New chapter!
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At noon, Evan stood outside one of the biggest buffet restaurants in San Francisco and checked the time for the fourth time in a minute.
A thin figure came hurrying around the corner.
“Ev, sorry,” Peter called.
“Did I keep you waiting?”
Peter jogged up, breathless and apologetic.
Evan had called him half an hour ago and asked him to lunch.
Partly because Peter had been helping him since the day they met.
Mostly because the buffet charged fifty dollars either way, whether he came alone or brought someone.
Evan believed in getting his money’s worth.
Unfortunately, waiting for Peter had cost him another half hour, and hunger was already chewing through his patience.
“Starving,” Evan said.
“Come on.”
He paid, walked inside, and abandoned Peter almost immediately.
At the food line, he grabbed whatever was closest and started eating before he reached a table.
People looked over.
Evan did not care.
He filled plate after plate, carried them to a table, and began working through the pile like it had personally offended him.
“Whoa,” Peter said, sitting across from him with one modest plate.
“Ev, are you actually going to finish all that?”
Peter’s food was not even a tenth of what Evan had taken.
Evan glanced up, gave him a polite smile, nodded, and kept eating.
Both hands moved.
Food vanished.
Chewing turned into swallowing so fast that Peter’s eyes widened.
“Slow down.
Seriously.
You’re going to choke.”
“Growth spurt,” Evan said between bites.
“Need fuel.”
Peter gave him a look of deep, sympathetic understanding.
He was only a few years older, and he clearly remembered the teenage appetite phase.
Then he blinked.
In the time it took Peter to relax, Evan had emptied almost every plate in front of him.
“That’s…” Peter stared.
“That’s really fast.”
Evan swallowed, stacked the empty plates, slid them aside, and stood for another round.
A few minutes later, he returned with another mountain of food.
Peter stopped eating.
He just watched.
Less than five minutes later, the second mountain was gone.
“Better,” Evan said, patting his stomach.
Peter leaned forward and lowered his voice.
“You see the staff staring at us, right?”
Evan looked around.
Every server in the dining room was watching their table.
So were half the customers.
The stack of empty plates beside him had become impossible to ignore.
He smiled calmly.
Then he stood again.
“You…” Peter began, then gave up.
He watched Evan return with another pile and start eating again.
Inside Evan’s head, Venom howled with laughter.
“You eat more than me now.”
“Laugh again and I’ll make us order salad.”
“Cruel.”
Evan was not joking about the hunger.
He had eaten more than any normal body should have been able to hold, and his stomach still felt hollow.
“Now you understand symbiote hunger,” Venom said.
“But all this is weak food.
Sugar, bread, filler.
If you want real fuel, meat works better.”
Evan paused with a donut halfway to his mouth.
“Ordinary meat is not enough either, is it?”
He understood the problem.
His body had changed.
It needed energy on a scale regular food could barely touch.
The buffet was a drop of water on a dry sponge.
He needed a stream.
A river.
An ocean.
And the best food in reach was not pizza, donuts, or beef.
It was symbiotes.
Half an hour later, the manager approached their table with both hands held out like he was offering tribute.
“Sir,” the man said, voice painfully polite, “this is your fifty dollars back.
Would you consider ending your meal?”
Peter stared at Evan, unable to decide whether to laugh or apologize to the entire restaurant.
Evan looked at the money, then shook his head with absolute sincerity.
“Sorry.
I’m not the kind of person who eats without paying.
I ate, so you keep the money.”
Then he continued eating.
The manager’s smile nearly cracked.
This was not about fifty dollars.
His gaze slid to the stack of empty plates beside Evan.
At least two hundred.
Evan had eaten through a quarter of the day’s prepared food by himself.
Charging him five hundred dollars would still have been a loss.
The refund was not a refund.
It was a plea.
Evan understood that perfectly.
He simply chose not to.
I hope you enjoyed this chapter.