Batter 3, Ryu Jaehee, who was in charge of ingredient preparation, noticed the strange ingredient and picked up the shirataki noodles.
“The recipe clearly says to slice konjac into rice cake shapes, so why are there shirataki noodles here?”
Recalling who was in charge of getting the ingredients, Ryu Jaehee soon understood and nodded.
“Of course, Dobin hyung did a ‘Kim Dobin thing’ again. It’s going to be pretty troublesome for cooking leader Eden hyung. It’s practically like the main ingredient has changed.”
After chopping cabbage and green onions and cutting the fish cake into appropriate sizes, Ryu Jaehee reached for the carrots.
He washed the carrots, which had some dirt on the surface, then placed them on the cutting board and stared at them.
“Should I just slice it like this? Or should I peel it? The recipe only says to cut it into bite-sized pieces… I’ve never handled carrots before.”
With a determined expression, Ryu Jaehee picked up the kitchen knife again and sliced the carrot without peeling it. This was the second tragedy.
Placing the thickly cut ingredients neatly on a plate, Ryu Jaehee quickly summoned the next batter.
“Finally, it’s my turn. Before diving into cooking, let’s guess the dish just by looking at the ingredients.”
Batter 4, Yoon Eden, wearing a hoodie over a short-sleeved T-shirt and with his hands in the hoodie’s pockets, sauntered into the kitchen. He glanced at the ingredients Jaehee had prepared on the plate and spoke.
“What is this? Vietnamese spring rolls? But then there’s no rice paper. Curry, maybe? What’s the canned sikhye for? Did Dobin grow a conscience and bring it to drink when we get thirsty while cooking?”
Yoon Eden grumbled as he checked the recipe sheet.
“That makes sense. It’s not for drinking, it’s an ingredient. And as expected, Yehyun hyung has no sense. I mean, if my specialty is tornado omelet, there are options like omelet rice with a tornado omelet on top, but he went for konjac tteokbokki.”
Eden complained while quickly skimming through the detailed, lengthy recipe.
“At least it doesn’t look difficult… I’ll do my best to cook it for Hajun. Even if I can’t guarantee how it’ll turn out.”
He poked at the poorly prepared ingredients on the plate.
“But I can’t promise a good result. I’ve already given Junie some digestive medicine, just in case.”
Yoon Eden was more objective about his cooking skills than anyone else.
“Though Yehyun hyung beat me to it and already bought him some. Junie was worried, asking what on earth we’d feed him that needed two people to buy digestive medicine. I couldn’t exactly tell him not to worry.”
He chuckled awkwardly, picking up a strand of shirataki noodles, and mumbled as he squinted.
“Is this right? Using this makes it more like rabokki than tteokbokki.”
After another look at the recipe, he shrugged.
“This isn’t what’s in the recipe. Dobin probably couldn’t find the konjac he was supposed to buy and just grabbed whatever said konjac on it.”
He made a pretty accurate guess and cautiously put the shirataki noodles back on the plate, worried they might snap.
“This has disaster written all over it…”
With the main ingredient already different, it was hard to say how helpful the recipe would be. Yoon Eden shook the sikhye can before him. He noticed the line under the instruction to filter out the rice grains through a sieve and the numerous stars next to it, and clucked his tongue while searching for a sieve.
“Jun-… Ah, right, we can’t communicate.”
Instinctively about to call Jun, Eden stopped, recalling the no-communication rule.
“There isn’t a sieve. Where is it? I really can’t find it.”
He rummaged around the kitchen but eventually gave up on finding a sieve.
Unfortunately, there was no sieve in the kitchen of the REVE dorm.
This was the result of Seo Yehyun’s failure to check the kitchen utensils, despite checking the refrigerator’s contents.
“Why did I even shake this in the first place?”
Looking at the well-shaken sikhye can with a complicated expression, Yoon Eden sighed deeply as he opened it.
“For now, I’ll carefully pour it out and pick out the grains.”
As soon as he poured the sikhye into the pot, the grains poured out with the drink, and he let out a bitter laugh.
“Would’ve been easier just using sugar. Why did he pick a recipe that uses sikhye?”
He sighed, picking out the grains one by one with a spoon.
After painstakingly removing all the grains and leaving only clear broth, he turned his gaze back to the recipe.
“Now add 200ml of water, then one spoonful each of gochujang, red pepper powder, and soy sauce, and then add all the remaining ingredients before boiling it.”
Yoon Eden poured the water and added the seasoning ingredients with a spoon, then dumped the chopped ingredients from the plate into the pot without hesitation.
“How long should I boil this? Huh? Oh, by the way, konjac should be parboiled in vinegar water for 3 minutes and then rinsed in cold water before adding it…”
Yoon Eden looked at the already submerged shirataki noodles with a disheartened expression and read the recipe again with another sigh.
“This should’ve been written at the top.”
He naturally blamed Seo Yehyun, but in reality, it was 90% Eden’s fault for not reading the recipe thoroughly from the start.
“Should I fish it out? But this is shirataki, not konjac like the recipe says.”
Looking at the shirataki noodles already bobbing in the red broth, Yoon Eden quietly closed the pot lid.
“Nothing to do about it. Since it’s shirataki, it should cook quickly even without parboiling.”
This was the third tragedy.
“None of the vegetables are cooked. Maknae cut the cabbage too thick, and the carrot slices are too thick too. I should’ve cooked the vegetables first, then added the fish cake and konjac.”
As the soup started boiling and he opened the pot lid, stirring the soup with a spoon, Yoon Eden scratched his cheek.
