Episode 8: The Tin Robot Bakery Challenge

I watched the Tin Robot Bakery number videos repeatedly, selecting the ones that felt familiar and practicing them.

My memorization and singing skills were decent, so I learned them quickly.

“But, this isn’t the role I practiced for.”

I’d struggled for days, and now I had to perform a different role.

There weren’t any penalties for skipping it, so I considered ignoring it. But wasting 1,000 coins annoyed me, and the mandatory special mission worried me.

Who knew how it might be used against me later?

That left one option.

“Virtual Experience.”

It was time to use the skill.

***

The hesitation was brief.

“Use Virtual Experience.”

[Please search for the book, scenario, or script you wish to implement.]

A familiar search bar appeared.

I tapped the magnifying glass icon, and a keyboard popped up.

Tin Robot Bakery

I pressed the magnifying glass again, and one result showed up.

Tin Robot Bakery / Musical Script

[Would you like to implement this musical script?]

[Yes/No]

“I’m about to use a skill now! It’s my first time using it too!”

Of course, this wasn’t what I planned at all.

I gave Loki a forced smile and pressed Yes.

“Ugh…!”

Whoosh, my body sank downward, and my vision went black.

***

Cindy snuck out of the house again today.

She darted through back alleys to avoid the neighborhood adults and reached her destination.

Tin Robot Bakery.

The sign was old but hung perfectly straight, as if measured with a ruler, just like the bakery’s owner.

Cindy stifled a giggle and flung open the door.

“Robot Mister! I’m here!”

From inside the store, a silver tin robot emerged with a creaking sound.

“Wel, come, Mis, s?”

The voice was choppy, without inflection.

It sounded like someone reading the letters of the sentence one by one.

Cindy wasn’t scared of the tin robot at all. She ran to him with a bright smile.

“Hey, hey, bread! Want bread!”

The tin robot chuckled, “creak, creak,” at her instinctive words.

He asked her to wait a moment, then went to the back, returning with a freshly baked loaf, still steaming.

The bread was unusual: a perfect rectangular prism, with no curves.

“Hehe. Thank you for the food!”

Cindy wiped her hands with a wet towel and tore off pieces of the bread to eat.

The way she held the overflowing bread in her small hands and took big bites looked so appetizing.

Cindy ate three whole loaves afterward.

“Mister, aren’t you tired of making bread every day? I’m tired of studying every day.”

The tin robot, who was pouring milk into an empty glass, paused at her question as she patted her full belly.

-Do you do it because you like it? Or because it’s your job?

-Like it. Not tired.

-Super boring, I’m sick of it.

And Kim Jae-ha, now the tin robot, faced these three choices.

“Isn’t the answer too obvious?”

Every time he played the tin robot in Tin Robot Bakery, these choices appeared, and he was always baffled.

It felt like the game was handing him the answer.

Once, out of curiosity, he picked the wrong option.

[Incorrect Choice!]

[Virtual Experience will end after 10 cumulative mistakes. If it ends without answering the final question, your skill proficiency won’t increase, and you’ll face a penalty.]

This warning popped up.

“So, when will they ask the final question?”

Because of that, Kim Jae-ha had been stuck as a hardworking tin robot baker for a month in this world’s time.

“Like it. Not tired.”

When he chose the right option, his mouth spoke automatically.

Meanwhile, Jae-ha glanced at the wall’s mirror.

It showed Kim Jae-ha, twenty-five years old, not the tin robot.

“It’s amazing.”

He wasn’t sure if it was his low skill level or just how the skill worked.

To Jae-ha, he looked like himself, but to the virtual world’s people, he was a tin robot.

And the camera, Loki, was visible only to him.

“By the way, when does Tin Robot Bakery actually start?”

Today, as the tin robot, he baked bread as usual, and Cindy, the bakery’s only visitor and free eater, stopped by.

This daily routine wasn’t in the Tin Robot Bakery musical script.

Cindy didn’t even appear in the play.

She was only mentioned once, in a monologue by the tin robot.

“But the tin robot from Tin Robot Bakery seems like he would’ve lived like this.”

In other words, this skill didn’t just recreate the story—it built the entire world of that story.

“Okay, I get it. I get it, but…!”

When would this pointless repetition end?

Jae-ha tore at his hair in his mind.

Bang!

Suddenly, the bakery door burst open.

“You, you monster, how dare you do this to my daughter!!”

A middle-aged man with a shovel rushed in, shouting.

Cindy, seeing him swing the shovel at Jae-ha, cried out as if screaming.

