극야

“Why did you come back?”

“What?” 

The air is filled with the steady drip-drip-drip of a water faucet leaking somewhere, and it’s driving her crazy. She’s still looking at the man, though, in front of her, dressed in the same clothes as her, and with the same look in his eyes. Years have passed, but the look remains the same. They aren’t standing outside in a New York alleyway, they’re in Seoul, that’s the only difference. She sighs, looks at him. A beat. 

He holds out a cigarette. She ignores it, “why did you come back? Everyone has been talking about it, you know. The world is not as big as you think.”

“The world is big enough for all of us,” she snipes, “look, I didn't like New York. So, I came back. There’s nothing else to it.”

He steps closer to her. They both smell like onions, she thinks, and the air is too thick with smog at this time of day. There’s something about looking into his eyes; just like all those years before, she can't look away. “You were CDC at the best Korean restaurant in the world, and what, you leave all that to come to this place? We don't even have a star.”

“A star is irrelevant.” She finds herself growing more defensive, more angry, more impatient, “Look, I just needed a break, okay? That’s why I'm here.”

He stares at her. She’s been on the receiving end of it far too many times for her to be flinching away from it now, but she does anyway, “That’s a fucking joke if I ever heard one, you know. You’re a liar.” You’re lying to me again, Chef Kim.”

“Am I now?” 

“Yes, you are, and you will be a fucking liar unless you tell someone the truth.” He snaps at her, “And you know what? I didn't even expect anything else from you. Fuck you, man.”

“Fuck me? Fuck you,” she replies, equally venomous, “fuck you too, man.”

Vernon opens his mouth to say something, but thinks better of it and leaves. She’s still standing in the middle of the alley, looking at him, and realises that she never really took the cigarette from him.

It’s too late for the metro, which means that she has to walk the half kilometre to the bus stop, hoping that the late-night buses are running that night. Behind her, the lights of Gangnam district are as bright as ever—people move in and out of frame, just going about their lives, but she’s out there, feeling like shit.

And really, Vernon wasn’t wrong. She left because she wanted “different things”. That’s the original statement. “I wanted something different, so I came here,” she had said when Cheol had looked at her and asked, “I wanted something that would stay mine, so I came here.”

The bus comes within fifteen minutes of her standing at the stop, which means that she spends ten minutes of those staring at her concept notes for a new recipe. Sketches stare at her, brilliantly coloured, and she can’t help but think back to the pile of drawing pencils sitting in the middle of her drawer at home.

I need a break, she thinks, dragging herself up the short hill to her apartment building. I need a fucking break, and this is not it.

Unfortunately, this has not been it for a long time. Hasn’t been it, notsince New York, hasn’t been anything really, since she graduated from culinary school and had enough accolades under her belt to go around the fucking world, and she was just—just—she was someone. Someone who spent all their time in a restaurant, trying to figure out the rest of their lives. Someone who tried their best to purge the memories of New York from their minds, like it was a blip in the matrix, like they did not spend most of their lives moving from restaurant to restaurant, trying their hands at everything, before leaving it all behind at the peak of fame to come back to fucking Seoul and go back to the same restaurant where they wanted to become a chef for the first time ever. No, that’s a lie. It’s really not a lie.

When she opens the door to her apartment, the silence that greets her is shitty as usual. She tries not to think about it too much, and instead walks over to the cupboard where she keeps her crappy red wines. She could drink beer, but she’s trying not to fuck up her palate too much. Instead of sitting at her table with a bottle of beer, she sits at the table with a glass of wine, trying (and failing) not to think about New York.

Why was there so much to think about, when it came to New York? she wasn’t really trying to do anything, she just wanted to cook good food and become the best. Well, cooking good food was the goal at first, but by the end, she just wanted to be the best. The best in the game. The first female CDC at the only three-starred Michelin Korean restaurant.

The wine is over, so she moves onto the second worst part of her day: trying to go to sleep. Sleep refuses to come to her on most days, and on the others, she stays awake until the light blinks over the skyline, makes enough coffee to keep her going until the next century, and ignores the growing anxiety in her mind that one day she’s going to wake up with a dysfunctional heart and it will all be over soon, and that someone will find her on the floor of the kitchen, dead.

Almost like—

Shut up.

Sleep refuses to come, which means that she’s going to give into her worst impulses and go back to looking at the news again, staring at pictures of herself until they all start blurring into one and she no longer recognises the person staring at her from the screen.

Jungsikdang, New York, a new era: sitting down with Kim Mi-ran.

Kim Mi-ran, making waves in Korean fine dining.

So many headlines, and all the same; Kim Mi-ran, new chef, Kim Mi-ran, the best CDC at the best Korean fine dining restaurant in the world and the hottest new thing on the culinary scene. Her face, looking back at her from the articles, and everything feels off. Everything feels awkward, like she’s not even looking at the same person, like she’s looking at herself, refracted through an unfamiliar lens.

Let’s look him up.

She doesn’t want to, but her hands move of their own accord, because within thirty seconds, she’s looking at the face of Chwe Vernon, standing in front of the kitchen pass, leaning against the wall. He’s dressed in his chef whites and he annoys the shit out of her.

“Fucking Vernon,” she mutters, scrolling up to see the title of the article, The year’s Best New Chef works at Dovetail in London: Chwe Hansol.

She doesn’t want to think about how his name is now Chwe Hansol, and not Vernon. Not anymore, not like she remembers him to be. It’s all her fault, anyway. The article keeps raving about his career as sous at Dovetail London, about the new dish that he was developing, something similar to lasagna, wide noodles cooked in perilla oil with shiitake mushrooms and soy-braised beef scattered on top of it, glittering like jewels. She’s not jealous. She’s not jealous at all, but she wants to make something like this again.

Fuck Vernon. Fuck him and his perfect cooking.

Irritated, she rolls over on the bed, plugging in her phone, and closes her eyes. She doesn’t want to think about Vernon, not at all. She was fine in New York. She was good.

Well now, now she’s nothing.

 —

Chef Kim, refire.

Hands. Hands. Hands.

Pass too slow.

Wake up, Chef. You’re running late.

Her eyes blink open, and the clock on her bedside reads five in the morning. Only three hours, as per usual. Lying in bed, she makes a mental checklist of all the things that she needs to do before she begins work on prep for the day—make breakfast for herself, enough that she doesn’t keel over and die in the middle of service, drink a cup of coffee, text her mother. She needs to text her mother, she needs to text someone. Proof of life, kid. You ned to let us know that you’re here, and not somewhere else.

She needs to go to Gyeonghoeru. She needs to prep mirepoix and she needs to look at the menu for today because there’s a special and there’s always a special but she needs to keep track of everything. She has Vernon as her CDC and she’s fucking terrified that one day people are going to wise up to the fact that she has nothing new to offer anymore. No inspiration. Nothing.

1 unread message from Cheol.

[1:20 am] hey, just checking in. you’ve been offline for a long time. Work still shit, huh? Make sure you hydrate. There’s food at the house when you want to come by.

She hates this feeling. This constant buzzing inside her mind that she’s never going to be good enough, that one day, she’s going to be left aside by people who’ve seen her for so long, and that no one is going to look at her and say shit like ‘Kim Mi-ran, best CDC ever’, that people are going to call her out on her bullshit. Cheol gives that same feeling. Food at the house, when you want to come by. Not if, not an out. When. Like it’s preordained that she’s going to come by, that she’s going to turn up at Cheol’s bustling house full of his family and his friends and all his weird cousins that aren’t really cousins that she never really manages to keep track of, and she’s going to sit down and pull herself a plate. Because that’s what she does. She runs away, then comes back. She always comes back. Like a fucking metronome.

She doesn’t get groceries, doesn’t make herself breakfast. Instead, she stands in front of the coffee machine, contemplates whether to do something about the flickering light, and instead decides against it, before pouring herself a cup. Big cup, black coffee. No cream, no sugar.

The streets of Seoul are still foggy when she steps out of the house, wearing a grey coat with patchwork on it, one that she made or picked up while in Copenhagen, she’s not sure. She misses Copenhagen. Misses London. Misses a lot of things.

Most of all, she misses the feeling of being enthused about something in her life.

There’s a new stage at the kitchen this morning, and he looks fucking terrified, big doe-eyes that blink rapidly as he takes down notes in very cramped handwriting. She peers at him being coached by the front of house staff, and decides not to intervene when someone looks at her. She just shakes her head. There’s no reason for her to do anything about it. The kid’s as terrified as he is, and she’s just going to fuck everything up, so she leaves it.

Coat off, jacket off. Hair slicked back. Pull on your chef whites. Get started on your prep, you’re getting slow.

Her chef whites are actually black, a stark contrast from the rest of the kitchen. She’s not trying to stand out from the crowd, not really. Not in an asshole-like manner. She just likes the black instead of the white.

She’s peeling mushrooms for a light broth when Vernon steps beside her, picking up a knife and a mushroom. It’s annoying, how easily he falls in step with her, like he’s never really had to worry about finding his footing in the middle of a busy kitchen. She doesn’t resist the urge to sneak a peek at his chef whites, the embroidered Chwe Hansol staring back her like a fucking brand. He’s no longer Vernon; he’s no longer the person she knew back at culinary school. She’s no longer the person he knew either. Both of them are posing, standing in the middle of a high-end restaurant, peeling mushrooms in the fucking morning, and trying not to yell at each other. No yelling, chef. That’s another rule. She’s never broken it, not at Madison Park, not at NOMA, not even at Jungsikdang, where she could feel her brains leak out of her ears. Never yell in a kitchen, not in the middle of prep, not in the middle of service. Yelling means you’re losing control. Control. Control. Control. Everything on a plate has to be controlled. Yes, chef.

“Peas back on the menu?” Vernon asks.

She nods, “pre-sear Hanwoo today, chef.”

