Jack entered the Tanaka restaurant, greeting his friend Taro and ordering his “rainy usual”. The eldest son went into the back and proceeded with his order. As Jack sat down at his usual seat at the bar, he thought back on his life for the past three months. His first introspection was on the bonding he spent with Taro, eating new food that he was making every now and then. Alongside that, the new “events” that Taro decided to implement into the restaurant.
The first of these events was the “endless meat ramen bowl” that he brought up to Taro those three months ago. It was something he brought up as a challenge for any customers who thought they could get an easy and cheap meal for its value. An enormous bowl of noodles and various meats that seemed to never end. If you managed to completely eat it in one sitting, you just have to pay 500 zeni, well below its production value. However, if you fail to eat it all in a single sitting, then it costs a whopping 2500 zeni, which was almost three times its material value.
Jack brought such an idea up to Taro back then because he thought that he could eat so much in a single sitting, but he needed a way to make it possible without upsetting the patriarch of the change. At least, not upset him too much. When they brought it to Masako, the father, they could barely get out how much it would cost if the person failed. Masako was much more accepting once he heard the price. 2500 Zeni per person who failed the challenge? He didn’t even have to talk about how the meat could be livers and low grade meat to understand how hard it would be to finish it and get an insane profit.
After the implementation of this challenge, Taro and Jack came up with an idea to sell it to the whole town. After Taro went to put up posters about a new bowl and the challenge it would bring to the customer, he also told everyone he could about how a customer was going to attempt it on the weekend. That customer was Jack, himself, who wanted to advertise and wow people of the small town with something new and exciting.
Jack wasn’t wrong in the fact that the people were excited, he just didn’t anticipate how excited they would be. When he went to the restaurant on the day of the challenge, he found almost 100 people waiting just outside the place. Taro had to change the layout of the restaurant’s tables and chairs just so as many people as possible could watch Jack consume as much meat as possible. Jack himself was surprised just how many came, but realized that with no internet, most people had to either watch tv or actually go somewhere to find entertainment.
That day, in front of almost 100 seated people, Jack ate the “Bowl of Endless Meats”. As far as Jack was concerned, endless was right. The entire bowl was almost as big as his chest, and he got full in the first five minutes of eating. He hadn’t even gotten halfway through! Yet, with people watching on, Jack realized that ending it there wouldn’t drive people to come and try the challenge as well if he stopped in the first five minutes.
Jack firmed his resolve and continued eating. To the people watching, it was clear that Jack was way past his limit for food. His face was red with effort and strain. His belly bulged out, giving Jack a dad bod. His hands shook as he kept taking bite after bite. Yet, to Jack, he ignored the pain his body was screaming at him from being stuffed, and continued shoving it all down.
Unfortunately for Jack, after eating a little over half of the bowl, he bent over and threw up into a trash can sitting by his side. This made him the loser of the challenge and he had to pay a full 2500 Zeni, which was almost half of his savings at the time.
His showing got people so excited that the restaurant became the most popular one in town. Every time Jack went there before his work, he saw that the place was half-full. Families, workers, and out-of-towners now visited the place just for the food. Of course, many of them thought they could do the challenge, too. The Tanaka family got so many requests for it that they limited it to rainy days only.
Nowadays, Jack saw plenty of people who attempted the challenge on said rainy days, himself amongst them. The challenge was so successful, that other local restaurants were trying some variation of the same thing. Jack had even heard of some of it happening in neighboring towns!
The “Bowl of Endless Meats” wasn’t the only challenge that the Tanaka family implemented. On Sundays, you can ask for a “Hellfire Special” and can eat a ramen bowl of your choice with their new “Hellfire Seasoning”. The bowl, itself, didn’t change in cost. However, if you managed to eat it all without any other aid like water or ice cream, you would get the food for free, and your picture would be put up on the “Winners!!!” postboard they set up.
Jack looked at said postboard, and saw only three people up on it. The three people only completed the Hellfire Special, and their orders were written underneath their photo. Another section of the post board with “Bowl of Endless Meats” was still empty. Jack wasn’t concerned about that and just looked at one familiar face under the Hellfire Special section.
