“When you eat manga meat for the first time, you scream once and then fall silent—so it was true after all.”
“Tyrannosaurus was… a crab?”
“I know how that feels since I’ve eaten it too. You really just end up focusing on eating.”
Hah! I snapped back to my senses! Before me lay the radically transformed remains of the manga meat, reduced to bare bone from my relentless eating. I flipped it over to see Aurora still devouring it with single-minded determination. The way she eats reminds me of a mini-game in that one famous party game where you finish off pizza slices.
“Aurora, come back to us!”
“—!?”
Did my voice finally pull her out of her trance? She looked up as if to say, “What have I been doing?” Then, realizing the situation, she immediately grabbed the glass of red wine we had prepared beforehand and gulped it down to quench her thirst. I decided to calm myself down with a quick break, too. …Phew, this wine is pretty affordable but delicious. It pairs well with the manga meat.
“Welcome back.”
“Finally came back to reality, huh?”
“How did it taste?”
“The taste… It was more like chicken than I expected. It doesn’t look like chicken at all when it’s roasted, though. But somehow, it’s like… a flavor explosion. The kind of taste that destroys your ability to describe it.”
“So it leans more toward chicken, huh?”
“Dinosaurs evolved into birds, after all, so maybe that’s why it tastes similar.”
“Yeah, I get it. It’s like being smacked with a flavor hammer.”
According to the comments, most people can’t stop eating no matter how much you call out to them, only snapping back to reality once they’ve licked the bones clean. Then they just savor the lingering flavor in their mouths. What’s that? Some kind of addictive effect? …Seriously? Has that been studied? Is it actually healthy? Really?
“Wow… People who hunt this stuff—do the ones in the ‘We Hunted It’ party eat manga meat every day? I’m jealous.”
“Apparently not that often.”
“Well, selling it would make more sense.”
“No, it’s because if you eat it all the time, you lose the desire to eat other kinds of meat. <Chiba Takeshi @Rounders>
“Huh? The real deal?”
“Whoa, it’s Chiba Takeshi!”
While I was joking—or maybe half-serious—about that, someone with a familiar name commented. The viewers also started buzzing about the name. Hm, where have I seen that before? Rounders? …Oh! It was on the page where I bought the manga meat! That’s the name of the party listed under “We Hunted It.”
“Are you the one who hunted this manga meat? Thank you for such delicious meat. I’m George, the buyer.”
“Complicated names lol.”
“Thank you for your purchase! We’re glad you enjoyed it. <Chiba Takeshi @Rounders>”
This person also seems to post videos. When I searched, I found all kinds of suggestions like “Tyrannosaurus cooking” or “fastest strategies” popping up. Turns out they’re not just a video creator but also a famous adventurer. I’ll check out the cooking videos later.
Anyway, according to Chiba Takeshi, at first, they happily ate manga meat daily. However, as mentioned before, they lost interest in other types of meat. There were even times when they kept eating the manga meat they had intended to sell, reducing their income despite the life-threatening effort to hunt it. So now, they only eat a piece about the size of the one I had as a monthly treat.
“Even hunters who get it for free end up like that, huh?”
“That’s why we include a warning on the purchase page. Since you two snapped out of it midway, it seems there’s no need to worry, lol. <Chiba Takeshi @Rounders>”
“Scary… Wait, Aurora! When did you start eating again?!”
“—!”
“Are you… okay?”
“Please take it easy! <Chiba Takeshi @Rounders>”
We kept enjoying our wine and meat, but I’m totally not addicted, okay? Seriously. Completely normal.
All that remained on the plate were the spotless white bones, stripped clean of any meat. …It feels a little melancholic, somehow.
“—”
“Aurora, don’t make such a sad face. Well, we’ll have another chance to eat it someday.”
“By the way, you can buy it using the fashion show’s super chat.”
“Yep, you can buy it.”
“—!?”
“Stop joking! I wasn’t going to mention it, but now you’ve put the idea in her head! Aurora, no! If you keep buying it, you’ll go broke!”
“Sorry about that.”
“Oops.”
“I can’t believe Aurora’s this hooked.”
“By the way, about the bones: if you simmer them slowly, they make an incredibly rich broth. I love using it for rice porridge. <Chiba Takeshi @Rounders>”
“Um, Chiba-san, how long should I simmer it?”
“At least six hours. <Chiba Takeshi @Rounders>”
I considered continuing the stream to try it, but six hours is impossible. It’d be better to use the broth in a future stream after simmering it for that long.
With that decided, I put the bones back into the cooler box to save them. And Aurora! Stop drinking out of frustration! Don’t touch the bottle of Spirytus we bought as a joke!
After the commotion, Aurora and I managed to wrap up our first outdoor stream. As I turned off the stream screen, feeling a sense of accomplishment, I placed my hands on my hips and muttered:
“Time to clean up…”
The feeling of accomplishment immediately disappeared.
