14. Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fourteen
Cody
Cody drove home and unpacked his groceries.
The rest of his afternoon was spent fishing.
Bob had texted him a list of very specific ones he wanted pictures of: sunfish, yellow perch, catfish, northern pike, and largemouth bass.
After a couple of hours with no luck, Cody finally admitted defeat.
He went inside to make a shitty microwave pasta meal for dinner, daydreaming about the home-cooked meal Morgan had promised him.
As he scraped out all the remaining crusty bits in the little cardboard dish, he eyed his oven.
He wasn’t much of a cook before he left Earth, and then he’d spent the past decade in a world with no conventional ovens.
But it was easy to cook stuff over a flame in Velasarin using game mechanics, and he’d played some cozy life sim games before that had ovens, so maybe…
With ease, he brought up the pink game screen.
There was a menu across the top with all of his options.
One of the options was Recipes, a tab which he never bothered to open.
He wished he’d thought of this before eating the crappy microwave pasta.
He mentally clicked on Recipes. A whole list of recipes appeared, and he started scrolling through them.
Most of the text was red. When he clicked on one that was red, it showed him all the ingredients he would need, and pretty much every single ingredient was in red text.
He quickly deduced this meant he didn’t have the stuff on hand.
“There has to be something…”
What are you doing? Knife asked.
Learning how to cook, Cottage Country game style.
Good idea, Knife said. You’ve been eating shit for weeks.
Cody found one recipe that was in white text instead of red: Simple Peanut Butter Cookies.
He clicked on it and saw that all he needed was peanut butter, white sugar, and an egg.
He definitely had all of that basic stuff.
The recipe also said he needed a cookie sheet, which apparently he also had, somewhere in the kitchen.
He went through the cupboards and drawers until he found the flat metal pan.
He put the peanut butter, the sack of sugar, and one egg on the pan and… put it in the oven.
Are you serious? Knife asked.
How is this any different than how I cooked stuff in Velasarin?
Cody asked. I used to catch a rabbit in a trap, bring up a cooking spell from my menu screen, just like this, and then toss the thing in the fire.
And boom: a toasty, perfectly skinned and cooked rabbit would pop back out. This is basically the same thing.
A rectangular button that read [COOK] started to flash at the bottom of the screen. Cody mentally clicked it. The oven glowed orange and Cody felt a wave of heat. Five seconds passed. And then: Ding!
Cody opened the oven door. The smell of fresh-baked peanut butter cookies wafted out, and he grinned as he saw the perfect rows of one dozen cookies.
They even had the little fork crisscrosses on the top.
He slipped on an oven mitt and took the pan out.
He decided to let the cookies cool down a bit before taking his first taste test.
On the one hand: super fucking cool! On the other hand: it kind of sucked that it used up his entire jar of peanut butter and an entire bag of sugar.
Was that really necessary? And now he didn’t have any sugar for his coffee.
He’d have to consult his Map to dodge Doug at the Food Mart, so he wouldn’t have to drive all the way to Milltown for groceries.
And if he continued to cook like this, he’d have to start using measuring cups and do some experimenting.
Are you going to eat them or not? Knife asked.
Cody figured the cookies had cooled enough.
He grabbed a spatula and slid a cookie off the pan.
He bit into it. It was warm and gooey and soft and delicious.
He grinned and ate another. He wouldn’t have to eat the shitty microwave dinners anymore.
This was a game-changer, for sure. He was looking forward to Morgan’s stir fry chicken, but maybe he could learn to make something with this game oven and impress her on their next dinner date.
It did suck that he had to wait until Wednesday to see her. He hadn’t been sure how she was going to respond to him throwing some condoms in with his groceries, but he was pretty damn pleased with how that went down. He was mostly hoping it would make her laugh, and it had worked.
What are we doing tonight? Knife asked. Maybe you could take me out for another round with Little Miss Puffball?
Next month.
Fucking cock blocker, Knife mumbled.
Cody shook his head and wandered into his bedroom.
It was about time he finished unpacking, which he’d been putting it off for over a week now.
His suitcase lay open in the corner with clothes spilling out of it.
He’d have to do some laundry soon. There were also some cardboard boxes in the room.
