Once again, he was looking at that familiar ceiling.
Ke Ming opened his eyes.
The moment the warehouse scene resurfaced in his mind, he sprang out of bed in one clean motion.
My legs… are they still there?
He reached down and touched the bandages wrapped around his legs—and then he just stared, dazed, before a stupid laugh bubbled out of him.
"Thank god—hahahaha…"
"Hahahahaha."
A bright, hearty laugh came from outside the room.
Bang.
The door was shoved open with brute force. The Head Chef—still in his chef's uniform—strode in.
"Awake?"
He pulled a worn wooden box from inside his coat and casually tossed it onto Ke Ming's bed.
"Take your knives. Go process the ingredients."
The Head Chef patted Ke Ming on the head, as if trying to look friendlier—except the strength behind it was so ridiculous it almost drove Ke Ming's skull down into his spine.
Ke Ming nodded obediently and picked up the box.
It was solid wood. The once-smooth edges were dulled and scuffed with age, and the dents from being dropped—plus long scratch marks—looked jarringly out of place.
He slid the lid open.
Inside, a set of gleaming blades lay neatly arranged in the cramped space:
A cleaver for chopping, a slicer, a bone cleaver, a chef's knife…
It was hard to imagine how so many mismatched kitchen tools could be packed into such a small box.
Ke Ming rubbed his eyes—every lingering doubt blasted away by the Head Chef's booming voice.
"BRAT! If you're not down here in two seconds, tomorrow's main course is you!"
Ke Ming's heart lurched. Panicking on reflex, he clutched the wooden box and scurried upstairs in a frantic shuffle toward the second floor.
…
"Idiot! You cut crosswise there and you'll sever every vessel!"
Ke Ming ducked his head, narrowly avoiding the butcher's cleaver the Head Chef had flung at him. He nodded frantically, then—trembling—picked the blade up off the floor with both hands and offered it back as if presenting an offering.
That was how the days passed.
Mornings: he helped the Head Chef "process ingredients."
After closing: the Head Chef taught him, hand over hand, step by step.
Whether it was practice making perfect—or whether Ke Ming genuinely had talent—he learned fast.
If it keeps going like this… it's not so bad, is it?
He'd grown used to dealing with human lives. In the end, it was "just that." Once your moral line was broken, the sensation of cutting open a human throat even started to feel—disturbingly—addictive.
The Head Chef's got a sharp mouth but a soft heart. Yeah, he's got a lot of blood on his hands… but in a hellhole like this, if you want to live, maybe you don't have a choice.
Ke Ming conveniently forgot about the three fingers he'd lost, and felt nothing but gratefulness.
Without him, I'd probably be dead already—rotting in some corner.
Either swept away by the Sweepers, or ripped apart and eaten alive by some starving drifter… Compared to that, this life is practically a dream.
Alley 23 had always been like this: eat or be eaten. No one here had clean hands, and no one here had an empty stomach.
"Gourmet Alley" really is an accurate name.
In short—after a brutal, ugly "adjustment period," Ke Ming finally blended into Alley 23.
He became a proud cook.
…
"Brat, aim for the Achilles tendon. Where'd you get the idea that bashing the back of someone's head knocks them out?"
The Head Chef leaned against the wall, pointing and lecturing as if this were a normal apprenticeship.
"With your height, you think you can even reach his head?"
"Shut your damn mouth, cook. You think you can touch someone from the Seven Association?"
The one fighting Ke Ming was a black-haired man drenched in blood—both hands missing.
He'd practically been whittled down into a human stump, but he was still an adult. Even half-ruined, he fought Ke Ming to a standstill—and still had spare breath to spit back at the Head Chef.
"Bothering people in the middle of the night…"
The Head Chef glanced at his pocket watch, then yanked the cleaver that was embedded in the floor free.
He drove off with his back foot, twisted his torso, and—like a textbook shot-put throw—hurled a butcher's cleaver nearly half the size of Ke Ming.
It punched straight into the man's chest.
The impact launched him backward, and he slammed into the wall—pinned there as if nailed in place.
His feet dangled. His body was stuck deep in the masonry. Blood froth bubbled from his mouth as he cursed, words dissolving into wet gurgles.
The Head Chef walked up, gripped the handle—
and slowly, inch by inch,
pulled the cleaver out of his body.
When the blade finally came free, the man dropped to the ground like a sack of meat, collapsing into a twitching heap.
"The Seven Association's real departments? Yeah. Those guys, I don't dare touch."
He kicked the man curled on the ground, then planted his boot on the man's head.
"But trash like you? You don't get to bark at me."
Pop.
Pale brain matter mixed with blood sprayed out, the mess briefly outlined by the dim night.
"Home," the Head Chef said. "It's getting late."
Ke Ming nodded silently and, with practiced ease, rifled through the corpse's clothing.
An ID.
A wad of cash.
He followed at the Head Chef's heels, tiptoeing close behind.
"Head… Chef… if it's the Seven Association, aren't you worried they'll come looking?"
The Head Chef snorted, paused, and took the ID from Ke Ming's hand.
"Seven Association—Direct Office. William Liver… tch."
He tossed the ID away. It traced a lazy arc through the air and landed in the middle of the blood pool.
A gust of wind flipped it open.
In the smear of red, a few tiny words were barely visible—broken, blurred, impossible to fully make out:
"Thi… and the Astrology… are sibling offi…"
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