I'll Let You Eat All the Sunji Haejangguk You Want. In Exchange, Work with Me
I'll Let You Eat All the Sunji Haejangguk You Want. In Exchange, Work with Me
For a vampire like Bldi, who had only ever known the taste of blood, the texture of seonji was something entirely new.
Soft and bouncy, an absolute delight.
The savory thread woven through the familiar sweetness of blood was startlingly fresh and wonderful.
For a timid vampire with zero social skills, utterly incapable of blending into human society, every one of these sensations was a first.
"Deliciouth. Heh-heh-heh."
And so, she failed to notice the human's presence entirely—until his hand clamped down on her shoulder.
She'd always been confident she could bolt the instant anyone appeared.
In her head, Bldi was forever the dashing vampire who pulled off flawless escapes.
"Why don't we have a little chat?"
It was him.
The human who'd chased her off the chicken farm alongside that elf.
"A ch-chat? I, I don't have... anything to s-say...."
She forced the words out while staring anywhere but at his face.
From her perspective, she'd scraped together every ounce of courage she had.
Problem was, Lucas didn't hear a word of it.
"Hey, what's she saying?"
H-he didn't hear?
Or was he just pretending to be deaf to mess with her?
She'd once heard that well-fed carnivores liked to toy with their prey before the kill.
Was that all she was to this human? A plaything?
I am a vampire, you know.
A member of the race that once brought an entire continent to its knees in terror. Did that count for nothing?
This called for bravery.
She would show him her strength, make him tremble, and then take her rightful spoils.
"I-I-I may not look it, but I'm a f-frightening va-vampire...."
In her imagination, she was already standing tall, shouting down the human and claiming her prize.
She'd said her piece. Surely he understood now.
Summoning her nerve, she lifted her chin just enough to steal a glance at the human gripping her shoulder.
And what she saw was—
Lucas's eyes, head tilted, watching her like he was waiting for her to finish casting some kind of spell.
He's going to kill me. Kill me dead.
He's going to drive a stake through my heart. Chant a holy spell. Tie me to a pyre and let me burn.
The moment their eyes met, every worst-case scenario played out behind her eyes in an instant, a frantic panorama of death.
"Aaahh...."
Fwoomp.
Overcome by terror, she foamed at the mouth and crumpled to the ground.
While unconscious, Bldi dreamed of heroically thrashing Lucas and draining his blood as payback for the time he'd knocked her out.
Every gulp of his blood tasted sweet, but it also left that same peculiar, tingling sensation on her tongue she remembered from the coco blood—sharp and electric.
She told herself the shudder shaking her whole body was just the victor's euphoria, and she kept drinking....
"Hey. Stop napping and wake up."
In the dream, she'd drained Lucas dry and made him her thrall, and now her thrall was shaking her awake.
The instant she realized it had all been a dream, she was hit with a wave of crushing disappointment, relief that she wasn't actually dead, and fresh terror over what this human still might do to her.
Frozen and trembling, Bldi stared at the bowl Lucas held out toward her, its contents bubbling merrily.
"Eat this first. You look like you've been starving for days. Don't just go around eating raw seonji."
"......."
A pale yellow broth still boiling like lava, despite not being over a fire.
Smooth, pale-brown rounds of seonji floating on top.
Unidentifiable greens scattered throughout.
To a vampire who knew nothing of human cooking, the earthenware pot of seonji haejangguk looked like something a demon might have conjured.
"Y-you want me to eat this? C-couldn't you... just let me go home?"
Her voice was so faint it practically crawled back into her throat. Lucas didn't catch any of it.
Bldi took his silence as a refusal.
"I'm not going to hurt you, so eat. You were hungry, right? That's why you were raiding people's iceboxes and chicken farms?"
"......."
True.
Hunger had driven all of it.
In fact, if he hadn't run her off, she'd still be at that coco farm, happily drinking her fill.
But she couldn't argue.
She had no power here.
"So eat. We'll talk after."
"......."
She inhaled the aroma rising from the demon's brew.
The distinctive sweetness of blood, an unplaceable nuttiness, and a sharp, nose-tingling spiciness—all of it worked together to bewitch her.
