Bennita felt as if she had encountered the legendary Immobilization Spell. Her body was stiff and unable to move; she couldn’t even speak, and all she could do was silently watch the mysterious man who had intruded into her ho.
The man was slightly thin, about six feet tall, dressed in a splendid evening gown, his face covered with a half-mask as pale as White Bone, looking more like an elegant gentleman ready to attend a masquerade ball than a criminal breaking into hos.
"Madam, don’t be nervous," he said, "I’m off work now, and I just want to eat sothing good before I return to Hell."
"Off work? Hell? What is he talking about?" Bennita, who had been secretly observing the man, was startled by his sudden speech, her heart skipping a beat. Just as she was contemplating the deeper aning of his words, he suddenly said:
"Lady, I must say, your kitchenware is very incomplete, and your kitchen knife lacks maintenance. Have you really been using them properly?"
The man, with the temperant of a poet, lanted the plight of the kitchenware. anwhile, he took out a piece of beef and gently tapped on the steak with a small hamr, which he had bought but scarcely used, mumbling:
"Really, do you not use a hamr when cooking beef? The force of the hamring is critical to making a delicious steak. If combined with ingredients like onions and honey, you can turn ordinary beef into a lt-in-your-mouth grade A5 Wagyu. However, for a ho-cooked dish, it doesn’t need to be that exaggerated. A proper chew can make one fully enjoy the experience of tearing into the at."
"This man... is teaching how to cook?" A sense of absurdity flooded Bennita’s mind, suppressing her original fear.
"Oh, the weather is still quite cold, though I prefer clear soup, but to align with local habits, let’s make a creamy mushroom soup..."
The man kept explaining the cooking steps and ingredients to himself, occasionally using the marks on the kitchenware to launch into sarcasm, causing Bennita to begin thinking whether she really couldn’t cook, as he said.
A full-ti housewife who can’t cook?
That’s an insult!
Yet, slling the enticing aroma, she couldn’t help but feel her saliva secreting.
She wanted to secretly swallow her saliva, but her stiff body made even this small motion difficult to achieve; thus, uncontrollably, saliva dripped down from the corner of her mouth.
"Ah, just kill !"
Bennita scread frantically in her mind, but the man’s movents remained graceful and skilled. After enduring for over an hour, a sumptuous dinner was finally ready.
Creamy mushroom soup with pan-seared veal, accompanied by broccoli and potato salad, this was a rather standard Victoria-style dinner. However, the man seed to have used many cooking thods unfamiliar to Victorians, making what appeared to be a ho-cooked al sll irresistibly tantalizing.
Bennita watched as he casually plated the food, then moved behind her, and faint yet intense sounds of eating reached her ears.
"..."
The sound of mushroom soup slipping down the throat, the noise of beef being torn and chewed, the sounds of mashed potatoes and crisp vegetables mixing...
These normally imperceptible sounds seed as though they were right next to her, invading Bennita’s ears, furiously stimulating her stomach.
This torture lasted for several more minutes, accompanied by the sounds of swallowing the soup, until everything finally ca to an end.
The figure appeared again in Bennita’s view, placing the used tableware into the sink and swiftly beginning to wash them. The white gloves he’d never taken off remained spotlessly clean.
Just as Bennita’s thoughts were in disarray, suddenly the sound of a door lock ca from the direction of the entrance. She didn’t know why her hearing was so good today, but it obviously wasn’t the ti to think about that.
"Oh, no! Damn it! Jones, don’t co in! You shouldn’t be back now!" Bennita wanted to scream loudly, but her throat couldn’t make a sound. Her mind was flooded with stories of victims who had been killed when they returned ho during a criminal’s act, and her breathing beca rapid.
"Darling, I’m ho, what’s for dinner?"
Her husband’s voice ca from the door, but Bennita saw the man who was returning the tableware turn around.
"It’s over! Oh, God! Who will save us!" Despair filled Bennita’s eyes, but the next mont, the man just smiled slightly and said,
"It seems I should leave now, thank you for your food, beautiful lady."
Listening to his tone, which seed to be chanting poetry, Bennita watched in horror as he suddenly spread his arms, like lifting up shadows, and pulled out a cloak woven from darkness behind him. As the cape wrapped around his body, the man just disappeared before her eyes...
"Oh, dear, you’re here, I thought you weren’t ho..."
At the sa ti, Jones Nordman walked into the dining room and marveled as soon as he saw his wife,
"Oh, my God, this sll is magnificent! What did you make today?"
Bennita suddenly felt her body relax, her stiff body almost collapsing to the floor; she hurriedly wiped the drool that had fallen onto her garnt and turned around,
"Nothing, nothing, just trying... yes, trying out sothing new!"
"That sounds really exciting!" Jones, who hadn’t noticed anything unusual about his wife, returned to the entrance to change his clothes.
Bennita carefully moved her body, which was sowhat sore from standing stiff for over an hour, and walked to the pot. If not for the considerable amount of food still in there, she might have doubted if everything she had seen was just a hallucination!
Putting the leftover food from the man onto the plate, Bennita found it was exactly cooked for two people and started to wonder if this was just a coincidence.
But thinking too much at this point was no help; she nervously brought the dishes to the table, her mind recalling the surreal events.
She decided not to tell her husband about what happened today because it would only make her seem like a lunatic, and no one would believe that she had encountered a visitor from Hell who could cast an Immobilization Spell and disappear at will. Nor would anyone think that soone would invade a wealthy neighborhood’s ho just to borrow ingredients to cook a al.
"What was that person, really? What was his job? And Hell..." Bennita’s mind was in utter chaos until her husband’s scream interrupted her thoughts:
"Oh, my God! This is definitely the best beef I’ve ever eaten in my life! Darling, how did you do it? It’s much better than that damn hotel! Little Jimmy and Hannah are coming back tomorrow evening, make this again for them to try!"
Listening to her husband’s exaggerated admiration, Bennita picked up a piece of beef, her mind heavily burdened as she put it into her mouth.
In that instant, all her wild thoughts were swept away, leaving only one idea—
"Should I now go make a note to write down everything I still rember? But... can I really replicate this taste?"
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