“Dad?!”

“…Crap.”

An event was happening?

And like this, of all ways?

“Cindy, you, you! I told you not to go to strange places! Don’t tell me you ate something made by that monster?!”

“N-no, Dad! This isn’t strange! It’s, it’s bread!”

Cindy trembled but held out one of the rectangular prism loaves to her father.

Jae-ha nervously awaited the man’s reaction.

“Will he throw it away? He probably will, right?”

Of course, he knew that would happen.

The tin robot’s bread was treated like a weird dish or poison from a witch.

He knew it well, but…

“I hope he accepts it.”

He didn’t expect him to eat it, but he wished he’d hold it, just for a moment.

He wished he’d see it as bread.

Jae-ha recalled his first day making bread.

Kneading, proofing, and baking with clumsy hands.

Watching the bread rise was amazing, and the savory smell made him proud.

When Cindy said Mister’s bread was the most delicious, he felt good, even though he wasn’t really the tin robot.

He couldn’t forget the faint electric jolt when he tried making curved or round bread.

It tickled, but sometimes it was so sharp it hurt!

[The Tin Robot cannot tolerate anything that is not straight!]

Seeing that warning, he gritted his teeth inside.

Knowing real bread wasn’t this shape, he made straight-edged bread and thought:

“Was it hard for the tin robot to endure himself, unable to tolerate anything not straight?”

If the bread’s shape matched others’, he wouldn’t be shunned like this.

He might’ve been pathetic, unable to change despite knowing this.

Born a tin robot, unable to make bread with a human’s touch, he was a freak who wanted to bake but couldn’t handle anything not straight.

“…How much he must have hated it.”

And Jae-ha realized it was somewhat like himself.

As that thought hit, the bread Cindy offered was thrown to the ground.

“What kind of bread is this! Everything from how it looks to the guy who made it is weird! Did you, did you eat this? Huh? Did you eat it!”

The bread was crushed under the man’s foot.

Cindy, startled by her father’s roughness, burst into tears.

The man hid her behind him, smashing the displayed bread with his shovel and stomping it.

“If you make this again and feed it to my daughter, I swear I’ll kill you!”

He dragged Cindy out, who didn’t want to leave.

Bang!

The door slammed so hard the walls shook, leaving…

Crumbled, blackened bread pieces and an empty tin robot.

“Haa…”

The tin robot, Jae-ha, rubbed his face with dry hands.

“I want to quit everything, really…”

Recalling the Tin Robot Bakery musical’s ending made him feel worse.

The play kept a fairytale-like, fantastic vibe, but the ending was realistic.

Viewers expected the tin robot to be accepted as a baker.

But the musical ended with him just not being kicked out of the village.

Since the play began with the tin robot’s crisis of being banished, it resolved that problem, but…

“Nothing essential is resolved.”

The tin robot doesn’t get the ending he wants.

At least, not in what Jae-ha knows.

“And I have to keep doing this?”

Then, a message appeared.

[What will you do now?]

This was the final question.

He noticed he could move and speak freely now, as if everything was up to him.

Jae-ha moved right away.

“The answer is obvious.”

He swept up the broken bread, mopped the dirty floor, and went to the kitchen to start making bread again.

[Is that your answer?]

Jae-ha nodded.

[You have answered correctly, the Virtual Experience will end!]

[Final Review in progress…]

[Player Kim Jae-ha’s final score for the Tin Robot Bakery Virtual Experience is 43 points.]

[Skill proficiency will not increase as you did not achieve 50 points or higher.]

[No penalty will be imposed as you answered the final question correctly.]

“What? Wait, hold on!”

“Why is it only 43 points…!”

But before he could say more, his vision went black.

***

“…Jae-ha. Jae-ha?”

An unfamiliar voice called him familiarly.

It pulled his mind, which was drifting in sleep, back to awareness.

His dark vision cleared, and he saw his surroundings.

He was in his room.

[Sub Quest Completed!]

[Sub Quest Completed!]

[Sub Quest Completed!]

[Level Up!]

Quest windows showed sub quests he didn’t know about were completed, along with a level-up message, floating before him.

He looked away and saw the nameless person.

“Ah… Hy, brother.”

He nearly slipped up in front of Loki.

They could edit it out, but it was better not to leave any trace.

Nameless smiled faintly as he watched Jae-ha barely say “brother.”

“Ugh, creepy.”

“You seemed to be practicing something, then went quiet, so I came. Did I interrupt you?”