That scent.
It was the same scent that had lured her here to begin with, the one that had pulled her toward the coco farm and their blood.
It was a little different now, but unmistakable.
How was that possible?
And woven through it all, the sweet fragrance of blood tickled her nose. The source was obvious: the pale-brown seonji drifting in the broth.
Wait, could this be that stuff from earlier...?
A first. She'd never seen congealed blood before, let alone blood that had been boiled.
She lifted the spoon, scooped up a piece of seonji, and ate.
"Oh...?"
The sweetness flooded her mouth the instant it hit her tongue, but it was nothing like what she knew.
Not just plain, one-note blood-sweetness. There was... a richness. A savoriness, maybe?
She had no way of knowing the broth was saturated with doenjang and a vegetable stock pressed from various greens, each flavor steeped deep into the seonji. She'd never tasted anything like this.
And then came the sharp, prickling finish.
Far more intense than what she'd felt drinking coco blood, it sent a shudder coursing through her body.
It wasn't just good.
The warmth of the broth settled solidly in her stomach.
The nutrients packed into the seonji woke her body up, a swell of deep satisfaction.
All of it combined, and a smile slipped out before she could stop it.
Delicious.
Before she realized it, Bldi was looking at the human across from her.
"Well? Good, right?"
She couldn't deny it.
It was good.
Her appreciation for the taste outweighed her fear of what he might do to her.
When she nodded, the man smiled, deeply satisfied.
She didn't recognize it.
The way that smile resembled a hiker benevolently tossing food to a passing wild animal. The way it matched the look of someone who'd recommended a restaurant and was watching their companion enjoy the meal.
When he told her to try it with the seokbakji, she obediently lifted a spoonful of the red radish side dish to her mouth.
Tasty.
The spicy, prickling heat numbed her tongue, but something about it kept pulling her back for more.
She mixed rice into the haejangguk and ate.
For Bldi, who had known only the sensation of drinking blood, a feast of brand-new flavors crashed over her in waves.
Every time she bit into a piece of soft, moist seonji, the deep, rich savoriness that spread through her mouth made her shiver.
A new texture. A new flavor.
The sweetness she was used to from drinking blood was slightly muted here, but in its place, a whole spectrum of tastes had soaked into the seonji.
It blew apart the prejudice that human food was tasteless to vampires in a single spoonful.
Maybe it was because that seonji sweetness had permeated every other ingredient.
Aaaah, it's so good. So good.
Her eyes sparkled as she kept spooning up the haejangguk.
Every mouthful of seonji haejangguk sent heat flooding through her.
For vampires, blood was their primary source of nourishment—it circulated through their bodies and released energy, lending a flush of color to their complexions.
Some vampires even preferred the act of drinking blood to sex, since it sent the heart's blood racing that much harder.
For their kind, hunger and desire were fed from the same vein.
This has never happened to me before....
Bldi was a vampire with an unusually low sensitivity to blood. Drinking it didn't sharpen her aggression the way it did others, and she usually stayed just as timid regardless.
What's causing this?
She had a feeling it might be the prickling sensation that had been running across her skin ever since she'd entered this space.
Bldi didn't know.
That flush of heat and pounding heart were an allergic reaction—what happened when a vampire ingested garlic.
Oblivious, Bldi polished off every last drop of the seonji haejangguk.
That was so good.
Even after finishing, she felt a pang of regret.
Her stomach was full to bursting, but she wanted more.
She looked at Lucas, who'd been calmly watching her eat the whole time.
They say no one who gives you food can be truly bad.
Maybe he really wasn't a bad person?
Maybe he wasn't the kind of vicious monster who'd drive a stake through her heart without a word of warning....
"Th-thank... you."
With her internal sense of intimacy somewhat bolstered, she managed to voice her gratitude a little louder than before.
"As long as you ate well, that's enough."
This time the human seemed to hear her, answering with a smile.
He really might not be a bad person.
A thought stirred: maybe it's okay to trust him.
"Come to think of it, we haven't even introduced ourselves. Nice to meet you. I'm the owner of this restaurant. Call me Lucas."