“Isn’t tteokbokki sauce usually thicker? Why is this so watery? I don’t know how much longer I should boil it to get it like store-bought tteokbokki.”
Stirring the soup with a spoon and watching it dribble off immediately, Eden thought of typical tteokbokki and felt a bit flustered.
Assuming it would eventually thicken if he kept boiling it, he turned up the heat to high.
“Is this really right?”
The result was something that couldn’t be called tteokbokki.
The broth still wasn’t thickening and stayed runny.
It was a disastrous result.
Even while transferring the no-longer-recognizable dish into a bowl, Yoon Eden’s expression remained ambiguous.
Wondering where the burnt smell was coming from, he saw that the bottom of the pot was charred black from ingredients sticking to it.
Out of a final sense of duty, he put the pot in the sink and filled it with water.
“Cooking’s done! Taste testers, come on out!”
“Why does it smell burnt…?”
Gyeon Hajun stepped out of his room, wrinkling his nose. The final batter, the taste tester, had arrived.
From this stage onward, communication was finally possible.
Of course, even if they could communicate at this point, no miracle would revive the failed dish.
Curious about the outcome, the REVE members flocked around to check out the finished dish.
Silence fell as they laid eyes on the dish neatly served in a bowl.
“This is… tteokbokki…?”
Seo Yehyun voiced everyone’s thoughts.
Konjac noodles floated in a watery, fiery-red broth, with overly-cooked ingredients scattered throughout.
It looked less like tteokbokki and more like dog food—or rather, something you wouldn’t even serve to a dog.
The one responsible for the dish, Yoon Eden, was already standing next to Gyeon Hajun, holding a glass of water in one hand and a digestive tablet in the other.
“Does Jun have to eat this? He just lost at Halli Galli because he wasn’t good enough. Why should he be subjected to this ordeal?”
“Wow, it looks like it’d kill me if I ate it.”
“Dobin, this is all your fault. If you’d just bought the right kind of konjac, it wouldn’t look this bad.”
Yoon Eden replied as Gyeon Hajun picked up some konjac noodles with chopsticks, only to have them snap apart.
“It’s not just the look of it… sigh…”
As soon as Gyeon Hajun took a bite with his spoon, he set it down.
Without a word, he accepted the water and digestive tablet from Yoon Eden and swallowed the pill.
“I think this might be bad for my health, so I’m not going to eat any more.”
Gyeon Hajun shook his head, and even the production team seemed to agree that making someone eat this unidentifiable dish would be cruel.
After all, no matter how much you washed them, carrots with their dirty skin still on weren’t appealing. As he lifted a spoonful of carrot, Gyeon Hajun advised.
“Jaehee, you should peel carrots with a vegetable peeler before you slice them.”
“Yes, I’ll do that next time.”
Seo Yehyun sighed as he looked at the konjac gochujang noodles that seemed to have come from hell.
“How could such a simple dish end up so disastrous? I even wrote the recipe as clearly as possible to avoid this.”
“It’s because Dobin bought konjac noodles. And you should’ve put the part about boiling the konjac at the beginning.”
“If we’re assigning blame, shouldn’t we start with Yehyun for making this harder by choosing konjac tteokbokki? If it was just regular tteokbokki, it wouldn’t have turned out like this.”
“Well, if Jaehee had chopped the ingredients smaller, it wouldn’t have looked this bad.”
“Hey, I did everything right except for the carrots! I only have 10% of the blame for this mess!”
They started shifting the blame for the catastrophic failure onto each other. What a tear-jerking display of teamwork.
No one could deny that Gyeon Hajun, who had to clean up without even eating properly, was the most unfortunate.
* * *
“Even though everyone made mistakes before me, the biggest mistake was… Yehyun, for making it harder by choosing konjac tteokbokki instead of familiar tteokbokki. If it had just been regular tteokbokki, it wouldn’t have turned out this way.”
After his interview, the cameraman sent the final batter, Gyeon Hajun, into Kim Dobin’s solo room.
Leaning back comfortably on the sofa, he let out a deep sigh.
“I feel like we chose the wrong content for the first episode of this reality show. The beach trip, the cooking…”
“The beach was a terrible idea, for sure.”
“Let’s just admit the cooking part was a disaster too. I mean, look at that. It’s like something straight out of hell, not tteokbokki.”
Seo Yehyun shook his head.
[☺ 80,000 fans achieved!]
[Reward: +10 initial intention, choice of item]
The initial intention points, which had been gradually chipped away, were restored to a stable 80.
It hadn’t been long since it was 70,000 fans, and now it’s 80,000. He wondered if something had happened, given that they hadn’t even made a comeback yet.
[A project to help idols who’ve lost his original intention!]
[Requirement: After disappointing 30,000 fans, you must make 30 million fans happy! (88,401/30,000,000)]
Looking closely, the number of happy fans differed from the total number of fans.
It seemed like even fans who’d left or had a fleeting interest were counted. That was somewhat reassuring.
As soon as Gyeon Hajun finished his interview, Ryu Jaehee eagerly asked,
“Hyung, how bad was it that you couldn’t keep a straight face and stopped after just one bite?”
“The moment I took a bite, I felt like I might wake up in a hospital tomorrow.”
Everyone turned to look at me, the one responsible for cooking.
“I swear I just followed the recipe: put in the ingredients and boiled them.”
I felt genuinely wronged, having done everything by the book. It’s all because the others before me didn’t do their part properly!
***
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tteokbokki from hell 🤣