Chapter.7 Masquerade Ball (2)
***
Jingle jingle!
[Chef Cook’s Pizza House] was decorated in a bright and cheerful atmosphere that stimulated the appetite, unlike the atmosphere of the alley where ghosts seemed to appear. On the wall covered with bright green tiles, the large front glass had a cute menu that looked like it had been drawn with oil paint, and in the middle of it, a man with a fat and funny beard gave a thumbs up! Shouting ‘OPEN!’ He was holding a sign that said.
“Welcome!”
A fat man wearing an apron covered in flour welcomed the group with a bright smile that matched the bright atmosphere of the room.
The professor, who entered with a slightly nervous face, greeted Chef Cook as soon as he heard his voice, waving his hand and smiling brightly as if he had never done so before.
“Chef Cook! It’s been a while! Is your business doing well? “I’m here again!”
“Um, I’m sorry about this, but… Is it because I’m getting older these days or because I’m out of my mind? I don’t remember the customer very well. “Have you come to our store often?”
“oh my god! Chef! I don’t know!? You’re a professor, professor! A regular at this place! Last week, when I took a week off from work, I ate pizza here for lunch all week! Chef Cook, I feel sorry for you!”
“Oh my~ I’m sorry! This is so good that even regular customers forget about it. “You are disqualified as a business person.”
“Hehehe, if you’re sorry, you can give me a good service.”
“Of course! “We’ll specifically enlarge the size for free, so tell us what menu you want!”
A fat man and a professor talk back and forth in a nonsensical conversation as if they were in their own separate world.
Ian and Bex suddenly looked at the professor with their mouths open in a daze as they watched the skit unfold before their eyes and turned slightly to whisper.
“Hey, all of a sudden. What kind of show is this? connexion? Do you take vacation from work? “Do you eat pizza?”
Ian couldn’t understand the situation. When I heard that I wasn’t allowed to use firearms when entering a psycho gang’s lair, I thought to myself, ‘Is there a rule to not make a lot of noise for safety reasons?’ I was thinking the same thing and preparing for hand-to-hand combat, but when I came in, I found myself chatting about old times with an ordinary pizza restaurant guy.
“Shhh! Joe! The professor told me to do nothing! Look ahead! “The store owner is looking at you!”
Ian was startled by those words and turned around, and the store owner, who had been chatting with the professor with a smile on his face, suddenly turned around with an expressionless face and was observing Ian with his eyes wide as if they were about to explode. I saw the professor leaning against the counter place his hand on his forehead.
“The person behind you. who?”
“Ahhh! This is the group that came together. party! “I thought I’d get together with my friends after a long time and eat some pizza!”
“customer. for a moment. Please wait. Did you do it? “The security has not improved these days, and thieves are rampant.”
Pop, pop, pop, pop!
The professor desperately tried to calm him down, but the psycho gang, which had already been switched on, did not even listen to what the professor said. Chef Cook roughly took off his flour-covered apron and crossed the counter with a fierce force, holding a large rolling pin in his hand and gritting his teeth so loudly that the restaurant rang.
“What is the government doing? The police are taking taxpayer money and making a living! If you don’t catch even one thief – Sigh!! What is a small business owner like me supposed to do for a living!!! Damn you thief! Eat without a gun! Black consumer!!!”
Buuuuung!
“We have to kill them all! Hit them with a rolling pin! Take off the skin, make it into dough, and spread it with plenty of bright red sauce! Top it with plenty of yellow fat and top it with all kinds of toppings and serve it to the guests! Just wait a little while longer, sir! Chef Cook is waiting for the customers. “We will not disappoint! Always! Even if the sky falls! Even if the world falls apart! Even if a nuclear weapon falls and destroys everything! We will achieve customer satisfaction!”
As the fat man approached him with bloodshot eyes, holding a club-like pushing stick in one hand, Ian instinctively reached for his empty waist.
Crash!
Not being hostile to a fiercely approaching opponent was a task that required a great deal of patience for someone who was determined to live freely for the rest of his life.
‘Hang in there… Don’t react aggressively if things go wrong…!’
Ian managed to suppress the aggression that instinctively rose up, and with an awkward smile on his face, he took out the piece of paper the professor had given him from his pocket and held it out.
“Hehehe! I came here to write this. “Ho, did you happen to come here mistakenly thinking it was a different store?”
On the shiny piece of paper that Ian held out, there was a picture of a pizza and the word [Coupon] written in large white letters.
Good!
The man silently takes the coupon from Ian’s hand. The fat man who held the coupon in front of his eyes, scratched it with his fingernail, and even smelled it…
Sigh!
