Chapter 2

[For gaining more experience the writers experience is needed.]

After writing on half of the page, and reviewing on the aspect of getting experience, the pages flipped over and returned to its original page. And for the purpose of gaining more experience the writer needs to put down his own experience.

[What am I supposed to do if I want to gain more experience?]

[The experience written down by the writer will allow them to get experience.]

[I can get experience by writing, correct?]

[Yes.]

[If the written experience is read then experience can be gained?]

[Yes.]

[It doesn’t matter what kind of experience is written?]

[Yes.]

Lee Jong-suk was looking into the contents of the books when his dad entered the room.

“Mom went to take a bath.”

Listening to the voice of his dad Lee Jong-suk immediately closed the book.

“Okay!!”

Dad looked at him and smiled till his eyes fell on the hard covered book.

“When I was in my adolescent I was also very curious and had many books.”

Said the dad while stroking the hard covered book.

“Sometimes even the mathematics reference books were covered like this.”

Smiling at the old memories that popped into his mind, dad gently flipped over the hard covered book.

“Ah! I see.”

“It’s alright, when I was your age… hmm?”

Lee Jong-suk’s dad laughed as curiosity and wonder arose in his face about the hard covered book. But unlike his thoughts the book turned out to be blank.

“Is this a book that one uses to write a diary?”

Said Lee Jong-suk’s dad with that thought and closed the book.

“Diary?”

“Isn’t this a book to write your diary?”

Listening to his fathers words, Lee Jong-suk opened the first page. And astonishment arose in his face.

All the notes that he wrote were gone.

“Huh?”

Lee Jong-suk looked at the notebook for a second and shook his head hastily.

“It’s nothing like that. And next time you come into my room call out please. As you said dad this is the room of a teenage boy.”

“Ha! Okay. Okay. When I was your age I was like that too.”

Dad went out of the door and laughed at the words and actions.

“And be careful around your mother. Don’t think too much about the awkwardness, it is bound to disappear in a few days.”

“Yeah! I know.”

After his dad left Lee Jong-suk rose to look at the hard covered book, no, to look at the experience book.

After showering and coming out there were rice cakes and tempura on the table.

“Couldn’t sell the leftovers?”

Lee Jong-suk’s parents had a small snack shop. The small shack shop was right below their home. And all the leftover food was usually sold as snacks, but this usually gets tiring for them.

“After selling the leftover I’ll go ahead.”

Listening to his mom’s words Lee Jong-suk left a huge sigh and picked up a rice cake with the fork and put it in his mouth.

As soon as it entered his mouth, Lee Jong-suk’s eyes wavered.

“The flavor… isn’t that bad.”

Though the rice cakes were pretty warm, the sauce was a little spicy and messy it was overall a little weird.

“Yesterday the taste wasn’t so bad.”

Thinking about it Lee Jong-suk put down the fork on one side and looked towards a barrel. The barrel was slightly opened and had been completely filled with a new batch of red sauce. Lee Jong-suk slightly tasted it from his fingers.

“I don’t know how to get more cooking experience. How to get more than 25 experience points?”

Thinking about it Lee Jong-suk went back into his room.

“Experience book….”

Lee Jong-suk went into his room while mumbling to himself as he recollected the words that his father had spoken to him.

“A diary to write my self experience… Will it count as my experience if I write it in the form as a diary?”

Lee Jong-suk was thinking over that thought for a few moments.

“Even if the experience is common, experience is given. Then if common experience can be written down how to get more experience?”

With that thought Lee Jong-suk looked at the experience book for a while and remembered something from a while back.

There were still quite a few experiences that he had not experienced for himself.

[When I was young I used to hear the voice of a ghost in the countryside home that we used to live in. From the outside I used to hear someone calling “Jong-suk ah! Jong-suk ah!” I went to see the source of these sounds.

“Even I don’t know! Yes!”

I was scared of answering anymore so I went back to my room but later I remembered a story in which a lion calls you three times before it takes you away.

At that time I only answered two times and came back to the room otherwise I might not have survived?]

[Interesting experience has been written. You have received 2500 experience points.]

Lee Jong-suk laughed after looking at 2500 experience points. He had got 100 times more than what he had got for the common experience.

“It looks like I can get experience for things that I didn’t actually experience, If I can write down more experiences of this kind. Then perhaps?”

Lee Jong-suk took a pencil and wrote down another story.

[When I was young I was taken to a planet in the south where alien men used to live. At that place I saw elves, dwarfs friends who lived alongside the devil…]

Lee Jong-suk laughed at the story that he wrote which was a very common plot in the fantasy novels.

“If this counts as experience then I won’t write any more experiences related to this world.”

Lee Jong-suk was mumbling in the inside when his eyes caught something.

[You can only write the details of what you have experienced.]

The posts that Lee Jong-suk recently wrote vanished almost immediately.

“Damn! So only the things I experience will get me experience points huh.”

Lee Jong-suk turned and at looked at the door while thinking about what the experience book said.

“If I do business with the sauce, then it would most likely lead my house into ruins, but I still won’t mind it”

Though it might ruin his home, the thought of his parents staying up all night made him feel uncomfortable.

“Even if I get experience for cooking I don’t know what sauce to make to help them.”

