Joko looked at his phone screen.
“It’s already five in the morning.”
Joko looked around his new room. Everything looked very modern, with a private bathroom and a water heater. It had air conditioning, a widescreen TV, all the basic furnishings for a boarding house, and even a refrigerator.
There was a wardrobe, a bed with a frame, and, of course, Joko also had a kitchen.
Though it was tiny compared to the communal kitchen outside.
But Joko felt like he wouldn’t be cooking at home anytime soon.
He had already been battling the kitchen since morning. There was no way he wanted to cook again.
“System, are you sure they won’t come today?”
(Host, relax. They won’t ever come again.)
“Hmm.” Joko went back to bed.
(Host, you should be getting up now and heading to the store.)
“I only finished marinating the chicken at the store and cleaning up before moving into the boarding house at ten last night. It’s only five now. I’m supposed to wake up at seven, right? We open at nine in the morning and stay open until night.”
Joko ignored the system.
(Since when do we open at nine in the morning?)
“Since now.”
Joko went back to sleep.
Meanwhile, the Cooking System watched as Joko fell completely asleep.
It checked on the thugs from the previous night.
Its vision shifted from Joko’s boarding-house room to their hideout.
(It seems they really are dead.)
The system saw several of them lying dead with their eyes wide open. Foam was even coming from their mouths.
No one would suspect that they had been poisoned by the concoction it had prepared. People would assume they had overdosed on the bootleg liquor they had mixed themselves.
“Hey, why is the door of that empty house open?”
A few men returning from dawn prayer noticed that the door of the house that had once stood empty was suddenly open.
“Did you see that?”
“Hey, isn’t that the place belonging to the thugs who hurt the satay seller whose stall is in Blok M?”
“Wow, that’s terrifying.”
“Are you going to look?”
“Come on, come on!”
The two men looked into the seemingly neglected house and were stunned to see several men they had just been talking about lying there lifeless.
“There—they’re there.”
“Call an ambulance! Call the police!”
They quickly took out their phones and called for an ambulance and the police to come immediately.
Their commotion prompted the neighbors on both sides to open their doors.
By 5:00 a.m., the area already felt like a makeshift marketplace because of the discovery of the dead thugs.
Joko Fried Chicken Blok M 12:39 p.m.
“Hey, man, have you been open here long?” one of the men asked Joko, who was busy carrying out their order.
“I just opened yesterday, sir,” Joko replied.
“You’re incredibly lucky to have opened today.”
“Why am I lucky, sir?”
“Because the thugs who used to hang around here are dead.”
“Huh? Dead? You mean the thug with the dragon tattoo on his arm, sir?”
“How do you know?”
The man took the order Joko handed him.
“They came here yesterday and demanded protection money.”
“And you paid them, right?”
“Yes, sir. They took everything I made that day.”
“Oh my God. But you’re okay, right?”
“Yes, yes, sir. I’m fine.”
“Thank goodness. At least you survived. Did you know your stall used to belong to a satay seller who stood up to them? They split his head open, and he died instantly.”
“Astaghfirullah, may he rest in peace. Why weren’t they arrested, sir? I feel sorry for the man who sold satay. He was only trying to support his family, and it ended like that.”
Joko was truly grateful that he hadn’t tried to fight back. If he had, his fate probably wouldn’t have been much different.
“They have connections. None of the authorities around here dare go against them. That’s why you can see for yourself, right? You’re the only one selling here. Everyone else has already moved away.”
“Oh, I see. Thank you for the information, sir.”
Joko excused himself and quickly went to serve another customer who had just arrived.
(System, was all of this your doing?)
The system didn’t answer Joko’s question.
Joko didn’t need to hear the system’s answer.
The system he had thought was harmless turned out to be anything but. It wasn’t at all like he had imagined. He would have to be more careful from now on.