“Thank you for coming back to our store, customer! There are a lot of rude customers these days, so I guess I overreacted! As an apology, I’ll give you a side dish for free, so please forgive me! Hehehehe!”
His horribly crumpled face brightened and he returned to the counter with a big smile on his face.
“Phew!”
When Ian turned his head, he saw the professor, who had been watching the situation with one hand in the inside pocket of his leather jacket, giving a thumbs up in his direction. I hear a familiar clicking sound, so it looks like a holster has been attached to the inside pocket of my jacket.
The professor put the half-triggered pistol back in his pocket and spoke to Cook, who was smiling while holding the coupon.
“Hey… do I have to wait long?”
“Oh my! no! “Just tell us what kind of pizza you want!”
The professor glanced inside the counter out of the corner of his eye at the sight of Chef Cook, who had now completely taken on the appearance of the store owner. What you are looking for is a box painted with yellow paint. When you open the package, it’s always stacked on the left side behind the counter, so it’s easy to find, but today it was nowhere to be seen.
“Umm… I’d like a pineapple pizza, please.”
“Pineapple? customer. How about other menus? Our pizza shop’s pride, meat sauce pizza, is so famous that it’s even covered in gourmet magazines! ‘Fresh’ meat just arrived…”
“Absolutely!” Please give me pineapple pizza. “I’m a vegan, so I can’t eat anything with meat in it.”
As the professor said that and gave a sign with his eyes, Ian quickly realized what was going on and began to act accordingly.
“Give me a pineapple pizza too! “I’m allergic to meat!”
“Ah, if you say so. “It seems like vegetarian customers are coming here often these days.”
After ordering, the professor took out a few crumpled bills from the pocket of his leather jacket.
“I’m sorry, customer, but I don’t have any change, so I paid with my credit card…”
“Hey, what’s between us? “You don’t need any change, so just keep it.”
“Hehehehe! Then I will be grateful! “Both of you, please wait 15 minutes!”
Thump thump-clap!
The fat man answered with a friendly expression and then entered the galley inside the store.
“Puh-ha-eup!”
“You can talk now. “When Chef Cook is making pizza, he doesn’t know if a bomb explodes outside.”
As Chef Cook disappeared into the store with a hollow smile, Ian and Professor Bex let out the breath they had been holding without anyone else being the first to do so.
“Is this… like a role play? I guess I guessed roughly from the middle and adjusted…”
“Oh, that’s right. good job. “You said you could act a little?”
“Do it, Hepburn. “Is that person… a psycho gangster?”
The professor answered Bex’s question by quenching his thirst with the water bottle he had in his pocket.
“Puh-haa! that’s right. ‘Human Meat Chef Chef Cook’. One of the representative neutral psycho gangs. There are several types of psycho gangs, but the one that people in the wasteland are generally familiar with is the Type A aggressive psycho gang. They are literally just crazy, unbridled maniacs. Sometimes they live alone, sometimes they group together. What they have in common is that they kill and eat people when they meet them, and their actions lack reason and logic.”
Knock knock.
“On the other hand, as we just saw, a psycho gang that is crazy but obsessed with something and can use it if you match it well is called an N-type neutral psycho gang.”
“There was something like that… It’s the first time I’ve heard it while living in the wasteland.”
“It has to be that way. “The only area with so many psycho gangs that needs to be classified like this is District 47.”
Boom boom boom boom!
The professor continued speaking while hearing the sound of something heavy being struck inside the store.
“Chef Cook’s thinking is fixed on the pre-war environment, and in his mind there are only two types of people. Customers and non-customers. You have to tune in to his conversation. Did you see it earlier? “Ian, as soon as you say something else for a moment, he suddenly goes crazy and starts running wild.”
“He spoke as quietly as an ant, but he had incredibly bright ears. “I thought it was a killer from a horror movie.”
“That’s right.”
“….huh?”
The professor said to Ian, who was questioning him, pointing to the empty counter behind the counter.
“excuse me. “Can you see the miscellaneous tools piled up under the shelf?”
“Where… oh, there.”
“okay. Originally, the delivery man from Dome would put pork or beef in a conspicuous yellow box and leave it in front of Chef Cook’s store periodically. If there is a box behind the counter, you can order a menu containing meat with confidence, but if there is no box and a menu containing meat is recommended, you must reject it. The chef grows wheat and tomatoes in the backyard, and even built a small barn on the second floor to raise a cow and source cheese, but he can’t do that with meat. “If it falls, I go out to find it myself.”
“What kind of meat… are you looking for?”
