The sight of the pulsing, luminous rice-ovum, the fact that I was alive, that the STAUST said 47%—a real number, progress!—it hit me like a lightning bolt of pure, undiluted triumph.
"I DID IT! HAHAHA! I DID IT!"
I scrambled to my feet, my body singing with a strange, jittery energy. My hands trembled, but not from fear. From elation. Without thinking, I turned toward the nearest solid thing—the vast, obsidian wall of Mr. Fin's flank—and threw my arms out in a hug.
My arms didn't stop at his scales.
They plunged through the bubble's membrane.
The sensation was instant and deeply wrong. It wasn't like breaking a surface; it was like sinking my arms into a vat of lukewarm, sentient gelatin. The membrane stretched around my elbows, resisting with a rubbery tension before yielding with a sickly schlorp.
Mr. Fin's entire body went rigid. His obsidian scales, smooth a moment before, bristled. Each individual scale split open along an invisible seam, and from within, a tiny, perfect eye blinked open. Hundreds of them, each with a star-shaped pupil, all widening in unified, cosmic indignation.
His mass didn't just move; it warped. Space itself seemed to bend around my embrace, contorting him in a way that made my own bones groan in sympathy, a deep, marrow-deep ache as if the pressure of the entire abyss were suddenly squeezing just me.
"UNHAND ME, YOU SALT-SLOBBERED—" His roar was cut short, not by his own will, but by the gelatinous blob.
The blob, still wrapped around my ankle, gave a silent, full-body shriek of alarm. A pseudopod whipped up faster than sight and slapped something onto my forehead with a wet splat.
It wasn't painful, just damp. The sensation faded, leaving behind a glowing, icy chill on my skin. I didn't need a mirror to know what it said. I could feel the words etched in cold light: [BUBBLE INTEGRITY WARNING: 12%].
At the same moment, the floating rice-ovum reacted. It emitted a sound that defied physics—a high, piercing, continuous scream, like a teakettle being boiled inside a black hole. Its labyrinthine internal patterns blazed, projecting holographic text into the swirling, honey-scented steam around it:
[STEP 1: CELEBRATION WITHOUT CONTACT]
The words flickered weakly, distorted by static, before dissolving into nothing.
The message was clear. I had broken a rule. A big one.
I dropped my arms as if scalded. The membrane snapped back into place with a rubbery thwip, sealing itself. Mr. Fin's scales shuddered, the hundreds of starry eyes snapping shut in sequence with a sound like Velcro being torn apart in slow motion underwater.
The elation drained from me, leaving a cold, hollow shame. I took a step back, my bare feet sinking into the sand. I couldn't look at him. My gaze dropped to my feet. I turned my back on the shark, on the grain, on everything. I focused on the seabed, on the individual, glowing grains of sand. I started counting them silently, my vision blurring.
"Are you…" My voice was a small, broken thing. "Are you angry with me?"
For three full seconds, the only sound was the low, wet gurgle of the abyss and the hum of the rice-ovum.
Then, Mr. Fin's gills stuttered. Flit-flit-flit-flit.
He exhaled. Not a roar, but a long, pressurized plume of brine. The mist didn't dissipate. It hung in the thick air, condensing, shaping itself. It formed a school of tiny, perfect, fish-shaped glyphs that swam in a slow circle before lining up to spell a single, shimmering sentence:
[APOLOGY ACCEPTED: BARELY]
His scales rippled one final time, settling back into their normal, seamless obsidian. The crisis was over. The bubble's membrane glowed a bit more steadily. The integrity warning on my forehead faded to a faint, cool tingle.
The gelatinous blob, still attached to my ankle, gave a soft pulse. It extruded a single, thin pseudopod that reached up and patted my shoulder clumsily. It left behind a sticky, translucent residue that smelled, inexplicably, of the salty low tide and the faint, plasticky scent of childhood bandaids. A weird, gross comfort.
The hologram from the rice grain flickered back to life, the letters reassembling from steam:
[STEP 2: AGGREGATE STEAMED GRIEVANCES]
It dissolved again into the mist. The rice-ovum itself had changed. The smooth surface was now dotted with tiny, fin-like protrusions. They were small and useless-looking, and they flapped weakly in perfect time with my own shuddering, post-cry breaths.
