Sssssizzle!
The product of taking a life, forbidden by Buddhism, was cooking appetizingly right before my eyes.
After eating nothing but processed meat that didn’t even taste like meat day in and day out, I was finally going to grease my stomach after a long time. *Slurp!*
“You’re a tiger, don’t you like raw meat?”
It’s just because getting fire is a hassle; honestly, I prefer cooked meat.
If I used fire wrong, I could burn my home mountain to the ground, so even if it tasted a bit worse, I usually just ate raw meat.
The meat sizzling and cooking on the grill right now was samgyeopsal.
Even though I had money now, I still couldn’t bring myself to order beef because my hands trembled at the thought.
“First, one bite……”
I wrapped the browned samgyeopsal in a lettuce leaf with garlic and ssamjang.
And then….
*Munch, munch…!*
Grrr!!! This is insane! Insane! Life is really worth living.
Just the other day, I was putting up with crazy customers at the convenience store and filling my belly with expired food.
“Boss, give me a bottle of cheongju—no, soju!”
“I’m sorry, sir, but in our store, we need to see your ID……”
Next time I meet that damn grim reaper, I’m really going to beat him half to death. Even if he’s giving me a body, he should have given me something mature, shouldn’t he! I’m sick and tired of being treated like a kid everywhere I go.
“Here.”
I held out my ID to the owner.
Twenty years old. The age written on my ID was exactly twenty.
When my age was being decided, I’d at least asked to be made an adult; if not for that, I would have been forced to abstain from alcohol.
The owner looked at me with suspicious eyes, but he finally placed a bottle of soju on the table and walked away.
I poured the soju into a glass and sent it down my throat.
Grrr!!
In the old days, if I wanted to get drunk, I had to go all the way down to the villages to find an alcohol jar, or eat a dog to get intoxicated, but now that I was human, I could proudly buy alcohol with money.
This was also the reason many phantom beasts and spirit creatures came down to the human world.
“An alcohol jar…… Thinking about alcohol jars reminds me of that guy. Should I give him a call after so long?”
I guess the urge to call a friend when you’re drunk is common to both humans and phantom beasts.
[Hello….?]
“Uchi…!”
[Sanbeom…? Don’t tell me you’re drinking?]
“Yeah. I’m eating samgyeopsal as a side dish right now.”
[Weren’t you telling me you were broke and struggling just a week ago?]
“I was! But now I have money. A lot of it!”
[Good for you. So what did you call for?]
“I called because I wanted to hear my friend’s voice. Since I’m drinking. I started thinking about you, and you like alcohol.”
[I used to. In the old days, I drank alcohol instead of water…. but these days I don’t have time to drink because of work.]
“Work? Ah, right! You’re, what was it, Giseongchang…..?”
[The Meteorological Administration.]
“Ah, right! The Meteorological Administration, the Meteorological Administration. How’s work these days?”
[It’s manageable. Changing the weather was something I used to do a few times with Taoist arts, easy. Seeing as you’ve got money now, I guess you found a job that suits you.]
“Mmm…. Should I say it’s a job that suits me? Well, anyway, I found something like that. It’s called being a voice actor… like a pansori performer who acts with their voice.”
[Good find. I have to go now. My daughter keeps asking me to play with her.]
“Daughter? Ah, that gumiho! I saw her playing at the playground in front of your house last time and almost swallowed her…… Anyway, take care.”
The call ended.
It was a conversation with an old friend after a long time, yet it felt somewhat empty.
A bitter taste rose in the alcohol that had tasted sweet just moments ago.
“Everyone’s working hard at life, huh……”
The affection contained in a single glass seemed to gradually fade as the times changed and the years passed.
Friends who had laughed and chatted together were now walking their own paths and growing distant.
Looking back, those days remained only as memories that could never return.
Just like humans........
For me, a phantom beast living in a fantasy world, to think of myself as human…… Tch, how unbecoming.
While I was lost in such thoughts, someone tapped on my shoulder.
It was a man and a woman dressed entirely in blue.
“We’ve received a report that a minor is drinking at this establishment…..”
That damn grim reaper who gave me a body like this—I’ll beat him to death for sure!
(“I’ll beat him to death” is something you say after it’s done!)
Shut up!
I recalled a line from a recent anime and launched a tackle.
.
.
.
The officers checked my ID and ran a background check, then apologized, bowed their heads, and left.
