“What? Crabs?” Zelos shot back, puzzled, as he helped himself to another serve of tempura don.
Immediately, Shakti stopped moving her chopsticks. She was getting a bad feeling about this. Her intuition was as sharp as ever.
“Zelos?” she asked. “Do you mean these aren’t crabs?”
“I mean,” he said, “I’d call them...crab-adjacent. Whatever. Don’t worry about it. Just eat up! You know, lass, not thinking too hard about what goes into a donburi is what makes it so tasty.”
“Don’t just brush me off with some stubborn old chef’s proverbs! What is this ‘crab’?! Tell me! In fact, prawn tempura aren’t meant to have tails that look like this, are they?”
“Don’t worry. I prepared it all perfectly. I wouldn’t be serving it to guests otherwise.”
“Yeah? Then how about you try looking your ‘guest’ in the eyes while you say that?! Just tell me what ingredients you used already!”
Zelos wasn’t even trying to make eye contact.
His reaction made Ado and Lisa put their chopsticks down too.
“It tastes good, right? So what’s it matter?” Zelos asked.
“Why are you so hesitant to tell me what’s in this?!” Shakti cried. “If there’s nothing wrong with it, surely you could just tell us, right?!”
Zelos sighed. “You see... There are all sorts of things in this world you’re better off never knowing. Things you can’t go back to not knowing. The truth’s not always sunshine and roses, you know? Now—do you still want me to tell you?”
“W-Wait!” Ado yelled. “The way you’re phrasing this is basically an admission that you’ve put something crazy in here, isn’t it?! What the hell have you made us eat?!”
“Ah. Whoops. Slip of the tongue. Don’t worry about it.”
“We are worried about it!” the three shouted.
Zelos stubbornly ignored the trio’s suspicious glares—even though he’d practically confirmed that he’d used some questionable ingredients—and returned to eating his mysterious donburi alongside the coccos.
But the others weren’t about to let it slide.
“Look—quit beating around the bush and spit it out!” Ado said. “What. Did. You. Feed. Us?!”
“Really, it’s fine,” Zelos replied. “It’s not poisonous. Is it honestly worth getting this worked up about?”
“If it’s ‘fine,’ then I don’t understand why you can’t just say what you used!” Shakti yelled.
“Because I don’t want you chucking it all back up and wasting the food. The lives that went into making this dish would spin in their graves, don’t you think? It’s a dog-eat-dog world, you know?”
“So...” Shakti paused. “The ingredients are so insane that you think we’d vomit if we found out what they are?”
“Look... Are you sure you want to know? Like, really sure? Because... Heh. Heh heh heh...”
With his hair covering his eyes, Zelos started giving off a disconcerting vibe.
The others were curious about what exactly he’d fed them, but at the same time, they could feel the danger. They knew that once they found out, there’d be no going back.
They were being forced to make the ultimate choice. If they found out, they would regret it. But if they didn’t, the uncertainty would keep gnawing at them.
In other words, it was just a matter of what kind of mental burden they preferred. There would be no happy ending, and their unfortunate fates had been sealed the moment they’d swallowed their first mouthful of donburi. Their joy from eating it had long since disappeared. Perhaps they could’ve stayed happy if they’d never noticed...but it was too late for that now.
It’d become a real catch-22.
“I’ll ask again,” Zelos said. “Do you want me to tell you, or not?”
Zelos’s aura had only grown stronger and more oppressive. He looked like a commander about to send his squad on a suicide mission.
The trio could tell this was going to end in tragedy.
But all the same, their burning desire to know the truth won out by a hair.
“P-Please... Tell us,” Ado said. “What did you use to make that tempura?”
This was what they’d decided, knowing full well they’d regret it.
“Hmph... Very well. Then allow me to enlighten you! But know that you are certain to regret your decision. The truth is a cruel mistress, and your urge to open Pandora’s box shall bring you great misfortune. Remember—you are the ones who insisted on hearing the truth! May you regret this foolish moment forevermore!”
Zelos suddenly sounded like one of those unfortunate bosses who turns out to be a pawn of some shadowy organization.