He nods, and she doesn’t want to imagine it, but his voice sounds more clipped, “heard.”

—

Service begins, and its hands, fire, hands, fire, all over again. Over and over, and by the end of it, she’s struggling to keep her hands under her control. They’re shaking. They didn’t shake before, but now they shake every so often. No one notices. If they do, they're too polite to say anything to her face.

Wiping down her station, she looks at her watch. Midnight again. Vernon is beside her, single-handedly focused on doing the thing that she hates doing the most, but he does it so elegantly, it makes her wonder if she ever looked like that. There’s no one here, and he’s still wiping down the station with her. He’s not doing it with her; he's doing it at the same time as her.

“From tomorrow, you’re on the galbi, chef,” she says, passing him by, and he looks at her, “what?”

Vernon doesn’t mince words, “the galbi is your signature. You formulated it.”

“And I’m asking you to start working on it from tomorrow,” she fires back, “is there any confusion, chef?”

There are no people in the kitchen anymore, and Vernon’s face goes through five distinctly different emotions, before settling on something that is similar to surprise, “you are just asking me to do galbi? Like what is happening here?”

She sighs, placing the towel away and going back into the locker rooms. Vernon follows; there’s no one here, not now. No one to tell him to fuck off. She pulls her chef’s whites off, he looks away. There’s nothing to look at, but still, he looks away.

“Is this charity?”

She blinks, not looking at him. Just sort of in the vicinity of him, she blinks, “where did you get that idea from?”

He takes another step forward, “you always do this, Chef Kim. You always fuck with my head. Me on the galbi? You know you don’t want me to do it, so you’re doing charity.”

She finishes dressing up, pulling her grey wool coat from Copenhagen, “I’m not doing charity, Chef Chwe Hansol.”

“Then what is this,” he scoffs, “you’re finally recognising me? That would never happen, I know you that well.”

“Maybe, Chef Chwe Hansol, you do not know me that well,” she snaps back, “it’s been a long time since culinary school, and Sketch. You cannot think that I’m the same, because I’m not.”

At the mention of London, Vernon flinches, and she wants to smile. There’s a tight thread spooled inside her heart. Sketch. London. Le Cordon Bleu. He looks like he wants to laugh, but he doesn’t. instead, he turns on his heel, and walks out of the locker room. She’s still standing, and all of a sudden, she feels like she’s back at Sketch, back before the whole thing blew up in her face.

—

[London, seven years ago]

Service is brutal.

She knows this. Knows this in her bones, knows this in the way her vision gets slightly blurry after every service ends. Service is brutal, but it is satisfying. She needs the hit of adrenaline to get through every day.

“Good work on the peas, chef,” she doesn’t even need to look at the person to know who’s talking to her, because who else would speak in that voice? In a kitchen, where it tends to get loud as fuck, Vernon is the only person who consistently speaks to people in that particular tone. Like he’s speaking to elementary school children. She likes to think that they’re all elementary school children either way.

“Thank you, chef,” she replies, “good work on shucking the oysters, chef.”

“Likewise, chef.”

She rolls her eyes good-naturedly, following him out of the kitchen and into the locker room, “are you really going to be this way, Vernon?”

“Be what way?” He looks at her, raising an eyebrow, “what happened?”

 She grimaces, “seriously? You’re going to NOMA, and you didn’t tell any of us?”

Vernon sighs, “I didn’t go to NOMA, I applied to NOMA. I don’t know if I’m going to get in. it’s a competitive position, you know. They’re not just going to give it to me because I asked for it.”

She sighs, holding her hand out. He says nothing, just reaches and wraps his hand around hers. It’s grounding, holding his hand. Their calluses match.

No. Vernon will go to NOMA, she’s sure of it. He’s also going to be great at it; she is also sure of this one thing. The rest of it—she’s not sure about that.

“What about you?” Vernon nudges her shoulder, looking at her changing out of her chef whites, “going to finally buy clothes that are not grey or black?”

“Don’t judge the clothes, Vernon,” she laughs, “at least I buy something other than t-shirts.”

“Yes, you buy shirts,” he sighs, “Mi-ran, I’m really just stressed about NOMA. I don’t think I’m going to be hired there, but I would love to.”

“I know, Vernon.” The two of them walk out of the building, into the night, and she looks at the sky, but Vernon is looking at her. She can feel it, that he’s looking at her, with his cheekbones and perfect facial structures and the propensity to treat people with kindness despite being in a stressful work environment—Vernon is looking at her.

“Mi-ran, do you, maybe, next week—”

Her phone buzzes in her pocket. She unlocks it, expecting to find—what? What did I expect to find? An email from National Insurance, telling me about my new health plans?

Instead, it’s something she doesn’t expect.

It’s from NOMA. The executive chef at NOMA, that is.

Chef Kim Mi-ran, this is Adrian—

Her heart stops, and from the way she can hear Vernon's breath hitch, it’s clear. He’s read it too. She shoves her phone back inside her pockets, “I’m not going to go to fucking NOMA, Vernon.”

He stares at her for a long time, and then opens his mouth, “heard, Chef Kim.”

He says something, but the sentence that he’s about to say dissipates into the night like it never existed in the first place. She doesn’t want to think about how much that hurts her. The email from NOMA sits in her email inbox, opened, read, but not answered.

Three months later, she’s flying to Copenhagen.

—

[Seoul, present day.]

On Mondays, the restaurant is closed, so she has free time. Free time to go about making the new menu for the upcoming summer months because that’s one of the duties of an Executive Chef, and she needs to finish the roster for whoever is on cleanup duty the next day, and she needs to do so many things. One after the other, things keep piling up for her, and she needs to finish them.

Instead, she wakes up at four in the morning, and walks down to her nearest convenience store to pick up a pack of cigarettes. She’s not even thinking about the transaction when she slides a ten-thousand won bill across the counter to the bored and cleared sleep-deprived clerk, walking outside to the footpath and lighting up a cigarette in the first light. She likes this, likes watching the sun break out from over the horizon because it signals to her that the cycle will still move on. Despite her not being there, despite her being absent from the rest of it, the cycle will move on, the sun will continue to rise, and she doesn’t need to think too much about it.

She thinks too much about it.

The coffee machine has a flickering light, still, and she ignores it again in favour of making herself a big cup of coffee, drinking it slowly as the hands on the clock tick past her. Six am. Seven am. The restaurant remains closed today. There’s no need for me to go in there.

At eight in the morning, her phone rings. It’s Cheol, and she contemplates only for a minute before pressing answer and holding the device up to her ear, “yes, Cheol.”

“Hey, Kim,” he laughs, “morning, Babygirl.”

“Don’t call me that,” she grumbles, “and why the hell are you up so early?”

“What do you mean?”

“You usually wake up at eleven in the morning, Cheol. It’s eight am now. A whole three hours early. I want to know why.”

He pauses for a moment, “why do you think, babe?”

She pinches her brows, because this is what Cheol always does and she’s feeling a headache come on, and Cheol will not let up until she’s guessed something, “I don’t know, you have work?”

“It’s Monday, babe. We took off work.”

“Most people have work.”

Cheol laughs, “not me, though.”

“Yes, yes, tell me all about your perfect ‘I own a business and employ my best friends and it is profitable as fuck’, Choi Seungcheol.”

He laughs again, an obnoxious sound that she hasn’t heard in a long time, “look, I was calling about lunch. We’re planning a barbecue, in the garden.”

“The garden?” She asks, “your big-ass house’s garden? A barbecue there?”

“Yeah, the cousins are coming over, and I think Mingyu is bringing a new friend of his, some cook, so I thought you guys could bond or some shit, I dunno.”

“I can’t bond with someone just because we’re both cooks, Cheol,” she sighs, “and who is it?”

“Mingyu said it was a secret, so I’m keeping it a secret from you too.”

She nods, “so Mingyu hasn’t told you, huh?”

Cheol doesn’t reply for a moment, “not really, but I would like you to be here.”

She thinks about it for a moment, eating lunch with Cheol's weird family and friends situation that she doesn’t want to keep track of. It’s going to be hot, it’s going to be annoying, but she likes the chaos. And if things go well, he’s not going to let her near any sort of open flame, which is a nice thing. She doesn’t want to cook on Mondays. “Who else is coming?”

“All the family, the friends, and you know, Mingyu’s new friend.”

She sighs, “do you want me to bring something?”

“Bulgogi?”

“Fuck no,” she laughs, “I’m not bringing fucking bulgogi to an open lunch, Cheol, I know my foods well enough for that.”

“It’s a picnic, sort of, you know,” he sighs, “listen, if you don’t want to, then you don’t have to.”

“No, no, I want to,” she exhales, going back to her breathing exercises, “I want to make something for you and your friends and family.”

“Make anything you want,” Cheol smiles into the phone, “I’m sure none of those bastards have ever had anything made by a Michelin starred chef before, so it’s going to be a fun thing, no matter how awful you think it is.”

“I do not think it’s awful.”

Cheol stays silent, “well, yes, it’s going to be awkward,” she replies, “but I can handle that much, you know, I can handle it. It’s not going to be a bad thing.”

“I know it, Babygirl, it’s going to be good.”

—

Cheol texts her after she cuts the call, a litany of emojis with the words do u wanna come for lunch yes or no, and she answers after thinking about it for five minutes, yes, Cheol, I will come to the barbecue, but no Korean food. I need something not Korean for once.

Will do, boss, he replies, hamburgers for everyone.

—

Cheol was lying when he said that the barbecue was going to happen at his house, because the address that he has given her goes to a fucking camping ground on the outskirts of town, where people go to have fun for the weekend, and definitely not meant for someone like her, but she musters up the courage either way. The taxi driver looks at her strangely when she tells him the address, but he says nothing more when she presses two bills into his hands. He doesn’t even spare a glance at the assortment of groceries she has in her hands. He’s also lying to her about being able to cook for everyone, because before she leaves the apartment, he texts her, begging for her to bring some groceries. She debates for a second on whether to do it for him or not, but Cheol just sends her a text, I’ll buy you a drink, Mi-ran, at the Shilla.

