Chapter 111: Reunion in Front of the Door (3)
Chapter 111: Reunion in Front of the Door (3)
Jo Minjoon did not like langoustines. More precisely, he did not dislike their flavour; he disliked the way they looked. They reminded him of insects. That was why his hands moved slowly as he peeled the shell from the tail of a half-cooked langoustine, a Norway lobster. Joanne watched him and smirked.
(Translator’s Note: Langoustine — A small marine crustacean, Nephrops norvegicus, found in the northeastern Atlantic and parts of the Mediterranean. Despite names such as “Norway lobster” or “Dublin Bay prawn,” it is neither a true lobster nor a prawn in the ordinary culinary sense. Langoustines have long been valued in European seafood cuisine for their delicate, sweet flesh and are especially common in French, British, Irish, Italian, and Spanish cooking.)
“You’re quite the scaredy-cat, aren’t you?”
“……It’s a little disgusting.”
“What’s disgusting about it? Look how cute it is.” Joanne calmly picked up a sautéed langoustine. With practised movements, she peeled off the shell and removed the meat. “See? It’s this easy.”
“……I know.”
“Get used to it quickly before the finals.”
At Joanne’s words, Jo Minjoon sighed and began handling the langoustines with renewed determination. He did not want to look like a coward.
Once he had removed the meat and put it in the refrigerator, it was time to work on the accompanying components. That was precisely why Jo Minjoon had been put in charge of the langoustines despite not even liking them. The dish had many elements whose flavour could easily change, such as the purées and foam.
Sauces. There was more than one kind. When it came to components such as carrot purée, buttermilk purée, and buttermilk foam, Jo Minjoon could execute them more perfectly than anyone else. He followed Kaya’s original recipe, but they were free to adjust the consistency according to their own judgement.
I can make purée better than anyone.
Of course, if he considered the entire world, there would be plenty of people better than him. But at least within this competition, that was how he felt. He was confident he could beat Anderson and Kaya when it came to bringing out flavour in sauces.
It was about time he gained some confidence. His cooking level was 7. His understanding of French cuisine, American cuisine, and other styles had improved considerably. He was confident in his ability to harmonise the natural flavour of an ingredient with the flavour of a sauce, and he understood what kinds of dishes became delicious through particular methods of cooking. Now, there were even times when he understood the meaning behind what he was doing as he cooked.
That was why Jo Minjoon was certain. He believed Kaya could win. No, he would bring victory to Kaya. He would prove himself.
The dish Kaya was responsible for was gazpacho. Since gazpacho was served cold, there was no problem making it in advance. In fact, it was much better for her to prepare it early and then check the condition of everyone else’s dishes.
That was what a head chef normally did. Unless it was a small restaurant, a head chef rarely stood at the stove or wielded a knife personally. It was not because they considered such work beneath them. Running an entire kitchen was far more difficult than simply executing one dish perfectly.
Alan was a perfect example. His cooking level was 8. Of course, even if he and Kaya were both level 8, there would still be differences between them. But regardless, Alan was running a Michelin-starred restaurant despite being level 8. That was because, apart from his cooking ability, his skill at leading a kitchen was unquestionably strong.
And in Jo Minjoon’s eyes, Kaya was quite a capable head chef because of her extraordinary sense of taste. Jo Minjoon could determine a dish’s cooking score at a glance through the power of the system, but Kaya could understand the state of a dish completely just by tasting a small amount of sauce. Nor did she rely solely on taste. She could judge how well something had been cooked simply by looking at its exterior colour, and when something was wrong, she would send it back without hesitation.
I shouldn’t have anything to worry about.
Jo Minjoon’s plating was simple yet luxurious. He swept the purée across the plate as though drawing a line, then arranged carrots seared in duck fat alongside the sautéed langoustines. Beside the langoustines, he stood a sage leaf upright like a tree and scattered breadcrumbs in a strip as thick as a railway track. Finally, he spooned buttermilk foam over the langoustine meat.
Just like that, all five plates were finished. Kaya pierced a langoustine with a chopstick and nodded.
“Good. It came out well.”
“It tastes the way you wanted, right?”
“Almost. Even with the same recipe, the feeling changes subtly depending on whose hands make it. That’s fascinating.”
“If you ever run a restaurant, hire a chef who cooks as well as I do. Then at least you won’t get any complaints from customers, right?”
“………So confident.”
“There’s never been a time when I had no confidence. I was just worried that my pride might turn into arrogance.”
But he had decided not to worry about that any longer. The standard was simple. After Kaya’s outburst, Jo Minjoon had thought about many things, and now he found it difficult to keep diminishing himself. He needed something else to focus on. If Kaya truly depended on him, then he would become a pillar she could rely on. That was what he had decided.