“Anything. If it’s not a ‘guest’, catch anything that’s alive and turn it into pizza. “There are quite a number of people who died at the hands of that guy.”
“Hey!”
Bex got sick of the professor’s gloomy voice and took a step backwards to the other side of the counter. The menus with brightly colored signs saying ‘Today’s Recommendations’ all contained meat.
“There are no idiots in District 47 wandering around Cook’s territory without knowing how to act as a customer, so the main ingredients for that pizza would be a crazy psycho gang wandering around nearby or a freshly dead Type 2 mutant.”
“You’re saying you’re letting a guy like that live? “Just because they make pizza well?”
The professor scratched his head at Ian’s question.
“hmm. To be honest, I’m a bit like that too…”
Bang!
“The pizza is here~ Enjoy it and come visit again next time!”
“thank you!”
Jinkle Jinkle –
The professor stopped talking when the chef appeared and received the pizza. He immediately left the store, opened the cardboard box, and savored the smell of great pizza he had smelled for the first time in a long time.
“As long as he can get the ingredients on time and dress up in old-fashioned clothes like this and pretend to be a customer, he’s a really good cook. “You get useless old currency rather than scrap or shillings, so you can essentially get it for free.”
“But you kill people, right? “Is there anything more important than safety?”
“Actually, I think so too, but the dome is strongly advocating that Chef Cook should be kept alive. It is said that among the high-ranking people in the dome, there is a person who orders a servant to deliver Chef Cook’s pizza every day and eat it. I think it may be due to the influence of those cheeses. There is a rumor that the dairy cow on the second floor was also a gift from the dome. But lately, the yellow box has never arrived late, so the chef hasn’t used any strange meat, and so-and-so has made the central area closed to traffic. “The delivery man must be returning by now, taking a long detour through the central area, carrying that yellow box.”
Sigh-
The professor tore off a slice of the steaming hot pizza and took a big bite. Even though I used the few old bills I had left, the taste was well worth it. Hmm…. It’s Chef Cook’s pizza that I’ve tried for the first time in two years.
“Ha hu- Wow, it’s hot. You too, eat before it gets cold. I accidentally ordered two plates, so I can eat one right now. “I’ll use the rest of the plate for today’s work, so don’t touch it.”
“Hmm… then where….”
“Shall I just eat one piece?”
Ian and Bex reach for the pizza with suspicious expressions upon hearing the professor’s words. Not long after, the pizza box that the three people rushed at like an anglerfish was neatly organized.
“Anyway, in District 47, there are quite a few N-type psycho gangs like ‘Chef Cook, the human meat chef.’ ‘Wild Wild Park Young-jun’ who lives near the dome and map collector ‘Toothnid.’ ‘Mercenary Alan’ and ‘One Night Lady’ near my house are also famous. The reason District 47 is famous for being a good place to live is not only because it is safe, but also because thanks to these guys, you can use old-fashioned services even outside of the dome. To put it bluntly, it must be hard to find pizza made by experts like this anywhere in the wasteland?”
“Kwaauk! “This is… a taste that leaves me with no choice but to agree.”
“As expected, the environment in rich neighborhoods is different….”
Ian and Bex pat their stomachs with a feeling of fullness. But there was a strange look of anxiety on their faces.
“Hey professor.”
“huh?”
“I’m sure you said ‘rehearsal’ before going into that pizza place, right?”
“yes.”
“We were on our way to the center to appease that monster.”
“Well, I remember it well.”
“Then going and doing it… really?”
The professor wiped the oil from his hands on his pants and nodded widely towards Ian’s eyes, which seemed to be saying, ‘Please tell me no.’
“Yes, that’s right. “What we are going to do today is to become the lead on the stage that the people who have come out of the dome are busy preparing by now, and to act according to the script in front of the Old Picture, which is running wild due to a problem with its behavioral principles.”
“that···. “It’s safe, right?”
“Hmm… how much?”
The professor returned a vague answer to Bex’s anxious words.
“Last year, there were five incidents that provoked Old Picture, seventeen people participated in the play, and twenty-seven people died.”
“What a mess! “The survival rate is below 0%!”
“Hey Hepburn, actually, I prepared a will, but if something goes wrong…”
“It’s okay, it’s okay. “The third play exploded a little too much and even people around me got involved and died, so it’s not that difficult.”
A voice with a strangely confident tone. Vex realized this intuitively.
“Hepburn. Have you… tried this?”
“Uh… um… how did it happen?”
The professor laughed awkwardly, recalling how three years ago, while mindlessly robbing the central area, he came across Old Picture and accidentally set his house on fire.
***
