Tenth Meal - Barbeque skewers (Part 2)

At another one of the tables.

Rare Steak looked up from his steak at the group of people gathered around the board and he couldn't help feeling a bit excited by this as well.

But of course, his reason for showing off was different from everyone else's.

He looked over at another table where there were a few young girls who were currently chatting with each other before revealing a look of determination.

When he suddenly stood up, everyone else at this table was caught off guard.

Baked Potato couldn't help asking, "What are you doing?"

Rare Steak pointed at the board and said, "I'm going to sign up too!"

Baked Potato looked at him with a strange look and asked, "Why? What's suddenly gotten into you."

Rare Steak looked down with a sad look and said, "I overheard my daughters talking to their friends about me…"

When they heard this, all of the others at the table couldn't help looking at him with a look of pity and sympathy. They knew that if he was planning on entering this contest just to impress his daughter, it must have been something quite bad that they had said about him.

But of course, it was hard for them to really relate with him since they didn't have daughters of their own. They hadn't even had girlfriends yet, so it was hard for them to feel any relation to this.

So the only thing that they could do was offer whatever advice they could think of.

Baked Potato patted him on the shoulder and said, "You do what you need to do, we'll be there to support you."

Chicken Caesar Pizza shook his head and said, "It must be those girls that they're hanging with that's corrupting them like this. They really need to find better friends, like a guy like…"

Before he could finish his sentence, he suddenly felt a chill come over him.

When he looked at Rare Steak, he saw that he was glaring at him like he would attack at any moment.

Chicken Caesar Pizza quickly raised his hands and said, "I was just going to say someone like me, I wasn't going to say me."

But even after he said this, Rare Steak didn't stop glaring at him.

There was an awkward atmosphere that appeared between them and it took a long time for it to disappear. There was only silence that was between them as Rare Steak glared at Chicken Caesar Pizza.

As for Baked Potato…he was focused on eating the baked potato that was in front of him.

As a scientist, he really didn't feel this kind of tension since silence was what he was used to the most with his long periods of experimentation and concentration.

Finally, Rare Steak said in a fierce voice, "If you even think about it, I'll cut that off."

Chicken Caesar Pizza saw the look in Rare Steak's eyes and the way that he was looking at him. He couldn't help crossing his legs when he saw that Rare Steak's eyes began to move down slightly.

After this, Chicken Caesar Pizza quickly nodded to show that he understood and promised that he would never approach his daughters. Only then did Rare Steak finally turn his gaze away from him and turn back to his steak.

Seeing this, Chicken Caesar Pizza couldn't help letting out a sigh of relief.

He just couldn't understand why Rare Steak had overreacted so much to these simple words.

It wasn't as if he was saying that he was going to make a move on his daughters, he was just saying that they needed better friends…He didn't know why Rare Steak was being so sensitive.

What he didn't know was that Rare Steak had heard his daughters talking about Chicken Caesar Pizza.

The one word that had stuck out when they talked about him was…"handsome"...

He had remembered this and had kept it in the back of his mind.

Chicken Caesar Pizza was his friend and if he didn't do anything, then he would leave this matter. But if Chicken Caesar Pizza ever showed any interest in his daughters…like he thought that he had done just now, Rare Steak wouldn't hold back at all.

After all, even he had to admit that Chicken Caesar Pizza was handsome, more handsome than him when he was younger.

So it wasn't strange at all if his daughters were…

But as their father, he wouldn't let them go at all!

After this incident was over, they went back to eating their food before Rare Steak suddenly remembered something, "Ah, I have to go sign up."

Baked Potato suddenly said, "They're just taking unofficial bets, so there's no need for you to sign up. Not to mention, it doesn't seem like your wife and daughter care about the bets at all."

Rare Steak suddenly stumbled as he was standing up before looking at Baked Potato with a strange look.

He had thought that Baked Potato didn't care about any of this during this time, but it seemed like that wasn't that case. While he had lost his mind because of what his daughters had said, Baked Potato had calmly analyzed the entire situation.

Seeing that he had a shocked look on his face, Baked Potato added, "All you have to do is show up tomorrow for the competition and you'll be able to enter. I'm sure that as long as you do well, you'll get the approval of your daughter and wife."

Though he didn't really believe this because he felt that this whole contest was nonsense, he at least said this to support his friend.