I wiped my nose with the back of my hand, staring at the new instruction. My brain, fried and literal, tried to parse it.
"What is a… steamed grivance?" I asked, peering at the fins. "Is that a fish? A steamed fish grievance?"
Mr. Fin's gills emitted a sound that was the acoustic equivalent of a facepalm—a damp, discordant SPLONK like a harpsichord being dropped into a bathtub.
The gelatinous blob spasmed. Its comforting pseudopod retracted and then lashed out, not in anger, but in frantic, corrective panic. It shot toward my face and clamped over my mouth.
The texture was appalling: cold, rubbery, and distinctly like overcooked squid. It sealed my lips shut.
The STAUST text above the rice flickered wildly:
[LINGUISTIC CORRECTION IN PROGRESS]
[DO NOT INGEST SEAFOOD-BASED PUNS]
Mr. Fin's dorsal fin trembled with the effort of containing what looked like a universe-sized sigh.
The blob wasn't done. The pseudopod over my mouth began to mold itself. It pressed and shaped my lips from the outside, forcing them into a new configuration. It was a deeply violating sensation, like having my face gently stretched over a sushi mat. It held the shape for a moment, then released.
The hologram flickered, reassembling with a new, addendum step:
[STEP 2.5: ACKNOWLEDGE CULINARY PUNS ARE ABYSSAL WAR CRIMES]
The rice-ovum's tiny fins, which had gone still, now bristled outward, becoming sharp, barbed little points. They vibrated with clear offense at my mispronunciation.
I rubbed my sore lips. Right. No puns. Got it. Grievances. Not grivances. I thought about the word. Grievances. Complaints. Problems.
My mind, desperate for a framework, reached for the only cooking advice I'd ever absorbed passively. It came from the flickering screen of the orphanage's common room TV, from a smiling host in a too-white kitchen.
"On TV," I said slowly, thinking it through. "They said… love is what food needs."
It sounded stupid the moment I said it out loud in a bubble at the bottom of existence. But it was the only recipe I had. I had no technique, no tools, no knowledge. All I had was a desperate, hungry feeling.
So I closed my eyes. I tried to shut out the shark, the blob, the judging audience. I thought about rice. Real rice. Not this glowing, finned ovum. I thought about the idea of rice.
I tried to feel love. Not a big, abstract love. A specific, hungry love.
I sent the feeling toward the pulsing grain.
Love for the delicious, glutinous stickiness of it.
Love for the way it steamed together, each grain plump and separate yet part of a whole.
Love for its clean, simple taste, a blank canvas.
Love for the memory of sunshine on a field, translated into grainy warmth on my tongue.
The effect was instantaneous and catastrophic.
The rice-ovum convulsed. Its barbed fins snapped fully erect, becoming sharp, defensive spikes. From its very core, a geyser of steam erupted—but this steam was thick with bioluminescent spores. They filled the air, a glowing fog, and I inhaled a gasp of them.
The taste was overpowering. Not honey or disinfectant. It was the electric, ozone-and-earth aftertaste of a wheat field moments after being struck by lightning. Charred, alive, and terrifying.
Mr. Fin's gills snapped shut with a wet, final CLICK. He took a full step back.
The gelatinous blob's pseudopod, still near me, spasmed wildly. Its surface fractured, not into pieces, but into a kaleidoscope of shifting, panicked patterns that mirrored the frantic, skittering rhythm of my own heartbeat.
The STAUST text didn't update. It shattered, the letters exploding apart before being sucked back together into a frantic, blinking warning:
[EMOTIONAL CONTAMINATION DETECTED]
[AFFECTION PERMEABILITY: 89%]
As the warning blazed, the labyrinthine patterns inside the rice-ovum began to bleed. A viscous, honey-colored syrup seeped from the etchings, coating the sphere. And the smell… the smell shifted one final time. It lost the edge of char and ozone, softening into something warm, gentle, and utterly suspicious. It smelled, distrustfully, like genuine care.
The shards of the whalebone mortar, still drifting nearby, began to hum. The crimson glow from their spiral carvings faded, replaced by a warm, soft, glowing gold. A wholesome, gentle light.
It was the wrongest thing I'd seen yet.
