Damn, My Womb's Quivering....
"You really worked hard on this."
"Haaah...."
Watching them prepare for the event without a hitch, I felt like all the suffering up to this point was finally paying off a little.
We'd put in this much effort — the least the game could do was drop some decent rewards.
If this turned out to be "real life" and the loot was stingy, I was genuinely going to cry.
"Whoa, this is incredible. You guys really put in the work."
"I can't exactly deny it when the work was real. Still, seeing everyone prepping with smiles on their faces does feel pretty good."
"We're selling churros later — swing by if you're interested."
"I'll definitely come grab some."
Cinnamon was the sole normal person in that insane group, so the desserts coming out of her booth were normal too.
...Of course, Cinnamon had one problem of her own: her personal cooking skills were rock bottom.
She burned or ruined things so often she basically felt like a kitchen terrorist.
Aside from that, though, she was perfectly ordinary — so they'd set the booth up so she only sold what other people cooked.
The result was a booth with decent-tasting food, completely independent of her culinary ability.
Sure, they were selling churros that had cooled off a bit, but at least they weren't abominations.
"Oh, Aroma. Long time no see."
"You're still exactly the same, I see.... Ugh, what on earth is that?"
"Mint chocolate cheese katsu! Doesn't it look delicious?"
"...No."
Yeah. My memory hadn't failed me.
It had been such a traumatic dish that I'd never been able to forget it....
Holy shit — the mint chocolate cream looked like some kind of semi-translucent green liquid.
Mixed with the cheese and stretching out in long, gooey strings, it looked absolutely revolting.
How is anyone supposed to eat that...?
If you bought and finished the food from every one of those idiots, they stamped your card. Collect every stamp and the reward was a small brooch.
Minty was insanely obsessed with that brooch — her entire reaction flipped depending on whether you had one or not.
In the main story, this event dropped hints related to the brooch. In the actual event, you had to obtain it no matter what if you wanted the event's efficiency to improve.
I didn't know exactly how that would translate into reality, but given how perfectly every setting had been reflected so far — down to the last creepy detail — I was pretty sure I had to get it this time too.
"I heard Gourmand's stuff is actually really good?"
"That's just because both of you have broken taste buds."
Gourmand's cooking wasn't normal to begin with either.
She shaped sauced jajangmyeon into a cylinder, piled whipped cream on top to make it look like a cream cake, then decorated it with all kinds of fruit — a whipped-cream jajangmyeon cake.
At least the exterior just looked like a regular cake, so it was less disgusting than the mint chocolate cheese katsu.
But later they'd cut the cake so the cross-section was visible, and the visual that resulted made the word "revolting" come out of your mouth on its own.
Fuck — and she had to go and sprinkle chili powder over the whipped cream to turn it red. That pisses me off.
I wanted to crack open Gourmand's skull for thinking that making a dessert out of jajangmyeon for Black Day was somehow a good idea.
Honestly, as a person, Gourmand was worse than Minty — because the idea for the menu Minty was selling had come from Gourmand in the first place.
Minty just dumped mint chocolate essence on any dessert she could find; left alone, she was the type to quietly enjoy her own weird food by herself.
If she'd been forcing that on people, Aroma would've cut her off ages ago.
Aroma was a true connoisseur who made hot chocolate with just the right amount of melted marshmallows. If she'd been subjected to that kind of violence, she never would have stayed quiet.
Sure, just looking at it was a little nauseating — but it was their own taste, so it felt weird to criticize.
Even watching them prep is making me dizzy.
Once things started, I planned to do a full lap as fast as possible and grab the brooch first.
I could already feel a headache coming on.
Why, after finishing all the work, was there still another hell waiting for me?
"Still... everyone looks like they're having fun."
"Showing off something you made yourself is a joy for some people, I suppose."
I deliberately turned my eyes toward booths that had nothing to do with the Dessert Research Club and treated myself to the sight of desserts that actually looked delicious.
Ha. Aroma should've been part of this too, making hot chocolate.
"Master?"
"Want some of this?"
"Oh — hot chocolate?"
"I made it myself. Aroma looked busy."
"Thank you."
Hmm. It wasn't bad, honestly.
The temperature was fine, and the balance of melted ingredients was decent.
But Aroma made it so ridiculously well that this one left me just a little unsatisfied.
"Thank you."
"Not great, huh?"
"No, that's not it."
"Hmm. I should learn from Aroma."
"...I won't stop you. Anyway, it did taste good."
Aroma was just unfairly good at it — that didn't mean this one was bad.
Still, going so far as to take lessons just for this?
Then it hit me, a beat late: he was doing it because he knew I liked hot chocolate.
...Does he really not think about anything except me?
At this point it was almost scary.
I couldn't understand why he was so fixated on me.
Wanting to learn how to make hot chocolate just so he could make it for me....
"Isn't it obvious?"