Cody hadn’t packed much when he moved. He knew he would be getting all the furniture and dishes and stuff that belonged to Grandpa Sam, so he donated most of his basic stuff from his apartment.
He had only packed up the most important items, especially since he wanted to take a one-way trip up in his car and not worry about renting a moving truck.
The first box had his laptop and other electronic stuff, like his Steam Deck.
He picked up the handheld gaming console but didn’t turn it on.
He had been looking forward to his super early retirement so he could kick back, go fishing during the day, and spend evenings catching up on his insanely long game ‘to be played’ backlog.
But now…his stomach twisted. After the life he’d lived, and the situation he was currently stuck in, he wasn’t sure if he’d want to play a video game ever again.
He put the console back in the box and decided to ignore it for now.
He was going to have to find some new hobbies.
Or he could, you know, kick back and fish during the day and have sex with Morgan all night long.
That could also be an option. He was also enjoying the books he was borrowing from the library, so he supposed reading was kind of one of his hobbies now.
He read books here and there and even had some paperbacks packed, but had never really considered himself an avid reader.
He opened the second box to find the books he’d been thinking of.
It was a small collection of paperbacks, including A Princess of Mars and some Ray Bradbury and Jules Verne titles he’d had since he was a young teen.
He scooped up the box, carrying it into the living room where his grandfather’s bookcase stood.
It wasn’t quite full, so there was room for Cody’s books.
He started placing them on shelves in no particular order.
He never really cared about organizing them by author or anything like that.
Once he was done, he looked over Grandpa Sam’s collection.
There were the recognizable red spines of The Witcher paperbacks, the bright, thick spines of the A Song of Ice and Fire books, and a handful of James Patterson paperbacks.
Fairly typical older dude books. But along the bottom shelf were some paperbacks that Cody didn’t recognize.
The titles were kind of weird, too. Cody pulled one out.
“Catgirls in Paradise?” Cody read off the cover. There was a sexy young woman wearing a bikini, with cat ears and a cat tail. “Huh.” He pulled out another, and another, only to find that every single cover had some scantily clad big busted beastkin woman on the cover.
Shit, if these are the kind of books your pops was into, he would have loved Velasarin, Knife said.
No kidding.
Back in Velasarin, there were beastkin girls, elves, orcs, just about everything that was depicted on the covers of the paperbacks Cody was looking through.
Not all of the women he’d met were as busty and beautiful as the women on the covers of the books, but Cody met quite a few stunners during his time in the game world.
Remember that super cute bunnykin? Knife asked. With the floppy ears?
Cody smiled to himself. Yeah…I remember her.
But Cody felt an ache in his chest. One that felt hollow, like a piece of himself was missing.
He wondered what it would’ve been like if he could have had one last conversation with Grandpa Sam.
If he could tell him about all the adventures he had in Velasarin.
The dungeons, and the pretty beastkin girls, and that one time he met a dragon.
He wondered what it’d be like if he could talk to anyone about this stuff.
You can talk to me, Knife said solemnly.
It’s not the same. Because sometimes he wondered if Knife was real, or if he’d gone insane.
You are not crazy, Knife said. I am real.
Cody was silent, still thinking about Grandpa Sam.
And his mom. The two people who he used to depend on when he needed to talk about stuff.
His dad had never really been around, but at least he had his mom and Grandpa Sam.
He used to talk to them about regular life stuff, his ups and his downs, and general advice about work and school.
But he couldn’t even remember what his last conversation with Grandpa Sam had been about.
It was at least a few years ago, in real world time, and over a decade if Cody counted his time in Velasarin.
But you got the girl, Knife reminded him. You came for her, and I’m pretty sure she’s smitten with you. Not sure how you pulled it off, but you did. Be happy.
Yeah, Cody said, hardly believing how well things were going with Morgan.
Cody shook his head and flipped through the book he was holding, but paused when the word ‘pussy’ caught his eye.
He read a few lines and realized he was reading a very lewd sex scene involving a woman who was begging to be bred and filled with baby bunnies.
He supposed that made sense, given the cover of the book depicted a scantily clad bunnykin woman.
Her gigantic boobs were barely contained in the frilly apron she was wearing.
“You dirty old man…” Cody mumbled. And then he sat down on the couch and spent the rest of the evening reading Bunnykin Breeding Bakery.