Chapter 8. A Warm Taste of Mother’s Cooking (1)
“Please! Spare my child!”
The target desperately clung to No. 6.
“This child is innocent! My baby is too young to know anything about Abraxas’s secrets! I don’t care what happens to me, so please!”
Tears filled her eyes as she begged him again and again.
No. 6 looked at her without emotion.
“Your baby was never a target.”
The moment he finished speaking, No. 6 lunged forward and drove his dagger into her chest.
It happened in an instant.
The blade cut through flesh and bone before tearing apart her heart.
“Ghk!”
A final scream escaped her mouth.
No. 6 twisted his wrist and violently pulled the dagger free.
Shredded flesh and spurting blood stained the surroundings red.
“We only obey orders. You are the only person I was ordered to kill today.”
Perhaps it was a tiny bit of sympathy.
No. 6 said only that to his target.
Even while blood poured from her body and she slowly died, relief appeared on the woman’s face.
“Thank goodness... Thank goodness... really... thank goodness...”
For the few seconds before her breathing stopped completely, she repeated those words again and again.
Soon, the target stopped moving.
After confirming her death, No. 6 turned away.
Abraxas had many enemies.
And he had many more targets to hunt.
“Waaaaah!”
Then the abandoned baby began crying desperately inside the stroller.
Perhaps it instinctively understood that its mother had just died.
Either way, it had nothing to do with No. 6.
That child was not his target.
That was all.
“Ghk!”
Yukgap shot upright with a cry.
The familiar sight of his room entered his vision.
His face was covered in cold sweat as he repeatedly looked around.
There was no mistake.
He was in his room.
He was sitting on his bed.
“...Why?”
Yukgap clutched his dizzy head.
“That was just an order.”
There was no reason for him to feel guilty.
No.
Could he even feel guilt in the first place?
“Why did that appear in my dream?”
Yukgap lay back down and forced his eyes shut.
He needed to sleep.
He needed to fall asleep and get away from this strange feeling.
But sleep would not come.
It seemed he would not be able to fall asleep again.
It was a quiet evening.
Perhaps because of the dream he had the previous night, Yukgap felt uncomfortable all day even though he tried not to show it.
“Yukgap, I have something to ask.”
Victoria, who had been sitting in the hall quietly watching television, suddenly spoke.
“What?”
“What exactly does ‘a mother’s touch’ mean in cooking?”
The program she was watching had the phrase [A Mother’s Touch] written across the screen.
Apparently, it had caught her interest.
Yukgap shrugged.
“How would I know? I don’t even remember who my family is.”
He did not even have simple memories of his family, much less his mother.
To Yukgap, the phrase ‘a mother’s touch’ was nothing more than a distant concept.
“Cooking programs always say ‘a mother’s touch.’ But every mother’s food should taste different, right? Why do they all use the same expression?”
Victoria stared at the screen and tilted her head.
Yukgap answered casually.
“I don’t know. Maybe there’s some flavor you can only describe as a mother’s taste.”
Bang.
At that moment, the restaurant door opened.
A neatly dressed elderly gentleman in a suit stepped inside.
“Is this the place?”
He nervously looked around.
Robert immediately went to greet him.
[Mortal destined to die eventually. Have you come here to consume organic matter in order to prolong your miserable existence?]
“Uh... I did come here to eat, yes.”
The elderly gentleman answered with a blank expression.
Once again, Yukgap immediately shouted at Robert.
“Hey! How many times do I have to tell you to be polite to customers?”
[Silence. Do not interfere with my customer-service methods, lump of flesh.]
As usual, Yukgap had to apologize on Robert’s behalf.
He bowed awkwardly.
“Sorry about that. Our waiter is a complete mess. Hahaha.”
“It’s all right. I’ve already heard the rumors.”
The elderly gentleman laughed good-naturedly.
Apparently, he had heard about Restaurant Shelley before coming.
“So, what can I prepare for you? I can cook most things, so just tell me what you want.”
Yukgap spoke politely.
The elderly gentleman hesitated.
Then he finally forced the words out.
“Then... could you perhaps recreate my mother’s cooking?”
“What? Your mother’s cooking?”
Yukgap was caught completely off guard.
The elderly gentleman hurriedly explained.
“Mr. Lee Seryun introduced me to this place. He said this restaurant is run by an extremely talented alchemist, so I might be able to find the taste I’m searching for.”
Apparently, he knew Seryun.
