Descent of The Demon Master [EN]: Chapter 205

Kang Jin-ho looked at the people in front of him and swallowed a sigh.

Jo Gyu-min, Park Yu-min, and Joo Young-gi.

The three people closest to him were all gathered, looking at him with serious expressions.

An emergency meeting.

Since they couldn’t decide on a business, everyone had gathered to start brainstorming. Even though Kang Jin-ho hadn’t done anything wrong, he felt like he had committed a crime, and he looked at them with a somewhat awkward gaze.

“…Why don’t we just open a chicken place?” Joo Young-gi lamented, as if all of this was pointless.

“We’re going to fail anyway!”

“Why are you saying such unlucky things?” Joo Young-gi just chuckled at Park Yu-min’s scolding without making any excuses.

Those who hadn’t served in the military with Kang Jin-ho wouldn’t understand.

There was no way the employees could endure Kang Jin-ho’s personality. In Joo Young-gi’s opinion, the key issue wasn’t what kind of business they should start or how to sell it.

The key issue was whether Kang Jin-ho could actually manage a store properly.

But since the others didn’t know this, they had no choice but to agree with the situation for now.

“Let’s do something easy. We can’t do a job that requires a lot of cooking time or special skills. Every time a chef changes, the evaluations will be a rollercoaster. If we don’t want that, Kang Jin-ho would have to run the kitchen himself, but even if we sell well that way, it’s meaningless.”

Jo Gyu-min approached it very realistically.

But this kind of vague analysis also had the disadvantage of not reaching a conclusion.

And Park Yu-min approached it in a completely different way.

“But Jin-ho.”

“Yeah?”

“Isn’t there anything you want to do?”

“What I want to do?”

Park Yu-min nodded.

“No, well, if you had thought about a specific business, we wouldn’t have come this far, but instead of that, how about trying a food that you really liked or a food that you thought was ‘special to me’?”

“…A special food?”

Joo Young-gi sighed at Park Yu-min’s words.

“Hey, what kind of special food would a guy who has as much sensitivity as a cat’s tear have?” [A Korean idiom meaning someone is not very emotional or sensitive.]

“Hey, but there might be one, you never know.”

Just as Jo Gyu-min was about to come up with a new idea after seeing Kang Jin-ho close his eyes and fall into thought, Kang Jin-ho opened his eyes and spoke.

“There is.”

“Huh?”

Everyone’s attention turned to Kang Jin-ho.

“Is it a food you like, or a special food?”

“If I had to choose, it’s a food with a story, so I’d have to say it’s a special food.”

“Oh, what is it?”

Kang Jin-ho answered as if it were nothing special.

“Pizza.”

“…Huh?”

Everyone’s faces went blank.

Pizza?

“In my life, this is the first time I’ve seen pizza come up as a food of memories. It feels like hearing my mother say that she missed the taste of cola so much. Anyway, you’re a weird one, really.”

Joo Young-gi said, dumbfounded.

Park Yu-min also looked at Kang Jin-ho with a look of incomprehension. But unfortunately, Kang Jin-ho couldn’t resolve their questions.

To explain the story, he would have to tell too many things.

“Thinly spread dough with what? Cheese? What is cheese? You say it’s solidified milk? It’s sour? Are you talking about the solidified sheep’s milk that those Mongolian guys eat? You make it with cow’s milk? And what? What goes on top of it? Ham? Where did you come from?”

Kang Jin-ho smiled without realizing it.

His master, who was about to freeze to death while rummaging through a trash can in the cold winter, had saved him. When he woke up after being sick for three days and nights, his master asked him if there was anything he wanted to eat, and Kang Jin-ho had said he wanted to eat pizza without even realizing it.

His master had asked what pizza was, and usually he would have brushed it off as nothing, but… because he had been sick for so long, Kang Jin-ho, who was in a daze, had enthusiastically explained pizza to his master.

Even though he could have thought it was just nonsense from a kid who was half out of his mind, his master had baked a pizza as similar as possible to what he had described, and the taste of the pizza his master made was more than anything in the world…

“It was the worst.”

Kang Jin-ho shuddered.

It was definitely not food that a person could eat.

It was so bad that it made him want to throw up. But Kang Jin-ho ate the whole pizza.

Because he was hungry?

No.

It was the first food someone had made for Kang Jin-ho in almost twenty years. Considering how much effort it must have taken to listen to a child’s nonsense in that cold winter and make a dish that looked similar in an era without supermarkets, the taste wasn’t important.

Kang Jin-ho still remembered that the pizza he ate then was the worst-tasting pizza in his life, and at the same time, the warmest pizza in his life.

“…I think I’ve decided.”

Jo Gyu-min waved his hand wildly.

“Wait a minute. We decided not to do delivery! A pizza place without delivery! This is a shortcut to failure.”

Jo Gyu-min strongly opposed it, but Park Yu-min seemed to think differently.

“Jin-ho wants to do it. And I’ve been thinking about it, and pizza doesn’t require that much cooking skill. No matter how good an item is, if it’s a food that Jin-ho can’t make himself, it’s going to be a problem.”

“That’s true, but…”

Pizza is ultimately a food that you can make if you know how to make the dough, spread it well, and put it in the oven. How to mix the ingredients is the key, but it was definitely a very easy food for a beginner to make compared to other foods.

“Still, a pizza place that doesn’t deliver is…”

“There are many pizza places that don’t deliver in the downtown area.”