He folded his arms across his chest—just like a certain commander—and gave a deep sigh.
Was he expressing repentance for what he’d done? Or was it pity for the trio, who were certain to regret their decision in mere moments? It was hard to tell. But either way, the die had been cast.
Zelos had no choice but to tell them the truth.
“Let’s start with the mixed tempura,” he said. “I used poisonbane burdock, instakill carrot, death onion, and afterlife yam. All of which are poisonous.”
“S-Surely those aren’t meant to be used as cooking ingredients!” Ado exclaimed.
“Relax,” Zelos said. “I nullified the poison with a cure potion. Anyway, moving on—the ‘prawn’ tempura was made from three-day centipedes. They’re named for the fact that their poison slowly kills you over three days, leaving you writhing in agony as your body rots from the inside out.”
“A... A centipede?” Lisa stammered. “I— I ate— I ate a centipede?! Aaaaaah...” With that, she suddenly fainted.
“Lisa?!”
It really was a bizarre ingredient.
“As for the ‘soft-shell crab,’” Zelos continued, “I used lesser murder tarantulas. Fun fact about those, actually—while they’re shaped like crabs and called tarantulas, they’re actually more closely related to ticks, scientifically speaking. They swarm their prey and use venom to liquefy their victim’s flesh before eating it.”
“So those really weren’t crabs?!” Shakti asked, incredulous. “I know you said they were ‘crab-adjacent,’ but I didn’t think they’d be, well... And—ticks?! They’re just called tarantulas?!”
“Don’t worry. The poison’s completely nullified. My prep work was flawless.”
“So that’s what you meant when you said you ‘prepared it all perfectly’?!” Ado cried. “What the hell did you just make us eat, Zelos?!”
“I did ask whether you really wanted to know, didn’t I? Quite a few times, in fact.”
Zelos was right when he said he hadn’t made any mistakes with the prep.
And while he had been eating a tempura don in front of them, they’d asked to try some too.
They probably should’ve asked him what was in it first.
Besides, they were at a rest stop nestled in the mountains. Where would crabs or prawns even have come from? Under these circumstances, the responsibility fell on the trio for eating without any suspicion.
More to the point, Ado had known that Zelos ate some strange things while trying to survive in the Far-Flung Green Depths.
Apparently, that had built his tolerance for eating that sort of stuff.
“In this world,” Zelos said, “being weak gets you eaten, and being strong means you get to eat. And here we are, strong, alive, and eating tasty food—shouldn’t we all be happy about that?”
“Urgh, the guy’s got nerves of steel...” Ado sighed. “Dammit. We never should’ve asked.”
“You’re right,” Shakti said. “We would’ve been better off not knowing. But at the same time...it is delicious. And while it still feels wrong to eat it, that feeling isn’t so strong that I can’t eat it.”
“Wait— Shakti? You’re gonna eat more?!”
“I mean, we ate worms without knowing it back in Isalas, didn’t we? After going through that, the idea of foods being too weird to eat isn’t as convincing. Wouldn’t we be happier if we just ate without worrying too much? It’s better than eating grubs, at least.”
“Damn...”
“Worms are a precious source of protein,” Zelos chimed in, “but it’s a pain getting all the dirt out of them first, isn’t it?”
“You’ve eaten worms?!” Ado said.
Zelos was one thing, but apparently Shakti had nerves of steel too.
At the end of the day, only Ado and Lisa were delicate about these things.
Zelos’s willingness to eat bugs to survive was respectable, but Ado and Lisa were too stuck in their modern-day Japanese ways to come aboard.
Even if they knew this was a fundamental difference about living in a new world, they couldn’t get used to it. Ultimately, Ado stressed over it until he fell asleep later that night.
He’d heard people say before that living was a battle, but this was the first time he’d really understood what they meant.
Namely, people here had to be willing to eat whatever it took to survive. It was a reminder that he’d have to abandon the ideals he’d grown up with in Japan if he wanted to survive in this harsh world.
He and Lisa would have to make a decision: live strong and resolute like the locals, or stick to the Japanese mindset they’d been raised on? They couldn’t have it both ways.