Shrimp And Chicken
'But wait.. Although I know all of this, what exactly is game? I know it's a combination of a lot of stuff but how would I use it exactly?' Kubera thought about this for a moment not expecting Nari to reply to him.
(Game consists of a lot of skills and stats you haven't unlocked yet such as 'mouthpiece' and 'confidence' yes, but when you have all the required skills and stats, a new skill called 'Game' will be unlocked. Along with the skill will be new information I will be able to give you that tells you about: game such as the importance of it and how to use it, women and why they aren't as complicated once you have game and why you should love women. They're the way they are because of men, no one else.)
Seeing this response, Kubera decided to take a step back from his newly found hostility towards women and just focus on what needs to be done instead of thinking about this stuff. The time will come for when he should be worried about this, but he knew the time isn't now.
Right now, something major caught his attention, something beyond women. Food! He hadn't eaten all day since coming to this world! He was so focused on finishing his tasks that he didn't notice how hungry he was until he finally had time to breath.
It was currently 10:22 am so he went straight to Dojo Hall to see what they had he could eat.
...
He was currently looking at the food that was being displayed through the glass on the counter with a bunch of food on it inside the Cafeteria. There were all kinds of delicacies behind the window that caught his eye, but he wasn't worried about that. What he was looking at was the cooked meat! There were baskets filled with different kinds of meat, he saw that they all had different names such as: Chicken, Asada, Shrimp, and pork.
"Hey, you see anything you like?"
A man behind the counter snapped Kubera out of his daze, after looking at the man, he could tell he must be the cook here judging by his attire and the knife in his hand. Seeing this, he responded to the man, "Yea, I'd like a plate of Chicken and shrimp."
"Do you want a taco or some fries to go with it?"
Kubera didn't know what a 'taco' or 'fries' were, but since it wasn't in the meat baskets he knew he couldn't buy them, "No, I just want the meat only by itself."
The man stared at him for a few seconds to see if he was joking, but judging by his straight face, the man concluded he must be a picky eater, "Alright, that'll be 8 dollars."
Kubera remember that he needs money for food, so he opened his backpack to find a wallet that had dollars inside of it and his school ID. He noticed that he had 2 green bills with a 20 on them, and another bill with a 10 on it. Seeing this, he pulled out the 10 and gave it to the cook, who placed it in the register and pulled out 2 dollars and gave it back to him.
The man pulled out a styrofoam container and scooped up the chicken and shrimp and poured it into the container before putting a small plastic bag with a fork, knife, and piece of cloth inside of it on the top of the container. He then handed it to Kubera, "Stay healthy bro not many people eat like you."
"Um, thank you sir." Kubera assumed he was referring to him eating meat only. He grabbed his food and looked for a empty table to eat at. When he sat down however, a crazy realization came to him.
He needs more money! A container of meat cost $8 dollars and he only has $42 dollars! He won't be able to survive next week at this rate. He couldn't get a job since he wasn't 18 and he didn't have any skills to make money off of, so how was he going to make money?!
'Wait.. I'm thinking about this all wrong! I do have money, it's just on someone else..' He remembered that when Nari was explaining to him what an AOI was, she mentioned how students tend to buy and carry expensive stuff on them to raise their status. He currently has a bonus AOI task to knock out a student as well, so why not kill 2 birds with one stone!
He knew he wouldn't be able to predict how much cash a person is carrying on them, and he read about how digital money exist via credit and debit cards and other apps, so he might get unlucky and get nothing at all from a person! But it was a risk he was willing to take.
With a plan set, he decided after he finished eating he'll go scouting for someone who could help him with his money problem..
With that out the way, he grabbed a shrimp with his hand to examine it. From the looks of it, it looked like a very small fish judging by the little fin at the end, it was just missing it's head. There was a thin shell around the meat that he had to rip off before eating it unless he wanted to eat the shell. After removing the shell, he took a bite out of the shrimp and compared it to what he ate in his world.
'It's surprisingly tasty! It's a little juicy and filling despite being so small. It's not bad, I'd definitely hunt this back in my world if I could to save them for snacks on the move.' After finishing the shrimp, he moved on to the chicken.
He knew that chicken were small common farm animals here on this planet when he read about this world in the system so he knew to not expect much. The chicken was diced into squares and had some spices on it. It didn't look as juicy as the shrimp but smelt pretty good so he took a bite of it.
'It's very dry, and the taste isn't as good as the shrimp even with all the spices.. This taste similar to some of the bugs I had to eat back in my world.' The chicken thus fell to the bottom of his list as a tasty source of meat. He still ate it nonetheless because he did pay for it after all, he wouldn't let his money go to waste!
After finishing his meal, he realized he hadn't drank anything all day either! So he went to the bookstore to buy a water bottle. When he arrived into the bookstore he made sure to check all the prices of all the items there.
A bottle of water turned out to be a whopping $2! Back in his world he'd drink lots of water daily, maybe a bucket a day depending how hard he worked. In this world, he believed that translated to 5 gallons of water. 1 gallon was 128 ounces, and in each water bottle he saw, there was only 17 ounces of water! Although his new body was weaker then his previous body and didn't do nearly as much work, having a well hydrated body was important for energy to do work.
He was planning to saturate his body with 3 bottles of water at the of every day, and drink 5 bottles throughout the day, giving him 136 ounces of water every day. This was so in the future when he started to do more work that required more physical and mental work he'd have the energy and his body would already be used to storing a lot of water.
But looking at the prices of water, that's $16 a day if he bought water from here! This only made his desire for money grew. For now he decided to buy 2 bottles of water so he could hydrate himself now and have one bottle for later.
He took the two bottles and went over to the cashier who had a big black and grey beard. He grabbed the bottles and scanned them before saying the price that caught Kubera off guard, "That'll be $4 dollars and 32 cents."
"And 32 cents?!" Kubera couldn't help but ask out loud after hearing the cashier. The school didn't raise the price on his food, so why did this bookstore raise the price on these items?
"I feel you kid the taxes in this state hurt. I remember it used to be only 50 cents for a bottle of water, not it's $2 dollars plus taxes.. Hey, it's America so I trust the government"
Hearing what the cashier said, it caused a chill to run down his spine. Prices used to be a lot lower? And not only that, it raised by over 100%?! Although he didn't know much of anything regarding politics, this sort of change over the course of a short amount of time shouldn't be normal.
He pulled out a $20 dollar bill and gave it to the man, who in returned gave him 1 $10 dollar bill, 1 $5 dollar bill and 68 cents, which were some silver coins of different sizes and a few copper coins, all with different faces and images on the back of it.
He put his change into his wallet and walked outside the bookstore. He stuffed 1 of the bottles into his backpack before drinking the other one in a matter of a couple minutes! With his stomach full of food and water, he believed he was now ready to focus all of his energy into finding some money.
'Now where should I start..'