Chapter 48: Unexpected Fame (5)
Chapter 48: Unexpected Fame (5)
Gulp.
The sound of someone swallowing nervously broke the silence. It was Jo Minjoon. He stared seriously at the chips being drawn from the boxes. One for the Blue Team, one for the Red Team. Eleven for the Blue Team, eleven for the Red Team. By the time thirty-four chips had been counted and both teams stood at seventeen votes each, Alan finally spoke.
“Now, one of the boxes is empty.”
To the contestants, it sounded like a declaration. Alan turned towards Jacob and asked, “Jacob. Do you think your team will win?”
“Yes.”
“And why do you think that?”
“I believe in my teammates.”
“Do you think you performed the role of head chef well?”
“That’s a difficult question for me to answer. I think my teammates would have a better answer.”
Alan simply looked at Jacob. His expression seemed more complicated and tense than gentle, but Jacob did not avoid his gaze.
“If you had to choose the person on your team who performed the best, who would it be?”
“...That’s difficult. Saying everyone did well would be too easy. Fine. I’ll choose Marco. His was the only dish where we practically didn’t even need to wash the plate.”
“Then who performed the worst?”
Jacob could not answer immediately. It was understandable. The moment he named someone, that person would inevitably be hurt, and nobody on his team had made such an obvious mistake that he could single them out without hesitation.
Finally, Jacob answered awkwardly, “I’ll choose myself. I tried to adjust to being head chef, but I don’t feel as though I fulfilled the role properly.”
Alan said nothing. The room remained silent under the mounting tension, and only after a long moment did he smile.
“It sounds as though you were trying to avoid my question, but I also think your answer was sincere. I won’t argue with it. I’ll only say one thing. Jacob, you did your best as head chef. Remember that.”
“Thank you.”
As their exchange ended, Kaya’s expression soured. It was obvious who Alan would turn to next.
Beside her, Chloe nervously wiped the sweat from Kaya’s forehead with a towel as Alan looked over expressionlessly.
“Kaya. I’ll ask you the same question. Do you think you’re going to win?”
“I don’t know. In the end, we’ll know when we see the result. So why ask me? If I say I’m going to lose, it sounds like I have no confidence. If I say I’m going to win, then it’s confidence without any proof. Isn’t that right?”
At Kaya’s bold reply, most of the people around her gave bitter smiles. They all knew what her temperament was like, but even so, they had not expected her to answer a judge like Alan so challengingly. Was she bluffing, or was this simply the only way she knew how to respond?
Alan did not become angry. Her words were not offensive enough to warrant that, and more importantly, she had a point. Her eyes might have been narrowed in their usual sharp way, but there was no reason to criticise every little thing. He was a judge, not a teacher.
“I don’t particularly care how you answer,” Alan said. “Just answer the question. Are you confident?”
“I already told you. We’ll know when we see the result. I don’t know.”
Alan’s eye twitched. In truth, even he was a little taken aback. He had not expected an answer like that. But looking more closely, Kaya herself seemed almost as surprised by what she had said. Apparently, she had not intended for it to come out quite so sharply.
Alan took a short breath and moved on. “Then I’ll ask the next question. Who was the best chef on your team?”
“Hugo and Chloe. Oh, right, you only want one. Chloe. I’ll choose Chloe. Honestly, their dishes were about equally good, but if you include the service, Chloe was better. She smiles really brightly. She’s cute and pretty, unlike me. The customers really like her.”
“...Don’t you think the customers would like you quite a bit too if you fixed that temperament of yours?”
“Did you fix yours, Chef? That nasty personality.”
Alan smiled instead of answering. In truth, it was not something he was in any position to criticise. He was hardly the sort of person who greeted customers with a bright smile himself. He continued with the questions. Even Alan was not particularly used to conducting interviews like this, but it was a television programme, so he could not simply skip the process.
“This is the last question. Who performed the worst?”
At that, several contestants unconsciously looked towards Peter. It was understandable. He was the one who had created the most shocking incident by burning his dish.
Kaya did not try to make herself look considerate by refusing to name him. Whatever she said, the situation was already miserable. A clumsy attempt at kindness would only make things more uncomfortable than a straightforward answer.
“He burned perfectly good chicken. It would be difficult to say anyone other than Peter.”
“And what about you? Don’t you think you were lacking as head chef if you allowed him to make that kind of mistake?”
“When did I say I wasn’t at fault? I’m comparing the two. One is the idiot teammate who can’t even preheat an oven properly and burns his own dish. The other is the head chef who failed to check on that teammate properly. Even objectively, the bigger idiot is still the teammate.”
It was almost painfully honest. The production crew seemed to find the exchange amusing and laughed quietly, but Jo Minjoon could not help feeling nervous as he watched her. Honesty without pretence could easily be perceived as rudeness, and the public had a tendency to focus more strongly on flaws than virtues.
