"Crazy bastard, your ass will be on fire...!"
"I don't care! She broke my heart! She can have my ass too...!"
Near a tiny street food mart that looked like it hadn't seen a health inspector since the last millennium, two boys sat at a table loaded with a gastronomic explosion of spicy chaos.
One of them was eating like a vacuum cleaner on overdrive, as if he'd been marooned on a desert island with nothing but his hunger for company.
The other young man sat opposite, watching his friend's culinary self-destruction with a mixture of pity and disbelief.
The table was a battlefield of street foods so lethal they could double as military-grade firecrackers.
Flaming hot bacon sizzled like it had been stolen straight from a dragon's pantry, while Carolina Reaper noodles coiled ominously in their bowl.
On another plate, burritos stuffed with sriracha-laden meat loomed beside two ominous chunks of ghost pepper, glaring up at them like tiny demonic skulls whispering, "Abandon hope, all ye who eat here."
To wash down this molten inferno, a towering glass of pepper smoothie sat like a liquid dare, challenging anyone foolish enough to take a sip.
And not to mention, the food mart's hygiene was about as trustworthy as a three-dollar bill left in a public toilet.
So why was Kai, inhaling food like there was no tomorrow?
Well, his girlfriend of two months had betrayed him.
She got his friends killed and put a county-wide manhunt on him from the Dragon's henchmen.
Kai hoped to drown his sorrow in a lava flow of spicy food, hoping the fiery inferno on his tongue could extinguish the raging firestorm in his chest.
His friend watched helplessly as Kai attacked a burrito filled with ghost pepper like it was the source of all his woes.
Seeing Kai bite off a chunk of the burrito, then suckling on its contents before crunching down and devouring the pepper chunk, his friend could only ask with sadness.
"Kai...did you really see them together?"
Kai nodded while shovelling another burrito into his mouth without pausing to taste it.
It was spicy, it was hot, but not nearly hot enough to burn away the betrayal he felt.
He wished for more peppers in this meal, wishing they could scorch his memories into oblivion.
However, the heat was no match for the pain gnawing at his heart; it was not working.
He had trusted her with his life, but she did him dirty. He was ready to give up his life for her.
Even if they had only been together for two months, he felt like she was his soulmate.
"Those two fuckers... I saw them talking near the bridge... nom nom... How else would he know her? I know she sold me off... slurp..."
Kai mumbled through a mouthful of half-chewed pepper, grease, and rice, spraying bits of his food back onto his plate like a spicy confetti cannon.
"Man, you gotta stop eating like this."
Ken said, watching Kai with a mix of horror and concern.
"Your health is already on a first-name basis with the Grim Reaper. Eating this much is gonna kill you before the hot food does."
Ken reached out and tried to wrest the burrito from Kai's chubby hands.
"Hey! Don't you fuckin' dare!"
Ken was taken aback by Kai's choice of words but replied calmly, knowing his friend needed consolation, not confrontation.
"I'll pay for you. I'll even get you the chili dog with a ghost pepper, so please, man, stop."
Ken's hopes, however, were about as effective as a paper umbrella in a hurricane.
Kai snatched his burrito back and crammed the rest of it into his mouth, barely chewing before washing it down with his pepper-infused smoothie.
In a final attempt to redirect his friend's misery, Ken decided to make Kai question the truth of what he had seen.
"Dude, you said they they were talking, right? What if Takeshi was inquiring about you but your girlfriend tried to mislead him."
Ken's words seemed to work as Kai suddenly stopped eating midway.
A large burger hung limply in the air as he paused and froze, staring at Kai while processing his words.
Grease and sauces dripped down his fingers, his double chin, and his plump lips.
"You may...gulp~ rwrite...Maibe I shaw it from the brong angle?"
Kai mumbled, and Ken sighed in relief before handing his friend a bunch of napkins to clean off the sauce.
However, before Ken's hopes could fully take root, Kai banged on the table and stood up abruptly.
"Come on, I bant to hear it brom her moudh!"
"Wha...?"
Ken questioned, not understanding Kai's garbled words.
His voice was muffled by the layers of sauce and his own fat rolls hanging around his double chins and under his jawline.
Kai suddenly reached out and grabbed Ken's shirt, transforming his expensive designer wear into a Jackson Pollock painting of red hot sauce.
Ken didn't need to look down to know his shirt had gone from runway to ruin.
He simply closed his eyes and took a deep breath, bidding a silent farewell to the shirt he had paid nearly eight hundred bucks to import.
"I want to confront her... come on, buddy!"
