Chapter 1. Back-Alley Alchemy Restaurant
“Man, I’m exhausted.”
Yukgap sighed as he dropped into a chair.
The clock showed four in the morning.
Restaurant Shelley was open from eight at night until four the next morning.
It was finally time to close.
“Yukgap, good work today.”
Victoria, the restaurant’s owner and his employer, spoke in a cheerful voice.
Yukgap answered as if it were nothing.
“What work?”
Compared to what he had gone through in the past, this barely even counted as hard work.
As if agreeing with him, Robert, who handled customer service, responded with a series of electronic beeps.
[Correct. You did not work hard. There were few customers today. This lump of flesh failed to make proper use of his labor capacity.]
“Shut up. Is it my fault we didn’t have many customers?”
Yukgap snapped back irritably.
Victoria tilted her head.
“Isn’t it the chef’s fault if the restaurant isn’t doing well?”
“The problem is opening a restaurant in a deserted back alley like this in the first place. How is anyone supposed to even find this place?”
Victoria hummed and laughed.
“You found this place just fine, Yukgap.”
“I was running away and hid here by accident.”
Yukgap frowned at her answer.
Then he quietly looked at the calendar hanging on the wall.
“Tch. Has it already been three months?”
It had been three months since he had hidden here.
Three months since he had started working as a chef.
Three months since he had been given the ridiculous name Yukgap.
“Nothing passes faster than time.”
Yukgap muttered while watching the first rays of sunlight slowly spread through the back alley.
“Haa... haa...”
His breath caught in his throat.
He could no longer hear the footsteps of his pursuers.
Fortunately, it seemed he had finally shaken them off.
“Ugh... ngh...!”
The moment relief washed over him, pain surged through his body.
Blood was pouring from his side.
It seemed he had been shot while escaping.
“I need something to recover.”
No. 6 staggered as he looked around.
He panted heavily and drew in a deep breath.
Then a strange chemical smell drifted from somewhere deeper in the back alley.
“Is it here?”
Before long, No. 6 stopped in front of a mansion standing in an isolated corner of the alley.
There was no doubt.
The building looked ordinary from the outside, but countless strange chemical smells were leaking from within.
Ever since he had been modified into a chimera, his sense of smell had become several times sharper than that of a normal human.
Something like this was easy for him to detect.
If he was lucky, there might be something inside that could heal him.
“I never heard there was a laboratory here.”
No. 6 carefully scanned his surroundings.
Fortunately, nobody was around.
After taking several deep breaths, he smashed a window and climbed inside.
“Please... meat. Meat. I need meat...!”
Repeating only that thought, he searched through the mansion.
Just as No. 6 had expected, strange experimental instruments and chemicals were scattered everywhere.
Then, on the far side of the laboratory, he spotted a refrigerator.
“Found it!”
No. 6 rushed over and opened it.
Fortunately, it was packed with various kinds of meat he could not identify.
“Good.”
He hurriedly pulled the meat out.
As luck would have it, there was also a pot and a gas stove right beside the refrigerator.
“Good. If I eat this, I can recover.”
Breathing heavily, he turned on the stove.
Normally, he would have eaten the meat raw.
But when he was this badly injured, doing that could actually make things worse.
He needed to cook it so his body could digest it more easily.
“Good. There’s salt, minerals, and plenty of vitamins too.”
Muttering to himself, he pulled all kinds of seasonings and vegetables from the refrigerator.
Then he threw everything he could grab into the pot and boiled it together with the meat.
Before long, the smell of cooked meat filled the room.
“Good. This should do.”
What he had thrown together was closer to an unidentified brown lump than an actual dish.
But this was no time to care about flavor.
Crunch, crunch!
No. 6 greedily chewed and swallowed everything in the pot.
Almost immediately, the wound in his side began healing at incredible speed.
The bullet embedded inside his body was naturally pushed out.
At the same time, strength slowly returned to him.
“Whew... I think I’ll live.”
Only then did No. 6 let out a relieved breath.
He staggered toward a nearby corner and dropped to the floor.
Maybe it was because he had escaped his pursuers.
Maybe it was the relief of surviving a near-death experience.
Either way, sleep suddenly overwhelmed him.
“I’m telling you, I’m absolutely certain he’s exactly the kind of talent I was looking for!”
No. 6 opened his eyes to the sound of a loud voice.
When his mind cleared, he saw a large blonde woman standing beside him with a vein bulging on her neck.
A pale-looking man beside her seemed completely troubled.
“Doctor, how many times do I have to tell you that ‘talent’ is not the word you should be using here?”
“But he broke in and even cooked something!”
“You call that cooking? Please say something that makes sense.”
The man pointed at the crude lump inside the pot No. 6 had used earlier.
The man appeared to be an albino.
His hair was white, and his eyes were red.
