After playing games nonstop for hours, I started getting hungry.
I’d spent the whole day sitting in a chair playing games, so I hadn’t eaten anything proper.
I hadn’t moved much, so I probably hadn’t burned many calories either, but the human body was the kind of thing that needed a surprising amount of energy just to sit still and breathe.
A voice I missed brushed through my mind.
A young man mustn’t starve. It was something a certain Italian old-timer used to say all the time.
-Food? I’m not really feeling it, so I’ll just skip it.
-Merda!! A young man mustn’t starve. Especially not one like you.
-…Wait, what. So old men can starve?
-I only have half my body left, so half the calories are enough for me, but that’s not true for you.
That damn Tallulah always left me unable to say a word.
Mr. Belly really was a man of many talents; despite being a retired technician, he was also good at cooking. I’d never actually eaten anything he made, but even the photos gave off the aura of a professional.
He said something about this much being basic for a man from Naples, but I’d bet there weren’t many people like him even in Naples. There was no way the world had that many talent monsters.
Anyway, thanks to him, my cooking had improved.
Before I got to know him, my skills had been limited to ramen and fried rice, but now I’d gotten good enough to say cooking was a hobby.
Rubbing my smooth stomach, I moved to the kitchen. This was surprisingly addictive.
In any case, a young body really was nice. The poor condition that had still lingered this morning was completely gone.
Maybe because I’d raised my concentration, my head felt clearer too, and my groaning stomach seemed to be demanding food.
Then, shall I cook!!
…Or so I declared grandly as I came to the kitchen, but choosing a menu was awkward.
First of all, the place itself was a problem.
A refrigerator, an induction cooktop, a microwave, and an electric kettle huddled together in the corner of the studio apartment. Those four things were the entirety of my kitchen setup.
When I opened the cupboard, I did at least find a pot and some dishes, but even those were sparse.
The pot was far too small for boiling pasta, and the frying pan was an awkward size too.
The ingredients had the same problem. I had gone grocery shopping once, but that alone wasn’t nearly enough.
The place was so barren that there was a limit to what one shopping trip could cover.
Just off the top of my head, there was tomato pasta or chicken noodle soup, but I didn’t even have canned tomatoes, let alone carrots or celery.
After looking around a few times, I had no choice but to take out the garlic.
“A bachelor’s pasta has to be aglio e olio, after all.”
I took the garlic I’d put in the fridge and divided it up. Since I’d bought peeled garlic in bulk, I planned to freeze about half of it.
Normally, for aglio e olio, you shouldn’t use peeled garlic but buy whole garlic and peel it each time to get the proper garlic aroma… but I’d have to look for that next time I went to the mart.
The ingredients were poor, but fear not. We had modern science.
I took out the chicken stock I’d bought in advance from the fridge.
If you used too much of this, you’d get sick of it, but at times like this, nothing beat it.
First, I put the garlic on the cutting board and trimmed off the ends. This cutting board was small and cute too.
Even the kitchen knife was small and cute.
Rather than a kitchen knife, it felt more like it was a close relative of a fruit knife.
If I could afford it, I’d have to buy new ones of both, I thought as I sliced the garlic.
The knife, the cutting board, and even my hands weren’t what I was used to, so I needed a brief adjustment period.
Still, after fumbling for a bit, I quickly got the hang of it.
There was such a thing as muscle memory. It meant the body remembered movements it had repeated and mastered.
Judging from how I’d struggled with the knife, did Kang Jimin have no interest in cooking?
Who knew. I wasn’t sure which it was.
Was it because I hadn’t adjusted to this body yet, or because this body’s muscles had no muscle memory?
Still, this body seemed to have good sense.
I’d felt it while gaming too. Even when commands I was used to didn’t work well at first, I quickly got the feel for them.
If anything, it felt like my physical ability had gone up compared to before.
I didn’t know. I still hadn’t fully adjusted yet.
I sautéed the garlic in oil, added peperoncino, and turned off the heat.
The water in the pot began to boil, so I tossed in the spaghetti I’d snapped cleanly in half.
If the old man saw this, he’d be foaming at the mouth.
What did I care? I wasn’t going to see him anymore anyway.
…Despite learning Korean just for a game, the old man never accepted spaghetti snapped in half or iced Americanos until the very end.
There had even been a time when provoking him with Americanos and pineapple pizza was content, but then the old man, eyes rolled back in rage, started indiscriminately challenging people to first-to-tens.
After he made a full round, Americano had somehow become a forbidden word.
Later, when Tung-tung-tung-tung-tung was trending, we ran a first-to-ten then too, but that time I won.
“Ah. Now I suddenly want caffeine.”
Was it because I’d thought of Americanos? But there wasn’t even any common instant coffee mix at home.