Jo Minjoon looked down at his dish. The carrot purée, looking almost like melted orange juice, ran across the plate in a straight line. Beside it, small round dollops of buttermilk purée sat like macarons. He had not simply made them visually appealing. Kaya had acknowledged the flavour as well.
“I’m not……going to retreat anymore. The road I need to walk is clear, and so is the place I’m looking towards. There’s only one thing I have to do. Keep moving forward.”
“Right. I like this side of you better.” Kaya spoke with a satisfied expression. Compared with the hesitant, uncertain Jo Minjoon, she much preferred the bold Jo Minjoon standing before her now.
The dishes began appearing on the table one after another. Five seats surrounded the table laden with food. Marco merely toyed with his fork, looking unsure what sort of expression he ought to make.
“It feels like a buffet even though it’s supposed to be a course meal. No, maybe I should call it a party?”
“What’s wrong with that? Just eat everything in order.”
“What was the order again?”
“Gazpacho, langoustine, pasta, turkey, then sorbet and tarte Tatin.”
Except for the gazpacho and pasta, every dish had a score of 8. The pasta had been made by none other than Joanne. Still, it could not be helped. For one thing, the pasta recipe itself did not even have a score of 8. And even aside from that, Joanne did not possess the skill to produce an 8-point dish with ease. Things might have been different if Kaya supervised every step……but there was no guarantee Joanne could execute everything flawlessly in front of fifty customers.
Still, a score of 7 did not mean a dish was not delicious. Samgyeopsal was a good example. Even if it was grilled perfectly over a good fire, its cooking score could not exceed 7. Yet no one could reasonably say that properly grilled samgyeopsal was not delicious.
Joanne’s pasta, the tortellini, was the same. It was not an especially extraordinary dish. However, the flavours of every ingredient in the filling remained distinct, and the seared pumpkin contributed a fresh sweetness.
It was clean, delicious, and simply a good dish. If she could reproduce it like this during the finals, there would be no problem.
The same was true of the other dishes. Chloe’s turkey had a rich aroma reminiscent of foie gras, and when eaten with the artichoke gazpacho, the texture of its fibres made it feel almost as though one were eating duck meat wrapped in radish. Naturally, the flavour itself was far more refined.
There was nothing that needed to be said about Marco’s tarte Tatin, sorbet, and pre-meal bread. His bread alone made it obvious why Marco was Marco.
In fact, when ordinary people visited an expensive restaurant, the place where they often noticed the greatest difference from an ordinary restaurant was the bread. It might seem strange to focus on something secondary when one had come for the main dishes, but it was unavoidable. Most high-end restaurants paid considerable attention to their bread, and freshly baked loaves were the bare minimum. That resulted in a soft texture that brought out the aromas of butter and grain to their fullest.
And right now, Jo Minjoon could smell in Marco’s bread the same aroma he had encountered in luxurious restaurants. Just as good rice could make even simple side dishes taste satisfying, Marco’s bread had a charm that could make a person happy without any sauce or butter at all.
Yet Kaya’s expression could not brighten even after tasting all of it. Jo Minjoon could not bring himself to ask why. He felt that the moment he asked, the invisible weight on Kaya’s shoulders would become real.
That night—or perhaps it was already dawn—Jo Minjoon opened his eyes. He could not quite tell whether he had properly woken up or had simply closed his eyes for a while and opened them again. His body was tired, but his mind was clear. After all, his head tended to be clearest after three or perhaps four hours of sleep.
Out of habit, he picked up his mobile phone and saw that it was three in the morning. It was far too early to be awake. He was not thirsty, nor did he feel any need to go to the bathroom.
He was about to close his eyes and try to sleep again when a notification in the corner of the screen caught his attention. It was a message from Kaya.
[Kaya: Are you asleep?]
It had been sent about thirty minutes ago. He wondered if replying now might wake her if she had already fallen asleep, but before long, his fingers were moving across the screen.
[Me: I just woke up.]
The reply did not come immediately. Just as his eyelids began to grow heavy again, his phone vibrated.
[Kaya: Ah, sorry. I only just saw this. You haven’t gone back to sleep, have you?]
[Me: No. But what’s wrong this late at night?]
[Kaya: I can’t sleep. I was wondering whether we should sing lullabies to each other if you couldn’t sleep either. Reading fairy tales would be fine too.]
Jo Minjoon read and reread the message with a sour expression. Perhaps Kaya somehow realised how he was reacting, because another message quickly arrived.
[Kaya: I’m joking. You got all serious again, didn’t you?]
[Me: No.]
[Kaya: Look at you lying. Forget it. Turn on the light and look in the mirror. Does your face look fine?]
He wondered what she was suddenly talking about, but by the time he came to his senses, he was already checking himself in the mirror just as Kaya had told him. His hair was slightly dishevelled, but otherwise he looked fine. Just as he was about to reply, there was a knock at the door.
