After the Special Move

The Gochujang Braised Chicken Wings were my trump card, my special move, so to speak.

Conversely, this also meant that after the Gochujang Braised Chicken Wings, I didn't have much else up my sleeve.

At best, there was the Spicy Marinated Crab, made by prepping crab and tossing it in a red chili powder-based sauce,

the Chinese-style Soy Sauce Steamed Fish, topped with vegetables and sauce and finished with cilantro,

the steamed egg that I had introduced to the Chairman as Korean-style Chawanmushi,

and the kimchi pancake made with kimuchi, which was fermented most similarly to Korean-style Kimchi.

Add to that some freshly tossed geotjeori and radish salad, and that was it. That was how the table was composed, and that was my so-called nine-dish meal, the Gucheopbansang I had presented.

Compared to the stone pot rice, samgyetang, and Braised Chicken Wings, the rest of the dishes lacked both time and effort.

I had just scurried around the kitchen in my spare moments, whipping up quick, simple recipes that guaranteed a certain level of taste to increase the number of side dishes.

The stone pot rice, samgyetang, and Braised Chicken Wings were overwhelming enough on their own; I can't even begin to describe how hard it was to make these side dishes on top of them.

There were so many things to pay attention to, and my head felt like it was going to explode from managing all sorts of dishes simultaneously.

They required a lot of hands-on work, and my body was already in bad shape; by the time I finished cooking, my legs gave out and I almost collapsed.

Looking back, it feels like nothing short of a miracle that I managed to pull it all off.

I had come up with this combination thinking I could make it work if I just suffered enough, but I didn't expect it to actually succeed.

Pick, pick.

After I ate the Braised Chicken Wings, there was no particular reaction to the steamed fish, kimchi pancake, radish salad, or geotjeori, just as I had expected.

To the Chairman's sharp palate, they would feel like nothing more than minor side dishes prepared just to fill out the table's composition.

The ones that performed better than expected were the steamed egg and the Spicy Marinated Crab.

In the case of the steamed egg, unlike Chawanmushi, it was served hot rather than cold, and the texture was completely different, which seemed to intrigue her,

and as for the Spicy Marinated Crab, she seemed interested in the fact that, despite also being called gejang, it lacked the marinating process of Ganjang Gejang.

Both seemed to have caught her attention more for their cooking methods and concepts rather than the taste itself, but hey, I'll take what I can get.

Either way, as long as the Chairman found them refreshing, that was enough.

By the way, it was surprising that the Chairman seemed to have tried Ganjang Gejang before.

I heard it was popular in Japan because it was made with raw seafood and soy sauce, so it seemed its legacy had survived thanks to that.

Anyway, the Chairman tasted every single dish I had prepared.

“…”

Silence followed.

The Chairman set down her utensils and wiped her mouth with a napkin.

Looking like a fragile existence that might break at any moment, yet paradoxically possessing an arrogant presence that seemed like she would sit in that seat of honor forever, she gently pushed the table away.

The meal was over.

Exactly thirty minutes had passed; it was 21:30.

I retrieved the dinner table and checked the remaining contents as I moved them.

More than half of the rice inside the stone pot was gone. She hadn't completely emptied the bowl, but this alone was a massive achievement.

The samgyetang's broth had barely decreased, so it didn't look noticeably different from before, but about half of the scorched rice was gone, and the chicken was riddled with holes as if a mouse had gnawed at it.

It was a bit disappointing considering the effort I put in, but still, this wasn't bad.

As for the other side dishes, she had only taken a bite or two of each, leaving them looking almost identical to how they looked when I first brought them out.

The key was the center of the table, the main dish I had poured the most effort and highest expectations into.

The Gochujang Braised Chicken Wings.

Upon glancing at the plate, only a few wings at the bottom, some green onions, and crumpled jujubes and basil remained.

A stark difference. Two-thirds of the total amount was gone. Considering the Chairman's usual appetite, she had eaten a tremendous amount.

It meant she had grabbed and torn into several times the amount of the other side dishes with her own hands.

I had roughly guessed as much, but seeing the results like this gave me an incredible sense of accomplishment.

Out of the nine dishes, I had salvaged at least one.

She definitely liked it. The dish I made, the Gochujang Braised Chicken Wings, had successfully won over the master of the Megacorp, Karin Isiho.

Was it because I had been tamed by the corporate ecosystem and the power of the Chairman sitting at the very top?

Or was it because I had finally gotten the chance to express the cooking technique I possessed and the food I used to eat in my previous world after such a long time?

Even though not a single dish was completely emptied, my steps were light as I carried the leftovers outside.

I handed the side table over to the Suit-wearing Secretaries outside the main gate and returned.

What would happen to those leftover foods? They would probably be thrown away.

Unless one was crazy, no one would dare touch the food the Chairman had left behind.

It was such a waste.

If I were to put a price tag on that barely touched full-course meal, it would easily be worth hundreds of thousands of City Dollars.

I used all sorts of precious ingredients, generously applied high-end cooking techniques, and paid close attention to the plating.

Because time was tight, it wasn't quite at the level of a top-tier high-end restaurant, but I could proudly say it was comparable to the dining halls in the upper levels that rich people would enjoy.

Plus, though it's a bit embarrassing to say, it was made by me, someone with experience as the head chef of the Kyoku Hotel's top restaurant, so there is added value as well.

I wasn't overestimating it at all.

In all good conscience, that was exactly how much it was worth: hundreds of thousands of City Dollars.

'I'm hungry.'

Money was one thing, but I just wanted to eat the leftovers. If they gave them to me, I could even bow in gratitude.

