?
The Knight Restaurant was bustling.
The knight order and Internal Affairs people who'd shown up for lunch had done some aggressive word-of-mouth, it seemed.
The evening crowd was easily double the lunch rush.
They'd probably headed straight into the viscount's estate and spread the news.
Sure, it was a countryside viscountcy, but the household staff alone was sizable enough.
Plenty of farmland, quality hunting grounds, and the dense Britten Forest meant the territory pulled in respectable revenue.
No mines or anything that really raked in serious money, but it had everything it needed.
Either way, I'd been run ragged all day.
As the sun set, farmers and hunters heading home after work stopped in their tracks and wandered into the restaurant.
"A new eatery, eh?"
"Bulgogi Baekban? Give me one of those."
"Whoa! Look at the size of these portions! The cook here's got a generous hand."
"Wait, you sell booze too?"
I gave every evening customer who ordered food a free bottle of soju.
"One bottle each, on the house. Courtesy of the owner."
"No kidding. Free liquor?"
"A little gift to celebrate the grand opening."
"Ha! This guy knows how to run a business!"
"Much obliged."
Mostly, I needed people to register that this place sold alcohol.
Especially the ones working physical labor all day.
What comforts a working man more than a hot meal and a drink after a hard day?
Bulgogi Baekban with a glass of soju.
Throw in some Dakttongjip Bokkeum on the side.
That's it. That's the whole formula.
One sip of throat-burning soju, and these early-modern-fantasy-world farmers and hunters were guaranteed converts.
"Krrraaah! This stuff's killer! Boss, one more bottle over here!"
"Yes sir, one more soju! It's in the fridge — just let me know whenever you grab one!"
"That works?"
"Running the place solo — a little hard to pour drinks while I'm stir-frying meat."
A woodcutter who'd just knocked back a shot of soju with his ssam-wrapped bulgogi squeezed his eyes shut, face flushing pink.
"This is insane. The beer at the Blue Inn's been tasting watered down lately, but this place is the real deal."
"One more round?"
"Hell yes."
The bottles emptied fast.
The redder my customers' faces got, the wider my smile stretched.
You know what has the highest profit margin in a restaurant?
Not the donkatsu. Not the bulgogi baekban.
Not the dakttongjip on the side, either.
Alcohol.
Booze leaves the fattest margin.
A customer who camps out nursing a pot of eomuk-tang and kills eight bottles brings in more revenue than a table that orders four full servings plus sides.
And on top of that, the Golden Wagon Merchant Group had agreed to charge me only cost price plus shipping — since I'd helped them with the product concept and basic design.
Which meant every empty bottle was stuffing my wallet that much faster.
That's right. Drink up.
Drink deep and turn into money in my pocket.
"Hoo-hoo-hoo."
I caught myself laughing like the secret villain of the story.
I really shouldn't.
The grin just kept slipping out anyway.
"Look at all that. Heh-heh-heh."
Enjoy your meal, everyone.
"Boss! Grabbing another bottle of soju!"
"Go right ahead! As many as you like!"
And as my wallet filled, the crackling sizzle of oil rang out even louder.
Sizzle-pop. Sizzle-pop.
Ah, now that is a beautiful sound.
I'm starving.
***
I sent off the last customer and stood at the counter, tallying the day's earnings.
Daily revenue: thirty gold.
A full thirty gold.
In this world, ten silver roughed out to about the same as ten thousand won back in Korea — which meant roughly three hundred thousand won.
Three hundred thousand won in a single day.
Conventional wisdom says restaurants run on razor-thin margins, but I was the guy who'd burned through half his knight-order severance to build this place outright.
And what does that mean?
It means I'm the landlord.
The almighty property owner, peer to God Himself, as the saying goes.
The single biggest expense for any restaurant owner — rent — was a giant zero.
No outflow there.
Labor costs?
I worked alone. What labor?
Cross that one off, too.
Maybe if business really took off down the line, sure.
But for now, I didn't need to pay anyone.
Ingredient costs, mana usage fees for the Flare Range — sure, those added up. But even so, my margins blew a typical restaurant's out of the water.
And a huge chunk of today's revenue? Soju.
That sea of empty green bottles was every drop I'd sold.
At this rate, I'd run dry before Kobi's next delivery even arrived.
