Monday.
As usual, Master Qingyu had gotten up early, washed up, and headed into the kitchen to begin his busy, fulfilling day.
Back when it was just him, Eevee, and Riolu, three meals a day had been easy enough to throw together. As the Gym grew more popular, however, the number of Pokémon living there had increased significantly.
In the kitchen, Qingyu quickly shaped rice balls with both hands, softly humming a lilting tune from his previous life.
Making breakfast for this whole big family took considerably longer than it used to.
Still, for Qingyu, it was a labor of love.
He had always been fairly interested in cooking. At first, he had even tried making home-style dishes that both humans and Pokémon could eat.
Unfortunately, he had absolutely no talent for it. The mere appearance of his cooking could send even a glutton like Miraidon fleeing in terror.
In a sense, that made him a badass who could single-handedly scare off a Legendary Pokémon...
Cooking should have been an objective skill, in theory.
Yet even when he followed every step of a recipe to the letter, the results somehow looked outrageous. He could only blame the Pokémon world for all of it.
People's constitutions couldn't all be judged by the same standard. If some people had special constitutions that let them talk to Pokémon, naturally, others could have constitutions suited to cooking.
He must simply have been unlucky enough to roll a terrible-cook debuff.
Exactly. This world, where belief shaped reality, had to be interfering with his performance. There was absolutely nothing wrong with him!
After a long period of trial, error, and struggle, Qingyu had gradually come to understand the limits of his skills-
Anything requiring even a little technique had a high chance of ending in disaster.