Chapter 782

In the end, Bruce still couldn't muster the courage to use the kitchen utensils here. It wasn't that he was timid, because he had just seen someone leaning against the side taking drugs and even putting a handful of plant roots into the pot.

He didn't require the dishes to be completely clean and hygienic, but at least they couldn't be poisonous, right?

Coming downstairs, Bruce decided to survey the terrain here first. At this time, it was approaching dusk, and there were still quite a lot of people on the street, so it was noisy. Bruce felt that he was out of place here, and everyone looked at him with a strange gaze.

Bruce knew that not many people knew him. Bruce was more famous in the upper circles because those people could afford entertainment magazines and often saw him coming out of bars.

However, people here basically could only afford ordinary newspapers, and there were rarely gossip news on them. And if they didn't read magazines, they shouldn't know what Bruce looked like.

Bruce looked down at his clothes. He wasn't that stupid to wear brand-name clothes here. Everything he wore had no brand, and it was no different from what Cat Getan citizens walking on the street usually wore.

Bruce thought the problem might be with his shoes. He had just rushed over from the shareholders' meeting and didn't have time to change his leather shoes. He also forgot to take off his watch, which might be a bit out of place here.

The watch was easy to handle; just take it off and put it in his pocket. But if he took off his leather shoes, where would he find shoes to wear?

Bruce observed the surroundings and found that many people wore boots. This was indeed a good choice. After all, Cat Getan had rain all year round, and having a pair of sturdy rubber boots could avoid getting his feet wet.

Bruce was lucky. He found a boot shop at the street corner. When Bruce went there, there was no one there. He poked his upper body into the somewhat blocked shop and asked, "How much are rain boots?"

The shop owner who was calculating accounts looked up at him and said, "5 dollars, add 2 more dollars, and I'll give you an umbrella..."

Bruce raised an eyebrow, not because he thought it was expensive, but because he thought it was too cheap. He reached out, took a pair of boots from the cabinet beside him, looked at them, and found that the material was very thick and the joints were well made. So he said, "Give me a pair of boots, and add an umbrella."

The shop owner said, "Put down the pair in your hand, that's a display item. Wait a moment."

Saying that, he walked into the room inside, took out a pair of boots and an umbrella, and handed them to Bruce. Bruce didn't take them immediately, but sized them up. After receiving them, he checked them carefully, and then handed the money to the shop owner.

On the way back, Bruce found a small hot dog shop on the side of the road, and he spent another two dollars to buy a hot dog.

Back in the rental house, Bruce immediately changed his shoes, hid his watch, and then opened the hot dog packaging and took a bite.

The next second, he frowned hard. The bread and sausage of this hot dog were not bad, but there was too much sauce. In an instant, those sauces rushed directly into his throat, making him almost vomit.

Besides the rich mayonnaise, there was spicy chili sauce. The hot dog contained several slices of pickled cucumber and chili rings. Almost none of the bread's fragrance and the meat's flavor remained. The whole mouth was left with only the taste of sauce.

Bruce endured the discomfort, ate the hot dog, and then ran to the faucet to drink two mouthfuls of tap water.

Finally, he suppressed the strange spice flavor. Bruce coughed hard twice, shook his hands, and leaned on the edge of the sink. He thought, maybe he was too delicate. In the slums, putting a lot of sauce should be considered an advantage, right?

But soon, he found that he was too young, because less than 20 minutes later, his stomach started to hurt.

Before, he was choked by the full mouth of sauce and hurriedly went to the tap water pipe to drink water, but he forgot that this wasn't his manor and didn't have that set of expensive water purification systems. This was Cat Getan's slums. Mendeleev didn't even know what was in the tap water.

The stomach and intestines that were used to light food couldn't adapt to that big pile of chili sauce and chili rings, combined with the tap water that was like a periodic table of chemical elements. Bruce squatted in the toilet for a whole night until the second half of the night when he felt a little better. He lay on the bed and fell asleep.

When he opened his eyes again, it was approaching noon. Bruce wanted to get up early to find a job, but now he was facing another problem, which was, what about lunch?

That dinner yesterday didn't replenish any energy for him, but instead made him a bit dehydrated. Now he was thirsty and hungry, and didn't dare to eat or drink anything, fearing that bacterial problems would lead to gastroenteritis again.

Now he understood what Maggie meant. People who didn't grow up here really couldn't survive because besides having a firm will, a flexible brain, and strong patience, you also had to have an iron stomach.

Enduring the weakness, Bruce felt that he still had to cook for himself. He decided to buy some vegetables, but didn't know where to buy them. But fortunately, in the process of going downstairs, he met the Asian woman who was stir-frying again.

