Chapter 79: The Unfamiliar One (1)
Chapter 79: The Unfamiliar One (1)
“Chloe’s been acting a little strange lately.”
It was morning. Kaya leaned forward and carefully looked around as she spoke in a voice so low that it sounded as though she were revealing an enormous secret. Jo Minjoon reached out and pushed her forehead back with one finger. “Your hair’s going to fall into the soup.”
“…Are you going to keep doing that?”
“So, what’s strange about Chloe?”
Kaya frowned and glared at him, but in the end she answered anyway, her voice even rougher than usual. “She looks like she’s worrying about something. And she’s been absent-minded most of the time.”
“Maybe it’s spring fever.”
“If it were something like that, would I have bothered telling you?”
Instead of replying, Jo Minjoon simply smiled. Kaya frowned again. “Why are you laughing?”
“It’s nothing.”
He found it admirable that someone like Kaya, who normally kept such strong walls around herself, was worrying about someone else first. But if he said that aloud, she would obviously deny it.
Jo Minjoon turned his head towards Chloe. She had been taking dumplings out of the steamer for a while now, and even from a distance he could clearly see their cooking score. Seven points. For something she had made in less than an hour, it was quite good.
At that moment, Chloe suddenly exclaimed, “Ah!” and jerked both hands back. The pot slipped from her grasp and fell to the floor with a loud clatter. Before Jo Minjoon could even stand, Kaya was already on her feet and hurrying over. The back of Chloe’s hand had turned red, and Kaya grimaced as though she herself had been burned.
“Ah, why are you getting yourself burned like this?”
“Ahaha… I’m fine.”
“I knew something like this would happen when you kept spacing out. Keep it under cold water. I’ll get some medicine.”
“No, I’m really fine. It’s not that serious…”
“What are you going to do if a girl ends up with a scar on her hand? You’re different from me.”
Kaya said that with a serious expression and went off to find the first-aid kit. Jo Minjoon, who had been watching the scene, quietly repeated her final words in his head.
You’re different from me.
Considering Kaya’s past, he could understand why she would say that. She had never been able to live an ordinary life, whether as a girl, a student, or a daughter. When girls her age were putting lipstick on their lips, Kaya’s face had been stained with dust. When others sprayed perfume, she had spent all day working at the market until the smell of fish clung to her clothes and skin.
What bothered him, however, was the implication behind what she had said. What are you going to do if a girl ends up with a scar on her hand? You’re different from me. The way she treated it as natural for herself to get hurt made him feel stifled. Kaya was a girl too. He hated the idea that she seemed to take for granted that injuries did not matter on her, as though she herself were somehow less important or her life held less value.
Jo Minjoon approached Chloe. She gave him an awkward smile while holding her hand under cold running water. “Ugh, this is embarrassing. Making a mistake over something like this… I’m a failure as a chef.”
“Why are you taking it that far? Professionals get hurt over little things too. Do you think the burn is serious?”
“No. I probably don’t even need medicine.”
“Use some anyway. If you’re careless, it could leave a scar.”
“…Are you worried about me?”
“Shouldn’t I worry about a friend?”
At his words, Chloe said nothing and smiled faintly. Yet even when she smiled, something about her expression remained dark. Jo Minjoon remembered what Kaya had told him—that Chloe seemed worried about something. He also remembered the conversation they had once had, although it had hardly been advice Chloe had asked for.
Back then, when Chloe had been uncertain about her path, the only thing Jo Minjoon had been able to offer was clumsy reassurance. He had no idea whether saying something similar now would help, but even so, he opened his mouth. It was all he could do.
“Are you still worried about what we talked about back then?”
For a moment, Chloe did not understand what he meant. She had no idea which particular moment he was referring to by “back then”. Only after thinking for a while did she realise he meant the day they had seriously talked about cooking. And now that she remembered it, Jo Minjoon had been rather kind to her that day too.
Chloe tried to keep the corners of her mouth still, but the memory made her smile before she could stop herself. Embarrassed by her own reaction, she coughed lightly and forced the smile away.
“It’s nothing like that. I’ve just been absent-minded lately.”
“…I’ll clean this up first. Keep your hand under the water.”
Jo Minjoon bent down and picked up the pot from the floor.
Chloe glanced at the steamer inside. Fortunately, the dumplings had not been damaged much. “I think we can still eat them.”
“…That’s what you’re worried about right now?”
“I’m a chef first.” Chloe smiled bitterly as she said it. It was a lovely smile, but there was still something troubled behind it.
Jo Minjoon sighed. “Is it something you can’t tell me?”
Chloe did not answer, and that silence was an answer in itself. Jo Minjoon did not press her any further. After looking at him with complicated eyes for a moment, Chloe slowly asked, “How are things with Kaya?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well… the same thing everyone else keeps asking.”
She hid the awkward truth beneath a joking tone, trying as hard as possible to make the question sound insignificant. There was even a smile on her face. Fortunately, Jo Minjoon did not seem to notice what lay behind it.
“…You know it’s not like that. Why are you asking me this now?”
“I thought there was nothing between you too, but lately even I’m not so sure. Hey, don’t look at me like that. Honestly, do you realise how much closer you two have become? Of course people are going to get confused.”
Jo Minjoon could not find anything to say in response. Chloe was not exaggerating. Even he had admitted that some of the scenes shown on the broadcast and in edited clips made him and Kaya look excessively close.
Chloe kept her eyes on him. “So you’re saying that you… don’t think of Kaya that way?”
