Surviving on the Northern Front with Gukbap

Chapter 0

"Our son is good with a knife."

It was a compliment I heard from my mom when I was in my first year of middle school.

Looking back now, I must have been incredibly clumsy, but as I was slicing napa cabbage kimchi, I got excited and wielded the knife even more diligently.

It was three years later, when I was a first-year in high school, that I sliced boiled pork.

Around that time, my father told me I had a talent for cooking, that I was especially good with a knife, and suggested I learn Japanese cuisine.

He said that Japanese food also had good profitability and prospects.

But I didn't want to do that.

"What are you talking about, I have to inherit the restaurant."

My parents opposed my statement.

Asking if I knew how hard and arduous the gukbap business was.

They lamented that making me work from a young age because they were short-staffed had become the source of this trouble.

But I loved my parents' gukbap.*

[N: Gukbap is a traditional Korean dish that literally means "soup with rice." It is a simple and hearty meal where cooked rice is served directly in a hot soup or broth, often with various other ingredients such as meat, vegetables, and seasonings. It is a popular comfort food, especially as a quick and filling meal or a hangover remedy.]

I wanted to leave that taste behind in this world.

Warm, deep, and hearty—

That gukbap.

That was how it was, but…

Thwack.

I am now in another world, not Earth,

In a corner of a kitchen filled with the smell of leftover scraps—

Thwack! Thwack!

I'm getting the shit beaten out of me.

"I told you not to eat it, you son of a bitch!"

WHAM!!