In the "real world," to save money, my university life continued the high school routine: dorm, cafeteria, teaching building.
What made university life easier than high school was the relaxed academic schedule. There weren't many classes, and sometimes, with no classes in the morning, one could sleep in until noon quite shamelessly.
After a long period of excessive freedom, when class times didn't coincide with meal times, more and more people became unwilling to walk ten minutes to the cafeteria or twenty minutes out of school to eat. Thus, "bringing food for classmates" became commonplace, and the memories of "bringing food" and "being brought food"...
Ah, I got distracted. Looking down at the meat I was halfway through roasting, I thought, fate is indeed a constant cycle.
Before, it was dorm, cafeteria, teaching building—a three-point line.
Now, it's prison cell, beast arena, infirmary—a three-point line.
In the shadows opposite, a beast with dark golden eyes lay in wait for today's feeding.
Roasting meat and then throwing it to the beast, I called this operation "Hey, Feed the Dog." Reading it all together, it sounds like "here we go," or "we go."
Feitan asked me to roast meat for him. I initially refused, but I'm mute. Feitan doesn't understand lip-reading or sign language, nor can he read (I don't know if this is true). I couldn't explain my reasons for refusal to him.
The truth is, there was no special reason, just laziness, not wanting to waste effort.
I think the reason Feitan assigned me the roasting was also out of laziness.
Who wouldn't like the comfortable life of having food brought to their mouth while lying down?
Being forced to roast meat for him started when he began manhandling me in the infirmary, the kind that interrogates you with pain. As an amateur, I thought his self-taught skills were quite impressive. I'm not masochistic and don't want to suffer without cause. After weighing the pros and cons, I took on the roasting job.
Doing repetitive, mechanical work daily can become tiresome, making me want to cause trouble for Feitan. In the prison cell, Feitan was chained and couldn't get close to me. In the arena, sneaking up on me to reduce my combat power and make me die wasn't what Feitan wanted, so he only laid hands on me in the infirmary. Coincidentally, I've now become familiar with the attack patterns of the various creatures in the arena, so I rarely end up in the infirmary. Normally, I just tie bandages myself in the prison cell.
Sometimes, I deliberately burned a piece of meat or roasted it unevenly. I thought Feitan, being a hot-tempered powder keg, would explode at the slightest provocation. To my surprise, he said nothing and accepted it all.
There was no other way, so I'll use that. Meteor City has that famous saying, "We don't refuse anything, so don't expect to take anything from us."
The type of roasted meat today was only moderately unpalatable, at a level I could barely accept. Before feeding the roasted meat to the dog, I took a large bite in front of the dog and then threw it.
Those dark golden eyes in the shadows narrowed. Good, the dog finally reacted.
"Childish," was his reply, his tone extremely contemptuous.
...Tch!
There are more aggressive ways to provoke him, but they're not worth it. In the original work, he's portrayed as a very vengeful character. If I truly angered him, any time I failed to die when I wanted to, he might find ways to torment me relentlessly, with the sole goal of not killing me. That would be a huge loss for me.
Yes, I'm not enduring silently; it's the correct choice of a rational, calm adult. Considering that Feitan doesn't like well-done meat and prefers it six or seven分熟, which saves me quite a bit of effort, that's perhaps his greatest virtue.
Unless I'm unable to walk, the daily battles in the arena cannot be skipped. I'm the type to rush to the front first (convenient for seeking death). With new and old wounds combined, I've unconsciously become covered in bandages.
My cellmates no longer call me "Bandage Boy"; they jokingly call me "Mommy," no, it's "