The Dish-Ordering Terminator
I have a terrible superpower. It makes every food I want to eat taste absolutely disgusting.
And the more I want to eat it, the more disgusting it gets!
It's a completely passive ability, utterly beyond my control, activating two or three times a day without fail. I can't dodge it, can't suppress it, leaving me constantly flipping off fate and wailing about what kind of worthless power this is—it's just a horrible curse designed to torture people!
It barely leaves a person any way to live.
This ability wasn't something I was born with. I clearly remember that when I was a boy, I ate many delicious things at home—tender steamed fish, sweet mugwort rice cakes, crisp stir-fried winter bamboo shoots, glossy braised pork belly with the fat rendered soft and melting...
But the year I turned sixteen, I suddenly acquired this power.
It started with an accident at a restaurant that took my parents' lives, and from that day forward, every trace of deliciousness vanished from my world.
Without even leaving a shadow behind.
After that, I plunged into a culinary hell of dark cooking, and for nearly ten years I couldn't escape. The moment I had even the slightest craving for something, whether I cooked it myself, went to a restaurant, or ordered delivery—the food that entered my mouth would be, without exception, absolutely repulsive.
Even instant noodles I made myself would taste like poison.
What made it worse was that my power extended to anyone eating at the same table. If someone else ordered their own dish, it was fine—the worst flavor landed only on me. But if I did the ordering, by the end of the meal, everyone's expression would be a masterpiece of suffering.
Although no one knew the exact nature of my ability, those who'd spent enough time around me could sense something was off.
Any dish I ordered, whether it was a century-old establishment's signature classic or the most-hyped item at the latest trendy spot, would be guaranteed to taste dreadful.
Over time, I earned myself a title.
The Dish-Ordering Terminator.
Friends never let me order at group dinners. As for corporate dinners—forget it, I wasn't even allowed to look at a menu.
I'd hoped that dishes ordered by others might escape my curse.
Countless experiments proved otherwise. The outcome always fell into two categories.
One: I didn't like the dish to begin with, and my power didn't need to do anything extra—I simply wouldn't enjoy it.
Two: On the first bite, if I felt even the faintest thought of "not bad" or "pretty tasty," my power would instantly activate, and the second bite would be unswallowable refuse.
The bigger the pleasant surprise on the first bite, the harder the second bite would crash.
Sigh. To experience such dramatic emotional whiplash just from eating a meal—no one else in the world could claim a more painful understanding of life.
That about sums up my curse. Since acquiring it, I've had zero opportunity to enjoy any of the world's culinary wonders. All fantasies of fine dining have been forced to remain just that—fantasies.
To keep myself from falling into eating disorders, I've had to violently suppress any pleasurable thoughts about food, pretending that every meal is merely a necessary, tasteless, colorless energy bar required to stay alive.
At least this makes the awfulness slightly more bearable.
---
Just as I was still miserably struggling through life, a turning point arrived.
A new girl joined our department.
Nothing unusual about that—our department had high turnover, and we hired new people every year. A new female colleague was hardly noteworthy.
What was noteworthy was that the dishes she ordered didn't taste disgusting.
The first time I noticed was at the welcome dinner. Miserable as I was, I'd long since lost interest in any kind of group meal. I showed up only to make an appearance, and sat before an array of beautiful-looking dishes, desperately resisting any inappropriate fantasies about them.
I didn't even look at what I was picking up—just shoved it directly into my mouth.
As usual, disgusting.
But I had to pretend I was enjoying it.
So frustrating.
Just as I was swallowing my complaints along with the food, I froze.
That last bite... it seemed... kind of...
Delicious. A word I thought had gone extinct in my vocabulary had just flickered across my tongue.
I was stunned. My eyes drifted involuntarily toward the dish.
Sticky rice ribs.
A dish I'd loved as a boy.
Probably just the "first bite good, second bite bad" phenomenon, I reassured myself, not wanting false hope to lead to disappointment.
But my disobedient hand had already reached out with my chopsticks for a second piece.
Oh well. There's an infinite supply of terrible food. I'm doomed anyway. I put it in my mouth.
The next second, my eyes went wide.
White sticky rice clung to the braised ribs. Bite into it, and the rich meat juice seeped into the grains—fragrant, chewy, satisfying. The ribs inside were tender and deeply flavored, the meat so soft it practically melted on the tongue, and even the bones were worth sucking on, intensely savory, impossible to stop eating.
It was genuinely, truly delicious.
My heart soared—could my power have faded? Was the good life back? Could I once again swim freely in the ocean of fine dining?
Testing the other dishes shot down that fantasy.
Absolutely vile. I looked like I was about to turn green.
Of everything on the table, only the sticky rice ribs were good.
I was puzzling over this when my chopsticks, still angling for more sticky rice ribs, nearly collided with another pair. Both of us quickly pulled back, and when I looked up, I saw it was the new girl—Lily Tian—smiling at me.
"You like this dish too?"