Drink at the Shilla means an easy million won on the pocket, so she’s not even upset at Cheol, or at buying food and groceries for his stupid friend outing. Drinks and a dinner at the Shilla, Cheol, don’t go back.

The camping ground looms up at her about an hour later, and she has to fight actively to not give into her desires and tell the driver to turn back and go back to her pick-up point. It’s going to be good, Kim Mi-ran, she tells herself, it’s going to be good.

—

Cheol’s carrying about three thousand blocks of firewood in his arms when she walks up to him, arms full of groceries, “Mi-ran!” he yells, “you made it!”

Thankfully, he doesn’t drop everything and come running to her for a hug, but it’s awkward nonetheless, “I’m here, like you requested,” she holds up the bags, “and I brought stuff that we can cook.”

“You’ll need to pick that up by yourself,” he says, grinning, “my hands are full of wood.”

She chooses not to play into the trap of that innuendo.

Stil, they fall into step alongside each other, and it’s nice. Nice to the degree that she forgets about the restaurant, the fact that she’s going to have to ditch them all at eight in the evening to catch the bus back to Seoul. Cheol will probably be angry with her, but she doesn’t know what else to do.

“Change of plans, baby,” he says, smoothly, placing the firewood blocks near the already set-up tent, “my parents aren’t coming.”

She rolls her eyes. This was bound to happen. “So, what, it’s just the friends?”

“Just the friends,” Cheol nods, “Jeonghan and Mingyu and Joshua, along with Mingyu’s new friend.”

“This friend that you’ve neither seen nor managed to have a conversation with,” she sighs, setting the groceries down, “what about the cousins?”

“The cousins aren’t coming either,” Cheol assures, “don’t worry, it’s just going to be us four, and you’re going to take off at eight, so you don’t even have to spend the night with us.”

She blinks, “how did you know that?”

It’s now Cheol’s turn to roll his eyes, “I know enough about restaurants to know that they need to start prepping at the crack of dawn,” he replies, “don’t worry, I’ve got the car, so I’ll drop you and Mingyu’s friend off at the bus stand at eight.”

She wants to ask why Mingyu’s friend is also leaving at eight, along with her, but then remembers that Mingyu’s friend is a cook and most restaurants need start prepping from the morning, in order to be able to serve their guests. And if he’s working at a small-scale restaurant, then he needs to be working throughout the day, so there’s that. Suddenly, she feels a strange sense of solidarity towards this unknown friend of Mingyu’s, someone who knows her struggles, someone who is on the same boat as her. It’s a bracing thought.

“When are the rest of them showing up?” she asks, rolling up the ends of her sleeves, “I could get started on cooking.”

Cheol shrugs, “Jeonghan will be coming soon enough, but Mingyu will be a bit late. Around noon, maybe?”

“Noon, right.” She can do noon. She can do lunch. She can do a lot of things.

“What do you have in that bag?” Cheol comes over, checking his phone, “Jeonghan’s here.”

“Jeonghan’s here?” and on cue, the tall, almost angelic-looking man appears into her field of vision, grinning from ear to ear, “Jeonghan!”

Jeonghan stops for a moment when he sees her, “Mi-ran?” he asks, “you’re really here? Food and Wine’s Best New Chef at twenty-three is here at a picnic?”

She rolls her eyes, but she likes Jeonghan. Maybe it’s the deceptively angelic looks, maybe it’s the way that he greets her with a hug every time he sees her, like he’s preparing for her to leave again. Maybe it’s that one time she made him a scallop dish, with a caper sauce and stuff, for his graduation from college. Jeonghan hated the dish, told her that it tasted strange, and she told him to fuck all the off to fucking Busan. Still, it was probably the most honest review anyone had given her in her life, so she liked it, likes him. Jeonghan is nice. He’s annoying, but nice.

He hugs her, placing a quick kiss to her cheek before looking at the bags she’s been arranging on the edge of the temporary firepit, “really, Cheol’s making you cook again?”

“I thought I’d bring something for him and his family, but he told me it’s just going to be us four,” she shrugs, “I made food, either way.”

“Yeah, food you’re not gonna eat,” Cheol shouts, “what did you even make?”

She points at the refrigerated bag, “there are some flank steaks in there, trying to actually work on a chimichurri-inspired marinade, but made with Asian ingredients, like shiso and more minty things. There are a lot of cognates within South American and Asian cuisine, so we can do that. And on that side, we have some shikhye, that I have been making for a long fucking time, and in the last bag we have something of a quick and easy yeolmu bibimbap, because I found some young radish kimchi, so we have that—”

“Jesus, it’s enough for a group of ten, not four people,” Jeonghan picks up one of the Ziploc bags with the flank steaks, “do you need help with cooking the steaks? I can do that.”

“No, it’s fine,” she sighs, “I think Mingyu’s new friend is a cook, but I can’t just—”

“You’re gonna make Mingyu’s new friend cook? The first time he comes here?” Jeonghan laughs, “come on, Mi-ran, you shouldn’t do that.”

“Well, I was supposed to have help from Cheol’s family, and the rest of our friends, but that’s not happening, so we now have to make do with something like this,” she grumbles, “I don’t want to make the guy cook in his first hangout either, but what can we do?”

“We can just have Mingyu help you with it,” Cheol replies, setting the logs, “he’s a competent cook, you know.”

“He would have been better if he had some formal training instead of just puttering about in a home kitchen,” she grumbles, “he had so much potential for becoming a chef, you know.”

“In your mind, everyone should be a chef,” Cheol laughs, checking his phone, “oh, wait, Mingyu is here.”

“Mingyu is here? Should I get started on the steaks?”

But Cheol is not paying her any attention, and neither is Jeonghan, so she looks up at the two people coming up the field. One of them is Mingyu, his tall frame easily visible even amidst the crowd of people, and on the other side is—fuck, it’s Vernon.

She sighs, standing up, and Mingyu runs up to her, pulling her into a hug again, “Mi-ran! So nice to see you, and this is Vernon—” he makes a gesture towards the man, who’s staring at her, intensely, “I met him in the gym! He’s also a cook, same as you!”

“Yeah, I know him,” she sighs, “he’s my CDC at Gyeonghoeru. He’s excellent.”

That one gets their attention. Cheol stands up straighter, and Jeonghan has a knowing glint in his eye, “really?” Mingyu asks, “you work with him?”

Vernon doesn’t answer at all, just keeps staring and staring at her, not looking away, and she hates her decision to come here again. Instead of running away, she turns to the stove, checking for temperature, “he’s excellent, Mingyu, I’ve told you that.”

—

On Monday mornings, she wakes up earlier than usual. Most days, she doesn’t go to sleep. Instead, she just stays awake, blinking in the darkness of the night, looking at her shitty ceiling and hoping for the morning to come by quicker. On Monday mornings, she gets to the restaurant at five in the morning, hoping for her prep to get done before she has to get wrapped up in the process of making menus and doing other stuff that keeps the restaurant smoothly running, the mundane, day-to-day tasks that she doesn’t really enjoy, but at times like these, they are a welcome reprieve for her.

“Morning chef,” the new stage, a boy whose name begins with Lee and well, she’s never learnt the rest of it, “prep time?”

“Prep time, Lee Jungchan, was it?” She asks, peering discreetly at the apron, “welcome to Gyeonghoeru.”

The boy looks bashful, “it’s just Lee Chan, actually. My parents put an extra syllable on there to make it more symmetrical.”

“Right, Lee Chan, then,” she smiles at him, looking around them at the pristine kitchen, “what else is there at this time of the day?”

He shakes his head, “just thinking about small talk, chef.”

“Small talk is good,” she pulls out her NOMA notebook, we’re doing a ginseng infused broth for the seasonal menu this time around. Have you ever had wild ginseng?”

“Wild ginseng?”

She shakes her head, smiling, “I had it once, and surprisingly enough, it was in Copenhagen. I think about it from time to time.”

“Was it—in a broth, or some sort of other preparation?” he asks, and it’s kind of endearing how he’s hanging on to her every word, and he trips over his words in an attempt to continue the conversation, “I mean, I had your dish at Jungsikdang, and the dol hareubang completely changed my life, I think it’s the best dish I’ve ever had.”

“Thank you, for the compliment,” she smiles, “you went to Le Cordon Bleu, right?”

He nods, “I know you and chef Vernon were both alumni of the same school. And you came to the school, one time, when I was still a student there.”

She frowns, “did I?”

He shakes his head, “I think you just came there to attend another lecture.”

That jogs her memory, “I went there to attend a lecture by Louis Dupont. He was my instructor when I was at Le Cordon, too.”

His eyes grow wide, “you learnt from Louis Dupont?”

“It was really nice,” she sighs, “his recipe for roast chicken is something I still haven’t managed to improve upon.”

“Still?” and in the morning light, she still thinks about the first time she had roast chicken by Louis Dupont, working at Gaspard, nervous as the youngest woman in the entire kitchen. Louis Dupont, who was an old man even when she met him, now positively ancient. Gentle hands teaching her how to truss the chicken, how to prepare a meal with care enough for it to leak out of every element on the meal, so that the people who eat your food will know that someone took the time to care about their meal. About food. She misses that time.

“I liked learning from Louis,” she offers, “he taught me why we should care so much about this.”

He blinks at her, clearly confused, “what?”

She laughs, “wild ginseng, boy. Wild ginseng.”