“It’s true that I admire her.” Jo Minjoon answered plainly, but the word admire carried a rather ambiguous nuance. Chloe’s smile stiffened slightly.
“If you only admire her, then what does Kaya think about you?”
What did Kaya think of him?
Jo Minjoon had never seriously considered that question.
Just then, Kaya came back with the first-aid kit. She opened it and frowned so deeply that her face almost resembled Popeye’s. “Look at this. It’s already this red. What do you mean you’re fine?”
“Kaya, wait. It’s better to put medicine on after the heat has gone down a little.”
At Jo Minjoon’s words, Kaya lowered the medicine she had been about to take out. She looked at Chloe’s hand for a moment, then spoke as though it were merely an afterthought.
“Oh, I ran into Martin on the way.”
“Martin?”
“Yeah. He said the mission’s starting soon.”
“What? This suddenly? How soon?”
Kaya answered, “Lunch.”
-
“You’re all excellent.” At lunchtime, those were the first words Joseph said to the eight hungry contestants standing before him. The contestants responded to the sudden compliment with awkward smiles, but Joseph continued. “You might think this is just a formal compliment. It isn’t. Compared with the contestants from previous seasons, you really are exceptional.”
“Joseph is right,” Alan added. “Because you keep presenting us with good food, we’ve had no choice but to work harder too. I’m talking about designing a mission that will fill this kitchen with genuine despair.”
At Alan’s meaningful words, several contestants visibly flinched. Just hearing him say it was enough to make them nervous.
They were the final eight. Whatever theme or ingredient appeared, they were confident they could handle it. The problem was that the judges knew that too.
A mission difficult enough to trouble even them.
What could it possibly be?
Jo Minjoon thought for a moment, but nothing came to mind. More importantly, he had no memory of anything like this happening in the original broadcast.
While everyone stared nervously at Alan’s lips, Alan smiled and turned towards Emily. Emily smiled brightly in return. Normally, it would have looked refreshing. In this situation, however, for some reason, that smile looked almost hateful.
“There are probably ingredients here that some of you have never even eaten before,” Emily said. “The staff also had quite a difficult time obtaining some of the rarer ones. In total, we prepared eight ingredients. Yes. These are what you’ll be cooking with.”
She pointed towards the table in front of the judges, where eight boxes had been arranged in a row.
There’s a different ingredient in each box…
Jo Minjoon’s gaze sharpened, but of course, sharpening his eyes did not mean he could see through the boxes. If a system window appeared, that would be another matter, but with his ordinary eyesight, it was impossible. There would have been no point in hiding them otherwise.
At that moment, Alan suddenly spoke. “I’ll reveal the first ingredient.”
The instant he opened the box, everyone’s expressions twisted. Some of them looked as though they might actually vomit.
Jo Minjoon reacted much the same way. He stared blankly ahead, never having imagined they would bring out something like this.
Alan raised the corner of his mouth in satisfaction at their reactions.
“Calf brain! An ingredient that lets you experience French cuisine in a very direct way. And I imagine most of you have never eaten it before.”
Calf brain.
It appeared in some French restaurants, but unless someone was a fairly adventurous food critic, the mere thought of eating it was enough to provoke disgust. Some people might argue that meat was meat, regardless of the body part, but when someone explicitly told you that what you were eating was a brain, revulsion came much more easily.
Fortunately, the next ingredient was less shocking.
Truffles.
Known in Korean as songno beoseot, they were often described as one of the world’s three great delicacies. Of course, outside countries such as Korea and Japan, people did not necessarily categorise foods according to some fixed list of “three great delicacies”, but that did not diminish the ingredient’s value. Its price alone was enough to show how highly truffles were regarded.
(Translator’s Note: “Three Great Delicacies” — An East Asian popular-culture classification usually referring to caviar, foie gras, and truffles as the “world’s three great delicacies”. It is especially familiar in Japanese and Korean food writing but is not a universally recognised international culinary classification.)
And it was certainly not something most contestants would have handled before. Even Jo Minjoon’s experience with truffles amounted mostly to using truffle oil.
None of the ingredients that followed were easy either. Shark fin. Deer liver. Sea anemone.
Fortunately, the next two were much less intimidating to Jo Minjoon: octopus and beef tripe.
Octopus was not especially common in Western cooking, but that was certainly not the case in Korea. The same went for beef tripe. There were countless restaurants in Korea devoted specifically to grilling intestines and other offal.
Just as the contestants began to relax slightly, however, the final ingredient woke them right back up.
At first, Jo Minjoon thought it was a sausage.
It was not.
If it had been a sausage, there would have been no reason for everyone to react with such horror.
Emily spoke with an embarrassed expression. “The final ingredient is bull penis. It’s not used very often, but its strong aroma is considered quite distinctive… Ah, for some reason, I feel as though you’re all looking at me like I’m a savage.”
Alan continued, “Each of you will be assigned one of these eight ingredients. You’ll choose by selecting a box without knowing what’s inside. However, the winner of the previous mission will be allowed to choose his ingredient directly. Minjoon, is there anything you want?”
“…At the very least, there are three I definitely don’t want.”
Sea anemone, calf brain, and bull penis.
Their appearances were shocking enough, but worse, Jo Minjoon had almost no idea how to cook them.
There were two ingredients that appealed to him: octopus and beef tripe. Both were ingredients he could consider himself fairly familiar with.
It did not take him long to decide.
Jo Minjoon spoke firmly. “I’ve decided.”