A Blank Slate Regression for the Idol That Lost His Original Mindset - Chapter 78

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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A Regression Guide for Idols Who Lost Their Initial Intentions Episode 78

The third batter in charge of ingredient preparation, Ryu Jaehee, discovered an unexpected ingredient and picked up the shirataki noodles.

“The recipe clearly says to cut konjac into rice cake shapes, but why are there random shirataki noodles?”

Ryu Jaehee, remembering who was in charge of ingredients, soon nodded in understanding.

“Doby hyung has done his usual ‘Kim Dobin’ thing. Eden hyung, who’s in charge of cooking, is going to have quite a headache. This is like having the main ingredient changed.”

After cutting the cabbage and green onions and slicing the fish cake to appropriate sizes, Ryu Jaehee reached for the carrot.

He scrubbed the dirt-covered carrot clean, placed it on the cutting board, and stared at it intently.

“Should I just cut it like this? Or do I need to peel it? The surface? The recipe just says to cut it into bite-sized pieces… I’ve never prepared carrots before.”

With a determined expression, Ryu Jaehee picked up the kitchen knife again and cut the carrot without peeling it. This was the second tragedy.

Ryu Jaehee neatly arranged the thickly cut ingredients on a plate and immediately summoned the next batter.

“Finally, it’s my turn. Before I start cooking in earnest, let me guess what this is just from the ingredients without looking at the recipe.”

The fourth batter in charge of cooking, Yoon Eden, wearing a short-sleeved shirt with a hooded zip-up over it, hands tucked in the hoodie pockets, strolled leisurely into the kitchen and glanced at the ingredients Ryu Jaehee had prepared on the plate.

“What’s this? Vietnamese spring rolls? No, there’s no rice paper for that. Curry? What’s with the sikhye can? Did he buy it for us to drink when we get thirsty while cooking? How unusually thoughtful of Dobin.”

Yoon Eden grumbled after checking the recipe paper.

“I should have known. It wasn’t for drinking but a cooking ingredient. And Yehyeon hyung has no sense. I mean, if my specialty is Tornado Omelette, there could be things like omurice topped with Tornado Omelette, but he had to choose konjac tteokbokki.”

Yoon Eden complained while skimming through the long, detailed recipe.

“Well, it doesn’t look too difficult… I’ll do my best cooking this for Hajun who has to eat it.”

He continued while poking at the roughly prepared ingredients.

“But I can’t guarantee the results. I already bought digestive medicine for Jun just in case.”

Yoon Eden was more objective than anyone about his cooking skills.

“But Yehyeon hyung beat me to it and already bought some. Jun was worried about what exactly we were planning to feed him that two people brought him digestive medicine, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell him not to worry.”

He laughed awkwardly and picked up a strand of shirataki noodles, squinting as he muttered.

“Is this right? If I make it with this, won’t it be ramyeon instead of tteokbokki?”

After skimming the recipe again, he shrugged his shoulders.

“It’s different from the recipe. Dobin probably couldn’t find the konjac he was supposed to buy and just grabbed anything labeled konjac.”

Making a deduction close to the truth, he carefully placed the shirataki noodles on the plate, afraid they might break.

“I’m already getting a bad feeling…”

Since even the main ingredient was different, he wasn’t sure how helpful the recipe would be.

After shaking the sikhye can enthusiastically, Yoon Eden saw the thick underline beneath the sentence about straining the rice grains from the sikhye and the numerous stars drawn beside it, then clicked his tongue and went looking for a strainer.

“Jun… Oh, right. No communication allowed.”

Yoon Eden, who was about to call Gyeon Hajun out of habit, remembered the rule and stopped.

“There’s no strainer. Where is it? There really isn’t one.”

He rummaged around the kitchen here and there before giving up on finding a strainer.

Of course, there was no strainer in Rev’s dorm kitchen.