She’d lied to him when she talked about the wild ginseng. Well, she wasn’t lying, just omitting the truth. It wasn’t NOMA, and it wasn’t even Copenhagen. She had wild ginseng for the first and only time in Sweden, delirious to the point where she imagined that particular root appearing in front of her eyes. NOMA was behind her then; a blur of time that was spent in a small house overlooking the river and where she became convinced that a ghost was haunting her, where her days began at six and ended at midnight. NOMA was a blur of guilt for her, days and nights of attempting to contact Vernon, until she gave it up entirely.

Hey, Mi-ran, I don’t mean to tell you this, but Vernon was there at the reunion dinner last night, and when they asked him about you, he said that he didn’t know what the hell you were doing.

Really?

He was far unkinder than that. Sorry.

I took the NOMA opportunity from him; he should be angry. I don’t mind. It would have been weird if he wasn’t angry.

He also said that the rice and egg broth with the shiitake mushrooms was kind of derivative.

…

Mi-ran?

Okay. He can think that. I don’t mind.

Do you.

I’m telling you the truth. He can think whatever he wants.

If you want my opinion—

Don’t. it’s fine.

I was about to say that the rice and egg broth dish was the best thing I’ve ever had.

Flatterer.

I speak the truth.

Love you.

You don’t really.

I don’t?

You love Vernon.

Lies. Liar.

It’s why you’re forgiving that comment.

I’m not. I’m ignoring it. As I should.

You’re a coward.

That’s why I love you, Millie. You keep me honest.

Both of you are stupid.

—

“Wild ginseng,” she mutters to herself, setting up her station, “wild ginseng.” A close aide of the president was coming to dine with them that night, the front of house had informed them all before, it would be great if the Executive chef made the Hanwoo dish. The not-so-subtle undertone of don’t give this to the CDC and the line cooks remained there, but she really didn’t want to be a part of whatever political game the aide thought he was playing. She was going to be there, as usual, and she would be nice, as usual, and it would be a good service. Like always. She had stages and she had line cooks and she had two sous chefs and a CDC who hated her guts but loved cooking. She could do it; she had the necessary skills. She was skilled, man.

Prep time sulks, but that’s the point. People keep looking at her like she’s an alien, come to earth to figure out the living patterns of human beings. To some of them, she must look that way: the CDC-turned Executive Chef from Jungsikdang, someone who would under no normal circumstances be a part of this kitchen. That’s what Cheol told her too.

“What are you doing here, Mi-ran? You should have gone to another restaurant, someplace better than this one. You know that, right?”

“I do, Cheol,” she’d said, not fully believing herself, “I do. I just needed a change.”

And she did. Fire three Hanwoo. Hands. Refire. Change this, chef. The expo is being held up.

Someone passes a deli container into her hands. She looks up. Vernon just shrugs, “hojicha. Family meal is up next.”

“Right. Family meal.”

The new stage was on the family meal, rice and bulgogi made from the leftover marinated beef they had in the walk-in. She eats it all, because food is fuel, and you need the energy. She wants an energy drink. She wants fried chicken. She wants, desperately, anything other than Korean or Asian food. Her palate is fucked.

After family meal is done, she steps outside the restaurant for a break, stepping away from the gates and into the back alley. A cigarette comes up to her lips even before the doors finish closing behind her, and she walks out to the side of the dumpsters, taking quick puffs to calm herself down. Halfway through the cigarette, she sits down on the curb, hoping that the solidity of the road will do something to her shot nerves.

The prep is over. Now it’s just service that I need to get through.

“Sitting here again?”

She doesn’t even need to look to know it’s Vernon. He takes a seat next to her, their knees touching, and for a moment, she thinks of another time, back in London, back in the timeline before everything went to shit, “you’re still here?”

“What, you thought I’d leave?” he laughs, “I’m not going to, Chef Kim. If you want to, you can leave. I’m not going to.”

“Gyeonghoeru that important to you?” she scoffs, “you said that it doesn’t have a star.”

“Yes, but it could.” Vernon holds his hand out for the cigarette, and she wordlessly hands it over to him, “you know it too. If we all pulled through this one, then we have a chance at getting a star. It’s doable. It’s there.”

“Do you know the process of getting a star?” she turns to look at him, and Vernon is there, with a faraway look on his face, like he’s looking at something beyond her, beyond himself, beyond this restaurant, even. It’s the same look she had seen on his face when he talked about working at NOMA, when he talked about their future, the two of them. It’s the same everything.

She has to look away to not start crying.

“It could be a starred place, you know,” Vernon says, “they genuinely have the potential for that. Everyone here loves cooking; everyone here loves the art of it. They’re hungry for success, and a star would make them even more hungry for it. You know this, Chef Kim, you know they could be better than a restaurant with the potential to get recognition. They could actually have it.”

Chef Kim. All those years of calling me Mi-ran, and now he reverts back to Chef Kim. Fine. Good. “Do you know how hard the process is?” she can’t help the scoff that escapes her, “it’s painful, it’s hellish. Every day is a constant grind in that process, to get a star. People become jaded, people become tired. People start hating each other. It brings out the worst in people.”

“And you think the atmosphere in there isn’t already shot to death?” he stands up, looking down at her, his eyes hard, “everyone is on eggshells around you, everyone is on eggshells around me. People start looking amongst each other the moment we have a conversation, because they know we’re fucked up, and they want us to just stop this mess.”

“I did not start this mess, you did,” she snaps, “you know how many times I called you? How many times I texted, begging for you to listen to my words? I cut myself up daily because I thought I hurt you. That’s what I did. Every day, chef, of course the dynamic is fucked up, because you hate me, and I dislike you just as much!”

He stands very, very still. She knows what she’s just said, she knows the impact of the words, but she doesn’t want to take them back. Not yet. Not now. Vernon knows it’s true. He said your dish was derivative.

Everything comes back to cooking, in the end.

He takes a deep breath, “you wrote all those words to me from NOMA. You wrote them from Copenhagen, Mi-ran. You wrote them from the place where I desperately wanted to be at. You still think I should forgive you?”

She stands up, “then don’t fucking ask me to get you a star!”

“You think it’s just me who’s going to get a star? You’re going to get one too!”

She stares at Vernon for a full ten seconds, before saying “fuck you.” The door slams loudly, in the wake of her leaving. He doesn’t follow her into the kitchen.

“Twenty minutes till the doors open, chef,” the front of house, Minghao, says, loud enough for her to be jolted awake from that fucking daydream. “You feeling good?”

“Never better, chef,” she mumbles, looking away from him, because Minghao unfortunately worked at Ever and is a bitch for getting an accurate read on whatever emotions she’s feeling at any moment, “we’ll be ready this way, chef.”

“Stations need to be prepped, chefs!” she announces, stepping into the kitchen, drawing everyone’s attention, “pre-service meeting, please.”

There’s a murmur of assent, and Minghao follows her to the dining room, bringing the whole front of house along with him. Vernon walks into the kitchen as she follows Minghao out of the kitchen and into the dining, his eyes flicker for a moment before settling onto indifference.

“I’ll oversee pre-service,” he says, and she nods, allowing that bit of lie to fall through. What else was she going to say? That she knows that he didn’t want to talk to her, or that he knew that she was aware of this?

The dining room has approximately ten people in there, split amidst kitchen and front of house. Minghao takes a deep breath, before looking at her, inclining his head just a little. When was the last time that she had seen that particular gesture? Right, at Ever, when Minghao was there along with Vernon, both of them staging, and she had followed Vernon out to Chicago just to try and make amends. She still remembers the look that Minghao had given her across the room. She doesn’t think he recognised her, but at times, Minghao makes her suspicious.

“Chef,” he murmurs, “the pre-service.”

“Right,” she claps her hands, “today, we have some important things on the menu, the new iteration of dol hareubang, served with an orange reduction, so that needs to be mentioned. Also, for the seasonal menu, we have the boiled whole chicken, paired with a shiitake mushroom broth that has been flavoured with ginseng and Chinese whole spices. That’s all.”

She finishes her speech feeling very stupid, and Minghao, thankfully, takes over from her, “okay, guys, listen up! We have a few people of note eating with us today—two public health doctors, who have come here to celebrate their anniversary, and the man has sent a note ahead with his reservation, saying that he will be proposing to his girlfriend. We will be facilitating that, so there will be a special red bean paste dessert for them, and for god’s sake, do not ask them for the check.”

Red bean dessert, with a champagne proposal. She can already think of the multiple ways that she can make this one occasion more special for this couple, to make this one experience an unforgettable one. Red bean parfait, modified slightly from the sorbet that we already are serving for dessert. The tasting menu would have to be changed slightly, but that’s okay. They can do it.

“Pâtissier would be taking point on that one,” she mutters, and Hong Joshua, the pastry chef, looks up from where he’s standing, nodding fervently. Look, he can do it. You’ve got a system now, Kim Mi-ran. You’ve got your own brigade.

“What about the presidential aide?” one of the front of house members pipes up, “shouldn’t we be considering him as a person of note too?”

Minghao looks at her. She sighs, pinching her nose, “if we consider every politician who walks in through those doors as a person of note, we are going to inundated with red tickets like that every day. Politicians are not people of note, the people are. Let’s keep that in mind, everyone.”

“Couldn’t have said it better myself, chef,” Minghao smiles, checking his watch, “ten minutes till doors open, chefs. I’m going to be on expo, so please make sure that everything is running smoothly. Seokmin, I’m counting on you for that.”

Seokmin nods, smiling brightly, ‘you can count on me, chef!”

“I can never get used to that,” she sighs, tucking her notepad into her apron pocket, “let’s go back to work, everyone.”

“Yes, chef!” the chorus follows her all through, even into the kitchen, where she looks at the dessert menu, that has been slightly revamped for the season; matcha and hojicha ice cream, along with a caramel sauce that people poured over their dishes. Joshua did a very good job of it, as expected from hi. She’s come to expect a lot of things from people, she does.

