My Meal Buddy Smells So Good

*Mutual healing, comfort, a pure food-and-eating story, a sweet little romance, foodie buddies, switch couple

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Star Calendar 4790, November XX.

"Mr. Fang, hello. Let's begin this week's consultation. First, tell me how your week has been."

"Hello. I've arrived on Chuanhe Star and started trying the local cuisine. My appetite seems to have improved. I can eat nearly 10 grams of carbohydrates, 20 grams of protein, and between 20 and 25 grams of vegetables a day. I've also needed fewer IV infusions."

"That's a huge improvement. Did something happen that made you happy?"

"I... met a food buddy. He has a good appetite and is an interesting person. He's always talking, and he's always eating, too." Fang Pingren recalled him, the corners of his mouth lifting a little. "Seeing him eat makes me feel like... I could try eating a little more."

Star Calendar 4790, December XX.

"Mr. Fang, you seem to have gained a little weight this week. How have things been?"

"I tried going with him to eat street barbecue. It's very unhealthy food, as you know... too much fat, too much seasoning, and no guarantee of hygiene... He ate more than three hundred skewers of different foods there.

I ate a bite of greasy grilled eggplant from the foil bowl in his hand. The rich oil coated the vermicelli, chili, and minced garlic. The seasoning was so crude that I could still taste the eggplant's raw bitterness.

But... it tasted kind of good."

Star Calendar 4791, March XX.

"Mr. Fang, did anything interesting happen this week? Anything involving your food buddy?"

"A few things. That day, he had a honey-mint ice cream in his hand, but the week before, we'd both been hospitalized for food poisoning. We were supposed to avoid everything except nutritional drinks and thin congee.

Nutritional drinks are the best option, but I can't stomach them, so we chose to get through that period by drinking congee. He found it hard to control his appetite. Um... I didn't think there was anything wrong with that, but he secretly bought ice cream and ate half of it in one go. When I caught him, he said the ice cream tasted like cheap toothpaste from a village shop on a remote planet. It was awful.

I think I got a little angry, so I snatched the other half and ate it.

An hour later, I threw up the ice cream. But that cheap toothpaste from a remote planet tasted surprisingly... sweet?

So, half an hour before I started talking to you, I ordered that brand of toothpaste online."

Star Calendar 4791, April XX.

"He seems to be dieting or saving money. Lately, apart from his livestreams, he rarely eats natural food and mostly sticks to nutritional drinks.

Those brightly colored liquids look sticky and cheap in their glass tubes. They're undignified, an insult to life itself, and even their taste has a chemical quality...

He likes the strawberry nutritional drink made by a certain company. He says it tastes more like strawberries than actual strawberries, with plenty of sweetness and a strong sourness. Ten tubes are enough to fill him up for a meal.

I watched him enjoy it, so I tried one. I finished the whole thing.

I was so full I wanted to throw up, but... I didn't.

That nutritional drink really was just like he said... sweeter than real strawberries."

Star Calendar 4791, September XX.

"Mr. Fang, you seem a little down this week."

"...Yes, actually, I've run into a problem.

It's about him again. Ai Kai, the food buddy I met on Chuanhe Star. As you said, we've become friends. He invited me to his place for dinner, so I went.

We cooked dinner together. Neither of us is good at that sort of thing, so it was a pretty bumpy process. The finished meal tasted a bit like... that dish I told you about before, the one with rice cakes as tough to chew as shoe soles and over-fermented kimchi. The sour and rotten smells made me throw up on the spot, and I convulsed, went into shock, and had to be rushed to the emergency room.

Anyway, the dinner tasted... uh, not very good, so he ate almost all of it. The problem came after the meal... While we were cleaning the kitchen together, I watched him wipe the scraps off the dishes and put them one by one into the dishwasher.

...I, suddenly, I thought he... I thought he... smelled really good."

Fang Pingren looked bewildered and helpless.

"I developed an appetite for him."

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#Colors too bright make every desire point toward one person alone.#

#So, Mr. Fang, are you sure it's just an appetite, and nothing else?#

#He~seems~to~smell~so~good~though~~~~#

[Self-controlled, abstinent anorexic X sunny food blogger and big eater]

Please note:

1. The blurb, title, and character names may change, but the central premise won't: an anorexic and a big eater become food buddies and fall for each other. The counselor rarely appears in the main story. The author knows little about counseling, so it won't be covered in much detail.

2. The story is basically about the protagonists getting to know each other and growing closer over one meal at a time. There's no particularly complicated main plot, and food will probably get a lot of focus. It's not dark or horror! It's a healing story! They will eat like this, not like that!

3. The story is told from the anorexic's perspective. They should switch, though the number of times may not be evenly split. I haven't read much with switch couples, so before writing, I'll catch up on a few stories and see how the authors handle fade-to-black scenes. Then I'll decide whether to include those scenes and whether to make them vers. The big eater gains weight midway through, then loses it later.

4. They mostly eat rather than cook. It's a food buddy story about exploring restaurants: eating together and falling in love, a warm, sweet little story about healing each other. Tentatively set in an imagined future. I'm thinking of an alien-planet setting with food, but my imagination is limited, so it'll probably just be Earth food in a different skin 0.0. There might be alien chefs, but passersby won't have much of a role.

5. I recently learned about the Fork and Cake universe and think it suits my couple perfectly. I've tentatively decided that I have to write an extra story in that universe for them!

- Idea saved on 2024.07.03 -

Theme: Food and love heal life