Business had genuinely gone better than I'd projected.
'Factor in the cost price on the soju — practically nothing — and...'
The smile came on its own.
I was pulling in way more than I ever did slaving away as a cook-knight in the order.
"That's what I'm talking about."
No more scrambling for my life in the capital wondering if today was the day I'd get killed. And I was earning far more than my knight's salary ever paid.
Sure, I'd lost the rank of knight and whatever honor went with it...
'That shiny honor never once stopped a blade from taking my head off.'
If honor's the thing that gets my head taken off, I'll pass.
"Long live the restaurant business."
Of course, I had to account for the opening-week bump.
Food businesses always do best on day one — that's just how it works.
Nothing guaranteed it'd stay this good forever.
If I didn't want to get left behind, I'd have to work harder.
Push menu development aggressively.
But for tonight?
Didn't I deserve a break?
"Fine. One single day to enjoy it."
I shut the door of the Knight Restaurant.
- CLOSED.
I hung the sign and killed the lights in the hall.
Wasn't I entitled to one last feast before clocking out?
After the day I'd had.
Humming to myself, I pulled out the portable Flare Range — the Brustar.
I sliced the leftover whole onion into thick rounds.
Grabbed the kimchi that usually went out as a bulbaek side and moved it to a serving dish. Then I scooped up some ssamjang and stepped out into the back garden.
Behind the restaurant, the garden grew all the various leafy greens that went out as ssam wraps with the bulbaek.
But I hadn't hauled all these side dishes out here just to pick lettuce.
In the corner of the garden, tucked beneath the shade of a broad old tree, sat a small table.
"Ah, now that is a view."
The wide fields and forests of the viscountcy, the patchwork of cultivated paddies and farmland — all of it spread out below in one sweeping panorama. A genuine power spot among power spots.
In daylight, you could probably make out the distant villages linked to the viscountcy.
The estate sat at the edge of a broad plain, perched halfway up a modestly rising hill — the kind of placement that produced a painting of a landscape.
Daytime offered more to look at, admittedly.
This wasn't the imperial capital — no city that never slept. Just scattered torchlight dotting the main road through the viscountcy's heart.
But if the land had little to show at night, that only meant the sky above was putting on its own performance.
Stars packed thick across the black expanse.
A dense river of them — a breathtaking galaxy — and cutting through it, two moons that loomed with a presence so stark it was almost oppressive.
Eclipse and Luna.
Both moons hung bright and full, lighting everything around me.
The soft glow alone was enough to make out the scenery without even bothering with a torch.
"This is unreal."
I fired up the Brustar and laid the wide grill plate on top.
Soaking in the atmosphere nature was providing, I brought out tonight's true headliners.
Samgyeopsal — straight from the ranch where I sourced Pog meat — and a green bottle of soju, pulled from the fridge.
The belly slid into my hand, layers of pale pink lean and pure white fat stacked in perfect alternating strata, flaunting themselves shamelessly.
Thick-cut. The flawless harmony of lean and fat. A perfect piece of meat.
A miraculous gift that tasted incredible with nothing more than a grill and a little heat. This was my dinner tonight.
"A reward for a man who's clocked out."
Now that was a proper reward.
But the empire's people didn't care for samgyeopsal — said it was too fatty.
I'd heard they preferred to render all the fat out and eat it more like smoked meat.
Turning this gorgeous pork belly into nothing but bacon.
Bacon's good, sure.
But it doesn't hold a candle to samgyeopsal wrapped in grilled kimchi.
The empire's citizenry, ignorant of this glory — I pitied them.
The Pogs themselves probably wept inwardly at the slaughterhouse.
Watching their proudest cut get tossed aside as tasteless, discarded in an act of unforgivable barbarism.
"Belly doesn't even sell, so take it for free. On the house."
I take that back.
Long live the empire's people.
A truly wonderful dietary culture.
The fact that the empire didn't know samgyeopsal.
Meant I could enjoy this sublime flavor for cheap.
I laid the chilled samgyeopsal onto the fully heated grill.
Tsssssssss!
"Aaaah. Pure aural bliss."
That glorious sound rang out.
I thought back to all those hours spent satisfying my customers' stomachs while completely neglecting my own.