Vernon would never say anything bad about me.

He did, you know.

Derivative.

Derivative.

Derivative.

Chef, we need three shrimp within the next two minutes.

Derivative.

“Chef?”

She blinks, the lights suddenly harsh, “am I having a stroke?”

Vernon stares at her, “no, not really. You’re three minutes out from the doors being open, though.”

“That’s right, everyone. Three minutes till the doors open,” she nods, “faster and cleaner on every dish, chefs. Every second counts.”

Every second counts.

“First tickets coming in,” Minghao announces, “we need three striped jack, three arctic char, please, chefs.”

“Heard,” she says. Her hands work fast, sure, confident. This is the one thing in her life that she’s entirely confident on, cooking. Every second counts, chef. She knows her hands are fast and sure; she knows her hands make art and work at it. She’s sure of it.

Derivative.

—

“That’s it,” Minghao announces, “thank you, chefs!”

Mi-ran throws in her towel with slightly more force than absolutely necessary. Everything had gone well. The presidential aide had shown up with their acquaintances in tow and they had had a good time. Everyone who stepped in through those doors tonight had had a good time.

“Thank you, everyone,” she says, looking at Minghao, who’s walking fast towards her, a smile on his face, “yes?”

“The persons of note wish to send their compliments to the chef,” Minghao grins, “they really enjoyed their meal.”

“You refused to take the check, yeah?”

He rolls his eyes, “of course we did, but now they want to meet you.”

“Why? They should be meeting Joshua instead. The dessert was the surprise one.”

Minghao shakes his head, “the dol hareubang.”

“The dol hareubang.” She sighs, “let’s go.”

When she follows Minghao out into the dining area, she can feel the eyes of the diners on her, looking with heightened interest in the executive chef, who’s coming to grace them with her presence. She doesn’t like this part of her job. One thing she didn’t have to deal with at Jungsikdang, were the meetings. She didn’t have to think about meeting people, just had to be satisfied with the knowledge that her food was good and it was received well by the people.

Minghao stops in front of a pair of people in the corner seat, “there you go.”

“I have to do it, right?”

“You’re the executive chef, not me.”

She sighs. He’s not wrong. Minghao rarely is. “Hello, I’m the executive chef, Kim Mi-ran,” she smiles, bowing at the couple, who elbow each other in excitement, “I trust everything went well?”

The woman stands up, smiling, “thank you so much for this incredible meal, chef. The dol hareubang was out of this world.”

“Thank you, we as a team work very hard for everything to be perfect,” she smiles back, “I trust the surprise went well?”

The brilliant smile on their faces rivals the brilliant cut of the diamond ring on the woman’s finger.

—

“Staff drinks, please,” Joshua whines during cleanup, wiping down his counter, “Saturday, please.”

Minghao looks at her, “I’m not the person who can sign off on that.”

Joshua looks at her, “pretty please, Chef Kim?”

She sighs, “we need to go over the vendor contracts on Saturday. I need Minghao and Vernon for that.”

“We can look over the contracts before we leave for drinks,” Minghao says mildly, trying not to annoy her further, “I’m sure we can finish everything in time and then go out for drinks, the whole staff.”

She looks down at the tile that she had been scrubbing for the past three minutes. There’s a particular red stain on there, that she can’t really get out. She’s been staring at it for the past three minutes, and the smell of soap persistently stays on, within her nostrils. They’re all going to go out for dinner and she’s going to have to go with them, because that’s what a good boss does; go out with their employees during the weekend, commiserating with them over general shitty work life and offering them condolences for ending up in the position where they were.

“Right, I don’t think I can join, sorry,” she says, “but the corporate card is there, for discretionary expenses. I think we can use that.”

Minghao’s expression perks up, “that's right! We can take the corporate card with us. And we've been working so hard for the past couple of months, I think we deserve a break.”

“We do,” Vernon replies. She looks at him. He’s scrubbing the floor, same as her, but unlike her, he’s managed to cover a significant area. She wonders if this is a sign from the universe.

“We’re bringing you too, chef,” Joshua points at her, grinning widely, “you cannot escape the company dinner just because you think it’s going to be a bad thing, you need to come with us.”

“I don’t need to do that,” she grumbles, “I shouldn’t go out and get drinks with anyone.”

—

Minghao leaves her in the middle of brainstorming about the seasonal menu, three of whose dishes need to be changed, citing some vague excuse about a wine vendor who had reneged on their promise for a proper Beaujolais, which means that she’s stuck in the small office at nine in the evening, with only a blinking table lamp for company. She has to be here, because there is work to be done. There is always work to be done. The work never ends, it seems. Not for her.

“Minghao?” the door opens, “I thought you were supposed to me here—oh.”

She looks up at Vernon, who’s wearing a plain white shirt and jeans, looking like he’s freshly showered, clearly expecting someone else, “oh, it’s you.”

“Are you upset that it’s me, chef?” she murmurs, going back to her notebooks, “Minghao has gone off in search of a proper Beaujolais. He’s not here right now.”

“Right,” Vernon sighs, ignoring the jab, “he asked me to meet him here.”

“I was talking to him until a few minutes ago, when he said that he had to leave,” she sighs, “I know you said you didn’t want to be a part of the proceedings, but do you want to take a look at the new seasonal menu? Front of House says that three dishes need to be changed out.”

For a moment, Vernon looks like he’d rather be anywhere else in the world, but shakes his head, sitting down on a stool, looking at er scrawled notes and sketches, “which three dishes?”

“The manduguk, which Joongang Daily didn’t like when they did the review, the LA Galbi, which Hankyoreh thought was the least cohesive of all of our dishes, and finally, the salmon roe, which in everyone’s opinion, is exceedingly difficult, has too many elements, and generally, is a bitch to prepare. Also, no one really goes for it in the a la carte menu.”

“Damn,” Vernon whistles, “that’s a lot of things to go through. You sure you need my help?”

She stares at him, “chef, I don’t know what you think about me, but to me, you’re my CDC. That hasn’t changed, and I don’t think it ever will. No matter what happened between us, I still need your opinion on this.”

He looks at her, “I said that I didn’t want to be a part of this.”

“I know, but I wanted you to be a part of this, so that’s why, I’m asking you for your opinion,” she holds her hand out for her notebook, “never mind, if you don’t want to give your opinion, or be a part of this one, then I shouldn’t force you to take part.”

“You always do business like this?”

“What?”

“I’m asking if you always do business like this.”

“I’m not the one running a business here, chef,” she sighs, “I still need to report to my boss and the accounting department, who always have something to say about the dishes that we have planned, and I still need to get everyone on board for this, so chef, if you don’t want to be a part of this, I’m not going to stop you. You are free to leave this office space.” That part of her sentence, you're also free to leave this kitchen and my life goes unsaid. His face looks like he’s gotten the memo, however.

He hands her the notebook, and she goes back to sketching the dishes. They need to scrap the manduguk. If Joongang Daily hates it, then it was truly not up to the mark. The first time that she heard about that review, she had scoffed. What did the fucking Joongang Daily know about haute cuisine? The second time, she read the review, which called the manduguk ‘unbalanced and not up to the mark’. Hankyoreh thought that the La Galbi was not cohesive and did not ‘speak to the overall quality of the atmosphere’, and that it seemed too much like ‘the Gyeonghoeru was trying to at once be an upscale restaurant and a small-time Korean barbecue joint in the Bay area, and it wasn’t working’. She knows. It never works. They need to change it.

 “Mi—Kim,” he says, and it’s pathetic, so pathetic, how small his voice sounds, and it’s kind of awful on her part, because that small part inside of her, that mean and angry and bitter part inside of her, that preens at this comment. He can’t even say my name out loud. She realises with horror, that she likes it when Vernon gets that tone in his voice. It means that he’s listening to her. It means that her words are affecting him, that he can no longer remain nonchalant and pretend that she doesn’t exist in his sphere outside of service and prep. Am I a fucking monster?

“Yes?” she looks up, and Vernon looks like he’s been thinking about this for a long time, “what do you need to talk to me about, chef?”

That’s just being cruel, she knows it, but she needs this, also; needs the distance of calling him chef, because she doesn’t want to call him Vernon, only to hear the words Chef Kim being thrown back at her. She doesn’t want to be a part of that. She doesn’t think her heart could take that much.

“I’m sorry.”

She blinks. “What are you sorry about, chef?”

“I shouldn’t have lashed out at you like that.”

“It doesn’t matter now, chef,” she sighs, “we should get back to work. That means I need to get back to work, and you can ask Minghao where he is right now. Probably moved on to a Languedoc sweet wine by now.”

“I’m trying to make amends here, Chef,” Vernon huffs, slightly irritated, and she must be crazy, because she really needs to see him lose it for once in his life. She needs to see Chwe Vernon just go insane. Berserk. She needs to see it. He’s snapped at her and he’s gotten irritated with her, but he’s never been angry. She needs to see it.

A sudden, irrational realisation comes over her, and she stands up, the notebook entirely abandoned on the desk, with its brightly-coloured drawings staring at the two of them, “how badly do you want that star, Chef Chwe Hansol?”

He looks up, eyes wide, “you’re considering it?”

“I still think it’s a bad idea,” she sighs, “but that’s not the point. Do you want it, or not?”

A moment.

Vernon stares at her like they’re back at le cordon, like they're back working side by side at sketch, like the last few years had never really happened, like they're not on other sides of a burning bridge. “Do you want this too?”

She nods, “I think we could get you a star, Chef Hansol. I’m not going to ask why you want that star or why you’re so intent on getting it in fucking Korea, making Korean food, when the process would have probably been a lot easier in the United States. I’m asking you, do you want the star?”

Vernon looks at her for a moment, then nods, “yes, I want it.”

She sighs, “well, let’s see what we can do about it.”

