University Festival and Family Secrets
“No way, you and my sister are both way too much!” Park Naeun, Park Nayoung’s younger sister and my junior at university, starts squawking the moment she sees me. She’s trying her best to glare menacingly, but to me she just looks like an adorable baby chick chirping away.
The reason she’s so worked up is simple: she found out that Park Nayoung and I have been secretly running a cafe together. I never saw any reason to hide it from her, but Nayoung insisted on keeping it quiet. Her reasoning was that if Naeun knew, she wouldn’t help—instead she’d just freeload and devour all the cafe food for free.
Honestly, it’s surprising it stayed hidden this long.
Naeun loves cafe-hopping, so she’s dropped by our place a few times, though never when Nayoung was around. She had no idea this was her sister’s cafe. After finishing her midterms, she spent the whole day lounging around watching YouTube when one of the cafes she frequented appeared in a video. That’s when she spotted her sister on screen. While most videos didn’t show faces, the very first one we filmed with Han Gaeul did—and apparently Naeun saw it.
She called me first thing in the morning, yelling nonstop, so I headed to her dorm early to calm her down and escort her to the cafe.
“How could you keep this from me? I kept all your secrets!”
Back during the freshman orientation retreat, Naeun had witnessed my abilities. I asked her to keep it quiet, and despite her usual loose lips, she’d apparently worked hard not to tell anyone.
“Sorry, sorry.”
“Does my sister know?”
“Of course.”
“Wow, so everyone knew except me! Just you wait—I’m going to eat everything for free!”
“Yeah, yeah.”
How much could this tiny girl possibly eat? If Nayoung didn’t mind, I had no intention of stopping her. A couple slices of cake seemed like a small price to pay if it kept them both happy.
“I’m eating at least ten slices of cake.”
...That sounded less cost-effective than I’d hoped. I decided to leave it to Nayoung to handle. Family matters were best left to family. I changed the subject.
“By the way, how did your midterms go?”
Exams had ended last week, and grades came out this week. Thanks to Lee Yujin’s help, I was probably safe from failing. Hoping I could just graduate without any disasters, I asked Naeun, but she quickly averted her eyes.
“...Let’s talk about something else.”
Her once-confident voice shrank. She’d clearly bombed the tests.
* * *
“You’re here?”
The moment Park Naeun spotted her sister inside the cafe, she puffed up again.
“Unni! How could you not tell your own family a single word? That’s too much!”
“Sigh... I had a feeling this would happen, which is exactly why I didn’t say anything.”
The sisters launched into an argument. Even though Nayoung had kept the secret, she was clearly losing ground. Eventually she seemed to admit defeat and sidled over to me.
“I’ll go get ready to open. Just feed her something and send her home.”
“Got it.”
Clearly uncomfortable with her little sister around, Nayoung made herself scarce. Naeun plopped down at a table with an air of authority.
“Hurry up and bring me cake. I’m getting dizzy here.”
“Want to try this first?”
“What is it?”
“A new menu item we’re testing today.”
To boost sales, we’d decided to sell packaged salads in addition to cake. I handed Naeun a salad made with various vegetables and strawberry slices, drizzled with a strawberry dressing infused with Sex Power.
“Ugh, who eats this grass? I want cake!”
“Just try it.”
Naeun eyed the salad suspiciously before spearing a sauce-covered vegetable with her fork and cautiously bringing it to her mouth.
“Mmm!”
Apparently it suited her taste. She started devouring the vegetables with gusto, scraping every last bit of dressing from the bottom of the bowl before demanding another. After polishing off two salads and some fresh strawberries on top, she spoke up.
“What on earth did you do to these strawberries? The fruit and the sauce are both ridiculously good. Did you inject them with sugar water or something?”
“Of course not.”
“If it’s this good, I bet fruit boxes would sell even better than vegetable salads.”
“Strawberries are a bit tricky to make in large quantities right now.”
Thanks to the skill Understanding of Sex Power, I could produce far more than before. Since it was a passive skill I’d already mastered, its growth rate was fast. Maybe by next year I’d be able to produce them unlimitedly? But not yet.
Nayoung had brought in a professional baker, increasing our daily cake output from one hundred to three hundred slices. That was already a huge amount, so adding fruit boxes on top wasn’t feasible. The salad dressing alone seemed promising enough to generate decent revenue.
“Talking about sugar makes me want tanghulu.”
“Tanghulu?”
“You don’t know tanghulu? It’s fruit coated in hardened sugar syrup. There’s a new shop near the back gate and it was really good. They said you can make it at home too. If we used these strawberries, it’d probably taste amazing!”
She gave me a hopeful look, clearly angling for me to make some. I searched online for the recipe. It didn’t seem too difficult—just sugar and fruit. The only downside was how tedious the process looked, especially controlling the heat.
“Hmm, should I...?”
Naeun stared at me with sparkling eyes. Feeling a bit guilty toward her, I sighed and headed to the kitchen despite the hassle. Since we didn’t have proper skewers, I cut wooden chopsticks, skewered the Sex Power-infused strawberries, coated them in Sex Power-infused sugar syrup, and boiled it. Online recipes showed a clear, glass-like finish, but because of the Sex Power, the coating on the strawberries gave off a subtle silver glow instead.