Right there, a picture smack dab in the middle of two other pictures of winners (both of whom looked to be in their thirties and working in construction), was Irah Munchkins. Under his photo was a note that showed his order of “large beef and chicken ramen - Age 739: Irah Munchkins”.
Jack looked at the photo of Irah, and felt mixed feelings about him. Sure, Irah had used his snake against him and messed with him with all the pranks (even though Jack couldn’t prove it was Irah), but the kid showed that he was more than a little annoying teenager. Irah helped Jack on quite a few occasions.
The first one was something that happened a month after living at the family’s residence. Jack had gone to get some of the money that he hid from the children in the top and back of his closet’s shelf. This was mostly because the children were very short and couldn’t reach it without help. However, when he got his money, he noticed that 1000 Zeni was missing from it.
He got very mad at that, so mad that he stormed his way to who he thought the true culprit was, Irah. He could forgive the pranks that Irah had put upon him, but stealing his hard earned money!? That was unforgivable.
He looked in Irah’s and Tate’s room they shared together, but only found Tate. Tate asked Jack why he was so mad, and Jack answered with an angry tone of, “Someone stole money from me. You wouldn’t happen to know who did that, do you?” Tate got wide-eyed and had the look of a child getting caught doing something wrong.
Jack narrowed his eyes at this change in behavior. “Was it you who did it?” He asked the small child. Tate shook his head as fast as possible. “Are you lying? You know what happens to people who lie, right?” “W-What happens?” Tate stuttered. “They get their mouths washed out with soap. So, I’ll ask you one more time. Do you know who took my money?”
Tate gulped, stuttered, and then told Jack. “I-I heard Irah say that he wanted a new JogMan. M-Maybe he took it for that?” To Jack, he didn’t think about how a JogMan, this world’s equivalent to the WalkMan tape player from his world, costs waaay more than the 1000 Zeni that was taken from him. It costs somewhere around 20,000 Zeni on its own. He didn’t think about that, he just thought to himself, ‘I found the culprit!’
He stormed his way through the house, trying to find Irah, but bumped into Disi instead.
She stopped him and asked what was going on with how angry he looked. Jack told her about how someone stole his money and he thought it was Irah. Desi also got upset by this, because she thought she had instilled righteous morals and values into her children, or at least taught them better than to be a thief.
Irah was out late by this point. He came back around 6:00 PM, after school and before his appointed curfew kicked in. However, he didn’t expect that he would find Jack and his parents waiting for him. When they saw him, they also saw a brand new JogMan in his hand.
They had Irah sit down, who was confused and nervous at the angry/disappointed faces that they were making. Well, the faces his parents were making, and the fact that Jack was with them.
That night was one of accusations, arguments, and angry words thrown around. However, by the end of it all, the situation became clear.
Irah didn’t steal any money from Jack.
He kept a journal handy that he wrote all of his earnings and expenses in. Since he was still 14 (who looked 12), he couldn’t get a job to buy the things he wanted. He could only rely on his allowance and any ‘businesses’ he conducted in his own life. Mostly, it was selling candy at school for a huge markup and doing yardwork for neighbors.
Jack was flabbergasted that Irah didn’t take anything from him, and the family soon turned it around on Jack. The parents were mad that Jack would accuse their son of such a thing, and Irah was mad at being accused in the first place. Also for being thought of as a delinquent.
When the family accused Jack of mismanaging money, Jack pulled out his own accounting. He wrote down the numbers for all of his earnings and purchases. It wasn’t much, but that 1000 Zeni meant just a little under 7 hours of work. With his part time shifts of 4 hours each day, that meant he lost almost 2 days of money!
His accounting also showed just how much he managed his own money. He took out the wad of Zeni he’s been saving up and showed them that he did, indeed, lose 1000 Zeni overnight.
This left the four stunned, as it seemed that there was a thief in the Munchkins household, but no one knew who.