It was Seo Yehyeon’s oversight—he had checked the ingredients in the refrigerator but failed to check the cooking utensils.

“I’ve hit a snag from the start. Sigh… Why did I shake this thing?”

Yoon Eden looked at the vigorously shaken sikhye can with troubled eyes, sighing deeply as he opened it.

“I’ll just pour it carefully and scoop out the solids.”

As soon as he carefully poured the sikhye into the pot, rice grains came pouring out along with the drink, making him laugh helplessly.

“It would have been easier to just add sugar, so why did he choose a recipe that uses sikhye as an ingredient?”

Yoon Eden lamented while picking out the rice grains one by one with a spoon.

After painstakingly removing all the solids, leaving only clear broth, he turned his attention back to the recipe paper.

“Add 200ml of water here, add a spoonful each of gochujang, red pepper flakes, and soy sauce, then add all the remaining ingredients and bring to a boil.”

After adding water and spooning in the seasoning ingredients, Yoon Eden poured all the chopped ingredients from the plate into the pot without hesitation.

“How many minutes should it boil? Huh? However, blanch the konjac in water with vinegar for 3 minutes first, then rinse in cold water before adding…”

With dejected eyes, Yoon Eden looked back at the shirataki noodles that had already entered the water, read the sentence on the recipe paper again, and sighed once more.

“This should have been written first.”

He naturally blamed Seo Yehyeon, but strictly speaking, 90% of the fault was Yoon Eden’s for not reading the recipe thoroughly first.

“Should I fish it out again…? But wait, this is shirataki noodles and the recipe is for regular konjac?”

Yoon Eden looked down at the shirataki noodles already swaying in the red broth and quietly closed the pot lid.

“Can’t help it. Since it’s shirataki noodles, it should cook quickly without blanching.”

This was the third tragedy.

“None of the ingredients are cooked. The youngest member cut the cabbage too big. The carrots are cut too thick too. I should have boiled the vegetables first, then added the fish cake and konjac.”

Hearing the sound of the broth boiling, Yoon Eden opened the pot lid and stirred the broth with a spoon while scratching his cheek.

“Isn’t tteokbokki broth supposed to be a bit thick? Why is this so watery? I don’t know how much longer I need to boil it to make it like store-bought tteokbokki.”

He was stirring the broth with the ladle he was holding, and when he scooped up a spoonful only to have it drip right down, he panicked, thinking of typical tteokbokki.

Thinking it would become like that if he kept boiling it, he turned up the heat to high and boiled it thoroughly. The result:

“Is this really right?”

Something with a visual that couldn’t be called tteokbokki at all was born.

The broth still didn’t thicken and remained watery like water.

It was the result of tragedy upon tragedy upon tragedy.

Even while transferring what could no longer be called tteokbokki into a bowl, Yoon Eden’s expression remained strange.

Wondering where the burning smell was coming from, he found that ingredients had stuck to the bottom of the pot, leaving the pot bottom charred black.

As a final act of conscience, he put the pot in the sink and filled it with water.

“Cooking finished! Taste tester, please come out!”

“Why does it smell burnt…?”

Gyeon Hajun came out of his room, wrinkling his nose. The final fifth batter, the taste tester, had appeared.

From this stage, they could finally communicate with each other.

Of course, communicating at this point wouldn’t bring about the miracle of reviving the ruined dish.

Perhaps curious inside, the Rev members all crowded together to see the finished dish.

Silence fell as they took in the dish neatly served in the bowl.

“This is… tteokbokki…?”

Seo Yehyeon voiced what everyone present was thinking.

Murky, bright red broth with shirataki noodles floating around and overly overcooked ingredients.

To anyone’s eyes, it looked more like dog food than tteokbokki. No, it had a visual that couldn’t even be given to dogs.

Yoon Eden, the creator of this dish, was already standing by Gyeon Hajun’s side with water in one hand and a digestive pill in the other.

