Ke Ming smoothly slipped on his coat, rose up on tiptoe, and crept out of the room.
After half a year, the Head Chef had let down all his guard. If Ke Ming wanted to run, it would be effortless.
But he'd already grown used to life here.
A five- or six-year-old kid running off into the Backstreets? No way he survives.
Still—eat someone's food, take someone's shelter, you end up owing them. He was staying in the Head Chef's home and being looked after. Ke Ming always felt he should do something to repay him.
Xinxu Garden sounded like a Chinese restaurant, but in reality the Head Chef's dishes leaned heavily Korean.
Other than things like Dongpo pork that could barely count as authentic Chinese cuisine, most of what he made was traditional Korean food.
And as everyone knows, Korean "cuisine" barely qualifies for the word cooking.
If I want to make truly peak delicious food… guess it's up to me, the foreigner!
No idea where the motivation came from, but these past two days Ke Ming had been getting up early to study recipes.
In his previous life as an overworked corporate drone, he'd often just drowned instant noodles for three meals a day. Cooking, as a skill, was something he barely understood. But he'd been working under the Head Chef long enough now—if he relied on the vague fragments of memory in his head and experimented a few times, he could at least roughly recreate parts of it.
The Head Chef watched all of this, and Ke Ming's silhouette overlapped more and more with a familiar figure he was almost forgetting.
"The heat's just right."
His gaze seemed to pierce through the wall. The Head Chef lowered his head and rubbed his fingers together.
…
The heat was right.
Out of the pan—fragrance bursting.
It was mapo tofu.
A traditional Sichuan dish.
Not the kind of perfection you'd call "ultimate," but in a foreign land, it still carried a faint warmth from home.
"You little brat… you've actually got it in you."
The Head Chef pushed open the kitchen door and stooped as he came in.
"C-Chef…?"
Seeing him, Ke Ming panicked and waved his hands.
"Mm. Shame, though."
The Head Chef lowered his head to sniff, then turned his body slightly toward Ke Ming.
"Huh?"
"Ingredients are lousy. But your technique's improved a lot."
"Your parents' regional traditional food?"
"…Yeah."
Memories from infancy surfaced—his father had been a great cook, fast and efficient, able to throw together a rich dinner in minutes.
Maybe he'd used some kind of "Singularity technology"?
Too bad his father was always busy. Most of the time it was his mother who cooked—never bad, exactly, but it always lacked that Chinese hometown flavor.
How did two people with such different eating habits end up together, anyway…
"Hey, hey—kid, you spaced out again."
The Head Chef poked Ke Ming's nose with a finger.
Ke Ming snapped back and instinctively covered his nose.
"Whenever you mention your parents you get like this. Tsk, tsk. Who knows what set you off."
"The heat's not there yet."
…
In the afternoon, Ke Ming flipped the sign on the front door, chased off the lingering customers, and returned to the back kitchen.
The Head Chef had gone out for something, leaving Ke Ming alone to mind the shop. He'd finally managed to muddle through the morning customers, sweating like a dog.
Without the Head Chef around, there was no shortage of people plotting in the shadows.
"Kid—how's business?"
Humming an off-key tune, the Head Chef pushed the door open, a long metal object slung over his shoulder.
Clang!
Metal struck the floor.
"Tsk, tsk—this took me some work. A prosthetic. Looks good, huh?"
He lifted the metal prosthetic and patted Ke Ming on the head with it.
"That left hand of yours can't stay like that. I figured I'd get you a prosthetic."
True. Missing three fingers wasn't just a problem for cooking—daily life itself was inconvenient.
"Lately that Corison Workshop in the alley's been pretty famous, right? Hah—kept saying they only do custom orders, wouldn't sell me one."
The Head Chef twisted the corner of his blood-soaked clothes and grinned.
"A bunch of tin cans. Even ingredients are more useful than they are."
"Back to your room. We're closing for the afternoon—I'll find a way to install it."
"Prosthetics… shouldn't there be specialists who—"
"Why are you yammering? You think I can't handle this little piece of junk?"
"B-but—"
The Head Chef slammed his palm down hard on the back of Ke Ming's head. Ke Ming's vision went black. The world spun, and he lost consciousness.
Staring coldly at Ke Ming collapsed on the floor, the Head Chef muttered,
"The heat's about right."
-------
My : pat*eon*com/RuneA
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