The smell of pork belly hitting the heat made my nostrils flare.
I shouldn't be like this.
"That smells incredible."
The scent of fat rendering and melting tickled my nose.
Clear oil slid across the grill plate and dripped — plip, plip — into the cup I'd set underneath to catch it.
I placed the kimchi, already cut into manageable pieces, right in the path of the flowing fat.
Chaaaaaah!
Kimchi brine met Pog fat with a violent hiss and crackle that echoed into the viscountcy night.
Was it on par with kimchi made directly in Korea? Probably not. But I'd put everything I had into it.
The aroma of the seasoning mixing with hot oil as it grilled was intoxicating.
I tossed finely sliced garlic onto the grill, then flipped the samgyeopsal — now golden-brown from the Maillard reaction.
Tssssss!
The meat, seared brown along the grain, looked obscenely edible.
Watching it finish cooking was pure agony.
I wanted to eat it now.
Weren't you supposed to cook pork all the way through before eating?
Twenty-first-century modern processing meant you could eat pork a little underdone safely, but who knew about here.
Magic might stand in for science, but hygiene standards sure weren't twenty-first-century standard.
Tssssss!
I waited until the last trace of pink had vanished from the belly.
"Aaaaah. I cannot take this. I really can't."
Even as I flipped the meat with tongs, my eyes never left it.
The galaxy unfurling overhead and the viscountcy landscape might as well have not existed.
The plan had been to feast with that gorgeous scenery as my side dish, but my focus had other ideas.
"Nnnngh."
The moment I decided the meat was perfectly done, I lifted it with the tongs and went at it with scissors.
Snip! Snip! Snip! Snip!
Every cut through the thick belly sent a fresh surge of saliva flooding my mouth.
The fat beading up on the meat dripped like my own mouth watering — as if it were channeling my inner state directly.
With the doneness confirmed, I reached for my chopsticks —
but first:
Crrrk!
I cracked the soju bottle open.
Glug, glug, glug.
Clear soju into a clear glass. Left hand for the glass, right hand for the chopsticks.
I picked up two pieces of that beautifully cooked meat, dredged them generously through the ssamjang, and—
"Hoo, hoo."
—cooled the steaming-hot meat with a couple of quick puffs and took the biggest bite I could fit.
"Delicious."
The aggressive punch of ssamjang hit my tongue first.
Through that thick layer of fermented bean paste intensity seeped the rich, nutty pork fat.
The samgyeopsal's assault was more brazen than anyone's — an Eganu-level punch you saw coming and still couldn't stop.
A devastating flavor.
The chew of the meat fibers and the deep savory notes from the Maillard reaction tap-danced a riot across my palate.
Blazing hot — felt like it might scorch the roof of my mouth — and I did not care in the slightest.
"Fucking delicious. Genuinely too good."
I tossed back a swig of ice-cold soju straight from the fridge.
"Krrrrrh."
The heat that had been threatening to blister my mouth cooled instantly.
But the soju sliding down my throat heated my empty stomach right back up.
Signal received: food's on the way down. Ready the next round.
"Hell yes."
Samgyeopsal and soju after a grueling day of work.
Was there anything better?
"This is insane."
Wrap it in grilled kimchi and I'd probably pass out.
Definitely pass out.
Knowing that, I still couldn't stop my chopsticks.
I wrapped the kimchi — dripping with rendered fat — around the meat, and the two hissed together in a cloud of steam, radiating presence.
Samgyeopsal and grilled kimchi, cooled with a few quick breaths, then one massive bite.
"Ah, hot. Hooooh."
Too hot — I had to clamp it between my teeth and forcibly cool it before it could go any further.
"Hoo! Hoo!"
To cool that inferno in my mouth, I had no choice.
I'd told myself I wasn't going to drink too much tonight.
Ah, well. No helping it.
Gulp.
"Krrrrah! That's good drinking."
A star-packed galaxy for a roof, the nightscape of the viscountcy spread below as my side dish, and samgyeopsal with soju.
This was luxury beyond luxury.
I could die happy right now.
That's when I felt it — the unmistakable presence of someone moving inside the restaurant I'd definitely locked up.
"Proprietor! You in there?"
Who the hell interrupts a man's dinner?
I put up the CLOSED sign. It's right there.