By Zephyria “Jin-Mu… Meat.”
As Jin Mu-hae entered the house, Joo-oh darted towards him.
His eyes sparkled, and he even reached out his hands, looking like a puppy welcoming its owner home from an outing.
But unfortunately, he was a man fully grown enough to not be called a puppy. Besides, the way he greeted him showed he was more interested in the gravy than the prayer.
“Why do you call people like that?”
Mu-hae’s words weren’t kind either. Regardless, Joo-oh snatched the rustling bag with a loud rustle.
The bag Jin Mu-hae brought was filled with cold barbecue. It was the leftovers from Boss Gil’s dinner the day before.
“Jin Mu-hae and… meat.”
“You don’t have to explain it.”
Mu-hae sighed at least five times, having brought that kind of thing from Boss Gil for money. He grumbled until the moment he left the Electronic Store, saying that the real cheapskate was Boss Gil.
Still, he felt rich inside knowing that the huge sum of money he thought was gone forever would be coming back.
If he had been in a slightly better mood, he might have rushed to the neon-lit pleasure district and bought something.
“Don’t take it out here.”
“It’s okay.”
“Did anyone ask if you were okay?”
Oops. He’d been distracted for a moment, and Joo-oh was trying to take the meat out with his bare hands.
Did someone starve him? Standing blankly in the doorway, licking his lips, he showed no patience at all.
As Mu-hae quickly blocked him, the white hand that had been reaching into the bag froze.
“Why?”
His face as he asked was barely rational. He seemed sane enough when he left the house at dawn not to cause a fuss about being taken along.
Now, it looked like he would slam the wall hard if he was deprived of the meat. Mu-hae somehow felt instinctively rushed and grabbed Joo-oh.
“I’ll warm it up for you, so stay still.”
Joo-oh was led away obediently like an animal caught by the scruff of its neck and sat down on a chair.
The face of the glutton about to eat soon brightened.
“Ha, hmm. I waited.”
“For the meat?”
“No. Jin Mu-hae.”
Yeah, right. Despite the good lip service, Joo-oh’s gaze was still fixed on the cold barbecue.
As the food was moved to a plate, his gaze moved to the plate as well. He must have been waiting for the meat, not Mu-hae.
“At least you’re not drooling.”
“I don’t do that anymore. It was a little hard to control yesterday.”
Was that something he had to control? He wasn’t a toddler.
Anyway, he said and did incomprehensible things whenever he had the chance. Jin Mu-hae clicked his tongue briefly and put the plate in the old microwave.
Glancing at Joo-oh, the strange feeling from the day before was gone, and his red eyes were somewhat relaxed.
‘How can a human being lose their mind just by looking at food?’
Human… He wondered for a moment, but whatever. Whether he was a vagrant or an Experiment, a human was a human.
Mu-hae simplified his complicated thoughts and handed him the utensils.
“I’m giving it to you because you were well-behaved. If you had torn my shoes like last time, I would have made you eat them.”
“I don’t like things that taste bad.”
“It’s not that it tastes bad, it’s that you can’t eat it.”
“…Hmm.”
“You can’t eat it.”
It was an answer that made him feel uneasy, even though he wouldn’t really tear up and eat the shoes.
Jin Mu-hae repeated the obvious several times, and only after Joo-oh nodded did he hand over the lukewarm plate of meat.
Wah! He cut a large chunk of meat and put it in his mouth. His slightly narrowed eyes were filled with happiness.
Mu-hae wasn’t in the mood to put anything in his mouth, so he just leaned against the wall, crossed his arms, and watched.
Joo-oh’s eating was surprisingly neat for someone who was inhaling food.
He didn’t make smacking sounds, and he didn’t make much of a mess around him. He handled a fork and knife well, like a normal person.
“Umm, haa.”
Besides, the sight of him chewing on his bulging cheeks and swallowing was strangely addictive.
In short, it was fun to watch. Mu-hae blankly watched the scene of him cutting, putting in, chewing, and swallowing, as if he were watching a TV show.
Then he suddenly noticed.
“…Hey. Where did you put it?”
The place where he had eaten was too clean.
“Where did you spit out the bones?”
The meat that he had snatched from Boss Gil as alimony was the upper body part of the Beast. Ribs covered in spices to hide the gamey smell.
There was no trace of him having deboned it at all. Mu-hae’s hair stood on end, and he grabbed Joo-oh’s chin hard.
“Did you swallow it?”
“Ugh, ahh.”
When he pressed his cheeks, Joo-oh groaned and opened his mouth.
His mouth was empty, as if he hadn’t eaten anything until just now. There were no bones, no pieces of meat, nothing to be seen.
“Did you swallow it?”
“It’s okay.”
“Do you even know what I’m asking?”
Just in case, he looked at the floor, but there wasn’t a single piece that had fallen.
Jin Mu-hae felt like he was possessed by a ghost, wondering how he had cut the bones with a dull utensil and how he had swallowed them whole.
If Joo-oh had really swallowed the bones… unless he had something like a gizzard next to his stomach, he was bound to get sick.
The feeling of being half drunk on the dawn emotions was completely gone. Thanks to that, Mu-hae, who had just heard about his father’s shocking past, didn’t even feel like being sentimental.
