[Short Story] The Devourers

Tetsuo Hirata was poking at some dried-out meat with his chopsticks at "Yakiniku Taisho," an all-you-can-eat barbecue chain.
For the past few days, he had been training at this restaurant every day in preparation for the "Original Gluttony Champion!" festival, a competitive eating event taking place in a week. This restaurant, where one can eat large quantities of rich food for a relatively low price, is a hidden sanctuary for competitive eaters. However, Hirata was bored.

He rescued the dried-out meat from the grill and dropped it into a small dish of salt sauce. He then thought about what to grill next, but he just couldn't get into it. The feeling of "boredom" was getting in the way of his training.
Should he go get some sushi, or perhaps reset his palate and mood with some refreshing ice cream—such escape routes kept crossing his mind. Staring at the meat soaking in the sauce in his small dish, Hirata muttered to himself.
"You've got it easy..."

However, as if to shake off such weakness, he quickly popped the short ribs resting in his small dish into his mouth and stood up. He headed toward the salad bar, but stopped midway and shook his head.
"That's not right, Tetsuo. You are the post-apocalyptic overlord of stomachs."
Telling himself this, he turned toward the next section. There, various types of meat were lined up, standing in his way as if to say, "I am your opponent." Hirata looked them over and grinned. Then, when he stopped in front of the rich, heavy seasoned kalbi, he felt as if the other meats were whispering, "Oh, as expected of a challenger."

After piling the kalbi onto a plate and returning to his seat, Hirata took his smartphone out of his jacket's inner pocket and set it next to the grill. He launched a video app and played "Original Gluttony Champion! Hellish Yakiniku Edition." On the screen, Adrenaline Shibata, a regular at the tournament, was taking on 10kg of ultimate bone-in kalbi.

Watching Shibata devour the bone-in kalbi on screen, he didn't want to lose, so he peeled the kalbi from his pile one by one and lined them up on the grill. He looked at the kalbi with a sharp gaze, as if to say, "Bring it on." All the while, the commentary echoing from his smartphone swelled in his head, and he even felt the illusion that he was inside the program himself.

However, the moment he moved the first piece of kalbi to his small dish, took a breath, and gripped his chopsticks again, a "hic" of air escaped him.
"It's okay, I'm just bored. I can't swallow because I'm bored," he told himself, but sweat was erupting from Hirata's forehead.
As he put down his chopsticks and stared at the meat covered in oil in his small dish, Hirata was suddenly pulled back to a distant memory.

---

When he was a child, he once took on a massive 5,000-piece puzzle. At first, he was obsessed and carefully fit each piece in one by one. However, that enthusiasm didn't last long, and when it was about half finished, his interest shifted to the Famicom game his younger brother was playing, and the puzzle had been left untouched ever since. In the end, it was never completed.

"I wasn't bored. The truth is, I couldn't assemble it."
It was long after that he realized this. Club activities, his thesis, his self-produced films—he had thrown them all away halfway through.

---

Returning from his reminiscence, Hirata gulped down a piece of kalbi with a loud sound.
And then—.

He placed a total of 8,000 yen on the table, which included the standard 3,000 yen fee plus a 5,000 yen penalty.

As he left the restaurant, Hirata's smartphone was glowing in his hand. On the screen, it displayed, "I am withdrawing from the program appearance." Staring at those characters, he let out a small breath and started walking. Along with the smoke leaking from the yakiniku restaurant, his back quietly disappeared into the night road.