“Hmm…”

Jo Gyu-min was worried, but Kang Jin-ho’s voice was firm.

“I’ll do this.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. I’ll do this.”

Kang Jin-ho smiled.

When he heard the word ‘restaurant business,’ he was a little dumbfounded, but now that it had come to this, he felt like he wanted to do it.

If someone could feel the same taste he felt back then, that would be enjoyable too.

But Jo Gyu-min was muttering to himself with a blank expression.

“A pizza place that doesn’t deliver… This is going to be a lot of work just to open the store.”

Jo Gyu-min sighed, but Kang Jin-ho got up from his seat with a look of relief, as if he had finally gotten a load off his mind.

“Strike while the iron is hot, let’s move right away.”

“…Don’t show your energy in weird places.”

Jo Gyu-min looked like he was about to cry.

“Thank you for your hard work.”

Kang Eun-young greeted everyone one by one. It had been two years since she had debuted in the entertainment industry. In other industries, two years would still be considered a rookie, but in the entertainment industry, where hundreds of people debuted and disappeared in a year, two years of steady activity was enough to be treated as a mid-level artist.

But Kang Eun-young never lost her humble attitude.

Was it because Kang Eun-young was naturally kind?

Absolutely not.

If rumors of her being arrogant reached her brother’s ears, Kang Jin-ho would surely try to fix Kang Eun-young’s mental state with hellish nagging.

And that would be the best-case scenario.

In Kang Eun-young’s opinion, he would probably make her retire, saying that she had been ruined by her entertainment career, and send her to college.

‘Am I crazy to study again?’

Thanks to her efforts to escape her brother’s clutches and maintain her entertainment career, Kang Eun-young was popular and had a good reputation as a humble person who wasn’t affected by the ‘star disease’.

“Thank you for your hard work!”

These days, she was busy helping out at her father’s store and filming dramas. Fortunately, her agency had decided to put her singing activities on hold until the drama aired, both to cover up the dating rumors and to give her a break.

Since her single album activities were also coming to an end, she was able to make a bold choice.

While Kang Eun-young was greeting people here and there, someone came up and tugged at her sleeve.

“Huh?”

Kang Eun-young turned her head and covered her mouth in surprise when she saw the person who had grabbed her.

“Are you leaving now?”

“Ah, ah, yes! Senior! I’m done now, so I’m leaving!”

“Yes, I see. Then, would you like to go with me?”

“M-Me, with you, Senior?”

“Why? Don’t you want to go with me?”

When Choi Yeon-ha said that with a smile, Kang Eun-young was startled and waved her hands.

“Of course not! It’s an honor!”

Choi Yeon-ha smiled and reached out to gently hold Kang Eun-young’s hand.

“I wanted to talk to Se-ah anyway.”

“Ah! Really?”

“Yes. I have a lot to say, and we’re colleagues in the same drama, but I don’t think we’ve ever talked separately.”

“I’m always happy to, Senior.”

“Hmm, ‘Senior’ is too stiff. Call me ‘Unnie’ [Older sister or female friend].”

“How could I dare…”

“It’s a bit difficult to talk here… I know a good cafe, would you like to go there?”

“Yes! I’ll go! I’ll go!”

Kang Eun-young explained the situation to her road manager and got into Choi Yeon-ha’s car. The road manager allowed it on the condition that he would wait in front of the store.

‘Ugh, so inflexible.’

It was a trip to a cafe with Choi Yeon-ha, but she didn’t like the idea of having a tagalong, but if she threw a tantrum at her road manager, she might witness a red Lamborghini speeding like crazy to the cafe.

‘The color is so eye-catching.’

He used to insist on white, saying it was embarrassing, but after returning from the military, Kang Jin-ho’s shamelessness had increased, and he was even driving around with a wrap. [A car wrap is a large vinyl graphic or decal applied to a vehicle.]

Of course, Jo Gyu-min was the one who did the wrapping, but the fact that Kang Jin-ho had accepted the red wrap, which he would never have allowed in the past, was proof that Kang Jin-ho had changed a lot.

“Senior, do you drive your own car instead of your manager’s car?”

“Huh? No, no. I usually ride in a van too. But today, the filming location was near my house, so I just told my manager to take a break.”

“Wow, is that okay?”

“It’s not usually okay.”

Choi Yeon-ha smiled.

That smile seemed to mean, ‘It’s not usually okay, but someone of my level can easily do this.’ Kang Eun-young looked at Choi Yeon-ha with admiration.

Even as a woman, Choi Yeon-ha was really pretty. It was so natural that she had been called the ‘Nation’s Goddess’ at one point.

If she hadn’t reduced her broadcasting activities and carefully selected her projects, she would still be called that.

‘She’s so cool.’

It was cool how she handled her schedule alone, and it was also one of the things she wanted to learn from her, how she managed herself perfectly without any scandals in this harsh entertainment industry.

“We’re here.”

Choi Yeon-ha parked the car in front of the cafe, opened the door, and got out of the car. Kang Eun-young also quickly got out of the car and followed Choi Yeon-ha into the cafe.

“This place is so pretty.”

“The atmosphere is nice, right? It’s a place I don’t tell other people about. I come here sometimes to change the atmosphere when it’s quiet.”

“Is it okay for you to come here with me?”

Choi Yeon-ha covered her mouth and laughed, then lightly patted Kang Eun-young’s back.

“Let’s go in.”

“Yes.”

The two entered the cafe.