Lucas extended his hand.
At the sudden gesture, Bldi flinched and stared at his outstretched hand.
What now?
What does that mean?
It's not coated in poison, is it? No, if he'd wanted to poison me, he'd have done it already.
So... could this genuinely be a handshake of truce?
Thump-thump.
Her heart—already pounding as a side effect of consuming blood and garlic together—hammered loudly in her ears.
"Ah, uh, ahh... M-my name is... Bldi."
Shyly, she reached out to take Lucas's hand.
The problem was that a vampire with zero social skills and next to no knowledge of human customs had absolutely no idea how a handshake worked.
She turned her palm down and pressed the back of her hand against the back of his.
This is how you do it, right?
She stole nervous glances at Lucas's expression, fumbling.
Then Lucas took her hand properly and repositioned it.
"This is how you shake hands."
"Ah, ahh... That was... a m-misunderstanding."
She startled at the feel of his palm against hers—so much longer and thicker than her own hand, roughened with calluses.
For a vampire who'd almost never performed physical labor, calluses were a deeply alien thing.
The sheer fact of touching someone made her head go blank.
And that someone was a man, no less.
The rush of unfamiliar sensation left her thoroughly flustered, but Lucas had already released her hand and was moving on.
"I made that myself because I wanted to talk. Figured it's better to have a conversation on a full stomach, right?"
He gestured at the empty bowl and went on.
"Glad to see the seonji haejangguk agreed with you."
"It's called seonji haejangguk?"
"That's right."
"Seonji haejangguk...."
She murmured the name to herself, carefully filing it away.
"It was de-licious. Heh-heh-heh."
"Yeah? The kind of thing you'd want to eat again?"
She nodded.
"In that case, if you had the chance to eat this haejangguk whenever you wanted, no strings attached—would you take it?"
"O-of course!"
The shout burst out of her before she knew it.
She could eat something this delicious, without worry?
Vampires weren't what they used to be. These days, they slept in remote ruins or abandoned houses, and they spent every night scrambling for their next meal.
The hours she'd wasted skulking through the dark to hunt animals, just to scrape by—she remembered exactly how miserable it had been.
And most of what she'd hunted had yielded nothing but bland, oversweet blood.
The reward for a successful hunt had never been anywhere near worth the effort.
Imperial cities and half-decent towns were almost always warded with holy barriers to keep vampires out.
So the best a vampire could do was roam the countryside, the forests, and the mountains hunting for prey, and wait—doing their utmost not to touch human blood—for the world to forget their kind existed. That was their way of survival.
How many times had she looked at the bright, glittering cities of the empire and felt sick with envy?
"In return, I'd need you to stop raiding any more chicken farms or livestock sheds."
"Hic!"
Bldi flinched violently and hiccuped.
She'd just been replaying the first time she'd met Lucas.
"...Th-that... I h-haven't been doing that... not since that day...."
She couldn't bring herself to add: because I was too scared of the human.
That much was the last scrap of vampire pride she had left.
"Good. Keep it up."
Lucas smiled gently and continued.
"In exchange for seonji haejangguk every day, I'd want you to do a little work around here."
"W-work... here? You mean... a job?"
"Yeah."
"Ah... well, you see...."
She found herself facing the single greatest dilemma of her undead life.
For a creature—human, or rather, vampire—with zero social skills and zero ability to interact, the word "job" might as well have been the most incompatible word in the world.
Work. For a vampire like her.
If anyone else had said this to her, she'd have transformed into a bat and fled on the spot.
But this was different.
The seonji haejangguk had toyed with her tongue and won, completely.
The thought of that dish kept tangling around her ankles, refusing to let her leave.
Live a lazy life and endure a tasteless existence?
Or work hard and earn a delicious one?
Ugh, I don't know.
Right at that moment, Lucas lifted the lid off a pot.
"For the record, we've got plenty of seonji haejangguk left."
The scent of it wafted out, curling through the air to tickle her nose.
"Aaaahhh...."
She inhaled, and just like that, the choice was made.
Biting her lip firmly, she nodded.
"I'll... I'll do it...."