Kaya herself was more afraid of malicious comments than she was of the judges, yet whenever she opened her mouth, this was the sort of thing that came out. Of course, her very personality made her entertaining on television, but it could take time for audiences to warm to a character like hers. Even the brief scene between Kaya and Minjoon had already drawn negative reactions from some viewers.
Kaya looked at Alan. “Was I supposed to say I was the worst one? Nobody gave me a script.”
“...Enough. Let’s end the interview here.”
Alan placed his hand over the red box. Emily, standing beside him, put her hand into the blue box and smiled.
“One of our hands should be empty. If my hand comes out empty, the Red Team wins. If Alan’s hand is empty, the Blue Team wins. How about you count down for us? On three!”
Everyone shouted together, Jo Minjoon included. The voices filling the room were thick with anticipation.
“One!”
“Two!”
“Three!”
After the results were announced, every contestant was sent to the interview room one by one, and Jo Minjoon was no exception. When his interview with Martin finally ended and he stepped back into the hallway, he found Chloe standing there, lightly tapping the heel of one shoe against the wall.
As he approached, Chloe turned her head. “Finished?”
“What are you doing out here?”
“Hmm. Going back to the kitchen feels awkward. The mood in there is really low.”
“What about Kaya?”
“Ugh. The way you keep worrying about her really does make you two seem like siblings. Don’t worry. She’s in the interview room.”
“Okay.”
Jo Minjoon leaned back against the wall beside her, feeling the chill of the concrete seep through his thin clothes.
After a moment, Chloe said, “I realised something today. Cooking in a restaurant kitchen and cooking at home are completely different. I didn’t think it would be this difficult.”
“Even so, it was exciting. I had fun. Watching customers happily eat something I made... That was a first for me.”
“...Same for me. Even if I get eliminated from Grand Chef later, I think I’ll still be able to hold on to my dream.”
Jo Minjoon nodded. At first, he had come all the way to the United States simply because he wanted his parents to acknowledge him. Of course, he had also wanted to stand on the stage he had admired. But the competition had given him far more than he had expected: his cooking skills had improved, he had been surrounded by talented chefs, and, most importantly, he had been forced to examine and refine his own attitude towards cooking and the passion he carried for it.
Jo Minjoon smiled faintly and said, “I’m glad I came to this competition. I think it might be the best decision I’ve made in my life.”
“I feel the same way.” Chloe looked at him and smiled brightly.
After that, neither of them spoke for quite a while. They did not particularly have anything else to say, but the silence was comfortable rather than awkward, and Minjoon felt no need to force a conversation merely to fill it. Still, just as every beginning had an end, so did their silence.
Chloe spoke first. “Come to think of it, what are you going to do about telling your parents? You said you were going to tell them about wanting to become a chef.”
“...I have to tell them. I can’t keep hiding it forever, regardless of what happens in the competition. And besides...” Jo Minjoon smiled. “We won this mission. I have to keep my promise.”
“...I’m not sure that really counts as a promise.”
Chloe scratched her cheek.
The Blue Team—Kaya’s team—had won twenty-six votes to seventeen. The margin had been so overwhelming that everyone had been left stunned. Considering Peter’s mistake, it felt almost like a dramatic reversal. Jo Minjoon still remembered the expressions on the Red Team’s faces; they had looked almost certain they would win.
“Maybe we won because of your service,” Minjoon said. “The customers probably weren’t judging only the food.”
“No way. Would they really consider something like that?”
Chloe laughed and shook her head, but Minjoon had not been joking. Just as Emily had said, it would not have been strange if Chloe’s smile had won over the customers. Service did not end with simply placing food on a plate and carrying it to the table.
“I’m serious. If the food from both teams tasted about the same, I’d probably vote for the team with the prettier chefs.”
“Stop it. Quit saying slick things and call your parents.” Chloe paused. “Ah, wait. Because of the time difference, is it too late?”
“No. It should be morning there right now...”
Jo Minjoon hesitated before pulling out his phone. The moment he turned on the dark screen, his expression froze. Chloe noticed immediately and leaned over to look. She could not read the Korean text, but numbers and missed-call symbols needed no translation.
21 missed calls.
Chloe frowned. “...Wait.”
Minjoon checked the call log. Ten calls were from his mother, five from his father, and the remaining six from his younger sister, Jo Ara. There were countless messages as well.
Jo Minjoon stared at the ceiling for a moment before lowering his gaze back to the phone with a sigh.
[Mom: Minjoon, people are telling me strange things.]
[Mom: Did you enter a cooking competition?]
[Mom: Call me when you see these messages.]
[Dad: Minjoon. Are you busy?]
[Jo Ara: Oppa, you said you were travelling. What are you doing right now? Mum and Dad are really serious.]
There were many more, but Minjoon found it difficult to keep reading. He switched off the screen, and Chloe reached out and gripped both his shoulders firmly.
Jo Minjoon raised his head, his expression dark.
“They know”