This woman lived on the third floor. She told Bruce that he could go to a main street nearby, where there was a vegetable supermarket. If he wanted to buy meat, he had to run further to the slaughterhouse nearby.

Arriving at the place the woman pointed to, Bruce found that the prices here were really cheap, and the boots, umbrella, and hot dog he bought before might have all been ripped off.

For less than a dollar, he could buy vegetables that would make him eat his fill. Although the vegetables here were not fresh and some even looked like leftovers eliminated by those high-end restaurants, they could at least be eaten.

Bruce felt that he still had to buy a pot because no one knew what had been cooked in that public kitchen pot.

Bruce asked the vegetable vendor where he could buy a pot. The black vendor thought for a while, scratched his head, and said, "Why don't you go to the grocery market nearby and take a look?"

Not far from the vegetable supermarket, there was a grocery market where everything was sold—hardware parts, daily necessities, second-hand old goods, pots, bowls, ladles, basins...

Bruce did see pots for sale, but the problem was that the pots here were second-hand, and looking at their origin, they weren't right, or rather, most of the things here weren't right.

Bruce saw the logo of a restaurant he was familiar with, and the reason why that set of bowls and dishes appeared here definitely wasn't because the restaurant was kind enough to donate them.

Walking on the road of the grocery market, Bruce felt like he had come to a large-scale stolen goods sales site. He thought, no wonder Selina lived here, no wonder every time he didn't catch Selina on the spot, the stolen goods would disappear in one night.

But there was no way, he had no choice at all. He knew that there couldn't be that kind of organic supermarket in the slums. Bruce shopped for a long time and finally picked a frying pan, and he also tried bargaining for the first time, and then he found that he had really been ripped off before.

This ordinary frying pan asked for 3 dollars, and finally bargained down to 60 cents. Finally, Bruce left the grocery market carrying an iron pot and many vegetables. His back on the road was heavier than Batman's.

Afterward, he went to the slaughterhouse to buy some beef mince that was still considered fresh. Returning to the residence, Bruce didn't dare to wash the vegetables with tap water, and didn't even dare to wash the pot with it. He could only fill the pot with water, put it on the stove, boil it, pour the water out, then carefully wipe it, and then boil a pot of water to let it cool, using it to wash the vegetables.

By the time the vegetables were processed, it was long past lunch time. Bruce, who was used to eating on time, felt his stomach ache.

After starting to fry the beef patties, Bruce felt even more uncomfortable. He didn't know how this kitchen was designed. No matter which direction Bruce stood in, he was downwind. There was no range hood, and the oil smoke from frying meat rushed directly into his face, choking him so he couldn't open his eyes.

The stove used a gas tank, but the knob was in disrepair, and the fire couldn't be controlled at all. A handful of spinach leaves were sprinkled down, and they weren't cooked after half an hour. Potato slices were thrown in, and they burned the pot in two minutes.

Bruce wasn't very good at cooking in the first place. Being able to get the food cooked could be considered his innate talent. He really couldn't grasp this kind of heat that was closer to metaphysics.

When eating, these vegetables that weren't cooked well made it even harder for him to swallow. He ate this meal for more than an hour. The sunset had already set, and he finally finished lunch. When washing the pot and dishes, he was stung by the sunset's afterglow so he couldn't open his eyes.

Before this, he had never thought that he was such a delicate person. He felt that his willpower was very strong. He could run out for a kilometer after being shot twice and was willing to step onto the battlefield after experiencing countless pains.

Such a great hero had never thought that he would be defeated by trivial matters in the world.

He didn't think that he would want to shed tears because of the wounds left by vicious criminals, but instead was choked to tears by the fireworks of the world hidden in the sunset light.

This bat fell to the very bottom of the cliff and realized that there was no grand battle to fight here. The biggest enemy he had to face was the small, trivial, but omnipresent dissatisfaction, a situation that wasn't difficult but couldn't be saved if he took a wrong step.

After finishing the meal, Bruce sat on the small balcony of the living room, listening to the drunkard's scolding upstairs, the couple's quarrel downstairs, smelling the stench brought by the garbage truck on the street, feeling the churning of gastric juice, and quietly watched a sunset here.

At this moment, he suddenly felt enlightened. This was an effect that no psychological treatment could achieve.

Because here, the death of parents might be very sad, but they didn't have much time to be sad because they had to go to work, pay rent, buy vegetables, cook, go to the market, eat, sleep, and take out the trash.

Sadness, grievances, entanglement, and nostalgia are best completed in a few days. If it were like Batman, who would be entangled for ten years as soon as he was entangled, they might have starved to death.

Only the bat hanging high in the attic has time to imagine himself as an avenger in the dark. People standing on the ground only want to think about what to eat tomorrow.