“If you look fine, come out. Let’s give two insomniacs a chance to sympathise with each other.”
“……I’ll put something on. Wait.”
Jo Minjoon pulled on a hooded sweatshirt and used the hood to cover his hair. As soon as he stepped out of the room, he laughed despite himself. Kaya looked exactly the same. She wore a loose white hooded sweatshirt with black shorts. Perhaps she had also been trying to hide her messy hair, but strands stuck out from beneath her hood like some kind of furry headdress. Kaya eyed him warily.
“You’re not going to say anything about me not washing my hair at dawn, are you?”
“Am I really that obvious?”
“You are.”
“……Now that I think about it, maybe I am.”
Pink gums showed above Kaya’s white teeth as she grinned. When she opened her mouth again, what he saw was not her gums but the bright pink of her tongue.
“Do you want to talk for a bit?”
“You came here for that.”
“Let’s walk for a while. Should we go to the garden?”
The two walked side by side towards the garden. They had barely gone any distance before Kaya began hopping lightly in place. She shoved her hands into the pocket of her sweatshirt and shivered.
“Ugh. Even in summer, the wind is cold at night.”
“That’s why you should’ve dressed properly. Shorts were too much. Should we go back inside?”
“No, I’m fine. I used to walk around New York in shorts during winter. This isn’t enough to make me crumble. I’m not that weak. I’m strong. Kaya Lotus……is that kind of girl.”
Her voice turned bitter at the end, and Jo Minjoon merely pressed his lips together without saying anything. It was obvious that she was anxious. That was unavoidable. The finals. Standing on the boundary between victory and elimination, a single step could earn someone everything or make them lose everything.
Of course, even if Kaya failed to win, her future would not suddenly descend into hell.
“You’ll win.”
“How can you say that so easily?”
“Because I’ll make you win.”
“That’s kind of strange. You suddenly became so confident.”
“I told you before. I’m not going to retreat anymore. We’re cooks. No matter how complicated this road gets, in the end there’s only one thing we have to do: make delicious food. And my food is delicious.”
The moon was bright. It was a kind of brilliant moonlight he could not remember ever seeing while living in the city. All the streetlamps were off, yet he had no difficulty seeing Kaya’s face by moonlight alone.
No, perhaps it was not because of the moonlight. Her expression itself seemed so bright that he could see it more clearly.
“I’d forgotten this, but in the end, that was what I wanted. Of course, it’s important to have lots of customers coming to a great restaurant……but ultimately, my dream was to make good food. And now I think I’ve half accomplished that. So I should at least have some confidence in myself.”
“……I’m sorry about last time. For throwing a tantrum over nothing.”
“No. I understand. And now I’ll tell you honestly. When you said I was your lighthouse, I was happy. It was just difficult for me to accept it. Because if I was your lighthouse, I thought I had to illuminate every path you walked. I wasn’t confident I could do that. No, maybe what I lacked was trust. Trust in myself, and in you.”
He did not know why, but as he said it, he felt as though he were confessing a sin he had hidden for a long time. Kaya’s eyes glimmered faintly. For a moment, he thought she was crying, but she was not. Still, her eyelids trembled as though she were holding something back.
“Are you saying that……you believe now?”
“Yes. I’m confident I can clear the road ahead of you. And even if I can’t, you’re someone who can still reach your dream. It took me a while, but I finally realised that.”
“Promise me. Pinky promise.” Kaya held out her right hand. Her little finger trembled in the cold air. “Make me win. At least for this competition, let me believe that you’re my lighthouse and depend on you. That’s all I want. Can you……promise me?”
Jo Minjoon looked at Kaya’s little finger. It was long, slender, and pale. Her nail had been trimmed short, and the creases at the joints were fine and shallow. Perhaps it was because of the cold, or perhaps her skin simply tended to react that way……but several parts of her finger had turned bright red.
Their little fingers slowly intertwined. Kaya’s hand felt cold, soft, and smooth against his. Then they extended their thumbs. Her thumb felt slightly different from her little finger. It was firmer and, rather than smooth, faintly rough.
They each felt warmth and cold at the same time. Neither of them could tell whether it was their own hand that was cold or the other person’s.
Even after their thumbs separated, their little fingers did not part so easily. Something seemed to linger between those two small stretches of skin. Was it merely warmth and sensation, or was there something more?
Their hands separated, reluctantly and slowly. The fingers that had lost their partners curled back into their fists. Neither of them spoke.
The motionless silence said thousands of words in their place.
Dawn.
The weather would probably be clear.
Tonight, the moon seemed closer than the streetlamps.
Five days until the finals.
Four days.
Three days.
Two days.
One day.
……
Zero days.