Chapter 132: Their Live Broadcast (1)
Chapter 132: Their Live Broadcast (1)
Once the introductions for Kaya were finished, Martin spoke.
“I already told you this, but I’ll say it once more. Today, you won’t simply be having a meal at Olive Island. The footage from all the cameras will be broadcast live around the world, and a great many people will be watching you.”
“Is there anything we need to be more careful about than usual?”
“Probably swearing. It would be nice if you could make things entertaining, but that isn’t something you can do just by being conscious of it. Just act naturally, the way you normally do.”
The brief explanation ended, and they all entered Olive Island. Rachel had barely begun to sit down when her expression dimmed at the sight of the photographs hanging on the wall. In one of them, a young Alan stood in the middle while a man and woman smiled towards the camera. The image quality was poor compared with modern mobile phone cameras, but even that blurry photograph was enough to stir old memories.
Jeremy glanced at Rachel, then said in disbelief,
“How long are you planning to keep living in that man’s shadow?”
“……What’s wrong with that? He’s my husband.”
“You suffered enough while he was alive, and you’re still like this even after he died. I told you, didn’t I? That your life would become exhausting if you married Daniel.”
“It was exhausting, but it was also fun and happy. That’s enough for me.”
Rachel replied calmly, then slowly looked away from the photograph. The regret in her eyes had not completely disappeared, but the smile she showed after taking her seat was perfectly composed.
“It’s been a while, Kaya. Come to think of it, I never properly congratulated you. Congratulations.”
“Thank you.”
Kaya replied with a bright smile. Jo Minjoon looked at her anew. It had not been very long since he had last seen her, yet many things had changed. Most of her recklessness and rebelliousness seemed to have faded. She felt more mature now……and more feminine.
Sera cleared her throat.
“It’s our first time meeting. You’re just as pretty as you looked on television. Is it because you’re young?”
“……What am I supposed to be if you start talking about age?”
Emily, sitting beside her, muttered gloomily. Jeremy spoke in his usual affected tone.
“But I heard you two were together all night…… Didn’t you know you were meeting today?”
“We didn’t. Our agent has a nasty personality too.”
Kaya answered, then glared briefly at her agent. When she had said she was going to meet Jo Minjoon for a while, the agent had worn an inscrutable smile and merely asked, ‘Will you be all right?’
Jo Minjoon looked at Kaya sympathetically.
“You’re having a hard time.”
“You too.”
The two clinked their water glasses together, then sniffed at the same time in exactly the same posture. Anderson watched them and shook his head. Sera smirked at him.
“Are they always like that?”
“You said you watched the broadcast. Just assume what you saw was real.”
“……I thought it was staged.”
It felt like watching a youthful romance drama. Still, because the two of them were naturally fresh and amusing together, at least watching them was not exhausting……though there was nothing anyone could do about the ache it caused in their sides. Sera smiled at Anderson.
“Anderson. Want to imitate them with me?”
“I’m celibate.”
“Who said we had to do it for real? I said imitate them.”
Sera pouted with a disappointed expression. Just then, Martin approached them.
“As I told you, today’s lunch will be broadcast live over the internet. There are already 120,000 viewers waiting. Is everyone ready?”
“One moment. I’m checking my make-up.”
Sera raised a mirror. Kaya, instead of looking into one herself, simply looked at Jo Minjoon.
“Is my make-up okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Then it’s fine.”
Kaya nodded firmly. A little later, Martin called out,
“The live broadcast is starting! In five, four, three, two, one!”
“Hello. This is Hunger Trip.”
Since there was no studio audience, naturally there were no cheers. Instead, comments began streaming rapidly across the screen Martin had set up.
[Oh, it’s starting.]
[It’s been a really long time since I saw Rachel Rose.]
[Huh? Why is Lotus there?]
[I read an article saying she’s a special guest.]
[I saw some of her activities outside, but it’s amazing seeing her together with Jo Minjoon.]
As the comments rolled by, servers approached with appetiser bread and ciabatta. At the same time, Alan stepped in front of them and spoke confidently.