Despite that, Irah was very irritated to be falsely accused, and Jack immediately apologised for it. This wasn’t good enough for Irah, though, and he demanded that Jack do his chores for the rest of the week. Jack was surprised by the counteroffer, but couldn’t reply when Larry and Disi jumped in with their approval.
As such, Jack spent the next week doing said chores after work, forgoing an entire week of training. Irah spent that week nearby, lounging around with his friends and watched Jack doing the work.
The most surprising thing, however, was after the week of chores Jack went through. Irah walked up to Jack, and gave him 1000 Zeni. Irah didn’t like the fact that Jack was stolen from, and decided to right this wrong by giving the missing money to Jack.
“Don’t mistake this for me admitting that I stole it.” Irah told Jack with his “tough teenager” voice. “I just think that you shouldn’t’ve been stolen from, that’s all. I need to protect my family’s reputation.” Irah then walked off weirdly, something Jack vaguely recognizes as something from an anime Irah was watching on TV.
At that point, Jack didn’t know how to feel about the chunni short teen. Perhaps everything he thought he knew about Irah was wrong. Maybe he was just a good kid in the wrong crowd. Maybe he was just a rebel with a heart of gold.
He would ruminate on this until the next morning, where he fell on his butt trying to sit at the kitchen dining table. As he looked up from the floor, he saw Irah had taken the chair right when Jack went to sit down. His smirk throughout his mother’s lecture told Jack it was worth it. He could also see the new doll that Merci got from 3 days ago. He didn’t let it linger in his mind, though.
Those next two months showed him that Irah wanted to be a rebel with a tarnished, silver soul. He would still mess with others around him, but he couldn’t stand when injustice happened. Heck, at one point, Irah had actually tried to beat up some other teenagers who were bullying a “special needs” kid. He tried, but just got beaten up alongside the kid.
Jack didn’t get to know either Disi, Tate or Merci very well for the last three months, but they seemed to be chugging along.
Larry, on the other hand, was someone he did spend some time with. Some nights, he would spend time playing poker or another card game with Larry and the neighborhood fathers/husbands. Other days, he would help out Larry with his car, and Larry would teach him how a car usually worked.
Other than that, Larry was just a good and goofy husband and father to his family.
Jack, still staring at the photo of Irah, noticed the ‘Age’ word that should’ve been ‘Year’. His mind went back to how he learned about some things this world had that his world didn’t have.
His studying at the local library had helped him quite a bit in what happened to the world. He usually spent about once a week at the library to learn as much as he could. The Age mechanic of this world tripped him up at first, as he didn’t know if it was like Era from the Elder Scrolls or not. Apparently, it was implemented about 200 years after the founding of a Kingdom that would one day be known as the World Government, whose current King was a born dog man.
This meant that the Age calendar went into effect around Age 200. Which kind of made sense to Jack as his world’s Gregorian Calendar went into effect somewhere around the 15th or 16th century. He knew all of this because he decided to have one day off a week to just study at the local library. It helped him quite a lot to not sound like an idiot in front of people.
The world even had some cool myths like this so called Demon King (which he could find the name of), some mythical martial artist named Mutaito and his two disciples who went on to become the Turtle Sage and the Crane Sage. There were also mentions of some mystical witch who would give people predictions in exchange for winning against her strongest fighters.
Jack was then snapped out of his reminiscing when Taro came back with his bowl. The “Bowl of Endless Meats”, something Jack has only tried 3 other times after his debut with it. Still threw up before finishing them. “You know,” Taro began, his brows furrowed in concern, “You don’t have to eat all of this at once. You can just take it to go and eat it over time. I don’t think anyone will think less of you for doing it.”
Jack shook his head with a friendly smile. “No, I gotta do it. I can’t be known as the guy who came up with this idea and failed to be the first on the wall.” He took up his chopsticks, and began to eat.
Taro shook his head, and told Jack, “Alright, and thanks for helping me out yesterday. I didn’t know you were so strong!” Jack thought back to yesterday, when he came in to find that the family was out back, trying to move an entire pallet of frozen meats into their freezer. They had to order a lot more low demand meats for the Challenges.
