Chapter 51. The Taste of Sadism and Pleasure (3)
“L-Like this?”
The man hesitantly pressed Victoria’s invention against the back of his neck.
Victoria kindly explained,
“That’s right. Attach it near your spinal cord like this, then press the button...!”
The chip suddenly drove itself firmly into the back of his neck.
The man let out a short groan.
“Ugh!”
“All done. Now try eating some kimchi.”
Victoria looked completely confident.
The man alternated suspicious glances between Victoria and the kimchi.
But eventually, he bravely picked up a piece with his chopsticks.
“Ughhh...”
Looking as though he would rather die than eat it, he shoved the kimchi into his mouth.
Crunch. Crunch.
The sound of kimchi being chewed continued for a moment.
Then surprise spread across the man’s face.
“Huh?”
Something had clearly happened.
Feeling an ominous sense of foreboding, Yukgap quickly asked,
“What is it?”
The man looked utterly shocked.
“I-It’s delicious!”
He immediately began stuffing more kimchi into his mouth.
“Whoa! I had no idea kimchi could taste this good! Why didn’t I know this before? It’s delicious! So delicious!”
As though possessed, he kept devouring the kimchi.
Could inserting a single chip really change someone this much?
Yukgap turned straight to Victoria.
“What the hell did you do?”
“Remember what I told you last time? Spiciness isn’t actually a taste. It’s pain.”
Victoria tapped the side of her head as she continued.
“I made a tiny adjustment to the customer’s brain with that chip. Now, whenever he feels pain, the part of his nervous system responsible for pleasure reacts too!”
“So that means...?”
“Exactly. Every time spicy food causes him pain, he feels an equal amount of pleasure!”
Only then did Yukgap notice that something about the man’s condition was strange.
His face was bright red.
Sweat poured from his body like rain.
Tears and mucus streamed down his face.
His body was still reacting to the spicy food exactly as before.
“Hahahaha! Hahahaha! It’s so delicious!”
Yet the man only kept eating kimchi and praising the taste.
Victoria watched him proudly.
“Since this customer is more sensitive to spiciness than ordinary people, he’ll also experience that much more pleasure. If he’s unusually sensitive to spicy food, then all I had to do was modify his body so that spiciness became pleasurable!”
If he was overly sensitive to spice, she simply had to convert that sensitivity into another sensation entirely.
In a way, it was a solution that completely reversed cause and effect.
A very Victoria-like answer.
“Hehehe... delicious... so delicious...”
The man’s eyes had gone unfocused.
He had finished an entire head of kimchi and was now even licking the plate.
It was hard to believe this was the same man who had complained that he could not eat even a single piece of kimchi because it was too spicy.
Yukgap sensed something was off.
“His reaction seems a little weird, though.”
“Oh, come on! Why are you always so pessimistic? He’s eating kimchi happily now. Isn’t that enough?”
Victoria immediately dismissed Yukgap’s doubts.
Then she looked at the delighted customer with a satisfied smile.
“Anyway, another case solved by the great Victoria!”
“I’m back!”
A cheerful voice rang through the restaurant.
It was the same male customer who had previously struggled because he could not eat kimchi.
Yukgap recognized him immediately.
“You’re here again?”
“I haven’t found another restaurant this good.”
The man answered cheerfully.
Yukgap asked,
“Same order again today?”
“Of course! Make it insanely spicy!”
If anything had changed, it was his taste.
He had gone from being unable to tolerate spicy food at all to someone completely obsessed with it.
Now he came to Restaurant Shelley every day.
“Good grief.”
Yukgap sighed as he stirred a stockpot.
The broth had been simmered with generous amounts of habanero peppers, Cheongyang chilies, and garlic.
Just looking at it made his eyes sting.
He honestly wondered whether it was even edible.
“How does anyone eat this?”
Yukgap poured the violently spicy broth into a bowl.
Then he placed perfectly cooked noodles on top.
The red broth bubbling between the noodles looked like lava moments away from erupting.
“Your Inferno Fire Jjamppong is ready.”
Yukgap placed the dish in front of the man.
The instant his long-awaited meal arrived, the man’s eyes rolled back with excitement and he began devouring it.
“Delicious! Whoaaa! This is incredible!”
He was clearly still sensitive to spicy food.
Sweat immediately poured from his entire body like a waterfall.
But he did not seem to care.
He was simply delighted to be eating something spicy.
“Yukgap, what happened in here? My eyes and nose are burning.”
Victoria had just entered the restaurant and immediately reacted to the spicy scent hanging in the air.
Yukgap pointed toward the man.
“That customer has been ordering spicy food nonstop ever since what happened last time.”