“Does Hajun hyung really have to eat this? Hajun hyung just lacked Halli Galli skills, so what crime did he commit to deserve such an ordeal?”

“Wow, it looks like you’d die if you ate it.”

“Dobin, this is because of you. If you had just bought the right konjac, it wouldn’t have looked this bad.”

Seeing the shirataki noodles break apart as soon as Gyeon Hajun picked them up with chopsticks, Yoon Eden retorted.

“The visual isn’t the problem… Sigh…”

Gyeon Hajun took a spoonful and tasted it, then immediately put down his utensils.

Without a word, he took the digestive medicine and water cup from Yoon Eden and swallowed the pill.

“I think eating this would be harmful to my health, so I’ll stop eating.”

Gyeon Hajun shook his head. The production crew also thought it would be wrong to make him eat that unidentifiable food and gave the okay.

Gyeon Hajun picked up a carrot with his spoon that still had dirty peel on it despite being washed and gave advice.

“Jaehee, you need to peel carrots with a peeler before cutting them.”

“Yes, I’ll do that next time.”

Looking at the shirataki gochujang noodle soup that came from hell, Seo Yehyeon lamented.

“How could you ruin such a simple dish so catastrophically? I even wrote the recipe as detailed as possible to prevent this.”

“It’s because Dobin bought shirataki noodles. And you should have written the instruction to boil the konjac at the beginning.”

“Speaking of which, isn’t it Yehyeon hyung’s fault for substituting konjac instead of rice cakes for tteokbokki?”

“No, if Jaehee had cut the ingredients smaller, it wouldn’t have turned out this bad.”

“I did everything well except for the carrots, okay? My share of responsibility in this dish is only 10 out of 100.”

They began to shift the blame for this disastrous failure onto each other. It was tearfully bad teamwork.

No one could deny that Gyeon Hajun, who couldn’t even eat proper food and only got to do dishes, was the biggest loser.

* * *

“While everyone before me did make mistakes, if you ask whose fault was the biggest… it’s definitely Yehyeon Hyung who raised the cooking difficulty by choosing konjac tteokbokki over the familiar regular tteokbokki? If it had just been regular tteokbokki, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

After finishing the interview, they sent in Gyeon Hajun, the last batter, to Kim Dobin’s private room where the cameraman was.

I sat back comfortably on the sofa and let out a deep breath.

“I think we chose the wrong content for the first reality show episode. The ocean, cooking…”

“I really agree about the ocean.”

“Let’s agree on the cooking too. What is that thing, seriously. It’s not like it’s tteokbokki that came up from hell.”

Seo Yehyeon shook his head back and forth.

[☺80,000 fans achieved!]

[Reward: Initial Intentions +10, Item Selection Ticket]

The Initial Intentions that had been gradually chipped away recovered again, settling into the stable 80s range.

It didn’t seem like it had been long since the fan count hit 70,000, but it was already in the 80,000s. We hadn’t even made a comeback yet, so I wondered if there had been some kind of issue.

[Initial Intentions Recovery Project for Idols Who Lost Their Initial Intentions!]

[Required Condition – You who disappointed 30,000 fans, make 30 million fans happy! (88,401/30,000,000)]

Looking at it now, the number of fans made happy was different from the number of fans achieved.

It seemed like the number of fans who left the fandom or stopped being casual fans was also being counted. That was fortunate, at least.

As soon as Gyeon Hajun finished his interview and came out, Ryu Jaehee eagerly asked.

“Hyung, what did it taste like that you couldn’t even manage your expression and put it down right after one bite?”

“The moment I took one bite, I was hit with the crisis awareness that I might wake up in the hospital tomorrow.”

At those words, everyone’s gaze turned toward me, the one in charge of cooking.

“I really only added ingredients according to the recipe and boiled it, though?”

Having done things properly by the book, I felt truly wronged. This was all because the guys before me didn’t handle their jobs properly!

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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