My Restaurant's Guests are All Abnormal

Chapter 62: Chapter Sixty-Two: Nightmare and Water

That night, Chen Ze had a nightmare, repressed, very repressed, and he felt like Luffy who had fallen into the sea without any power to resist, slowly sinking down.

Chen Ze could even feel the pain and suffocation of seawater pouring into his lungs, which was unscientific because he had never been to the sea.

But in the dream, Chen Ze could even smell the sea, an unpleasant yet distinctly memorable scent that he thought he would recognize with just one whiff.

When Chen Ze woke up again, the sky was already bright, and the alarm he had set before pulled him out of the nightmare.

"What’s going on..." Chen Ze rubbed his chest, still feeling the illusion of suffocation, almost as if there was still seawater in his lungs.

"Could it be because I revisited Jaws yesterday?" Chen Ze pondered for a long time and felt that was the only possibility.

After getting up, dressing, and washing up, Chen Ze prepared to go to class. Going to class five days a week, continuously for a whole semester, gave him the illusion of being back in his student days.

Chen Ze opened the door and stepped out, and on a whim, looked towards the main entrance of the dining room, where he noticed what seemed like traces of water. freewebnovёl.ƈom

Frowning, Chen Ze walked over; there were indeed some water stains at the entrance, though not much, resembling the mark left by someone’s umbrella resting there for a while.

Chen Ze touched the doorknob, which also had water stains on it, and it was somewhat sticky.

"Damn, what the hell is this?" Chen Ze took out a tissue to wipe his hand and the doorknob, and he had never seen anything like this before.

Could it be that someone came to look for him last night while he was asleep? And even tried to open the door?

Chen Ze was puzzled but didn’t pay too much attention to it; he would check the surveillance later. For now, getting to class was the priority.

Still, he felt like he had just smelled a somewhat familiar scent but couldn’t remember where he had smelled it before.

When Chen Ze got home after class, it was already 6 p.m., and he noticed there were no more water stains in front of the door.

"Let’s see, which bastard did something to my restaurant last night." Chen Ze turned on his computer, pulled up last night’s surveillance footage, and started playing it at 64x speed.

He saw himself closing the door, the restaurant lights going out, and a few stray dogs running out of the camera’s view, but he did not see any people.

Chen Ze scratched his head, hit pause, and reduced the speed to 16x. He thought he had just seen water stains appear on the ground that weren’t there before.

After switching back to normal speed, he finally saw the water stain, larger than the one he had seen in the morning, appearing abruptly in front of the door of his restaurant.

Chen Ze watched all this in silence, feeling that things were now taking on a paranormal trajectory.

Chen Ze squinted his eyes and rewound the footage a bit, to the second before the water stain appeared, and then checked the time on the surveillance.

3:33:32 a.m.

Chen Ze leaned in to look closer and continued the playback, only to see that at the moment the water stain appeared, the door handle of the restaurant moved.

Yes, at the empty entrance of the restaurant, the door handle moved, as if someone was holding it, ready to open the door.

"Hiss..." Chen Ze gasped sharply, feeling like he was watching a horror movie, and to make matters worse, it seemed he was the male lead in it.

Chen Ze frowned, lost in deep thought. Throwing that video onto the internet might rack up a few hundred thousand views, but Chen Ze had no intention of doing that.

He even took the initiative to delete yesterday’s video. This was something that could not be disclosed. If someone got curious and came to investigate, Chen Ze would not be able to keep his restaurant’s secrets.

After hesitating for a while, Chen Ze went down to the first floor and turned on the restaurant’s lights.

The bright lights instantly illuminated the entire room, but Chen Ze felt goosebumps.

He now felt as if an uninvited guest had already entered the restaurant, invisibly watching him.

Chen Ze could chat with a Succubus and stay calm in front of a Dragon. He acted normally in front of Gu Aotian, but he was still very afraid of Ghosts.

With a stiff expression, Chen Ze walked to the door, pushed it open, then returned to the kitchen. He urgently needed to distract himself.

"Preparing spicy chicken today," Chen Ze said, rolling up his sleeves and taking a chicken out of the fridge. He felt nostalgic for his college days.

Touching the Arcane Wisdom Stone, Chen Ze certainly didn’t want someone coming in later and not being able to understand what they said.

"Chicken... potatoes... chili peppers..." Chen Ze prepared his ingredients one by one.

Chen Ze never really cared for spicy chicken, even disliked it, but after tasting the spicy chicken rice from a small college canteen, he fell deeply in love with the flavor.

Chen Ze took out his phone to check the recipe. Baidu only had the usual methods for preparing spicy chicken, but none of these matched his favorite flavor. frёeweɓηovel.coɱ

"Forget it, knowing the general process is enough. The key is seasoning and the way the chicken is prepared," Chen Ze shook his head. He went to the university canteen several times a week, but back then he never asked how things were made. So he wasn’t sure if he could recreate the taste in his memory.

Chen Ze only remembered that the chicken was very tender, different from the ordinary spicy chicken. The one at the small university canteen was savory, not too spicy, with bean paste sauce inside.

The cuts of meat were just the right size, some with skin attached, and with each bite, one could taste the flavor of the bean paste sauce.

Chen Ze tried to make his own version of spicy chicken following the recipe he found and his own memories.

[You have made a terrible spicy chicken, and your experience in making homemade dishes has increased by 1 point.]

Chen Ze looked at the oddly colored spicy chicken in front of him, lacking the courage to pick up his chopsticks and take a bite, so he ended up tossing it into the swill bucket.

"Could it be that I added too much bean paste?" Chen Ze touched his chin, pondering about his cooking process.

"Manager, good evening!" Before Chen Ze could figure it out, Betty’s boisterous voice resonated inside the restaurant.

This also made Chen Ze breathe a sigh of relief. He really feared that no customers would come in today. After all, he planned to wait until 4 AM.

Regardless, he had to see that mysterious presence today. Otherwise, Chen Ze would truly lose the courage to continue running the restaurant.

Because this morning, while wringing out the mop, he suddenly remembered—the water stains and the smell of seawater in his dream were exactly the same.