Yukgap imagined the Lich’s pale face and cursed under his breath.
“That annoying Lich dumped another troublesome job on us.”
The elderly gentleman looked desperately at Yukgap.
“My mother passed away thirty years ago. I thought I had moved past the grief, but I still miss the last meal she ever cooked for me.”
Regret filled his wrinkled face.
“I’ve traveled all over the country visiting restaurants because I wanted to taste my mother’s cooking one more time. But nowhere could satisfy me. That’s why I came here.”
His voice was full of desperation.
“Please. I’ll pay any amount. Let me experience my mother’s cooking just one more time.”
“Sir, even if you ask us that, recreating your mother’s exact taste is...”
Yukgap immediately showed hesitation.
How could he possibly recreate the cooking of someone he had never even met?
“We can absolutely do it!”
Victoria suddenly interrupted loudly.
Yukgap spun toward her.
“What?”
The elderly gentleman’s face immediately brightened.
“Really? You can?”
“After hearing your story, I’m moved to tears. A restaurant has a duty to cook whatever its customer wants! We’ll let you taste your mother’s cooking again.”
Victoria spoke confidently.
The elderly gentleman was overwhelmed with joy.
“Thank you! Thank you so much!”
Yukgap, as the actual chef, could only stare in disbelief.
He immediately confronted Victoria.
“Victoria! How are we supposed to recreate the cooking of someone we’ve never even seen?”
“It would be too pitiful to simply send him away. He traveled all over the country searching for the taste of his mother’s food. Can’t we at least help him?”
Victoria scolded Yukgap as if the answer should be obvious.
Yukgap frowned.
“I’m warning you right now. I have no talent for recreating the cooking of dead people.”
He was confident in his knife skills.
But recreating the flavor of someone who had already died was beyond him.
Victoria only smiled brightly.
“Leave that part to me. This is exactly why alchemy exists.”
“To recreate the taste of his mother’s cooking, I asked the customer to donate some of his oral cells.”
Wearing a lab coat, Victoria dropped something resembling a small piece of red flesh into a test tube.
Apparently, they were cells taken directly from the elderly gentleman.
“What are you going to do with that?”
Victoria answered Yukgap firmly.
“Human cells contain an enormous amount of information.”
She continued explaining while operating various complicated pieces of equipment in the laboratory.
“Men have XY chromosomes, while women have XX chromosomes. When a child is born, they inherit one chromosome from each parent, and the combination determines their sex.”
Victoria’s hands moved constantly as she talked.
Drugs and experimental equipment Yukgap could not even begin to understand passed through her hands.
“If someone inherits an X chromosome from both parents, they’re born female. But if they inherit a Y chromosome from their father and an X chromosome from their mother, they’re born male.”
Then Victoria suddenly asked Yukgap a question.
“And fortunately for us, our customer is male. Do you know what that means?”
“No.”
Honestly, Yukgap barely understood half of what she had just said.
Victoria happily hummed.
“Since the customer’s X chromosome must have come from his mother, isolating that chromosome lets us analyze part of his mother’s chromosome structure.”
She peered into a microscope.
“And in humans, mitochondrial DNA is inherited from the mother more than 99.99% of the time. In other words, the mitochondrial DNA in the customer’s oral cells is almost identical to his late mother’s.”
Even while she spoke, the cells inside the tube slowly began growing.
It seemed Victoria’s alchemy was gradually taking effect.
“By combining the information we obtain this way, we can design an incomplete reconstruction of his mother’s cells.”
Victoria looked confidently at the cultured tissue.
Yukgap still did not understand.
“How does that help us recreate her cooking?”
Victoria held up a familiar flask.
“Hehehe. We’re going to use this.”
Inside the flask, a homunculus groaned softly.
“Ghooo...”
Yukgap immediately recognized it and recoiled.
“Damn it! That’s a homunculus!”
An artificial lifeform used for testing alchemical reagents.
The last time Victoria had combined a homunculus with soup to create a ‘lively flavor,’ everything had gone completely wrong.
Why was she bringing one out again?
“Correct. More specifically, I’m going to use the homunculus to cultivate the mother’s cells.”
Victoria excitedly injected the cultured cells into the homunculus.
The needle pierced it.
The cells flowed inside.
The homunculus twisted and screamed.
“Ghoooooo!”
Then its body warped in several directions.
Strange arms and legs began growing from it.
The sight was truly grotesque.
