Chapter 8: Apprentice

A brilliant smile played on Ari’s lips as he left the kitchen with the thought of tasting his grandma’s cooking again. Just thinking about it made his stomach grumble and his mouth salivate.

If his memory served him right, his grandmother was a wonderful cook. So he knew that anything that she made would taste delicious, or at least he hoped that was the case. Because sometimes recollections of the past aren’t always accurate. 

Brains were funny like that. They like to put a rose-colored tint over things, changing a person’s perception of how things actually were. Which made people think that the subpar moments in their life were something special.   

So the scrumptious food that he recalled his granny making could just be an exaggeration. However, even if that was the case, as a person who never pictured themselves ever tasting their grandma’s cooking again, he didn’t mind if her cooking tasted like dirt-covered ass. If anything, he is just grateful to have a home-cooked meal again.   

After his mom and grandparents died, he never had a home-cooked meal again. Don’t get him wrong, he tried cooking for himself, but the one time he did, the stove blew a fuse and almost exploded.

And if that weren’t bad enough, the landlord blamed him for it and told him if he wanted it to be fixed; he needed to pay him an extra 1,900 with his rent. There was no way Ari would pay for that, so the rice cooker and microwave became his go-to when he was preparing meals. 

There is only so much a person can do using those appliances, especially if you’re trying to eat a healthy meal. Sighing, Ari shook his head just thinking about all the gross concoctions he came up with, and forced himself to eat because he didn’t want to waste food. 

In fact, gross was an understatement. Dreadful was the more accurate word. It was downright vomit-inducing. No sane person on earth would want to experience the flavors he created.

‘If there is one thing I need to do, besides stopping my family deaths, it’s learning how to cook,’ Ari thought, as he sat down on his grandma’s ugly green and yellow couch. 

In the other timeline, the one where his family died, he was overwhelmingly under-prepared for life. So much so that he had to take a virtual class catered to adult life to figure out most things. Luckily, that class was free, but sadly, the cooking class he wanted to take wasn’t. 

In this timeline, he will learn how to do so. However, before he does anything, he needed to find himself a job. He already knew that would be an arduous task because workers needed to be 18 years old to get employed. 

Ari always thought that this rule made little sense because of the Virtual Learning System that was put into place in 2085. Because of that system, children were required to start classes at age 3caused students to graduate when they were 15 or 16 years old. 

But because of his knowledge of the future, Ari couldn’t afford to wait a year to find one. He needed one now. However, it was this knowledge that allowed him to know about jobs he could get.

In his previous life, he had a co-worker at the black company where he worked that was his gathering partner. Ari listened to him every day as he complained about how he should have taken an apprenticeship instead of rushing to play Oasis Online. 

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From what the co-worker told him, an apprenticeship was a job that people used so they could work legally, even though they weren’t of age. It wasn’t like the olden days when the workers taught the apprentices their skills, instead; it was more like being a secretary.   

Which wasn’t bad since the pay was good, and if the apprentice was lucky, they would get a JB Injection that taught the apprentice everything they needed to know instantly. 

Knowing that getting one of those apprentice jobs would help him a lot, Ari turned on his phone and searched for job listings. However, just as he was about to click on a link, his phone rang.   

Confused about who was calling him, he checked the caller’s name, only to be surprised to see that it was his cousin. He was taken aback because the last time he talked to her was a year after his grandparents died.

They had always been really close to each other, especially since she lived in America. Ever since their first meeting at five, he felt a close connection to her. She was his best friend and little sister, all wrapped up in one. 

Even though she lived ten miles away, she would always come over every other weekend to hang out. Ari always felt grateful to her. She was one of the few people who never thought less of him because of his illness, not like his other cousins.

But when his dad died, he allowed his emo side to emerge, which caused them to drift apart. It wasn’t her fault. She tried multiple times to talk to him, but he just didn’t want to hear it. Thankfully, when he finally got his head out of his ass, she was there waiting with open arms.

Yet, it was only a few years later, when his grandparents died, that their friendship ended. After his grandparents died, he was left with nothing, so she offered him a place to stay with her and even help him find a job. 

Although what she was offering was what he needed, he couldn’t see it that way. He was too stuck in his own head for that to be possible. So the insecure turd that he was, he thought she was looking down on him. 

There was a huge argument with both sides saying things they didn’t mean until, on the spur of the moment, he blocked her and deleted her number. He always regretted that and wished he handled things differently. 

Luckily, he had a chance to do exactly that.  

Pressing connect, Ari put the phone to his ear and answered, “Hey Ji-Hye.” 

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