—

Mi-ran, what’s your deal with Vernon?

Vernon? He’s a friend.

He cannot be just a friend.

He is.

Have you seen the way he looks at you? Not a friend. Not by a long shot.

You’re lying hehe

—

On Saturday, she hands a typed-out card to Minghao, with the title ‘Non-negotiables’.

“What’s this?” he asks, without even looking at it, “cannot be the new menu, you just locked it last night. You haven’t even given it to everyone yet.”

“I think we should get a star.” She says, without any preamble. Minghao sputters, then does a double take.

“What?”

“I mean, it’s been long enough with me here, I think we need to work towards getting a star.”

“I’m sorry, chef,” Minghao says slowly, as if he’s trying to get it through in his own head, “you mean a Michelin star, right? This is not some other sort of award that I am not aware of?”

“No, chef, this is a Michelin star that I’m talking about,” she replies, “I want one.”

He blinks at her, “you’ve been talking to Chef Hansol again, I see.”

She turns her head so fast that her neck would have snapped, “no. I want the star.”

“Is this some ego thing?” Minghao looks like he might have a conniption, “it hasn’t even been a year since we opened, and the boss brought you into this ship as a last-ditch attempt to keep this restaurant alive. Chef Hansol joined after you did, so I want to be clear on this one thing.”

“I’m clear, chef,” she pulls on her apron, “we need to get a star if we want more people to come here.”

“Getting a Michelin star is not a publicity stunt, chef,” Minghao sighs, “are you sure about this?”

“One hundred percent sure,” she walks back into the kitchen, “we will get a star.”

Over at pastry, Joshua perks up, “a star?” he walks over, “are we talking about getting a star?”

“Chef Kim here is talking about getting a star,” Minghao sighs, “chef, please. Think about this. We cannot afford to fail if we start. We cannot stop on this trajectory.”

“I know, which is why I wrote those regulations,” she turns back to her finished prep, “we’ll get a star.”

Joshua and Minghao share a look amongst them, “is this about—” Joshua begins, and she holds up a hand, silencing them both.

“This is an ego thing,” she says, blatantly ignoring Vernon, whose looking at the three of them from his position on the pass, “I retained two stars at Jungsikdang, and I got another star for the restaurant the next year. I want Gyeonghoeru to have a star too. I want this for myself, and I want this for everyone else.”

Minghao takes a look at her list, “this is all on par for the course for fine dining, but what is this thing about a ‘chaos menu’?”

“The menu changes once a week,” she shrugs, “similar ingredients, because vendors will refuse to give us a good discount without larger orders, but we shift the dishes. Every week, the menu will change.”

Minghao looks like he might really have a heart attack now, “chef,” Joshua says, “I doubt pastry would be able to pull that off.”

“The dessert menu can be locked,” she concedes, “but the rest of it, I will change that. We are all capable of following through on a challenge, and I think—no, I know that this will do well.”

Footsteps. She knows who this is, because only one person walks like that, even within a kitchen, “chef,” Vernon says, voice clipped, “please, can we talk about this?”

She gives Minghao and Joshua a nod, following Vernon into the office.

As soon as the door closes behind her, he turns around, looking irritated, “a chaos menu? Really?”

“I thought you wanted a star, chef.” She replies, trying her best to be nonchalant, “we need to do this.”

“Doing this would harm us more than it would do us any good,” he snaps, “you know this, chef.”

“I was not the one who wanted a star, chef.”

A moment. One. Two. Vernon looks like he wants to storm out of the office, but finally decides otherwise, standing a bit taller. Doesn’t matter, he’s still the same height as me, she thinks, not a hint of malice in there. He’s still the same. Even if he had changed his name and adopted another person’s skin, he’s still the same.

“You’re going to make everyone suffer,” he bites out eventually, not looking away, “you’re going to make everyone suffer with your rules and this chaos menu that will be changing every three days—”

“Every week.”

“—every week, then, because you have no idea how these people work—”

“I have enough of an idea, thank you very much.”

“—which just means that you’re going to put everyone through the ringer for nothing!”

She doesn’t say anything when he finishes his sentence, just keeps staring at him. Theres a shuffling noise outside the door. About three people, listening in, two of them have to be Minghao and Joshua, and they must have recruited someone from the kitchen, probably to get another witness to this—whatever they were having right now. Was this a lovers’ spat?

“If you want to get a star, chef, you need to follow the rules and regulations. If you don’t wish for that, then you’re free to go. I’m sure London would be very happy to have you back, working in their kitchens,” she says finally, and although it’s bitter and mean and nothing like what she wanted to say to him, it comes out like she’s tired and exhausted, like she’s been holding her exhaustion in for months and weeks and days.

“Are you firing me?”

“I’m telling you to get with the programme that you built, chef, not the other way around,” she groans, “god, I’m so fucking tired.”

“Right, message receives,” he nods, “do let me know about the rules and regulations, I will be following them to the dot.”

“I would really hope that you do, chef, because my kitchen is not a place for idleness,” she replies, “make sure that you are on board with everything.”

Vernon steps aside, and she opens the door, yanking it back with so much force that the three people waiting outside almost fall over, and she glares at Minghao, Joshua, and Chan.

She scoffs, levelling another withering stare at Minghao and Joshua, who have the decency to look slightly abashed, “roping in the stage on their first month?”

Chan blushes almost immediately, “no, no, chef, I just wanted to show you this idea that I had been working on, and Chef Xu said that I could come to the office and show it to you, and Chef Hong said that I could—”

“They filled your heads with bullshit, right?” she rolls her eyes, “really? I did not expect that from the two of you, man.”

“You expected worse from us, be honest,” Minghao looks unashamed, and Joshua just giggles as she makes her way back to the kitchen and picks up her knife again. The fucking knife. She had got it back in NOMA, as a present from a friend in Japan, a beef knife that was half a joke, half serious. Still, she stuck with the utensil, even going so far as to travel to fucking Gifu to repair it one time.

“Hey, chef,” Minghao follows her into the kitchen, whispering low, “do you really think that fighting with him like this is going to help?”

“There is nothing to fight about,” she mutters, chopping up onions for the mirepoix with more anger than necessary, “look, chef, I’m thankful for the support, I really am. But there is nothing to help with, and I need you to focus and follow the regulations.”

Minghao sighs, “I worked at Michelin-starred restaurants too, chef. But this is too—”

“Everyone here is trained formally, yes, but Michelin star is a different ballgame altogether, you know. We need to get together and get our heads in the game.”

“Yes, that’s all well and good for you, chef, but I’m not jeopardising the well-being of the whole team because you wanted to have a Michelin star.”

“I did not want a Michelin star. I’ve got enough of them, and I hate the idea of it,” she snaps, not really understanding the implications of those words. I don’t want a Michelin star. I’ve got enough of them.

Minghao stares at her for a while, then a slow, understanding smile spreads all over his face, “understood, chef.”

She looks at him, hands still methodically chopping onions, “no, do not go there.”

“I knew there was something there when you came to fucking Chicago and waited around at Ever for a lifetime,” he snickers, “there’s so much I want to know about this.”

“There will be nothing that you get to know about this, you fucking asshole,” she rolls her eyes, “go run service. Prep will be over in an hour.”

He snorts, leaving her on the pass. Vernon comes up behind her, eyes red, like he’s been crying in the office, which is not true, because Joshua would know and Joshua cannot keep a secret to save his life, “chef, the prep.”

“Right, the prep, chef,” she mutters, bringing out her notebook, “we have two and a half turns tonight, so, prep accordingly, chef.”

“Two and a half turns,” he mutters, under his breath, going back to his station. She doesn’t want to hurt him, and she doesn’t want to argue with him, but she also doesn’t want to hurt herself.

—

“Coming for drinks?”

She stares at Minghao’s outstretched hand, blinking twice to refocus, after the Saturday service. Why is it that all Saturday services were shitty? They are all wiped out, Joshua almost cried during service, Chan actually cried during service, and Vernon was—Vernon was doing whatever his idea of a cold shoulder was, which was nothing.

And Minghao is looking at him with Seokmin in tow, all hopeful about a dinner, and she doesn’t really have the emotional bandwidth to deal with this anymore.

You have to, you’re executive chef now.

“I’m going to opt out of this one, chef,” she sighs, reaching into the drawer to get the corporate card they save for these occasions, “no expensive wines and shit, please. The discretionary budget has been shot to hell.”

Minghao makes a face, “what, you want me to wreck my palate?”

“Yes, please, chef, wreck your palate on cheap soju and beer, because that is the extent to which the company will be funding our team dinners to.” She rolls her eyes, “I spoke with the boss yesterday about it, and he said there was a discretionary budget in place for this. It’s not much.”

“Yeah, no shit, we’re gonna have to get fucked up on cheap liquor tonight, I guess,” Minghao pockets the card, “you're not coming?”

She stares at him. Is he kidding, or does he actually want me to come with him? “I’m not so stupid as to butt into the affairs of my subordinates, Minghao,” she shakes her head, “I need to work through this couple of vendor contracts before I can even get out of this office.”

Minghao takes a step forward, then takes a look at the giant spreadsheet that she has open on her computer, “I’m not going near that with a ten-foot pole, chef. That looks awful.”

“Yes, well, I have to deal with it, that’s my job,” she sighs, “tomorrow is a state holiday, and on Monday, we’re all off.”

“The restaurant's closed for two days, yes,” Minghao says, narrowing his eyes, “wait, are you planning to come back in here? Why?”

“I’m not, I just had an idea for a dish, we can put it in the menu maybe when we’re a bit more uh—financially solvent,” she wants to wring her hair out, “I’m going to go over the numbers again.”

“Don’t you need to see the accountant for that?”

“I’ve got enough experience at this, I think, chef,” she says, “if there is nothing that I can do, then I’ll talk to the accountant.”