With that thought in his mind Lee Jong-suk wrote the following down in his experience book.

[Cooking, 2,000]

The 2,000 experience points that’s he used, he meant to use it to know more about cooking. And so…

Slirk!

The books page was turned and a new post was started.

[I first started to cook when I reached 6 years of age. The first dish that I made was corn soup for my mom and dad. Although it was just corn and water that I boiled in a pot that was the first dish that I ever made and, mom ate it saying that it was very tasty.

Now that I think of it that corn soup was actually flavor less. I put corn and water and boiled them together….]

….

“Jong-suk ah! Wake up!”

The loud voice of his mother made Lee Jong-suk blank eyes open in the morning.

“Hmm.”

Groaning for a while Lee Jong-suk opened his eyes and started to get up.

Crik! Crik!

When getting up his body made the sounds of bones cracking.

“Euhk”

Lee Jong-suk’s body felt like it was stuck and stiff when he came out to answer the voice of his mom who was urging him to do something.

“Wash yourself quickly and get ready to go for school.”

“Yes.”

After taking his shower to go to school Lee Jong-suk started packing his school bag with the books on the desk when he saw the experience book.

[Received 2,000 cooking experience.]

[Cooking experience absolute taste has been received.]

[Cooking experience to adapt and set has been received.]

[Cooking experience kitchen knife has been received.]

He saw what he wrote yesterday and read the texts below his writings which showed that he had received experience and that he also achieved absolute taste and adapt/set.

It was nearly dawn when he had completely read a book and he was exceptionally tired so he slept and started to dream.

The content of his dream was the story of a chef reading his posts. And of boiling corn soup, and making food.

The dream so vivid that it felt like he was actually doing it. After a while Lee Jong-suk heard the voice of his mother.

“Jong-suk ah! Eat rice and then leave for school.”

“Sure!”

Answered Lee Jong-suk loudly and left the experience book in the room and came out. He came out of the room and went to eat rice when he saw his dad eating food.

“You are here. Come and eat rice.”

After listening to his dad’s words Lee Jong-suk sat down yawning and started to eat the bean sprout soup.

“Hmm…?”

After taking a spoonful of the soup a strange expression emerged on Lee Jong-suk’s face.

“Taste is…”

The taste was strange. As if the flavor didn’t go well with one another…

“Dad, doesn’t this taste a little strange?”

“It tastes like the usual. Why?”

After saying it wasn’t strange his father ate another spoon of the soup, looking at this Lee Jong-suk also had another spoon of the soup.

“It’s definitely strange.”

Listening to Lee Jong-suk words his father looked at his mother in the kitchen and gently said.

“When your mother gets frustrated she turns scary. So just eat.”

After hearing his father’s word Lee Jong-suk looked at the soup for a moment and thought about something and immediately added salt to his soup.

And started whisking his spoon as something was going on in his mind.

“Mom do we have olive oil in our home?”

“Olive oil in this house? No, but why?”

“Nothing.”

Didn’t know if it was because the cooking oil was made in the home, but olive oil had nothing to do with it. He took another spoon of the soup and nodded his head.

“A little better.”

Lee Jong-suk added a little salt in his father’s soup bowl too.

“I’m fine with it…. Oh? It’s good!”

Because of adding a little salt and changing the taste of the dish, Lee Jong-suk’s father looked at him.

“Our son has become a chef.”

“All I did was add a little something.”

While eating his soup Lee Jong-suk looked towards his room

‘Cooking experience……. Could it be because of it?’

And thought that he never knew the flavor of olive oil and also adding it a little into the bean sprout soup was getting more weirder as he kept on thinking.

After completing the soup Lee Jong-suk put down his spoon and got up and went over to the sauce that his father made yesterday.

Looking at face of Lee Jong-suk who went over to the sauce Lee Jong-suk’s dad said.

“That has also failed.”

“Failed?”

“It’s too ordinary. ‘Wow! Restaurant like flavor!’ I wanted to make one sauce like that but….

.”

After hearing these words out of his father, Lee Jong-suk took a little sauce on his finger and tasted it.

‘There is a slight lack of spiciness and a little more lack of sweetness. And also… something feels refreshing… Uncooked ingredient should be put for sweetness, honey… if it is added the sweetness will be way high. Then if we add yeot then the sweetness might be of correct level. And the spicy rice cake color will also be vibrant.’

Both the father and mother were looking at Lee Jong-suk who was adding the ingredients that were lacking in the sauce.

The two people who were previously watching television and eating rice in the hall room were now watching Lee Jong-suk take out red pepper powder and corn syrup and started adding it into the sauce pot.

‘How am I supposed to cook this?’

Thinking over it for a moment Lee Jong-suk bought the radishes that were lying in veranda next to the kitchen and started to trim them.

The peel of radish was being peeled extremely quickly in the hands of Lee Jong-suk. And he started to shred it very quickly too.

“Jong-suk ah! What are you doing in the kitchen!”

“Hmm, just a minute”

While quickly chopping the radish slight fascination arose on Lee Jong-suk’s face.

“Is it this easy to work on a radish?”

When Lee Jong-suk was alone, all he did was slice a piece of kimchi. But now the same hands were holding a knife and quickly peeling as well as chopping a radish.