I let one cool and took a bite. The sweet sugar shell shattered while the juicy strawberry flesh burst in my mouth. The sweetness was amplified several times over.
Delicious.
It was the kind of treat women would love—especially Baek Jina, our part-timer, who’d probably go crazy for it. Honestly, it was basically a lump of sugar, so health-wise it wasn’t ideal. But since I’d already started, I made a few extra for Jina and the other part-timers and stored them in the freezer before bringing the rest to Naeun.
“Wow, thank you!”
She bit into the jewel-like, silver-glowing strawberries with gusto. Her eyes lit up as she quickly devoured the entire strawberry tanghulu.
Her reaction to food is just like Baek Jina’s.
Both of them were cute rather than conventionally pretty, which made the similarity even more striking. Of course, there was an insurmountable chest-size gap between them. Still, they seemed like they’d get along well if they became friends.
After finishing all the strawberries, Naeun stared longingly at the empty plate, then looked at me expectantly.
“Wait a bit. I’ll pack up the rest for you.”
“Yes!”
I took out the extras I’d stored in the freezer for the other part-timers. Now that her sweet tooth was satisfied, Naeun beamed as she accepted the tanghulu.
* * *
“...Is she gone?”
“Yeah, you can come out now.”
Once Naeun had left, Park Nayoung peeked her head out. Pretending to prepare for opening had just been an excuse to hide from her sister. She stepped out and let out a long sigh.
“Ugh, how did she even find out?”
“She said she saw it on YouTube? The very first live stream we did.”
“Ah, that one? People who watched it have been contacting me too.”
“Want me to take it down?”
“It’s fine. It’s already public anyway. It’s not bad for cafe promotion either.”
She was incredibly dedicated to running the cafe. While I was satisfied with what we had, Nayoung clearly wasn’t—she seemed ready to do whatever it took to make Cafe Serer the best in the country.
Suggesting we sell salads had been her idea to attract more customers.
“Isn’t this level of success already good enough?”
“No. It’s not. I’m going to make the best cafe in Korea and wipe that smug look off their faces.”
“Those people” referred to her university classmates. I didn’t know the details, but it sounded like they’d done something during job hunting, and she wanted to succeed spectacularly as revenge.
“How’s your Sex Power holding up? You used quite a bit today.”
“Still got plenty left.”
“Hmm, really?”
For some reason, Nayoung’s eyes sharpened after hearing my answer.
“Sex Power... it increases when you have sex, right?”
“Uh... yeah. That’s right.”
“Did you do it with that YouTuber girl who came last time?”
It wasn’t a question—it was a statement of certainty. I nodded honestly.
“How did you know?”
“She was holding the Cerer statue last time. Only women who’ve had sex with you can lift that, remember?”
I was at a loss for words. While I scrambled for an excuse, Nayoung looked me straight in the eye.
“How many women have you been with, including me? Be honest and I won’t get mad.”
“Well...”
I thought about the women I had ongoing relationships with: my childhood friend Park Nayoung, the YouTuber Han Gaeul, my junior Lee Yujin, part-timer Baek Jina, and the rental girlfriend-turned-new part-timer Kim Eunha. That made five in total. There were others I’d only spent one night with or only kissed, but I only mentioned the five I was regularly involved with.
Nayoung’s face twisted more and more as she listened, and she slapped my back with her palm.
“You bastard! Not one or two, but five? And you even went after the part-timers? You turned this cafe into your own personal harem!”
“Wait, you said you wouldn’t get mad!”
“Would you not be mad if you were me?!”
She had a point, so I couldn’t argue. After hitting me a few more times, she seemed to tire out and sat down.
“Ugh, seriously. If it weren’t for the cafe, I’d fire you on the spot. It’s ridiculous that I’m getting angrier than your actual girlfriends. Still, listen carefully! I’ll overlook you being with other women, but if you ever get married or have a kid, you’re dead and so am I!”
She was my childhood friend of over twenty years, and I felt guilty, so I couldn’t push back. I nodded vigorously and gently massaged her shoulders to show my remorse. Seeing me yield, her expression softened a little.
While continuing the shoulder massage, I suggested, “Want to go on a date this weekend?”
“I’m busy as hell. What date? Forget it.”
“Come on, let’s go. We haven’t gone out together once since opening the cafe.”
“...Maybe.”
She didn’t seem entirely opposed and eventually agreed. Once she accepted the date, I slowly slid my hands from her shoulders down toward her collarbone.
Smack!
“Hands off. I’m not in the mood for that yet.”
My hand, heading toward her chest, was stopped by hers. But I didn’t give up—I kept moving lower until I reached her breasts and began kneading them while channeling Sex Power.
“Hey, I said stop! We open in less than thirty minutes!”
“Thirty minutes is plenty.”
“Damn it, we shouldn’t...”
As I grew more blatant with the Sex Power, her resistance weakened and she leaned into me. In the end, we opened the cafe about thirty minutes late.