“Yeah,” Minghao takes a seat on a stool, “no drinks, then?”

She shakes her head, “sorry, chef. No drinks tonight.”

When Minghao opens the door to walk outside, she can see Vernon standing outside, staring at her like she’s a problem he cannot really solve. She doesn’t return that look. I don’t care.

When she gets home that night, the clock is striking three in the morning. The spreadsheets were so complicated that she almost bled from her eyes, but she had to get through them. We need a star, she thinks, if not for me, then for the rest of the people in there. Joshua. Minghao. Seokmin. Chan. Vernon.

Vernon.

She reaches for her phone, turning blindly towards the place where she’s sure that she’s kept it. Minghao has added her to his Instagram, and like a fucking masochist, she opens his profile to see the story that he’s uploaded. Fucking idiot. What, you want to see how well they're doing without you?

It’s a photo taken at a cheap roadside bar. Minghao stares into the camera, grinning, and behind him, the rest of the crew. Chan is halfway through his drink, and Joshua is holding up a victory sign. Great. Vernon is there too, on the edge of the picture, smiling, holding his hands up in a gesture that means what—what does it mean? She doesn’t know. She never does.

[on this day seven years ago]

She doesn’t want to click on that notification, but she has to. There’s some sort of magnetic pull towards that notification that brings her to that memory from seven years ago, just when they began working at Sketch, her and Vernon, grinning, a cigarette dangling from her lips, and a can of coke in Vernon’s hand. Is she pathetic if she remembers everything about that one night?

She doesn’t care. She doesn’t care at all. She’s so good at this. She’s thirty and she’s a genius and she’s an executive chef and she misses Vernon and misses cooking in a way that actually mattered to her.

—

I don’t think this is working out.

How so?

I keep thinking about the burner.

The burner?

The burner. In the kitchen. I keep thinking about it. When it’s on, I think that it’s going to be easy. So easy.

To do what?

To just let the fire continue. To just let it burn everything and me along with it.

Have you done anything about it?

I just turn the knob off the moment the voices get too loud.

That’s good, Miss Kim.

That’s nice to hear. Miss Kim.

Why?

I get called ‘chef’ all the time. This is a welcome change.

I see.

—

She blinks awake in the middle of the morning. It’s eight o’ clock, too late, which means that she has one call from her mother, waiting for her.

“Mi-ran,” she hears on the second ring, when she calls her mother, “are you coming to lunch today?”

“I don’t want to, mom,” she sighs, “I just go home and start cooking, and I am taking a break from it for two days.”

Her mom sighs, “and what makes you think that I’m going to ask you to cook when I know that it’s a holiday?”

Shit. “I’m sorry, mom, it’s just that so many other people—”

“I know, honey. I know. Just come home. It’s going to be fine.”

“Okay,” she thinks about it, “I’ll come home in the afternoon, mom.”

“Love you.”

She doesn’t say it back.

She is so fucked. She keeps thinking about it while packing up for a night at her childhood home. Her mother would no doubt pack her with enough side dishes to last a whole month. The only person who’s been excited by the prospect of her returning, have been her parents. Her father would no doubt tell her to buy a car instead of hiring a car every time she made the trip, because getting a taxi costs money. Everything costs money. She’s not even interested.

She doesn’t want to go, but like a good daughter, she does. She opens her fridge and looks at the dismal selection of ingredients and thinks to herself, what can I make for my parents, and comes up with nothing, and still moves. Takes a shower, brushes her teeth. Feels like her insides are going to crawl out of her skin.

She can still see the Instagram story that Minghao had uploaded, with Chan and Joshua and Vernon, and feels like she’s messing everything up.

—

Her parents live in a middle-class area, where they bought their house in the years before the IMF crisis. Most of the people she grew up with were all the same: children of middle tier government workers, who had a set life course ahead of them even before they began to understand what life meant. Lawyer, doctor. Engineer. One became a prosecutor. Teacher. Bank worker.

“Mi-ran!” her mother says, the moment she walks through the front door, “come in! you look so tired, did you drive here? Why did you take so long to come? We’re all done with lunch.”

“Mother,” she replies, extricating herself from her grasp, “I just have two days of vacation. I spent the morning cleaning.”

That satisfies her mother, because cleaning is a good thing, right? Cleaning means that you were thinking about the space where you lived in, took care of the people who shared the same space as you. Cleaning was good. Cleaning was appropriate. Cleaning was what adjusted people did.

She’s a well-adjusted woman.

“You’re here,” her father says, “your sister was supposed to be back, but she’s not here yet.”

Did she mention that she has a sister?

“Yeah, right, I called her, and she said she’s not going to make it this time around.” She replies, looking intently at the floor design, “you called her? She picked up?”

“She didn’t pick up,” her father sounds irritated, but she can ignore that as much as she likes, “she just sent me a text. God knows what she’s doing right now.”

Mi-ran has an idea about what her sister might be doing at the moment, but she says nothing, and instead, she chooses to keep her mouth shut. She’s a wise woman. She’s wise and she’s a genius.

“Right,” she mutters, stepping beside her father, “I’m going to take a nap, mom. Don’t worry.”

—

“Don’t you ever rest?” her sister asks, lounging on her bed, “Copenhagen’s so beautiful. You should go gout sometime.”

She laughs, “eonnie, this is my first day off in—like, months.”

Her sister sits up, “months?”

“Months,” she repeats, “I think my hands are just, sixty percent julienned carrots right now.”

Her sister laughs, easy and relaxed, and Mi-ran allows herself to relax too, bringing the glass of coke up to her mouth. Her sister is here, visiting her at NOMA, and she’s having fun with her sister. She’s having fun with her sister right now. So much fun.

Her sister sits up on the bed, “I’m sure your hands are carrots right now. My hands perpetually smell of that same ink they use for evidence documents. It never goes away, man. I keep thinking, maybe today is the day I can finally scrub it all off me, but no. nothing happens. I still smell of ink.”

She snorts, “like Lady Macbeth?”

“Like Lady Macbeth,” her sister makes a show of scrubbing her hands, “all the perfumes of Arabia would not sweeten this hand.”

“You're always so dramatic.” She laughs, “you didn’t bring your husband along this time.”

Her sister stays silent for a moment, “hey, Mi-ran, you know something?”

Mi-ran sits up. She doesn’t want to admit, but am odd feeling runs all over her skin, because that tone of voice is something that her sister has used only once with her, a long, long time ago.

Mi-ran, tell me the truth. Do you want this for yourself?

“What happened?”

Her sister reaches for Mi-ran’s can of coke, and takes a drink, “your brother-in-law has been cheating on me.”

Mi-ran goes stock still. She knows her brother-in-law, knows the man who seemed sweet to her sister whenever he came over to the house, the man who cried like a baby when her sister appeared in her wedding dress, “he’s been cheating?”

“Yes,” her sister nods, “it’s his secretary. He’s like a walking stereotype, my god.”

Mi-ran takes her coke back, drinking from it. For a moment, she’s back in a side street in Seoul, passing a cigarette back and forth beside a convenience store. Don’t worry, no one’s going to tell on you. Do you want this, Mi-ran?

“Divorce him.” She makes a face, and her sister laughs, “what? I’m right.”

“I already filed the paperwork for it,” her sister shrugs, “I just—well, I’m kind of scared.”

“Scared?” Mi-ran can’t believe her ears. This was her sister, the girl who was her idol for the longest time, the one person who didn’t give a shit about how they were living their lives, and she’s saying this? It doesn’t make sense.

“Scared?”

Her sister shrugs again, “mom and dad told me that I shouldn’t think of getting a divorce so soon after getting married.”

She gives a short, self-mocking laugh, “he was sleeping with his secretary. I’m supposed to let that go, because people will say shit?”

“People always say shit,” Mi-ran sighs, “they kept saying shit about me, and now they're going to say shit about you. You shouldn’t be afraid of what people are going to say, and make ourself unhappy in the process.”

“I know, but it’s still, slightly uncomfortable,” her sister says, which means that it is very uncomfortable for her, “maybe when I have enough of my braincells about me, I’ll think differently, but for now, I’m not really willing to go and face the music. You must think I’m a big coward, right, Mi-ran?”

Mi-ran nods, and then stands up to look outside the window. Copenhagen is a beautiful city, no doubt, but it’s even more beautiful in the night. Everything seems bathed in moonlight, in this corner of the city. Her apartment is silent, “you can hide here. I don’t mind.”

Her sister stands up, “hide?”

Mi-ran nods, “yeah, hide. You can hide here. Running away from problems isn’t a bad thing. You’re nor a coward, sis. You can stay here.”

Her sister laughs, “my little sister is offering me shelter?”

Mi-ran makes a face, “I’m not little anymore. You hid me from the world when I asked you to, so now, even before you're asking me, I’m telling you. Hide in here for as long as you want. Take all your vacation days, and then some. I earn enough from NOMA. I’ll feed you, and we can live here. Get a transfer, to someplace other than Seoul. Run to Busan, sis. I’ll look after you.”

“The parents are not going to be happy about it.”

“They don’t always know everything about our lives, sis,” she laughs, “we’re people. Normal people. Normal people are allowed to run and hide from their problems. That’s what family is for. To give shelter.”

“That’s wat they're teaching you at NOMA?”

“They teach me how to farm, how to create things out of everyday produce,” she smiles, “I can make an haute cuisine puree out of parsnips that I harvest in the gardens, I can make something out of anything, almost. We can make a life in here, for you, for as long as you need.”

Her sister stares at her for a long while, “I think I would like that, Mi-ran.”

—

She wakes up in the middle of the evening, with a headache that threatens to blind her. Am I finally going blind? Swinging her legs out of the bed, Mi-ran goes to find her mother in the kitchen, stirring a pot of soup, “your father likes this, so I made some. You want?”