From beyond the bubble came a reaction. A unified, wet, sibilant HISSSSSSS of outrage. The shadowy appendages pressed against the membrane didn't press closer in hunger; they recoiled, peeling away as if the golden light were an acid. The audience was offended. Deeply, cosmically offended by the scent of sincerity.
I saw Mr. Fin's head tilt. Two spiraling, void-like openings on the front of his snout—nostrils?—flared. He inhaled the steam, the scent of bleeding-honey-care.
"It is not for you," I said quickly, misunderstanding his sniff. "But for them. You said the others are hungry?"
Mr. Fin's jaws parted slightly, revealing a glint of needle-teeth in a expression caught between a smirk and a threat-display. "Hungry?" he hissed, his voice low and dangerous. "They're starving."
His tailfin flicked, a gesture toward the membrane. The entities there had stopped recoiling. Now they were pressing close again, but differently. Their shadows were agitated, frantic. Oily smears where they touched the membrane evaporated into a new, desperate scent: burnt sugar and bottomless want.
The STAUST text fractured again:
[AUDIENCE SATIETY: CRITICAL]
The rice-ovum's barbed fins stiffened to their utmost, vibrating now at a high, painful frequency that made the fillings in my teeth (if I'd had any) ache. The honey-syrup bleeding from its patterns began to harden instantly, forming a web of amber-like veins across its surface, trapping the golden light within.
Panic returned, cold and clean. They weren't just hungry. They were at the breaking point. And my weird, love-tainted rice was confusing them, making it worse.
I had one tool. I didn't know how to use it, but it was all I had.
I bunched my hands into fists, pressing them together. My nose wrinkled with effort. I focused on the grain, on the warm, trapped light inside its amber cage.
"LOVE!" I shouted, the word tearing from my throat. "MORE LOVE! MORE!"
I didn't just think it. I pouted it. I pushed every sentimental, hungry, orphan-girl feeling I had toward it. I visualized it: the way a bowl of plain rice could fill the cold, hollow pit in your stomach with a simple, steadfast warmth. How it was the perfect companion, enriching the salty soy sauce, balancing the sugary teriyaki, soaking up the pungent vinegar of pickled fish. It was the quiet hero. The best friend of every other flavor.
The reaction was apocalyptic.
The gelatinous blob seized. It spasmed so violently it extruded six new pseudopods in a panic. They whipped out and wrapped around my wrists, my ankles, my knees, like living, constricting tourniquets, holding me upright as if I were a lightning rod.
The rice-ovum screamed.
The sound was a sharp, catastrophic SNAP-CRACKLE-POP—a thousand pairs of chopsticks breaking in perfect, horrible unison.
The web of amber veins ruptured. Honeyed syrup didn't ooze; it sprayed in a glittering arc across the bubble. Mid-air, each droplet crystallized, hardening into floating, complex kanji characters that hung glowing in the space. I couldn't read them, but their shape was unmistakable: 粘質 — Glutinous Heresy.
Mr. Fin's pectoral fins flew up and clamped over his gills, a gesture of pure, cosmic horror.
The blob's surface, still wrapped around me, fractured. But it didn't break. It became a living mosaic. Each fragment reflected not the abyss, but a memory. My memories. My childhood lunchbox: steamed rice pressed into clumsy bunny shapes. The dark, savory seep of soy sauce into the grain's crevices. A single, stolen umeboshi pickling the corner of the rice red. Each fragment played its brief, poignant loop, a silent film of mundane, profound nostalgia.
The STAUST text didn't flicker. It imploded, sucked into a single, blazing point before exploding outward into a final, definitive command:
[FINISHING MOVE: NOSTALGIA OVERLOAD]
The rice-ovum's barbed fins didn't just bristle. They detached. They launched from its surface and shot into orbit around my head, spinning fast, then slow. Each fin hummed a different, clear, electronic note. Together, they formed a discordant, haunting chord: the sound of a dozen different microwave ovens chiming that a meal was done, forever.
The sensory overload was total. The smells of syrup and lightning and soy sauce. The taste of charred wheat. The sounds of breaking wood and microwave chords. The sight of my own past playing on a jellyfish's skin.
My knees gave out. The fight, the fear, the desperate, forced love—it all drained away, leaving a profound, hollow exhaustion.
I slumped backward.