However, the pallet jack they had broke, so they scrambled to get all of the meats from the small truck outside into their freezer as fast as possible. The father and sons were having trouble getting it all in a timely manner, and had only managed to get one and a half of the two pallets they ordered inside. Each box containing frozen meat weighed somewhere around 70 to 90 pounds each.
Jack, knowing the customers waiting back inside were getting impatient, decided to help out by just grabbing the remaining boxes and lifting them all over to the freezer at once. Jack’s body alone wasn’t enough to lift the remaining 500 or so pounds of frozen meat on his own, so he decided to use his Chakra Enhancement technique to lift them all.
He thought he broke his back with how many snaps, crackles, and pops his joints gave. It was worth it, though, to see the family’s astonishment of such a monumental feat. The father’s face was the best, though. His eyes, which were always squinted like Brock from Pokemon, seemed to almost pop out of his head.
Unfortunately, Jack decided to not train later on yesterday, because his body felt absolutely awful after doing that. So he just decided to laze around with the Munchkins family last night.
Jack, having already bitten a large portion of meat, looked at Taro with puffed up checks. He gave as good a smile as he could, gave a thumbs up, and nodded his head with an “mhm!”
Taro chuckled, “Sorry, I’ll leave you to your meal. Just be sure to go to the doctor if you haven’t already done so, okay? Your body sounded like it broke every bone doing what you did.” He then looked at the bowl Jack was eating out of, and shook his head. “Maybe also for the constipation you’re gonna have.”
Jack, already focusing on beating the challenge in front of him, just nodded his head, and filed the thought away.
He would then puke after eating two thirds of the bowl, losing the challenge and 2500 Zeni.
Line Break Here
Jack Williams stood in front of a secretary, in a waiting room with only him in it. He was writing down all of his medical history on a form for his impromptu visit. He decided to take Taro’s advice to visit a doctor, especially since his body was still protesting even a full day after his little stunt with the pallet.
His run and stretches this morning just gave pain, rather than a relaxing burn like it did for the past 2 weeks. That was enough for Jack to actually go to the doctor.
After writing down all of the information, Jack handed it back to the pretty secretary. She took a look at the form and told Jack, “Head to the room down the hall saying ‘General Diagnostic’. I’ll be with you in a second.”
Jack blinked. “Uh, you are?” The secretary(?) looked up at him, her face starting to twist into something bad. “Yeah, why? Who do you think was the doctor?” Jack stuttered his response, “U-Uh, an old man or something…” The lady’s face started to turn red, her face, which he thought twisted into annoyance, actually became exhausted indignation.
“Oh, so you’re like the rest of the town, huh? You think a woman can’t be a doctor? That they can only be nurses and secretaries? Well, listen here, buster-” Jack interrupted her with “N-No! I don’t think women are incapable! I-It’s just that, aren’t doctors supposed to be, uh, older?”
The woman stared at Jack, her face still red, but no longer showing indignation or anger. It was carefully blank. She looked down with her hand covering her face. “Just… Just head to the General Diagnostics room, please.” He did as told to get out of that awkward situation, but not before he took a look at her name tag.
When he went into the room, he saw it was like any low budget clinic room. A table with a cushion and paper sheet on top. Some posters on the wall showing some common diseases and injuries as well as how to deal with them. And a section of the room filled with cabinets, a sink, and a table clearly meant for the doctor. He sat in a free chair and waited for the doctor to come.
However, as he waited, he decided to think about why he thought the woman couldn’t be a doctor. First of all, she looked younger than him. Easily either 19 or 20 years old. You couldn’t be a doctor without a residency in the US, and he thought it would be the same here, too. A residency was when a student took up work in a nearby hospital or university clinic to learn hands-on training from more experienced personnel. Yet, it takes anywhere from 3 to 5 years to complete a residency.
