Chapter 18. The Greatest Chinese Cuisine Martial Arts Tournament (2)
The two owners were speechless.
Not only had she released a grotesque alchemical monster into the alley...
She had even given it a cute name.
“What part of that thing is pretty or cute?! Are you blind?”
“Get that disgusting thing out of here immediately!”
Victoria slowly shook her head.
“Sorry, but I can’t.”
Then she grinned at them.
“Pretty Cutie Angel is a chimera I specially created to monitor food waste around the neighborhood. It’s here to prevent food waste from being ‘accidentally blown by the wind’ in front of our restaurant again.”
So this was revenge for the food waste.
The owners immediately understood.
But because they knew they were guilty, neither could openly complain too much.
“If that thing keeps wandering around, Restaurant Shelley won’t be able to do business either!”
The owner of Seonpunggak tried to threaten her.
Victoria shrugged.
“I don’t care. Pretty Cutie Angel is diurnal. Once the sun goes down, it’ll go to sleep on its own.”
The owner of Gwang-eun Chinese Restaurant immediately realized her plan.
“So that’s what you were after! Your restaurant opens at night, so that monster won’t affect your business!”
“What’s wrong with deploying special personnel to monitor food waste? You two are being awfully narrow-minded.”
Victoria only mocked them.
She looked extremely amused.
“Anyway, I’m going back to sleep. Pretty Cutie Angel will patrol the back alley and keep it safe in the meantime, so don’t worry too much.”
With that, she closed the door and went back inside.
The two owners stared blankly at the closed door.
[Screeeeeech! Gweeeeegh!]
Pretty Cutie Angel’s twisted cries continued echoing throughout the alley.
“Aaaaaah!”
Suddenly, Victoria’s piercing scream came from outside the restaurant.
Yukgap rushed over.
“What happened?”
“My Pretty Cutie Angel...!”
Victoria stared down in despair at the chimera she had created.
The creature with the completely unfitting name Pretty Cutie Angel was lying motionless on the ground.
Large blue blisters covered its skin.
“Judging from the livor mortis, this thing was poisoned. It must have eaten something seriously wrong.”
Yukgap examined the blue marks on its body.
Victoria recoiled.
“What? Someone poisoned my Pretty Cutie Angel?”
Yukgap lightly shrugged.
“Maybe.”
Victoria screamed in outrage.
“How could anyone do something so cruel? Didn’t they feel even the slightest sympathy after seeing Pretty Cutie Angel’s adorable appearance?”
“Have you ever considered that there might be something wrong with your sense of beauty if you call that monster adorable?”
Yukgap had already been horrified when Victoria created the chimera for neighborhood patrol.
Then he had been horrified a second time when she told him its name.
Still, Victoria clearly cared about the creature.
“Anyway, someone poisoned my precious Pretty Cutie Angel! I can’t let this go!”
“What are you going to do?”
Victoria answered with determination.
“There are only a few people cruel enough to do something like this.”
“Owner! Come out!”
Victoria stormed into Gwang-eun Chinese Restaurant and shouted.
The owner looked completely innocent.
“What now?”
“Don’t pretend you don’t know! You poisoned my Pretty Cutie Angel!”
Victoria shouted at him.
The owner merely laughed quietly.
“I really don’t know anything about that. This is a back alley. All kinds of things flow through here. If your monster ate some poison lying around and died, that has nothing to do with me.”
“So it was you after all!”
Victoria immediately raised her voice.
The owner answered,
“Don’t accuse innocent people. I told you, I really don’t know anything.”
“You’re the only shameless people around here who would do something like that to my Pretty Cutie Angel!”
Victoria refused to back down.
Growing angry under her constant accusations, the owner reflexively raised his hand.
“Shameless? I’ve been holding back because you’re a woman, but this is too much!”
At that moment, a heavy voice reached his ear.
“Hey. You’re not actually thinking of hitting our owner, are you?”
Yukgap instantly caught the man’s wrist.
The movement was too fast for the eye to follow.
His eyes gleamed with the fierce light of a predator.
“Ahem. I just lost my temper because she kept accusing me without proof. That was my mistake.”
Overwhelmed by Yukgap’s presence, the restaurant owner cleared his throat and apologized.
Victoria watched silently.
Then she suddenly asked,
“How long are we going to keep wasting energy like this?”
The owner tilted his head.
“What do you mean?”
“Honestly, isn’t this ridiculous? You two are harassing our restaurant just because we cooked a little Chinese food. All we’re doing is exhausting each other.”
Victoria made a serious proposal.
“Instead, let’s settle this like restaurants should. Let’s compete with food.”
“Hah. Interesting. A mere restaurant wants to challenge me, a professional Chinese chef?”
The owner openly mocked her.
Victoria did not back down.
Instead, she provoked him.
“Scared?”
“No. I simply find it laughable.”
The owner of Gwang-eun Chinese Restaurant remained confident.
So did Victoria.
“Our restaurant’s food is stronger than you think. You can both challenge us at once and we’ll still win. Why don’t we have a real match and see which restaurant’s food is stronger?”
The owner stared at her in disbelief.
“You’re awfully confident. Are you betting your signboard on that?”
“Of course. But if you want us to take down our sign, then you need to bet yours too.”
A true cooking battle with everything on the line.
Naturally, the owner did not retreat.
“Fine. I’ll tell Seonpunggak too. You don’t mind fighting two against one?”
“That’s perfectly fine.”
The owner grinned.
“Good. Then it’s settled. No changing your mind later.”
Soon, rumors spread throughout the back alley that Restaurant Shelley would compete against two Chinese restaurants.
The fact that the opponents were Seonpunggak and Gwang-eun Chinese Restaurant quickly became a hot topic.
“Boss, are you really sure about this?”
“Yeah. Both of those places are famous Chinese restaurants.”
