Chapter 190: Return and Resignation (Patreon)

The giant infant's corpse began to dissolve on the ground.

Black fluid seeped from the severed flesh into the walls of meat, and within a few dozen seconds, the massive body vanished completely.

At the same time, the underground space was collapsing.

Cracks were spreading across the petri dish itself.

The red pills stored inside were shattering one by one.

Points of light drifted out of the broken pills, joining the sea of light overhead.

The whole space lit up like snow.

Shido Makoto strode quickly toward Chu He and Ashu, who lay slumped in the corner.

"Chu He, get up!"

He slapped Chu He's cheek.

Chu He grunted, his eyelids twitching before slowly opening.

Traces of blood still marked his face where it had leaked from all seven orifices.

"I... I'm not dead?"

"You're not dead. Get up."

Shido Makoto turned to Ashu next.

Ashu had already pushed himself upright with his hands. He couldn't see, but his expression was clear and alert.

He could sense the changes in the environment around him.

"Is it over?" Ashu asked.

"It's over," Shido Makoto answered.

Ruan Luo dropped back to the ground, and the chainsaw's engine died.

She tossed the chainsaw carelessly aside. Her drooping left hand was bleeding, but her face wore an easy, relaxed look.

"Finally took it down," she said, rolling her neck.

Chu He braced himself against the wall and struggled to his feet. He looked around at the collapsing chamber of flesh and blood, at the motes of light drifting overhead, still caught in a daze.

"So... that huge thing was the director? You people killed it?"

"He killed it," Ruan Luo corrected.

"How did you kill it? I saw you stick a key into its forehead... and then I passed out," Chu He said, rubbing his temples, his face pained.

Shido Makoto didn't answer, because the black phone in his pocket had started vibrating.

He pulled it out. The screen lit up.

[Dungeon: "Sunshine Sanatorium" has been completed.]

[Survival confirmed: Chu He, Ashu, Fang Si, Ruan Luo.]

[Task evaluation in progress...]

[Rating: A-]

[Rewards being calculated.]

[Transporting...]

An A- rating for a Full Moon-class dungeon was more than respectable.

Chu He saw the message on his phone too and simply sat down hard on the ground.

"Finally over..."

"Thank you," Ashu said, giving a slight nod in Shido Makoto's direction.

White light had already begun spreading up from their feet.

The teleportation was activating.

Chu He shouted in a panic, "Wait, I haven't added you as a friend yet!"

He fumbled to pull out his own black phone, but it was too late.

"See you in the next dungeon," Shido Makoto's voice came through the white light.

Then the light swallowed him completely.

His vision went white.

...

...

Shido Makoto gripped the wok, flicked his wrist, and flipped the diced beef inside over in one motion.

Flames flared up, then dropped back down.

Since coming out of the Sunshine Sanatorium, his body had reached inhuman levels of capability — endurance, strength, reaction speed, all pushed up another notch from before.

If he had to face that doctor again, he was confident he could take him head-on this time.

Add two ghost items — the glasses and the master key — and this dungeon run had been quite the haul.

The only regret was that the silent pocket watch had run out of uses. That thing had actually been rather handy.

Full Moon-class dungeons offered rich rewards, but the difficulty matched them step for step.

More critically, the hints given on the black phone didn't necessarily line up with the information inside the dungeon anymore.

Take the clearance time — on the surface it said seven days of survival, but in reality, they'd only been given twenty-four hours.

Another difficulty had been locating the director and killing it.

Finding it depended on obtaining the doctor's glasses; otherwise its location was too well hidden to find under normal circumstances.

On top of that, the director itself possessed powerful mental interference abilities. If he hadn't already received amplification in that area before, this outcome would have been far from certain.

Shido Makoto let the thought go.

He still remembered what Ruan Luo had told him — anomaly concentration was spiking worldwide, and dungeons would likely start descending on a weekly basis.

Every week he'd need to set aside large blocks of time to train his body, refine his memory palace, take care of Sora, and handle intel trades with the Special Affairs Bureau.

A job with a fixed clock-in schedule simply didn't fit into that calendar anymore.

He plated the dish he'd just finished cooking, set it at the serving window, and called out, "Order up!"

Nanami trotted over to collect it, glancing back at him with a smile.

The girl's color had improved a lot lately. Ever since he'd reminded her a few times and started giving her staff meals, her face wasn't so pale anymore.

Shido Makoto untied his apron, thought for a moment, then walked out of the back kitchen.

Ikeda Ken was behind the bar, wiping glasses.

"Mr. Ikeda, got a minute?" Shido Makoto set a folded piece of paper on the bar.

Ikeda's hand stopped mid-wipe.

He set down the glass, picked up the paper, and unfolded it.

After reading for a moment, the smile faded from his face.

Ikeda set the paper down. "Shikata-kun, is this a resignation letter?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

Ikeda leaned in, lowering his voice. "Is it not enough pay? Or is someone giving you trouble? Tell me, I'll deal with it."

"Neither," Shido Makoto shook his head.

"I have some personal matters to take care of, and I can't spare the time anymore."

Ikeda stared at him for a good long while.

The man wasn't stupid — he knew Shido Makoto wasn't the type to quit on a whim.

But precisely because he wasn't stupid, he understood exactly what this young man meant to the shop.

In all of Kabukicho, there wasn't another chef who could cook Chinese food good enough to make customers line up specifically for it.

Nor was there another chef who had picky regulars asking for him by name.

Over this stretch of time, revenue from the Chinese food side of the shop had more than doubled, and it all rested on Shido Makoto alone.