“This is the first thing my restaurant takes pride in. The ciabatta was made by a pastry chef with thirty years of experience, with the temperature and humidity adjusted every day. The green butter here was made by mixing finely ground basil into butter, while the one on the right is our homemade goat’s cheese and garlic butter, made by combining goat’s milk cheese with garlic. The sauce on the plate is a mixture of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and vinegar.”
“The shape of the butter…… It’s really pretty.”
Kaya said, visibly impressed. Just as she had said, the butter served with the appetiser bread looked remarkably elaborate. It was difficult to tell whether the shapes had been formed by hand or with moulds, but the goat’s cheese butter was shaped like a baby goat, while the basil butter had been moulded into leaves.
Then Sera casually extended her knife and sliced into the butter.
Right through the goat’s neck.
Kaya, who had been admiring it with soft eyes, stared at Sera in horror. Sera, in the middle of spreading the goat butter onto her ciabatta, flinched and looked back at her.
“Uh…… Did I do something wrong?”
“……No.”
Kaya hesitated for a moment, then picked up her own knife and spread some of the goat butter onto her ciabatta. Her gloomy expression lasted only briefly. Soon, the hesitation on her face melted away and turned into a smile.
“Delicious……”
“The bread and butter are both really good.”
Jo Minjoon murmured calmly. The ciabatta had a cooking score of 7, and the butter also had a cooking score of 7. Yet when he spread the butter onto the bread, the contents of the system window changed.
[Ciabatta with Goat’s Cheese Garlic Butter]
Freshness: 98%
Origins: (Too many ingredients to display)
Quality: High
Cooking Score: 8/10
Simply spreading the butter onto the bread had raised the cooking score. That meant the two worked together that perfectly. The basil butter was not much different.
As the sommelier approached and poured red wine into their glasses, Alan looked at Jo Minjoon.
“Minjoon. What do you think? This butter. Do you think you can tell how it was made and what went into it?”
“Alan, have mercy. I’ve been suffering because of that question lately.”
“With great power comes great responsibility. Spider-Man’s uncle said that. God gave you an ability that makes other people want to chase after you just imagining it, so you should put up with that much inconvenience. I’m also putting up with the risk of having my recipe exposed because of you.”
“……For now, I’ll only tell you the ingredient ratios. The ratio of goat’s cheese to clarified butter is one to one. There’s about one clove of garlic per tablespoon of butter. It seems like you roasted the garlic, ground it, then added some ground white pepper. Did I get anything wrong?”
The others looked more nervous than Jo Minjoon did. Alan shook his head and smiled as though he could not believe it.
“Today, I really will have to prepare myself to have my recipes exposed.”
“Don’t worry. If something is too complicated, even I have trouble reading it.”
That was not a lie. He could only acquire recipes for dishes whose cooking level matched his tasting level.
The chat began moving even faster.
[Wow, that really is absolute taste!]
[I want senses like that too.]
[Look at Rachel’s eyes. She looks so proud she could die.]
[Kaya’s eyes aren’t normal either. They really look like they’re dating.]
Jo Minjoon glanced towards Alan. The information window hovering over him flickered into view, and Jo Minjoon’s eyes trembled in surprise.
[Alan Craig]
Cooking Level: 9
Baking Level: 6
Tasting Level: 9
Decoration Level: 7
……His level went up in the meantime.
Originally, Alan’s cooking level had been 8. Of course, it would have been stranger if the skills of a chef expected to earn three Michelin stars soon had stopped developing, but even so, Jo Minjoon had not expected him to have already crossed that threshold.
Expectation rose together with envy and admiration. Perhaps one of Alan’s dishes would have a score of 10. Just imagining it made saliva gather in his mouth.
Jo Minjoon moistened his lips with wine. Perhaps because it was meant as a pre-meal wine, the alcohol content was not very high, and the flavour was soft and sweet. The lack of harshness or unpleasant thickness made its high quality obvious.
He looked at Kaya.
“Come to think of it, a restaurant needs a lot of things to achieve a perfect composition. Chefs and servers are the basics, but you also need a sommelier, a pastry chef, and on top of that, a food coordinator.”
“Do you really need a food coordinator?”
“I used to think the same thing, but recently I changed my mind after seeing Teacher Rachel carve a potato. The feeling of the entire dish changed with a single cut of the knife.”
“What was it like?”
“Ah, wait. I took a picture.”
