The Villain’s Recipe - Chapter 13.2
Sui ended up sympathizing with the humiliation Min-ha must be feeling. She covered her ears and bolted out of the dining room, leaving only Min-ha behind to suffer endlessly as he sent Baek Seok-gyoloff.
“I shouldn’t have let him go.”
Ma Jin-cheol had said there was an important meeting today. And he went to it with hair like that. Min-ha had told him to take off his hood if possible before leaving, but wearing something on his head during a meeting probably wasn’t very polite. Even in the drama he used to watch with the grandmother next door, nobody wore a hat to a meeting.
“Sob. Sob.”
Even while sniffling in agony, Min-ha kept working. Leaving the fully cooked curry aside, he started preparing radish kimchi. He always ate curry with radish kimchi, after all. Next, he prepped a few dry side dishes.
Braised beef, stir-fried anchovies, and shredded squid. After finishing all of that, he checked the rice cooker. Baek Seok-gyol’s meal plan for today was porridge. Egg porridge, samgyetang porridge, zucchini porridge, tuna vegetable porridge, vegetable porridge—he made them cycle through every kind of porridge imaginable. And because porridge emptied the stomach quickly, he also prepared snacks to eat in between.
The easiest thing to make right away was pudding. He had made it once after Elder Jang, who lived in the village, said he wanted to try it and brought over the recipe, and it had become a sensational hit in the village.
Sui diligently cracked eggs by Min-ha’s side. Because she had researched and made various things, she was evaluated as having quite nimble hands, but cooking seemed to be a different story.
While cracking an egg, she heard a crunch and dropped a piece of shell right into the bowl.
“Ah!”
Sui desperately tried to fish the shell out with her chopsticks, but it wasn’t easy. She quickly became dejected and called out to Min-ha.
“Min-ha, shell.”
“I’ll get the shell out!”
Min-ha was lightning-fast when it came to cooking. Actually, Sui didn’t really need to cook. The original reason she stayed by Min-ha’s side was to protect him. But seeing the cooking process up close made it look so fun that she naturally ended up meddling.
“Ack!”
And she wasn’t the only one. Park Jung-woo, a guide from Zero, also shrieked while seasoning cucumbers on the other side. It looked like some seasoning had gotten into his eyes. Seeing that, Chae Ji-won reached out a hand to help, only to commit a far more horrifying blunder.
“Aaaaaah!”
The scream of a dying man echoed. Park Jung-woo thrashed and clawed at the floor like a salt-pickled loach.
“Right! My hands!”
Chae Ji-won belatedly realized that his own hands were thoroughly coated in spicy seasoning, but it was already too late. He quickly stripped off his rubber gloves to help Park Jung-woo, but Park fled at top speed even while temporarily blinded.
“Sob. Stay away!”
“No, I took my gloves off!”
Despite the desperate cries, Park Jung-woo kept dodging Chae Ji-won.
“Hey! Watch out! You’re gonna step on the cucumbers!”
Cries of distress burst out from here and there, but it wasn’t a bad feeling. The gathered people were all genuinely excited by the warmth that had returned after such a long time.
However, wherever there is light, there is also shadow.
❖ ❖ ❖
Kang Sa-hyeok stared blankly at the gate directly in front of him. The gate’s rank was B. While not exceptionally high, it wasn’t low either. Consequently, the regional guild and Management Bureau personnel dispatched for him were moving busily to prepare for the raid. Yet right now, what completely occupied Kang Sa-hyeok’s mind was Min-ha.
❖ ❖ ❖
Drip.
Elder Jang’s call was cut off midway. Kang Sa-hyeok tried calling back, but the other side didn’t pick up. After repeating the same action several times, he looked at Kim Mi-young. Tracking someone’s location via phone was something Kim Mi-young was much better at.
“It’s tough. We don’t even have the relevant equipment right now.”
Kim Mi-young shook her head apologetically.
“B-but Min-ha said he was fine.”
Elder Jang seemed desperately wanting to believe that Min-ha was safe. And Kim Mi-young didn’t bother shattering that belief for the old man.
“Of course. He’ll be safe. We’ll make sure to look for him.”
Even just hearing that, Elder Jang was deeply moved and bowed his waist repeatedly. In that situation, Kang Sa-hyeok persistently redialed the number. But at some point, even that became impossible.