Alongside that, her clothes weren’t really “professional” either. She wore a crop-top with skinny jeans, and high heels, too! Then again, he can understand why she wore it. She was insanely hot! She was redheaded, and didn’t seem to have any make-up on. Her large green eyes looked like gems under the fluorescent light, and her mouth seemed to be in a constant pout.
If anything, she looked like she was cosplaying an older Kim Possible or Mary Jane Watson from the Spider-Man comics. The hot Mary Jane, not the ones the modern artists were trying to “de-beautify”.
She didn’t even have a doctor's coat on to signify her as one… Wait, hold on, he remembered that a piece of cloth was hanging off of the top part of her swivel chair. He thought it was just a regular jacket, but that must’ve been her doctor’s coat.
Man, he made a terrible first impression. Hopefully, he can ask for forgiveness.
It wasn’t that long since he entered the room that she came in, and Jack looked at her and complained in his mind about the one flaw that will never leave her. ‘She’s so hot, but why is her name Pol En! Everytime I think of her now, I can only think of her sneezing out pollen like in that series of commercials about allergies.’
She didn’t look at him for more than a glance before heading to her little work area and sat down on another swivel chair. She turned to him, face a little downcast with shame and regret, and said, “I’m sorry about blowing up at you like that. I haven’t had a good time here. This town, I mean.”
Jack, wanting to apologize as well, said, “I’m sorry, too. I didn’t mean to imply that only men are capable of being doctors. It’s just, every doctor I’ve met is usually in his thirties and up. The only female doctor I went to other than you was easily 40. I-” Jack shook his head, “I’m making excuses now. I’m sorry for assuming something like that, is what I meant.”
Pol waved it off. “I already told you I’m sorry. Jeez, can’t you just accept that?” She shook her head and looked at the clipboard she brought with her. “Anyways, Jack Williams, why did you come in today?” And so the visit continued from there. Jack hadn’t visited a doctor for more than 2 years now, and he wanted her to see if his pain could be gotten rid of.
After doing a check-up for Jack, Pol En declared that his health was very good. Especially with all of his exercising he’s been doing. The pain should go away after a week of rest. Stretches are fine, and so is a small run, but any heavy training should be avoided.
“I can’t believe that you decided to pull a stunt like that. Really? Trying to lift who knows how many pounds all by yourself? I can’t believe you didn’t learn that from your years of exercising.” Pol En had a bit of a smirk on her face and shook her head at the audacity of someone pushing their body like that. Her smirk and amusement faded, however, upon hearing Jack’s next statement.
“Thanks for the compliment, but I’ve only been training for a few months. I know I shouldn’t’ve done that, but I was just really hungry for some food.” Jack had a small smile on his face, and proceeded to stand up. “Anyways, if that’s all I have to do, then I guess I can leave now. See-” Pol En stopped him dead with a serious “Wait.”
Jack looked back at her from where he had his hand on the door. Her face no longer had that cocky and bemused tone to it anymore. She was staring straight at him now. “You’ve only been training for a few months?” Her voice was dead and flat. Jack felt a bit nervous and replied truthfully. “Yep, I started about three months ago. Most of it is just body weight exercise, though.”
Her face didn’t change as she heard this. Then she pointed at the seat he got up from. “Sit.” She ordered him. Jack was hesitant, but didn’t see why he shouldn’t do so. Pol got up and began to use her stethoscope, hands, and other doctors tools on him once more. She didn’t speak to him at all throughout this process. Soon, Jack got uncomfortable with the observation and asked, “Why are you observing me like this? I thought I was fine.”
That snapped her out of her focus. She stepped back and looked him dead in the eye. “Are you sure you started exercising just a few months ago?” Her voice was no longer dead, but held an intensity deep within it. Jack just nodded. “You’re not lying to me, are you?” Jack felt a hint of Deja’Vu from that question, but shook his head negatively.
Pol stared a little bit more at him, before smiling like she caught something. Her eyes held curiosity and mischief in abundance, and her hand, the one not holding a clipboard, came up to her lips. “Then you, good sir, are someone I’d like to study.”