Jo Minjoon took out his mobile phone and began looking through it. Kaya leaned close to his shoulder until the two were almost touching. Emily spoke sternly.
“Kaya, Minjoon! The viewers are telling you two to stop playing around and whispering to each other!”
“Ah, right. This is live. Sorry.”
[lol those two are so cute I’m going crazy.]
[It would be great if they got married. If this were a drama, I’d stay until the ending.]
[Who’s prettier between Sera, Emily, and Kaya? Kaya for me.]
[Face alone, Emily. Body, Sera. Overall vibe, Kaya.]
It felt as though the smiling eyes of the viewers beyond the screen were right in front of them. Sera watched Kaya and Jo Minjoon with an uncomfortable expression.
“It’s really awkward seeing this in person.”
She was not talking about the chat. Her gaze was fixed on Kaya and Jo Minjoon. She had known the two of them were close, but perhaps because Kaya had been quite polite and courteous when speaking to her, seeing this side of her now felt strangely fresh.
“You’ll get used to it.”
Emily said calmly. In fact, Rachel and Anderson were not paying them any attention at all and were simply enjoying the bread. Jeremy, perhaps because of his naturally relaxed personality, sipped his wine while watching them.
“So I’m the only strange one.”
Why did the perfectly good ciabatta in her mouth suddenly taste sour?
Fortunately, the next dish was enough to comfort her. Seven silver spoons were arranged across a long stone platter made of marble. Perhaps because decoration had been prioritised over practicality, each spoon’s handle curved upwards like the heel of a high-heeled shoe.
On the broad, deeply curved bowl of each spoon sat caramelised kumquat, beetroot, and orange simmered in sugar. Beneath them was a pink cream.
Jo Minjoon placed the amuse-bouche in his mouth.
The system notification appeared like a firework, and the flavour spread through his mouth just as explosively. The cooking score was 8, and the taste certainly did not disappoint.
The orange juices spilling across the beetroot and kumquat covered their faint bitterness, while the cream beneath them carried a subtle scent of lemon and the savoury richness of tomato. The pieces of kumquat crushed between his teeth and harmonised with the other ingredients almost like a spice, making it feel as though he had stolen an entire feast prepared by dwarves and swallowed it in a single bite.
The depth of the flavour made the muscles of Jo Minjoon’s face twitch. His trembling eyes and mouth, the wrinkles appearing between his sharply defined nose and eyes—the cameraman captured every detail.
[Wow…… Look at that expression.]
[I think he’s better at expressing flavour with his face than any chef or celebrity I’ve ever seen.]
[Of course he is. The level at which he experiences flavour is different from everyone else.]
Jo Minjoon did not look at the chat.
A thought suddenly occurred to him. Just as someone starving could appreciate the value of food more than anyone else, perhaps he had become more sensitive to flavour because he had grown up eating his mother’s terrible cooking. To other people, something might simply be, ‘Wow, this is good.’ But for him, it could become an emotion impossible to express to anyone else.
His tongue was sensitive, yet when it came to precision, it still fell short of Kaya’s.
At the same time, however, another thought occurred to him.
When it came to enjoying delicious food, he did not lose to her at all.
He was confident of that.
With a pleased smile, he turned towards Kaya. Kaya had also put the spoon into her mouth and begun chewing. Before long, she wore an expression remarkably similar to his.
“It’s delicious.”
“Come to think of it, Kaya, have you gone to a Michelin-starred restaurant since Grand Chef?”
“No. This is my first time. That’s why I’m so flustered. Can’t you tell?”
“I can. That’s why I asked. It would’ve been nice if you’d come with me when I went to the three-star restaurant.”
“Back then, I didn’t show it, but I was really jealous. Still, I haven’t been to a three-star restaurant yet. Someday…… I definitely will.”
“You said it before. Not that you’d just go to one, but that you’d make one yourself. You can do it.”
“Right. You can too.”
Kaya smiled calmly. The faint creases beneath her heavy smoky make-up looked pretty.
Jo Minjoon had been admiring her face when he slowly realised that their surroundings had become strangely quiet.
He looked around.
Everyone else was staring at the two of them with peculiar expressions.
And the chat spoke for them.
[Why are they doing this to us?]