Authentic American Dinner

Dinner was delivery from a nearby pizza place, with a free two-liter bottle of soda.

Given how cheap food is in America, it's no wonder the average person is overweight.

You could say shut-ins exist all over the world, not just the otaku type from anime. But America uniquely has those weighing hundreds of kilos, unable to leave their beds, barely able to walk.

Still, that indirectly boosted industries like gyms and boxing clubs. Especially the rich, who spend time every day exercising to stay in shape.

As for those who are obsessed with fitness, whose goal is to sculpt a muscular physique and who frantically pump themselves with steroids—they belong to a whole different dimension of beings.

Remembering that movie where Thor ate himself into a fat guy, Henry suddenly worried about Kryptonian biology and whether it could stop him from becoming obese.

But when you're hungry and food's in front of you, there's no reason not to eat. Back at the Russian institute, that feeling of being so hungry you wanted to scrape plaster off the wall was still vivid in his mind.

Someone who's truly starved will always fear that feeling.

No wonder in Buddhism's six realms of reincarnation, hungry ghosts have their own realm, standing alongside hell and the animal realm as the three evil paths.

But after one bite of pizza, Henry regretted it a little.

His standards for food were picky yet not picky. He liked good food, but most of the time, edible was enough.

In other words, for Henry, food fell into three categories: delicious, edible, and inedible.

Now he could add a category between edible and inedible: "Eat it and you're sad, don't eat it and your wallet's sad."

As someone who didn't waste food, he couldn't throw edible stuff in the trash or let it expire. First, that wasted money; second, it disrespected the people who worked to provide it.

Even with tens of thousands of dollars as a cushion, he couldn't blow it recklessly. He had no other income now—pure spending with no replenishment.

But some food was just... no. Even if it wouldn't make you sick, eating it felt like betraying yourself.

Especially for a Kryptonian with super taste. To avoid tasting crap while still having to eat, he'd probably have to shove it straight down his throat or into his stomach.

Still, it made sense why the soda came in a two-liter bottle. It was literally for rinsing your mouth and washing your stomach!

This lesson made Henry determined to rent a place with a kitchen. If he got sick of eating out, he'd cook himself.

If Google Maps had existed back then, he'd have given that pizza place a one-star review no matter what.

To forget the taste in his mouth, Henry picked up the Yellow Pages under the phone and flipped through it, planning tomorrow's tasks to distract himself.

Too bad the Yellow Pages had no customer reviews, so he couldn't tell which place was better. He decided not to compare similar shops and just pick the closest one.

Henry hypnotized himself: in a completely unfamiliar place, you had to have some courage to try and fail.

As long as he wasn't greedy and stayed cautious, pulling out before a situation caused major losses, he wouldn't get trapped.

What he feared least was someone flipping the table and trying violence.

A Kryptonian like him, when pissed off, would see who ended who.

The next day, Henry woke up early, stepped outside his room, and basked in the morning sun. Winter sunlight was always warm, making you want to chase it—the opposite of summer, when you'd avoid it at all costs.

Too bad America was an old industrial nation, and LA was a big city, so the air quality was crap. Even taking a deep breath risked choking.

After freshening up, he headed out in the morning, bought a hot dog from the old black guy's stand nearby, slathered it with mustard, and wolfed it down. He skipped the free soda—it was basically a bacteria culture.

After scarfing down the hot dog, Henry first found a bank to deposit all his pay from the crab boat.

Carrying tens of thousands in cash was too flashy and unnecessary, and leaving it in the motel or a future rental wasn't safe. If it got stolen, all that effort would be wasted. Better to put it in the bank.

He hadn't opened an account in Alaska because Alaskan banks had few branches in the mainland US, making them inconvenient.

As for cashing an Alaskan bank check in the mainland, the fees were arbitrary—each bank had its own rules. It basically depended on the bank's mood, with no standard rate or percentage.

Now that he was in LA and planning to make it in Hollywood, he couldn't just take cash payments or cash checks with high fees. Opening a bank account was the best choice.

Small banks were out. The US financial system, thanks to Jewish scheming, was a mixed bag with no standards.

Unless you had an inside connection, a small bank was a deep palace—easy to enter, hard to leave.

They lured you with high interest. Once your money was in, they could twist you however they wanted, and you'd have to comply.

Big banks weren't exactly reliable either.

At least from his pre-transmigration experience, the collapses of Barings Bank, Lehman Brothers, Silicon Valley Bank, and others—even someone outside finance like him knew from the buzz.

So he had to avoid those landmines.

People with capital might try to snatch chestnuts from the fire, but someone like him would just be the leek getting harvested.

He didn't want to get so mad he used Kryptonian powers to storm a bank and "dispense justice."

Some banks' main business was financial investment, with deposits and transfers as side gigs. Those had entry barriers—either a referral or they'd reject "plebs" like Henry.

In short, US banks had tricky, shady practices. One wrong move and you'd be trapped with no recourse. Even in court, you couldn't beat these behemoths. After all, they wrote the laws.

America being founded by financial conglomerates wasn't a joke.

The more he thought about it, the more landmines surrounded the goal of "opening a bank account." Even a Kryptonian with a super brain felt like giving up.

Driving around, he spotted a Citibank on the side of the road.

Henry figured, even though he feared big stores bullying customers, once they reached a certain scale, things became more standardized and transparent. That was actually convenient for him.

He wasn't afraid of strict rules—he was afraid of rules that shifted.

So he parked, grabbed his backpack, and walked toward Citibank.

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