“Throw it up.”
“Why…?”
Joo-oh, who hadn’t been fazed by anything he heard, looked like he was being tormented.
He couldn’t understand. Jin Mu-hae lifted Joo-oh up, put on his shoes roughly, and headed to the clinic.
During that time, he struggled weakly, licked his lips without letting go of the fork, frowned slightly, and followed Mu-hae.
With a generous expression that said, ‘I don’t understand, but I’ll do as you say for now.’
“He swallowed the bones.”
“What bones?”
“Ribs. It looks like he swallowed them whole with the meat. About a handful.”
“Is that even possible?”
Jin Mu-hae and Teacher Jung’s conversation could be heard. Joo-oh sat blankly on the bed, looking at the air.
A translucent system window floated at the edge of his vision.
WELCOME TO LA VIDA 🙂
~Day 119 of Year 15~
[Quest]
Main Quest
Tutorial (Completed)
Chapter 1
☞ Heretic of the City (Completed)
The Wolf That Lays Golden Eggs √
200,000 Deal of Inheritance √
☞ Unquenched Embers (In Progress)
Intangible Legacy √
Start of the Journey
[Start of the Journey]
The records of Project Sola47 are incomplete.
According to Boss Gil’s advice, you must find the missing information yourself.
The first person you can contact is your father’s colleague who lives nearby.
The story has successfully gotten on track.
When playing the game, it was a section that could be reached in 15 minutes, as soon as you got the inheritance, you would quickly go home, unlock it, and another day would pass in an instant.
However, the flow of 「La Vida Blue」 in reality was not so immediate and quick. Now that he had become the protagonist himself and even the scenes he had seen as cutscenes had disappeared, Joo-oh had to feel all the omitted time of day and night.
But it was okay. It wasn’t boring. Compared to the past 15 years when he was aimlessly writing in his diary and losing his mind, every moment was enjoyable now that he had met Mu-hae.
Although he had been dragged to a place like this while eating meat, Teacher Jung was also a part of 「La Vida Blue」.
Seeing those he had longed for with his own eyes gave him an indescribable pleasure.
“Well, we can just scan his stomach to see its condition.”
Was Jin Mu-hae and Teacher Jung’s conversation about to end? There was a sound of a light device being pulled.
Joo-oh didn’t turn off the window he had opened, but just glanced sideways, keeping the window open.
“You swallowed the bones?”
He didn’t answer the question. He just stared at Teacher Jung and nodded.
It was because the food he had been eating was still lingering in his mind.
“Spread your arms out to both sides. And wait a moment.”
“……”
“If you listen well, I’ll give you something good.”
Something good? The corners of Joo-oh’s mouth twitched slightly.
Teacher Jung didn’t miss the moment and held up a clattering piece of metal. It was a sparkling wire puzzle.
‘Hidden item!’
Joo-oh quickly spread his arms out. As the doctor handed him the wire puzzle, his red eyes sparkled with joy.
「La Vida Blue」 had an achievement system. It wasn’t like achievements had any great function, it was just a way to get a trophy icon for self-satisfaction if you achieved special conditions.
One of them was to collect and clear all six types of wire puzzles scattered around the world. He had repeated the same puzzle so many times that he could tell the solution just by looking at the shape…….
“I’ve never seen this before.”
As expected. Had the number of puzzles increased as it became reality? The metal wire, which looked quite vicious, looked fun just by looking at it.
Joo-oh moved the hand holding the puzzle while the square device swept over his body.
Beep beep. Beep-.
“There’s nothing foreign. Are you sure you swallowed it?”
“He just ate the meat with the bones in front of my eyes. And they weren’t small bones.”
“But there’s nothing caught. I can’t tell him to throw up what he ate.”
“He chewed it.”
Joo-oh quickly interjected as soon as he heard the words to throw up the meat.
“How could he chew that? You stay still. They’re big ribs. The ones Boss Gil was eating.”
“Then didn’t he throw it away somewhere? Well, there’s nothing wrong with him for now, so if you’re still worried, give him some indigestion medicine.Teacher Jung turned away, leaving Mu-hae with a sticky expression. He rummaged through the cupboard and found a bottle of medicine that had been opened.
“I was taking it, so you don’t have to pay for the medicine separately.”
Clatter……. Two pills rolled into a small plastic cup. Joo-oh watched the scene and bit his lip slightly.
Come to think of it, when eating meat, you’re not supposed to eat the bones, are you?
Yeah. That seemed to be the case. Bones were parts that were thrown away. It was different from eating Aberrants or Beasts.
The ribs covered in sauce were tender and savory, so they broke without needing to exert any force, but you still shouldn’t eat the parts with bones whole.
He had lived in the wild for too long. It wasn’t a place he wanted to stay, but he was starting to forget the human way of life.
The fact that he couldn’t remember before he entered this damn game also played a part. Joo-oh narrowed his eyes and rummaged through his blank mind.
The fact that he had repeatedly played 「La Vida Blue」 countless times, and thus the information about the game that he had acquired, still came to mind without difficulty…….
‘I don’t know.’
As for the past, even after 15 years, he still couldn’t dig it out. Only his name and age seemed to be engraved and remained in his mind.