But buying coffee every time was a bit expensive. And if I wanted to buy beans and brew them, I didn’t have a grinder or a dripper.
The longer I spent in this house, the longer my shopping list grew along with it.
I could already see the ending where it kept getting longer and longer until it felt overwhelming, and in the end I didn’t buy anything at all.
Should I look for a mart that delivers next time?
I wasn’t sure about places like GX or Xple, but if it was a big place like X’s Mart, I felt like they might have offered delivery even around this time. Or maybe not…
As I kept thinking, human memory really was terribly imperfect. It was hard to be certain before looking it up.
And now I could never look up anything about those days again.
-Beep beep beep. Beep beep beep.
While I was lost in useless thoughts, the timer rang.
I brought over the pot and drained the noodles… Wait, what kind of house doesn’t have a colander?
How long had it even been? Another line had already been added to the shopping list. I probably couldn’t buy all of this.
Right. There was also the option of using home shopping.
Since I was already struggling with living expenses, rummaging through Xpang and getting some human feed delivered would probably help me save money.
Of course, for however much I saved on living expenses, I’d have to save on my happiness too.
Still, if I looked carefully, there should be some decent feed.
For example, factory-made bread. If I remembered right, a big 700g loaf was in the 3,000-won range…
If I stuffed a bunch of that into the freezer, I could use it like feed. I also felt like buying it by the kilogram made it much cheaper.
How would I eat it all? Future me would take care of that.
Welfare? If feed tastes good, is it even feed?
Where else would there be a farm that lets you just eat, shit, and game like this?
An Eat-Shit-Odinson farm. Now that I thought about it, it might sound rather impressive.
“Haha. As if.”
Well, it wasn’t realistic anyway.
If someone really provided food, clothing, and shelter on the dot and let me play Odinson, I’d be willing to be raised like livestock for about a year, but it probably wouldn’t last long.
I’d have to pick a day and go outside after all. I felt like I needed to visit the bank too.
If I could just get internet banking set up, then I could investigate the records and clearly resolve suspicions about things like rent or loans.
I added the noodles and pasta water, then squeezed in the chicken stock.
I mixed it carefully so it wouldn’t splatter, then turned off the heat and tossed it with my wrist.
Once I started hearing chap, chap sounds, it was time to plate it and finish.
I just dumped it onto the plate. A man’s dish, aglio e olio, needed no plating.
-Damn it. If you’re going to cram in that much garlic, you might as well call it aglio e aglio.
I could hear his sulky voice clearly in my ears. It tasted good, though.
As I clattered around and started eating, the flavor was quite decent.
To be honest, it was hard for oil infused with fried garlic to taste bad.
“…”
However, one problem arose.
I couldn’t finish one plate of pasta.
It wasn’t the common beginner’s mistake of failing to control the portion every time they boiled noodles.
Aglio e olio was practically my staple food. I ate it steadily about once a week.
This time too, I’d made it by eye, but the amount came out exactly as I’d expected.
What was different from my expectations was this body.
Kang Jimin’s stomach was much smaller than I’d thought.
Was the amount a man ate too much for a woman?
Even taking that into account, I didn’t think it was an amount I couldn’t finish…
Maybe Kang Jimin’s appetite itself was unusually small.
I tried to force it down somehow, but my fork gradually slowed.
Then, partway through, it stopped completely.
My stomach was full, and since aglio e olio was originally a greasy dish, it was also getting hard to eat.
Meanwhile, the noodles I’d snapped in half were at an awkward length, making them inconvenient to scoop up or twirl around the fork.
So this was why the old man had gotten angry, saying he could forgive smashing them to bits, but never snapping them in half.
…I briefly considered just throwing it away, but after making such a fuss about saving money, that was a bit much.
Gritting my teeth, I picked up the fork.
“Ugh. I feel bloated and awful.”
In the end, it took ages to finish the whole thing.
Suppressing the urge to dive into bed, I sat down in the chair.
If I lay down like this, it’d be perfect for getting reflux esophagitis. With this young body, I might be able to shrug off something like that easily, but since I’d gone and received a brand-new replacement, I should take good care of it.
I considered continuing the game right away, but I’d made way too much progress today.
I felt like I’d long since exceeded my quota. Hmm. It was like a tub of ice cream placed in the freezer.
Maybe I’d say it felt like the shock of seeing ice cream I thought would last a week show the bottom after only three or four days.
Resolving to restrain myself today, I went into the gallery instead.
When I checked what topic was circulating, surprisingly, it was a VTuber.
More precisely, a video that VTuber had uploaded.
Even more precisely, the gallery was filled with talk about its thumbnail.
Curious, I followed the link and saw an avatar with purple skin holding a broken straight sword.
…That’s me, isn’t it?