I. You Are What You Eat
By the time livestock collapsed, people had already started changing themselves.
It began as an answer to famine and disease. Climate breakdown wiped out pasture land, heat waves killed herds in a week, new plagues tore through what was left.
Governments poured money into synthetic animal protein and into genetic programs meant to make humans “nutritionally resilient.”
The official line was simple — if we could no longer rely on cows and pigs, we needed to be able to survive on anything.
One of those resilience lines quietly removed the old limits around cannibalism.
The prion risks. The slow, ugly neurological decay that used to follow. The immune quirks that made human flesh a poison to its own species.
All softened, edited, cleaned up in lab sequences and rolled out in prenatal kits and public health campaigns.
People were told it would help in disasters, wars, long sieges.
No one said out loud what else it made possible.
Synthetic meat became the staple. Most people grew up on it — uniform, safe, shaped into familiar patties and fillets. It kept cities alive, but it never quite replaced the memory of “real” meat for those who remembered it — or for the children raised on stories and nostalgia.
The market did the rest. If animal meat was gone, and eating humans was no longer a death sentence, then humans became the only true delicacy left.
The law adapted quickly. Cannibalism was no longer forbidden in itself. It was regulated.
You could eat human meat if it came from approved sources, processed in licensed facilities, tracked from birth to plate.
Anything outside that tight circle — unregistered bodies, clandestine kills — was rebranded as “cannibal crime” and punished as if it were a contamination event.
To make it all work, society split people by function.
There were citizens, who voted, owned property, signed contracts, changed jobs.
And there were the ones who never had those rights in the first place.
On paper they were the Cultivated Class, Nutritional Lineages, Gastronomic Lines.
In conversation people called them stock. Cattle.
On backstreets they were called meat-dolls, mince, soft-stock, bleeders.
Always women, with carefully controlled bloodlines.
They were conceived through artificial insemination in corporate facilities, their DNA tuned to produce the right balance of muscle and fat, the right hormonal profile, the right temperament.
The aim was consistent flavor, consistent texture, predictable health.
They grew up in closed campuses that looked, from the inside, like boarding schools fused with company housing. Dorm rooms, shared bathrooms, whitewashed corridors bright with posters about “wellness” and “growth opportunities.”
They attended classes where they learned to read, write, handle money, run a register, memorize service scripts. History and politics appeared only in filtered, harmless forms.
The outside world existed as a controlled blur — news segments chosen for them, travel ads that always seemed just out of reach.
At eighteen, most of them were transferred to restaurants owned by the same corporations that had bred them. They became hostesses, waitresses, bar staff, cleaners.
They wore uniforms that flattered their bodies without crossing into anything openly obscene. The customers saw polite, well-trained young women and rarely thought past the surface, the carnal craving being biblical in this matter.
If they did think a bit further, there were brochures ready to soothe them — pages about ethical breeding, enriched environments, compassionate practices.
From the first day on the job, the girls learned a word that governed their future — Ascension.
Ascension was the story they were told about what happened at twenty-five.
Work hard, keep your record clean, and one day you would be selected to ascend to a position overseas, in a management hub in another country.
Better apartments, new cities, more pay.
Everything to be excited about!
The restaurants threw small farewell gatherings when someone “ascended” — cake in the break room, speeches from supervisors, a hug at the loading bay door before the shuttle took her away.
Nobody ever came back to visit, but that could be explained. Life abroad was busy. Travel was expensive. There were rules about returning to active facilities.
Sometimes letters arrived, though.
Printed emails, forwarded messages, carefully curated social posts shown around in the dorms — look, she made it, she says the view from her window is beautiful, she says the work is demanding but rewarding.
The formatting was always the same.
The girls didn’t notice.
What really happens at twenty-five is buried several floors below the dining room.
That shuttle doesn’t go to the airport, it goes to a different wing of the same building or to a sister facility underground.
That Ascendant arrives in what looks like a spa — warm lighting, soft chairs, staff in calm-colored uniforms.
She is given a drink to help her relax.
She is told she needs a medical check and shower before her flight.
The preparation rooms are tiled, bright, and carefully sealed.
Hair is removed to mark a new beginning. Skin is scrubbed. Sensors read muscle density, fat distribution, bone structure — Everything is logged against her ID.
Then, depending on grade and demand, she is scheduled for processing.
From a legal standpoint, nothing wrong happens here.
The Cultivated Class are not citizens, they are assets of the Nutritional Infrastructure.
From a public standpoint, nothing happens at all.
Ascension remains a promise with no visible cracks.
Not all stock are equal.
Common-Line facilities handle vast numbers.
Diets are adequate but basic, environments functional. Their meat end up in mid-range restaurants, processed foods, ready-made meals in grocery chains.
People buy them for holidays, for weddings, for special celebrations when synthetic meat felt too ordinary.
Then there are Prime Lines.
Prime-Line stock live in smaller, more controlled settings.
They eat custom diets tuned by nutritionists for marbling and flavor. Their exercise is supervised, built to keep them strong but not tough. Noise and stress are also minimized for their comfort.
They are the Wagyu of the Cultivated Class.
They have hobbies, therapy sessions framed as performance support, entertainment scheduled to keep their moods stable.
Their living spaces are quietly luxurious compared to the dorms of the Common-Line.
Their flesh is reserved for the richest clients, the ones who treat their tongues with the same seriousness other people reserved for religion.
That is the realm of the Ryoumen family.
Their conglomerate, Ryoumen Gastronomy Group, owns an entire chain of premium slaughterhouses and restaurants.
Their flagship locations look like five-star hotels — marble lobbies, private elevators, wine walls, open kitchens where guests could watch chefs sear and plate courses behind glass.
The actual kill floors and preparation levels sit out of sight, stacked beneath all that polish.
Their brand promise reads — perfection from birth to plate.
Documentary crews are invited to film the happier parts — Prime-Line girls laughing in sunlit courtyards, playing music, tending indoor gardens, exercising under a trainer’s eye.
The footage always cuts away before the shuttle doors close.
Sukuna Ryoumen was born into the center of all of this.
While other children learned sports and instruments, he learned knife work and anatomy.
He spent hours in chilled rooms standing on a crate to reach the cutting table, watching butchers break down bodies into precise cuts.
He was taught where to slice to follow the grain, how to keep a blade sharp enough to go through flesh and connective tissue without hesitation.
His tutors blindfolded him and made him tell different preparations apart by taste, by sound, by smell.
He studied spices, cooking temperatures, aging conditions.
He read not just business reports but lab notes on gene edits and feed formulas.
He knew which diet changes rounded out flavor, which changes tightened muscle fibers and ruined a cut.
For him, the Cultivated Class were never girls first and livestock second.
They were a living, breathing part of a system designed to yield perfect meat.
By the time he inherited his share of the company, he was already a name whispered in food circles.
The kind of man who could host a tasting course where every plate was paired not only with wine but with a story about the life that had produced it — where she had been raised, what music she heard in the evenings, how long her meat had aged.
Most of the time, the slaughter in his facilities was automated and clinical. Lines of bodies, systems of lifts and rails, clean steel and disinfectant.
But for certain Prime-Line Ascendants, for private clients or for his own curiosity, Sukuna still took the knife in his own hands.
He was, after all, not just a businessman.
He was an enthusiast in a world that had decided other humans were its finest ingredient.
And in this world, the ones who carved it that way sit down at the table first.
🥩: @crescent-canine; @ossifrageyes; @frenzied--flame; @sixeyedsaint; @thereisacatinmybankaccount