I wanted to summon the grim reaper right away and ask for a new body, but those stiff bureaucrats wouldn’t come just because I called them….. Should I just die?
A phantom beast’s human form never ages.
However, its durability is the same as a human’s, so it can be damaged by something as small as falling from a high place.
If it gets damaged beyond a certain threshold to the point of irreparable recovery, the grim reaper does come to swap out the body, but……
“It would hurt….?”
I looked down at my wrist and muttered.
I’m not some pervert who enjoys the pain of reincarnation, so I have no intention of self-harming just to get a body swap.
“I’ll have to stop by a funeral home or an ICU later and look for a grim reaper.”
After thinking that far, I turned on my computer.
As usual, after checking my Witube views and comments, I rode the algorithm and drifted off to that faraway place.
“Ads, dammit!”
A fifteen-second unskippable ad blocked my path like the guardian of hell’s gates.
‘Wait…… why am I getting pissed over ads? I have money!’
Witube Premium subscription: ON
That’s it! So this is why humans are all about money, money.
Just like a monk who lived an austere life tasting pleasure and becoming a fallen monk, I, too, had realized the taste of money.
For dinner, of course, I ordered the chicken I’d won as a prize.
I’d tasted baeksuk and samgyetang before, but chicken was on a completely different level from those.
“Honestly, if I’d gone back to the old days with a chicken recipe……. I probably would’ve been hunted down the moment I entered a village……”
I’d started fantasizing about opening a food franchise across all eight provinces of Joseon with a chicken recipe, just like in the trending regression webtoons these days, when I remembered I didn’t have a human form back then.
Among the videos recommended on Witube, one particularly caught my eye.
[Viewer Voice Acting Contest! How is this not AI?!]
“Let’s see just how good this person is?”
I clicked the video.
There had been humans who were good at voice acting among them.
Well, none of them could match me, of course.
While watching the video and mimicking the participants’ voices for fun, that contestant appeared.
A contestant with tremendous skill, but viewers were insisting it was a fake because it was too perfect.
That contestant had likely uploaded a voice acting video to Witube that got insulted for being fake because the skill was too perfect.
And was probably tearing into chicken as a late-night snack right now…!
What more need be said? That was me.
The viewers who had thought my voice acting was fake went wild when they realized the final voice acting wasn’t AI.
See, they should have believed from the start.
The email had said the viewers were very curious about me, but it was beyond imagination.
After finishing the video, I scoured the Wituber ‘Dodohan’s channel.
“They definitely said they’d give appearance fees to participants, right?”
I rummaged through several videos and checked the donation records in them.
The video that had received the most donations was the ‘haptic suit’ video, which constantly got video donations.
The streamer suffered in proportion to that, but pain was something you had to endure to earn money, right?
If I could earn even half that much, my pockets would be quite heavy.
My pockets were already heavy enough, but power and money were things where the more, the better…….
Looking at it this way, I’m becoming too human.
It felt like I was only taking after the worst of humanity, but let’s gloss over the details!
I immediately sent an email saying I wanted to participate in the guest seat or something.
.
.
.
Ding.
Dodohan woke up and checked his smartphone with bleary eyes.
He had no memory of setting any notifications, and it wasn’t even a notification sound.
“It’s an email…..”
When Dodohan clicked the email, a long message unfolded.
[On this day when the long winter has ended and new shoots are sprouting. I have received immeasurable grace from you.
Five chicken gifticons. They resolved the dinner menu for my fifth day.
Even though it was earned through my own skill, grace is grace.
Therefore……....(omitted)
Lastly, I shall leave a line of gimbap and be on my way @)))))))))]
Dodohan couldn’t hide an awkward smile after reading that message.
“Y-you seem like an elderly person….!”
Because of the gimbap placed at the end of the message, which unfolded its greeting and introduction at great length like a martial arts novel, Dodohan felt his mind growing hazy.
“Did I invite him for no reason? Could it be a voice acting fabrication made by AI?! No, that’s not it. If it were, he wouldn’t have requested an invitation.”
He hadn’t been this confused even while watching the seven greatest mysteries……
Content was definitely going to be created, and if things went well, it could even trend on Witube.
It was he who had sent the invitation… but why was he the one worrying…!
The moment his mind was worrying, his hands had already sent that person the dates for a guest appearance.
To Dodohan, a broadcaster to the bone, it looked like a contract offered by the devil, but he eventually stamped his seal.