Whether it was because it had been so long since I ate hometown food, or because I had sweated buckets laboring to make that meal, watching someone else eat it right in front of me was nothing short of torture.

If I had had enough time, I would have filled my stomach under the guise of taste-testing, but because I was so rushed, I couldn't even do that except for the dishes that absolutely needed to be tasted.

I was starving. Even though I had roughly stuffed myself with a meal pack before coming here, I still felt this way.

This was the world we lived in.

The Chairman of a Megacorp who barely ate and threw away most of a meal that, if brought to a condominium right now, lower class workers would excitedly scrape clean without leaving a single drop of sauce,

and the salaryman chef who, despite creating that high-end full course meal, ate factory-made low-grade meal packs made of Chlorella, Insect Meat, and Soy Protein for his own meals.

I felt it all the time, but this cyberpunk capitalist society was truly heartless.

To think this was a world where even the freedom to enjoy delicious food, or the luxury to leave and throw away as much food as one wanted, could not be easily obtained.

I think I understand why those pseudo-communist parties, the New Mecha Communists or whatever, are running rampant these days.

With the world in this state, it's no wonder people are craving socialism.

Rise up, you too...!

While pouring out all sorts of complaints internally, I walked across the carpet with an outwardly impeccable, polite posture.

And so, I stood with my head bowed before the black dais that looked down on me coldly once again.

Looking down at me with a gaze that seemed to dissect and reassemble me at the atomic level, Isiho's Chairman nodded.

“It was not a bad meal. Better than I expected.”

“Thank you.”

“Now, let's hear your story.”

At those words, my body stiffened once again. Tension rose.

I had been so focused on cooking and explaining the finished dishes that I had forgotten, but the reason I came here wasn't to prepare dinner.

“I originally intended to listen while eating, but it was delayed like this, thanks to the food you made having more value than mere chewing material.”

The Chairman's dinner was only a secondary matter; the primary issue was the incident that occurred yesterday at Dragon's Lair, the clash with Ned Ludd, and the events that transpired involving the Schneider Family.

I definitely had something in mind for how to explain it before I came, but now that I was faced with reality, my mind went completely blank.

Perhaps because I had agonized so fiercely over the recipes, it felt like my brain had been completely washed clean.

“Do not leave a single thing out, and tell me every detail.”

Karin Isiho, the Chairman of the Megacorp, commanded me.

“What happened regarding the Luddite Gang, how the people in the bar acted that day, what judgment you made, and how you moved. Everything, all of it. Tell me everything you saw, heard, and thought that day.”

Then, with a strange golden glint in her eyes, she added.

“I hope your story is as interesting as the food you made.”

I took a deep breath and opened my mouth.

* * *

AM 1:03

I felt dazed.

It felt like all the energy had been completely drained from my body.

As soon as I entered my room in the Kabuki condominium, I practically collapsed, sprawling out on the plastic sofa.

I had exhausted all my mental and physical strength. Good lord, to think I had been talking for nearly three hours in the Chairman's office until my mouth hurt.

In many ways, I had surpassed my previous limits.

Just how hard had I flapped my gums over the events of a single day?

Originally, it was something that could have been explained in an hour, no, forty to fifty minutes... but the level of meticulousness and detail the Chairman demanded was on another level.

Thus, the final time it took was about three hours. It felt like I had hosted a talk show.

Telling me not to leave a single thing out and to speak in detail wasn't just a figure of speech; she meant it literally.

If I left something out or skipped over anything while talking, she would figure it out like a ghost and ask about it immediately, making me sweat bullets.

She didn't just ask about what happened, but inquisitively pried into the actions taken by others and me, what the motives and causes were, and what the basis for my thoughts was.

My throat, which was already half-hoarse from yelling yesterday, was now at the point where no voice would come out at all.

‘...Even while squeezing out every little fact and drying up my blood in the process, I somehow managed to hide what needed to be hidden.’

There was only one thing to hide.

The other function of the microchip that I hadn't even guessed at before was revealed.

A cyberdive in a bare body state.

A cyberdiver freely swims through cyberspace without any auxiliary equipment, digging up the Schneider Family's biometric security code from the roots of the Net, and then immediately applies it to Schneider's treasured sword, the obsidian blade Kokuyōtō.

Thinking about it now, I realize things had worked out so easily it was absurd.

Even I, who was ignorant about cyberspace, the Electrobrain Space, knew that this was a extremely abnormal occurrence.

A microchip that allowed me to perform a hacking operation in mere seconds—something that would take verified and skilled Net divers months to do even with all sorts of auxiliary facilities.

If the microchip had previously felt like a reliable asset that had saved me from crisis situations time and time again, now I was at the point of feeling a subtle fear because of this unidentified mental switch.

What in the world was it? It wasn't like casting pearls before swine; why was something this ridiculous sitting inside my head?

What on earth had happened at that Research Institute? What kind of experiments had Militia been conducting?

Everything was filled with doubt and anxiety. Just last night, because of it, I had a nightmare full of blurry afterimages from my time in the laboratory.

Naturally, I couldn't let anyone else know.

It was the same with the Chairman; I only explained that the chip in my head suddenly activated and unlocked the restriction on Schneider's Katana, allowing me to escape the crisis.

Fortunately, Karin Isiho didn't ask for more details about it.

Though I think about it now, that was strange too.

She demanded detailed explanations for everything else, so why did she let it slide when I gave a vague explanation about the microchip's activation?

I didn't know. My mind was a mess.

It felt like watching the Truman Show, like everything in the world was deceiving me and playing a prank on me.

...At least it was a relief that I gained one thing from this meeting with the Chairman.

I recalled the words she said as she dismissed me from her office.