I remembered now—tonight's dishes hadn't been pre-ordered. Everyone had discussed and chosen them together after arriving.
And this particular sticky rice ribs had been ordered by Lily Tian.
So I smiled back at her.
Meaningfully.
---
Much later, a friend who'd been there that night told me that the way I smiled at Lily then was like a starving wolf spotting meat—my eyes were actually glowing.
Well, he wasn't entirely wrong.
---
I had a bold hypothesis.
And I decided to test it immediately.
The test: invite Lily to dinner and eat whatever she ordered.
Naturally, I couldn't just come out and ask her out after knowing her for only a few days—that would seem suspicious. Too eager, too obvious.
I'd start with cautious observation.
Observing whether she, too, was a person of unusual abilities.
Unfortunately, I wasn't great at covert observation. Several times in the office, I was caught red-handed staring at her.
Our eyes meeting was awkward. She just smiled brightly. I looked away, embarrassed.
Not good. I'd definitely been flagged as a suspicious person.
Just as I was reminding myself to dial it back, a new project came in with a tight deadline. My manager couldn't handle it alone and assigned Lily to work with me.
Now I couldn't keep my distance even if I wanted to—I had to watch her closely every day.
As a newcomer, Lily had plenty of questions, and I seized the opportunity to impress, answering each one with patient thoroughness and offering tips she hadn't even thought to ask.
She was clearly grateful for my enthusiastic guidance.
The friendship blossomed, which meant the next time she caught me staring, I didn't have to awkwardly look away. Instead, we could share a knowing smile.
Good.
Time to test the bold hypothesis.
---
Lily flipped through the menu repeatedly but couldn't seem to decide on anything.
"Take your time," I said calmly, belying my inner turmoil. "Order whatever you want."
Honestly, I was screaming inside.
Lily, I finally managed to get you out for dinner under the excuse of celebrating our project! Order! Please order!
Do you have any idea how painful life became after that one magical plate of sticky rice ribs? Do you understand the agony of harboring hope without knowing if it's real or delusion?
Whether my hypothesis was right or wrong, I desperately needed experimental confirmation.
Even a negative result would let me move on.
After careful deliberation, Lily ordered two dishes, then tried to hand me the menu. "You order some too."
"No need, no need!" I pushed the menu back toward her, terrified that glancing at the dishes would trigger my power. "Just order whatever you like."
Then, for good measure, I added, "I'm really not picky."
True. Everything tasted awful anyway.
Lily made a small "oh" and gave me a slightly weird look. I worried she'd seen through me, but thankfully she went back to the menu and kept ordering.
While we waited, I chatted with her casually, but inside I was a knot of anticipation and anxiety—just like the time I slipped a love letter to the girl in the next class in middle school.
The food arrived quickly. Lily had ordered modestly—sweet and sour ribs, okra with shrimp, radish beef brisket, and salted fish luffa soup. Four dishes, colorful and aromatic.
A flavor I hadn't encountered in years.
I couldn't help swallowing hard, but kept up my act, pushing the dishes toward her. "You must be hungry. Go ahead."
---
I can describe this meal in one word.
Heavenly.
Every single dish was genuinely delicious. The sweet and sour ribs were fried to a golden crisp, the tangy sweetness seeping into the bones with just the right hint of acid. The okra was refreshing, the shrimp bouncy—they were a perfect match. The beef brisket was stewed until fork-tender, the meat meltingly soft, while the radish beneath had soaked up all the rich broth.
And the salted fish luffa soup was so savory I wanted to swallow my own tongue.
I was so happy I could have cried.
Across from me, Lily didn't eat much—just a few bites of each dish before setting down her chopsticks, dainty as you please. So most of the food ended up in my stomach. She watched me ladle thirds over my rice, muffling a laugh. "You really enjoy eating."
"It's because it's really delicious," I admitted honestly, overflowing with gratitude. "Especially the way you ordered."
"Really?" Lily covered her mouth, laughing—partly to hide her embarrassment at being complimented, but with a hint of pride in her eyes. "Other friends have told me I'm good at ordering, too."
"Really," I said firmly.
This meal confirmed my hypothesis.
The girl sitting across from me had the exact opposite power from mine.
Every dish she ordered was phenomenally delicious.
---
But a single experiment wasn't enough to set my mind at ease. I found more opportunities to replicate the results.
Sometimes it was late-night noodles with colleagues after overtime; sometimes I claimed I was too busy to go to the cafeteria and asked Lily to bring me lunch; other times I leveraged my mentoring services to guilt her into feeding me.
In short: I had to eat whatever Lily chose.
After several rounds of testing, I gathered new data.
Lily's power was indeed the inverse of mine, and the two could interfere with and cancel each other out.
When my anticipation for a particular dish spiked too high, the "make it disgusting" effect could overpower the "make it delicious" effect, making the dish merely okay rather than amazing.
But with Lily's ordering ability as a baseline, nothing ever dropped below "actually pretty good."