Chapter 16: Protagonist No. 2 Is Online1
“That’s right, it’s me.” Shao Dongmi glanced at the cards, he’d finally lost this time.
The enthusiasm Mu Lin had been radiating to play cards with just now reached its freezing point in an instant. He bowed his head and grabbed the box of cards, took the cards out of Shao Dongmi’s hands, randomly stuffed them into the box, and threw it into the cupboard, “It’s a misunderstanding, just a misunderstanding. I wasn’t feeling too well, so I was just resting here, I reported it to Command Centre. We’ll chat next time then, next time. Bye-bye, bye bye bye bye!”
He escaped before he even finished speaking. The money and lighter were left on the table, simply forgotten.
“W-wait? Bro?? Hey——” Shao Dongmi couldn’t stop him at all, and Mu Lin vanished without a trace.
I didn’t have time to ask about anything, my clues! He just left!
He had no choice but to pick up the things Mu Lin left behind. He would return them the next time they met, and ask about that restaurant in passing… was it a restaurant?
Speaking about restaurants, Shao Dongmi was feeling hungry. He hadn’t eaten anything apart from the breakfast the plane provided, and it was almost nightfall now.
Shao Dongmi felt his way to the cafeteria. Today he’d experienced Augustus’ decline, there seemed to be no convenience stores or dining halls in this place, so the Tribunal’s cafeteria would probably be his only food source in the future. Any food would do in this chaotic, combat zone-like place. Fortunately he wasn’t a picky eater, he thought.
Shao Dongmi made ample preparations in his heart before going to the cafeteria.
But the physical sensation could only be described as leaving him completely shook2.
The cafeteria was completely deserted, probably because the others were busy with the search and rescue and hadn’t returned. The tables were ordinary desks of different styles, as if they had been randomly picked up and gathered together.
The food arranged behind the glass cover was already completely cold and had an unsightly appearance. There was only a bit of pale fried rice, pale pasta, pale stewed potatoes, and yellow pickled radishes.
Shao Dongmi’s idea of fried rice included green onions, eggs, ham sausages and bean sprouts, but there were really only rice grains on the one in front of him, and it was cold. The pasta was the same, with the barest shadow of mincemeat sauce and condiments, and only thin grey noodles.
Carbs, carbs, carbs, and a pickled dish, that was it. What kind of magical recipe arrangement was this??
It’s okay, it’s okay, I’m not picky. I can eat it even if it’s just white rice with soy sauce, at worst, I’ll just drink it like congee with some boiled water. Shao Dongmi closed his eyes and spoke to himself. He put a bit from every dish in a bowl, poured himself a cup of water, and sat down in a spot by the window. In his mind, he had already grasped the difficulties he would have in making his own food in the future.
Afterwards, he was shocked to find that the taste was a whole different level of awful compared to the rotten external appearance of the food.
The solidified, cold oil was like dregs of poor quality candle wax, the texture of the food was like chewing cardboard, the kind that falls apart like crazy. The worst thing was that all of the food, including the water, had a faint and indescribably strange sour taste, and he couldn’t tell if it was a chemical taste or a bad taste or some sort of rank, gamey smell.
Shao Dongmi was stupefied.
The taste of eating his homework back when he was in school was better than this!!
Shao Dongmi forced himself to finish eating the bowl as if in punishment, with each mouthful more painful than the last, and after he finished eating, he had a hideous look on his face. He was done for, it was over, it seemed to be a problem with the water quality and the soil, so his own cooking would be just as bad.
Now Shao Dongmi firmly understood why Yan Chenli had said that “it still had to be the sweetness of Yinjiang’s apples”. He didn’t have a single doubt that eating tree bark from Yingjiang’s trees would taste better than this, at the very least it wouldn’t have this kind of pervasive strange odour.
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1 The four protagonists listed on the novel page are: Apple, Carbohydrate, Tulip, Standard Loan. From this we can truly see who the real stars of the story are lmao. ⤴
2 I couldn’t find a way to concisely tl this but the og is “shocking his mother for a whole year” which comes from a bad machine translation of a ship in World of Warships. The ship was ‘Le Terrible’ in French and it ended up as ‘shock my mother’, with the battlepass it featured on translated as ‘shock my mother for a whole year’. Obviously the internet ran with it and now it is slang for something that is so shocking it not only shocks you but also your mother. ⤴
3 Word censored in the raws. Sentence translates to something more like “being dragged □□ like this” so I just modified it a tad. ⤴
4 Using the term ‘老子 laozi’ which is an arrogant way to refer to oneself that roughly translates to ‘I, your father’. I usually skip translating it literally but in this occasion I felt it would be fitting haha. ⤴