The gelatinous blob was ready. Its pseudopods shifted, and its main body oozed beneath me, molding itself into a makeshift, yielding cushion. It smelled, comfortingly, of low-tide and childhood bandaids.
I lay there, spent. Above me, the orbiting barbed fins slowed their rotation. Their discordant hums settled into a strange, quiet harmony—a full, sad chromatic scale of completion chimes.
Mr. Fin's dorsal fin twitched once, silently.
The rice-ovum was no longer an ovum. It had settled. It was a perfect, simple sphere again, about the size of a peach. It pulsed with a gentle, rhythmic light, like the bell of a deep-sea jellyfish. Its surface was smooth, flawless.
Above it, the last of the STAUST text flickered weakly, burning out like a dying ember:
[ASSIMILATION COMPLETE]
[STEAMED RICE (ABYSSAL GRADE: F)]
The words dissolved. The steam rising from the rice—now just normal, if glowing, steam—curled upward in lazy, peaceful spirals.
With a series of soft, precise clicks, like knuckles cracking in reverse, the shards of the whalebone mortar reassembled in mid-air. They slotted together perfectly, forming a simple, humble bowl.
The peach-sized sphere of rice descended gently, landing in the center of the bowl with a soft plop.
It was a single, perfect portion of steamed rice. It glowed with a faint, internal gold, edges shimmering. It looked… delicious. Except for one flaw.
At its very center, marring the perfect surface, was a single, star-shaped scorch mark. A tiny, blackened patch where the love, it seemed, had burned a little too bright, a little too desperate.
I stared at it from my blob-cushion, too tired to move.
It was done.
I had cooked.
[STATUS]
I chide staust with a hem.
[STAUST]
[ABYSSAL COOKING SYSTEM]
[USER DATA]
[NAME: CHIARI]
[LIFEFORM: F]
[OWNER: C'thullus the Ever-Hungering (LVL. 456 Cosmic Shark)]
[Assimil..] "NO?"
bzztt [Assimililated: End...] "Wrong!" [Pet: - ] I nod.
[Pet: Endless faceted protozean essence of satiation]
[LVL: 1]
[Class: Orphan]
[Exp 0/100]
"thank you, you are a good phone staust" "It is not a phone human"
"Yes I know, it is a smart phone."
[Exp + 10]
[Exp 10/100]
[Exp + 10]
[Exp + 30]
[Exp + 40]
[Exp 100/100]
[Class selection]
[Option 1: Brat Cook]
[Option 2: Rude Cuisine]
I glimmer at the staust box. I caught you. We both know. I hold my breath and point my finger at it.
The box flickers.
[Option 1: Rookie Cook (Common)]
[Option 2: Emotional Artisan(Rare)]
[Option 3: Abyssal Chef(Epic)]
Cosmic shark says to pick three. He can't belief it his F rank gacha got an epic class.
"I Pick this, I like it." [Option 2: Emotional Artisan(Rare)]
"No why? That is just rare. Epic look it looks much better, the color is prettier."
"I want it. Artisan, I wanted to be an Artist."
"You can make... Abysall, Epic do you know how many bubble points an epic rank chef costs.... "
*I pretend to not hear mr fin and focus on Staust.* "I take artist."
The box flickers again. Buzzing harder. More then flicker and a glow.
[Option 1: Rookie Cook (Common)]
[Option 2: Emotional Artist(Unique)]
[Option 3: Abyssal Chef(Epic)]
[Class: Orphan(Common) -> Emotional Artist(Unique)]
[User NightSnack (Snail of Graviton Lvl 12400) one thousand eyes open wide and offers 500,000 Bubblepoints if C'thullus the Ever-Hungering is sending over the species with the unique class]
[User C'thullus the Ever-Hungering (LVL. 456 Cosmic Shark) blocks User NightSnack]
[User User NightSnack uses 10,000 Bubblepoints to gaing temporary administration rights]
[User NightSnack (Snail of Graviton Lvl 12400 / tmp. Administration) 1,500,000 Bubblepoints if C'thullus the Ever-Hungering is sending over the species with the unique class]
[User C'thullus the Ever-Hungering (LVL. 456 Cosmic Shark) mutes his own chat]
[User Chiari the Ever-Rice (Lvl. 2 Emotional Artist) says hello to the guests and is happy that they liked the rice so much.]