Evan's brain was in total chaos.
He was in a butcher's shop.
A butcher's shop where furries were displayed in glass cases to be sold and cut up into meat.
And he was there with four furry girls, about to buy meat.
They were just leaving the waiting lounge where they'd taken a short break. Evan caught sight of something that looked like a furniture store catalog. On the cover was a slogan:
"Without this, your kitchen will never be complete."
Curious, he opened it.
What exactly was his kitchen supposedly incomplete without?
There were tons of knives, pots, and other normal kitchen tools—
but not only that.
An oven as huge as the one Callisa had roasted him in.
A giant cauldron straight out of a cartoon about cannibals.
An enormous grill.
There was even… a guillotine.
Next to it a note about available colors: silver, steel, black. And a little tagline:
"Perfectly severs heads. Ideal for trophy enthusiasts. Details on our website."
"That's a good model."
Evan jumped and spun around on his heel.
Behind him stood Callisa.
"Sorry. You were really into that."
Evan exhaled, then suddenly realized something.
"Where are the others?"
Frida, Aiko, and Morona were nowhere nearby.
"They're picking out meat. Shall we?"
"Yeah, let's go."
Evan put the catalog back and headed with Callisa toward the display hall.
"By the way," she asked, "where does your world get its meat from?"
Evan looked at her, puzzled.
"You don't seem used to our methods," she added.
He sighed.
"That's true. On Earth, humans were the only sapient species. Most people only ever saw meat as cut-up pieces."
Callisa fell silent, thinking it over.
The other girls were wandering between the displays. After a bit, they all gathered in front of a case with a rabbit inside.
"Oh good, you're here. What do you think? Will he do?"
Frida and Callisa examined him carefully and then…
"Yeah, he'll be great as a roast," Callisa said, interested. "With rosemary and thyme."
"He'd be better on the grill," Frida countered. "On a spit he'd look amazing."
They argued for a moment, until Morona spoke up:
"The fish does not wait for the fisherman."
The girls stared at her, confused, then followed the direction of her claw. She was pointing at the display timer.
It showed 1 second… then switched to:
"Display time over. Please choose another case."
The rabbit exhaled as the case began sinking into the floor.
"Lucky brat," Frida growled. "I had such a good idea."
"We'll just keep looking."
Aiko flicked her tail and moved on.
To Evan, it felt like they'd just missed a sale on something in a supermarket and were left empty-handed.
After a while, they reached the fox from before.
"He'll do."
The girls agreed. Even Frida and Callisa settled on a single recipe.
"We're taking him."
The fox's eyes went wide; he tensed and started moaning into his gag. It was obvious he was begging them not to.
Callisa ignored it. She tapped through the options: "Buy", "Whole", and was just about to hit "Confirm" when Evan spoke up.
"Girls, aren't you forgetting something?"
They looked at him, puzzled.
"Forgetting what?"
"We've got everything."
"Except the meat."
Evan met their eyes.
"What about packing? Arslan told you to move. How much stuff do you still have to bring?"
At that, tails, ears and antennae all shot up at once.
"My clothes, my record player, my vinyls…"
"My dumbbells…"
"My drawing gear and entire manga collection…"
"An immeasurable magnitude of—"
Evan looked at them.
Callisa grudgingly admitted:
"Evan's right. We won't manage it. The vouchers are valid for another month anyway. Let's buy cut meat and do the housewarming next weekend."
She hit "Cancel," and the fox sagged against his restraints with a shaky breath of relief.
They went to the regular meat counter. Evan glanced back one more time at the fox.
He wasn't sure why, but he felt… disappointed.
They got back to the dorm. Evan was mentally done.
After unpacking the groceries, he collapsed into an armchair in the living room. He wasn't so much physically tired as mentally fried.
First the date where he'd almost ended up in Callisa's stomach.
Then the bar incident.
Then moving.
"Here."
Callisa handed him a beer.
"Thanks."
"How are you holding up?"
Evan felt himself sink deeper into the chair.
"It's all just… a bit too much at once."
Callisa sat down on the couch, crossed her legs, and opened a can for herself.
"I won't pretend I understand, but you do need to be careful. Who knows how many people will have their eye on you."
Evan groaned and sank even lower.
"Relax. It's an isekai. You'll get used to it by the end of the week."
"You're such a nerd, kitty," Frida grinned at Aiko, teasingly.
"And you're such a thug. Daddy's anti-daughter."
Frida just stuck her tongue out.
Evan managed to smile a bit.
"Maybe we should just drop that bet. That… stuff really is disgusting."
Callisa sounded honestly serious.
"I don't know," Frida mused. "I want to see naked Evan on a pole. And you—do you want him on a pole?"
Evan imagined Callisa in sexy lingerie and said that yes, he did.
Frida eyed him sharply.
"Careful with your wording. Something that ambiguous could also be taken as consent. The spit is a pole too."
Evan shuddered.
"It's a common trap," she went on. "Hiding intent in wordplay or double meanings. That lesson was free. The next one will cost you your ass."
"Don't scare me like that."
"So I can eat you then?"
He shook his head violently.
"Enough, Frida. Back to the topic. Evan, are you still in on the bet?"
"Yes."
He still really wanted to see Callisa do a pole dance.
"Alright. Don't say I didn't warn you."
After a while, Evan finished cooking his dish. He went for something simple: synth-meat sausages, a basic tomato sauce, some vegetables and spices.
From the start, something felt off.
The sausages cut weirdly, the texture strangely spongy, and they stuck to the knife. When he fried them, they sizzled in an odd way, and once he added them to the sauce, the sauce suddenly darkened.
Something was wrong, but he forced himself through the recipe anyway.
The final dish neither looked nor smelled the way he wanted. In fact, the smell was repulsive.
So repulsive that the girls instinctively stepped away.
Evan took a spoonful. The food resisted him, like it was made of some gluey tar.
That couldn't be right.
He put it in his mouth… and was instantly hit by a flashback to a video a friend had once shown him.
There was something called Maconochie stew — a canned beef stew issued to British soldiers during World War I. Officially, it contained beef, potatoes, turnips, carrots, green beans and beef broth.
In reality it was meat scraps, half-rotten vegetables, lumps of unidentifiable fat and a brown sludge they called broth, all mixed with metallic can-taste and weird chemicals.
Soldiers said it looked like something that had already been eaten once.
They described the flavor as:
"The taste of a swamp where something died."
Every bite drained your will and reason to live.
It smelled like mud, tasted like mud, and clogged you up like mud.
That phantasmagoria was no accident. The British Crown had deliberately created this thing as a way to cheaply keep their army in the trenches.
And Evan, without meaning to, had just recreated something similar.
The "meat" was like a cross between an industrial sponge soaked in oil and rotten octopus.
The sauce had absorbed that flavor completely and now had the consistency and stickiness of glue.
The vegetables had turned into some kind of freakish anomaly.
Evan didn't even swallow. He spat it all out, dumped the dish in the trash, then spent half an hour rinsing his mouth and cursing synth-meat.
When he finally calmed down, he looked at the girls apologetically.
"You were right."
They all gave him predatory looks.
"You owe us."
"At the housewarming party."
So he would be dancing on the pole…