If he left, the shop's reputation would take a hit that very day.

Ikeda gritted his teeth and tore the resignation letter in half.

There was a sharp rip.

Shido Makoto froze for a second.

"Mr. Ikeda, what are you—"

"I never saw it."

Ikeda tossed the torn scraps into the trash and clapped his hands. "I received nothing. Shikata-kun, weren't you about to tell me some kind of personal matter?"

"..."

Shido Makoto pinched the bridge of his nose. He hadn't expected the man to pull something like this.

"Mr. Ikeda, I'm serious."

"So am I," Ikeda said, leaning forward.

"How about this — you've got personal business to handle, right? I'll approve you a leave of absence. Paid. Indefinite."

"Whenever you're done with your business, come back. Not a single day of it comes out of your pay."

"Since when is there a leave like that?"

"There is now," Ikeda said, entirely reasonable about it.

"I've run this shop for thirty years. If I say there's a leave like that, there's a leave like that! This is my shop, I make the rules!"

Shido Makoto opened his mouth, at a loss for words for a moment.

In all his years, he'd seen people try to talk an employee out of quitting, but never quite like this.

Not content with just tearing up the resignation letter, the man had forced a paid, open-ended leave on him besides.

He'd meant to make a clean break of it, no complications.

Instead, the other man had beaten him to it, sealing off that path entirely.

Shido Makoto rubbed his forehead. "Mr. Ikeda, I really do appreciate how much you value me, but I genuinely have other things I need to do."

"Then consider it me begging you," Ikeda said, dropping his easygoing air for a rare moment of seriousness.

"Shikata-kun, I'm not going to stop you from doing whatever you need to do. Go handle your business. But this door — I'm keeping it open for you."

"Whenever you feel like coming back to fry up a couple of dishes, come anytime. I'd like to eat your twice-cooked pork for a few more years yet."

With Ikeda putting it that way, Shido Makoto couldn't push back any harder.

He thought it over, then nodded. "All right, then. Let's leave it at that."

"That's more like it." Ikeda broke into a grin again, his belly shaking.

Just then Nanami came back to the bar carrying an empty tray, catching the tail end of the conversation.

She froze completely.

Senior Shido was leaving?

A paid leave of absence?

Wasn't that basically just... not coming to work anymore?

The tray in Nanami's hands dipped slightly.

She thought about the staff meals he'd been making for her lately, all the little ways he'd looked out for her.

If Senior wasn't around anymore, would anyone at the shop still take care of her like that?

She kept her head down, not daring to speak, her eyes dimming.

Shido Makoto caught sight of her expression.

This girl wore every thought right on her face.

He sighed.

"Nanami."

"Ah, yes!" Nanami's head snapped up.

"I'm just not coming in every day," Shido Makoto said.

"If anything comes up at the shop, Mr. Ikeda will contact me."

"Keep doing your work here the way I taught you. Don't worry about it."

"Okay," Nanami nodded.

Shido Makoto picked up his jacket. "Also, have you saved up enough for next term's tuition at that voice acting school?"

Nanami's face went red at once.

She hadn't told more than a couple of people about that. She hadn't expected Senior to remember.

"A-almost there."

"Don't skip meals just to save money," Shido Makoto said, tossing the words back as he headed for the door.

"If you make yourself sick from hunger, whatever you saved won't matter. Keep eating the staff meals. Don't try to save Mr. Ikeda that bit of food."

Nanami watched his retreating back, her face flushing even redder.

She nodded, even though he couldn't see it anymore.

"I understand, Senior," she said quietly.

...

...

The next day at noon, Shido Makoto took Sora out.

Now that he had time to spare, he planned to treat Sora to a good meal first.

The girl had been through so much lately, and she'd been tense ever since coming back from the Hide and Seek dungeon.

He picked out a family restaurant.

Nice atmosphere, quiet, plenty of desserts.

Sora wore a white dress, two black ribbons in her hair, and looped her arm through his as they walked in.

"Makoto, I want that one."

The moment she stepped through the door she was already pointing at pictures on the menu. "And that, and that, and that one too."

"All of it?"

"Mm-hm."

Sora nodded, perfectly matter-of-fact. "Today you're with me, so I decide."

Shido Makoto didn't stop her.

This girl couldn't finish half a table of desserts on her own anyway — he'd end up cleaning up the rest of it in the end.

When the server brought the whole spread of desserts to the table, Sora's eyes lit right up.

Matcha layer cake, strawberry cake, pudding, molten chocolate cake — the table was covered edge to edge.

"Makoto, watch me eat."

Sora picked up a small fork, speared a piece of strawberry cake, and held it up to his mouth. "You first — one bite."

"I don't eat sweets."

"One bite."

Shido Makoto resigned himself to it and opened his mouth.

Only then satisfied, Sora speared a piece for herself and was just about to bring it to her own mouth when—

"So that's what I'm saying! This is my dream!"

A man's voice exploded from the next table over, shrill and grating, painfully unpleasant to hear.

Sora's fork froze in midair.

The piece of strawberry cake never made it to her mouth — the shout rattled it right off the fork, and it fell back onto the plate with a soft plop.

Sora looked down at the fallen cake, then looked up, turning toward the source of the noise.

Her face went dark.

Shido Makoto turned his head too.

Two people sat at the next table.

A guy in black-framed glasses was half-standing, gesturing wildly as he talked.

Across from him sat a girl with long straight black hair, wearing a white headband, eyes downcast, looking thoroughly unamused.