Kai demanded, dragging a protesting Ken behind him like a human tow truck, using sheer stubbornness and spice-fueled strength.
"I'm telling you, man, at least go to the toilet. Take a dump and wash yourself. You've eaten too much spice, and by the time we get to her place, you'll be shitting your pants!"
Ken pleaded, his voice a mix of desperation and resignation. But Kai paid no heed to his friend's voice of reason.
Ken only closed his eyes, bracing himself for the inevitable showdown.
...
A few minutes later, Ken was pinching his nose, desperately trying to block out all the air in the world from assaulting his sense of smell.
He found himself perched precariously on the back of a bicycle, praying to every deity he could think of to teleport them to the girl's house immediately.
Why? Because the man pedaling the bicycle was none other than Kai, exerting all his power on Ken's brand-new $2000 bike.
That wasn't even the real horror.
The true nightmare began every time Kai pedaled, his massive backside creeping closer and closer to Ken's face like some slow-motion asteroid of doom.
Kai's pants were traitors to humanity, sagging so low they exposed a catastrophic amount of butt crack with every bounce. It was like watching the Grand Canyon wiggle around in front of his eyes.
Ken clung to the bike seat for dear life, his soul crying out for mercy. His face was at perfect eye level with that cursed valley, and no amount of blinking could erase the memory.
But the universe wasn't done punishing him yet.
All that spicy food Kai had inhaled earlier? It was staging a violent rebellion in his intestines.
With each pedal, Kai let out a new wave of invisible death gas, and Ken felt his spirit leaving his body.
He squeezed his eyes shut, lips quivering, muttering prayers to every god he could think of.
"Please… just strike me down. Smite me right here. End it…"
Then it happened.
"Frttt~"
It wasn't just a fart. It was the fart. The unholy trumpet of doom straight from the depths of Kai's tortured soul.
A noise so wet and haunting it sounded like it came straight from the ninth circle of hell.
A rancid wind burst out, rolling over Ken's face like a toxic tsunami.
Ken felt his spirit leave his body.
His dinner staged an uprising in his throat, and he gagged, desperately trying not to baptize the road with his stomach contents.
In that moment, Ken knew he would never be the same again.
Ken wished, no, regretted with every cell in his body, that he'd ever answered Kai's phone call.
He could've ignored it. Could've muted it.
Could've thrown his phone into a blender and gone on with his day like a normal, functioning adult.
But no. He had to pick up. He had to be that good friend.
He had to listen to Kai cry about how his "girlfriend" of TWO FUCKING MONTHS had betrayed him, sold him out, and somehow caused the apocalypse in his personal life.
Now, instead of relaxing in his warm, bubbling Jacuzzi with a cold drink in one hand and scrolling through his contacts for which hot chick to booty-call next…
He was stuck on the back of Mount Doom: Bicycle Edition, riding behind a sweaty meatball of a man whose ass crack had become his new horizon.
And just as Ken dared to dream of survival—
"Frtttt~ prrrr~"
Another gust of hell's fury blew straight into his soul.
"Sorry about that. Hope it's not smelly. He he he... frttt~ prrrrrrr~"
Kai giggled like a toddler who discovered their butt could play jazz.
Ken didn't scream. Screaming meant opening his mouth. Death lay that way.
Instead, he gritted his teeth and croaked out,
"Nwo froblam, brend. Id's berbectly breadhable here, bro."
Kai actually giggled, like this was all some fun little bonding moment instead of chemical warfare.
Ken's eyes watered. His ancestors cried. His lungs, champions of underwater breath-holding contests, were starting to wave the white flag.
Every minute stretched into years. He felt like he was being slowly marinated in spicy butt vapor.
Finally, mercifully, after thirty agonizing minutes that felt like a full season of spiritual torment, Kai leaned forward and applied the brakes.
The sudden stop nearly sent Ken flying, face first, straight into Kai's apocalyptic ass crack, a forbidden zone rumored to be more dangerous than Chernobyl.
The cheeks of death were right there. Inches away. One wrong move and Ken's life would flash before his eyes—accompanied by the haunting soundtrack of "Frttt~ prrrr~" in Dolby Surround.
But Kai was completely oblivious.
He didn't even glance back. Didn't kick the bike stand open.
Nope. He just hopped off the bike like a Disney princess getting off a magic carpet, leaving Ken clinging to the seat like a man begging the gods for mercy.
And then—
—The bike slowly fell to the side.
"Mother fucker..."
Crash!
Ken hit the ground like a sack of regrets, still pinching his nose with both hands like he was trying to keep his soul from escaping.
"Just end me already."
.
.
.