Rare Steak was actually touched by these words since he never thought that Baked Potato cared this much about him.

He wiped the tears from the corners of his eyes and walked over to take Baked Potato in his arms.

When Baked Potato saw this, the first thing that he did was move his neck away from Rare Steak's mouth. Rare Steak was a vampire and vampires were famous for biting people in the neck to drain their blood.

At the same time, Baked Potato couldn't help revealing a strange look.

In his world, vampires were things of legends and as a man of science, he had never believed in legends like that. So when he met Rare Steak for the first time, shocked wasn't the right word to describe how he felt.

It was better to say that his world views had been completely overturned.

Still, he became friends with Rare Steak after knowing each other for a long time.

But even then, he couldn't help feeling awkward around Rare Steak in certain situations. That included this situation now where Rare Steak had his teeth right at Baked Potato's neck.

It was just a good thing that Rare Steak didn't notice this awkwardness at all.

It was also at this time that someone suddenly walked over to the table they were at.

Seeing the two of them hugging like this, they couldn't help saying with a smile, "Rare Steak, you can't get any affection from your wife and daughters, so now you're settling for Baked Potato?"

Both the faces of Baked Potato and Rare Steak twitched when they heard this and they quickly separated from each other.

Rare Steak gave a cough to calm down before saying, "It's nothing like that at all, Sweet and Sour Pork."

Although the way that he said it sounded very strange, Sweet and Sour Pork didn't bother teasing him anymore.

Baked Potato also cleared his throat before saying, "It's been a while since we last saw you. How has it been going with your work?"

When this was mentioned, Sweet and Sour Pork couldn't help revealing a smile.

After receiving the blueprints from Baked Potato last time, Sweet and Sour Pork's position had completely changed at work.

With such important blueprints, it was impossible for Sweet and Sour Pork to not receive a promotion. He had also made sure to keep this information away from his past superior to ensure that his past superior didn't steal it for himself because that was the kind of person that he was.

He had managed to get the information to one of the top people through his connection and everything else had been history.

His former superior had been fired for incompetence to the joy of everyone in their department. After all, their former superior was a bad person to begin with.

He was someone who stole the work of others to get himself promoted and he abused his staff. There were even cases where he had harassed female co-workers and then used his power to suppress them, sending them to the worst jobs.

In short, he was a person that everyone disliked.

So they were all happy to see him get fired.

Sweet and Sour Pork had been promoted to above the position that his former superior was in before. He was promoted so far up that he was basically in charge of the entire department now.

That was just how influential the information that he had brought back was.

With this new position, there was no need for him to personally come to this restaurant anymore, but he still did it. He missed the friends that he had made here and more importantly, he missed the sweet and sour pork that they served.

It was not something that he could get at any other store, so he was actually craving it.

After sitting down and chatting for a bit, he suddenly said, "Alright, I'll enter the competition as well."

"Eh?"

That was what everyone said in response to this.

Sweet and Sour Pork first turned to Chicken Caesar Pizza, "If you enter and win, don't you think that you'll be able to show off in front of the girls?"

Chicken Caesar Pizza's eyes lit up when he heard this.

He had already seen many cases of successful loves forming in the Between World Restaurant, so why couldn't he be the next case?

As this thought passed through his mind, he quickly gave a nod of agreement.

Then Sweet and Sour Pork turned to Baked Potato and said, "It'll be fun if we enter together. We can support Rare Steak and we can have some fun together."

Baked Potato's expression turned strange when he heard this.

That was because these words were striking at his one weakness, "friends".

As a researcher, he didn't really have that many friends since he spent a lot of his time on his experiments. So when he made his first friends here at the restaurant, he naturally cherished them more than anything.

That was why even though he had remained silent, he had also helped Rare Steak earlier.

After conflicting with his feelings for a bit, Baked Potato gave a nod in agreement.

"Then it's agreed, we'll all join the competition." As he said this, Sweet and Sour Pork put his hand in the middle.

The others all looked at it before putting their hands atop his and then they gave a cheer for Rare Steak.

As Sweet and Sour Pork watched this, he couldn't help revealing a smile.

Of course, it wasn't just for friendship that he did this…Well, friendship was his goal, but his main goal was to get closer to them so he could get more information out of them.

An event like this was perfect for this.

It definitely wasn't because he wanted to support his friends at all.