"Obvious?"
"Because I like you."
"......."
And answers like that always came out so cleanly it was almost uncanny.
With nothing but "I like you" as fuel, he looked ready to conquer the world any day now.
Maybe I should ask him as a joke later if he could actually pull it off.
"If Master likes me that much, then eat some food for me instead."
"Okay."
"...No. That was a joke."
He agreed so easily that my conscience actually wouldn't let me make him do it.
I sighed, ruffled his hair for a moment, and waited.
Soon Minty explained the purpose of today's Black Day event, and the moment the time came, the festival began.
"I'll be back."
"Okay."
Starting with Gourmand's jajangmyeon cake was probably the right call.
When I'd seen it in the story, that was where her most vicious side came out — so the sooner I ate it, the better.
"Hello."
"Ah, welcome, welcome! I'm Gourmand! For Black Day, I made a cake out of jajangmyeon! The triple sweetness is no joke, I tell you!"
No joke was right — the disgustingness of that food, that is.
Just looking at her face was already annoying. That cheerful, overly friendly demeanor got on my nerves from the start.
I hadn't liked her much even when she was just a game character, and seeing her in reality hadn't changed a thing.
"...One, please."
Apparently Gourmand loved desserts so much she wanted to handle entire meals with them — and for that purpose, she'd started weirdly mixing food and desserts into abominations.
Fuck. Just eat dessert until you're full like a normal person.
Oh my god. The visual.
When the bloated jajangmyeon was cut, the white cross-section of the noodles showed through, black jajang sauce seeping into the gaps between them.
Outside, pure white whipped cream wrapped around it, and the top was piled high with fruit.
"Thanks for the meal...."
Honestly, it wasn't that disgusting a food on its own.
The problem was that the longer it sat, the more the jajangmyeon bloated — and the weirder the flavor became.
If I mixed in as little of the cream as possible right now, I could minimize the taste.
Separate it as much as I can. Just don't make it obvious.
Watching Gourmand out of the corner of my eye, I carefully dismantled the jajangmyeon cake and ate the pieces separately.
It was basically decent food slapped together, so aside from the bloated noodles, it was edible.
...Not "tasty." Edible.
When cream-mixed jajangmyeon hit my mouth, a heavy greasiness hit hard. Then the tart fruit and finely ground chili powder slammed into my tongue, and for a second a gag rose in my throat....
"Edible" just meant I'd maximized the amount I could eat separately so I felt less of that revolting sensation.
"How is it?"
"...The jajangmyeon bloating is something you'll need to think about more carefully. Thanks for the meal."
"Ah, I didn't think of that. Hmm — maybe I should mix jajang sauce into the whipped cream and spread that on instead."
You absolute bitch?
Did she have some kind of power that granted wishes in the worst possible way?
I swallowed the stream of curses that wanted to come out, accepted the stamp Gourmand pressed onto my card, and moved on.
I'm already exhausted....
But the worst of it was still waiting — the most horrific food of all.
Just the fusion of dessert and savory food from Gourmand's idea was already disgusting. On top of that, mint chocolate — the ultimate love-it-or-hate-it ingredient — had been mixed in.
Honestly, I can eat mint chocolate by itself.
And the way Minty usually did it — dumping sauce on a normal dessert — I could eat that too.
Not being my taste didn't mean I couldn't get it down. It would just be annoying rather than revolting.
But this? This is not that....
I stared at the fried cutlet Minty handed me with a bright smile, and my mind went blank.
It would've been better if she'd fried it and then served it cold.
The fact that it had just come out of the fryer was what terrified me.
"Enjoy~"
"...Yeah."
I somehow swallowed the words You think I'm going to enjoy this, you fucking lunatic and bit into the mint chocolate cheese katsu.
At first, the familiar crunch of fried batter gave way to the rich savor of oil coating my tongue.
Then a strange, squelching liquid from inside invaded my mouth at a scalding temperature — a heavy wave of mint chocolate, simultaneously sweet and sharp, rolling in thick.
Between that liquid, soft and stretchy mozzarella tangled itself into the mix, making an already bizarre texture even more bizarre.
Yeah. This was genuinely horrific.
I'd been trying to keep my face under control, but face management wasn't the issue anymore — I was fighting not to throw up.
I genuinely thought I was going to die.
"Ugh... uh...."
"Customer?"
I somehow forced the first bite down my throat, then squeezed my eyes shut at the mountain of fried cutlet still left.
How the hell was I supposed to eat this?
The taste was so nightmarish that tears were starting to well up.
"Ah, welcome. Your order is—"
"She's with me. We'll eat together."
"Yes, please have a seat over here."
"...M-Master?"
"Give it here. I'll eat it."
He took my plate, polished off the mint chocolate katsu without hesitation, and got the stamp from Minty without a single change in expression.
...Fucking cool as hell.