She takes a look inside the pot. Ground loach soup, with ginger and radish. Pulling a spoon from the dish rack, she tastes it, feeling her mother staring at her while she tries not to think about how much she fucking hates loaches, “needs a bit more salt, but you have to be careful with it, otherwise it’s just going to be a salty mess. Here, let me,” she takes out the container of salt from her mother’s hands, “dad is still on his blood pressure medications, right?”

“Right,” her mother says, eyeing the container like Mi-ran’s about to defuse a bomb, “let me do that, Mi-ran.”

She shakes her head, “no, it’s fine,” she says, but her mother is already gripping it with both hands, and trying to take it from her, “mom, just give it back. Let me salt.”

“No, your dad is going to find it salty, and then he’s going to complain, let me.”

“Mom just—shit!”

The entire container of salt spills into the soup, the crystal granules melting into the soup faster than she can pick it out of the pot, “I was doing it!”

“You always manage to do this,” her mother sighs, “I told you to stay out of the kitchen!”

Mi-ran snaps back, “and you told me to taste it! Of course I’m going to change things! I’m a chef!”

“A chef?”

“Yes, just let me change the—” but it’s too late for that. Her mother, upset, takes the whole pot, and throws it down the garbage chute. Mi-ran just nods her head, stomps back up the stairs, and debates jumping in front of oncoming traffic for the next half hour.

Ground loach soup. Not even samgyeopsal for the kid who is coming home for the first time in months. Not even that.

When she finally comes down for dinner, the table is set for a simple dinner, a miso soup that has no ingredients other than tofu and bean sprouts in it, from what she can see, and rice and kimchi. Her father sits at the head of the tale, surveying everything with a critical eye, “your mother was making loach soup, right?”

“Well, there was an accident,” Mi-ran gives a half-assed explanation, “miso soup is great, mom. Thanks.”

She takes a seat, and even before she can take a first bite, her father says, “how is the restaurant coming along?”

She puts her food down, “it’s fine, dad. We’re running okay.”

“COVID hit a lot of restaurants really badly, you know that, right?”

“Yes, dad,” she says, dutifully, “we have a very affordable menu because of the budget cuts, and we’re thinking of—” he holds a hand up, and she shuts her mouth. Why am I even explaining myself to him? Why am I doing this?

“I just hope you're thinking about the future,” he says, sharing a look with her mother, and immediately, she knows what this is about. Of course.

Her mother, taking a look at her father, begins, “you know, there’s this very nice boy, lives right around the corner, works in the district governmental office. His parents attend the same church as we do, and it would be really nice to—”

“I’m not really looking to get married right now, mom,” she sighs, “I’m thinking of getting a bigger profit from the restaurant. We’re barely making profits as it is, right now.”

Bad thing to say. Her father looks up, “and you're still there?”

Mi-ran blinks, “what?”

Her father sighs, taking a bite of his food, “you refuse to get married. You refuse to even consider the prospect of moving into a proper career.”

“This is a proper career, dad,” she sighs, “I’m not having this conversation with you again.”

“It is not when you are constantly worrying about shutting down!” he shouts at her, and she thought that it was rare, when her father yelled at her, but nowadays, she keeps remembering occasions when he was yelling, shouting, like he is right now, “we kept telling you, to take up a proper career, but your head was filled with crazy nonsense about becoming a chef, and going to some fancy school in another country—”

“I worked my ass off to be in that school!” she shouts back, “I had jobs and I applied for scholarships and I worked day in and day out, just to be there, dad. It was my dream!”

“It was a fool’s errand!”

“Then you shouldn’t have taught me anything like that!”

“Mi-ran,” her mother says, clearly annoyed, “sit down and finish your food.”

But Mi-ran cannot hear anyone. She can’t even see her parents, all that is in front of her eyes is an open flame, flickering, waiting. Enticing. Burn it all down.

She stops yelling, but her voice is no less angry, “you shouldn’t have taught me how to dream, dad. You should have taken and strangled that dream for me when I was a child, but no, you taught me how to dream, and then you refused to let me follow them! Of course I left!”

“Mi-ran!”

She stands up from the table, pushing her miso soup away from her, “I’m going back home. This was a stupid decision.”

At the gate, she turns, “the miso soup has no salt, mom. And I have three Michelin stars, so I think I know what I’m talking about.”

—

The clock reads midnight when she reaches home, utterly exhausted. She doesn't want to fight with her parents, but every time she goes back to that house, she's reminded of her sister, and that one evening in Copenhagen, where she had looked at her and said, I'm scared, Mi-ran.

Every time. This happened every fucking time she went there.

She closes her eyes, and all of a sudden, she’s back in that one moment at Jungsikdang, her hands outstretched over the pass, a large knife in her hands.

Lower it. Lower the knife, cut into skin. You know what to do. You can butcher almost any game within three and a half minutes. You can do this, Mi-ran. You know what to do. You couldn’t burn it down, so you need to do this one thing. One thing, and you’re free of this kitchen. For the first time, and forever.

No.

Do it.

She’s always standing in that kitchen, over the burner. Doing nothing, just standing there. Sometimes, there would be the buzz of the kitchen all around her, moving like a well-oiled machine, not a cog out of place. Everyone in their right place, as it were. Everyone, except for her.

Mi-ran flops down on her bed, thinking about the whole fiasco. Her sister is not going back to their home anymore, not unless their parents actually apologise to her, which they’re not going to. Not at all. Going back home means going without her sister, means going back into the house of people who always meat well, but eventually meant a little too well.

“You know that they’re never going to forgive you for this, right?” her sister says, unloading her luggage from the taxi, “they're here because of a formality. They don’t really want you to go.”

“I bombed the college admission test, I can’t even get into a university if I tried,” she sighs, “I’m sorry, eonnie, I really tried.”

Her sister smiles, then wraps her into a hug, “I know, I know. You really tried. I know that.”

Mi-ran feels like she’s halfway in the middle of heaven and hell. She’s supposed to be happy, she knows, but the faces of her parents keep reminding her that her happiness is coming at the cost of theirs, and that she shouldn’t even think about being happy. She’s breaking her parents’ hearts, by not doing what they wanted for her. Essentially, by being herself.

I’m just seventeen, she thinks, I’m just seventeen.

The departures gate at Incheon airport is crowded, again, but she feels like she’s free. For the first time in a long time, she’s moving towards her dreams, without someone telling her to not follow them. Without someone holding her back. Or maybe she’s walking right off a cliff.  

“Be good,” her sister whispers, giving her a hug, “call me from time to time, okay?”

“Okay, I will,” she smiles, “I’ll be successful, eonnie. I’ll be successful.”

—

You have three missed calls.

She doesn’t bother checking who’s called her, because it’s always the same: her parents, Cheol, Mingyu, Minghao, someone from the restaurant, or a spam caller. Hopefully a spam caller.

The last text exchange with her sister is Mi-ran sending her pictures of dishes at Gyeonghoeru and her sister replying to her with pictures of her home and from around her workplace in Busan. Good for you, she replies, I’m trying to keep my eyes open today.

Good day or bad day?

Does it matter? Is it a good day for you?

It is a good day for me. I have a date tonight, so I’m going to get off work an hour early.

Ooh, look at you, going on dates. Proper young lass, I say.

I prefer the term ‘normal woman’, thank you very much.

I’m just saying, it would be nice if I could permanently move to Busan. Hang out there all the time.

You have a proper high cuisine restaurant to run, Mi-ran. You're an executive chef, and I keep telling all my colleagues about you.

About your sister who returned to Korea after trying to kill herself in the middle of her house? Very nice.

Haha, and have you told mom about that? She would want to know.

No, I haven’t, and mind your own business, sis. Going around talking shit about me, huh?

I tell them about my sister who was CDC at Jungsikdang, and got three Michelin stars for that restaurant.

Technically, I just got one. The restaurant already had two to begin with.

I’m going to hit you so hard.

Lol you should join the line.

Of?

The people who want to kill me.

You’re very morbid, Mi-ran.

I prefer ‘pragmatic’. Most line cooks want to kill their executive chef.

Did you?

Every day.

You’re very insane. Also, how the tables have turned, eh?

How the turntables, indeed.

When are you letting me come to Gyeonghoeru

I never came to Jungsikdang, so I want to come and eat at your place

When we have a star

So next week?

Fuck off, man.

Mi-ran sighs, drops her phone to the bed beside her, and rolls over to look for a pack. I’ve run out, she realises, sighing, I’ll have to go out and get some today.

Minghao send her a text, you need to talk to Vernon about the new menu if you really want a star.

Irritated, she calls the man, who picks up within a couple rings, “really, dude? I'm not going to call Vernon. I'm not going to call him at all.”

“Are you just being combative or annoying?” Minghao laughs, “you really need to call Vernon. He feels very bummed out that you didn't include him in the planning.”

Mi-ran rolls her eyes, “he’s not a child, Minghao, Vernon can come and join the process of planning the menu, it’s just that he doesn’t really want to. Ive asked him multiple times to come and join, and he hasn’t replied to any of my requests. That’s wild.”

“No, that’s just Vernon,” Minghao laughs, “just give him a call next time you need to workshop a new dish, because he was crying about it on Saturday.”

Mi-ran doesn’t respond for a moment, and then says, “he should have come to me, instead of telling you all about it.”

Minghao sighs on the other end, “look, Mi-ran, I’m not going to tell you how to deal with your issues, but you need to communicate better with Vernon. He’s the only person you have these issues with, and he’s the CDC. It’s hurting the restaurant, and if we want a star, we need to have better communication between you and him.”

“You think I don’t know that?” she scoffs, “fine, I’ll give him a call, but if he doesn’t respond, then I can’t do anything about it, and I tried my best.”

“Was that so hard?” Minghao laughs.

Yes, she wants to say, but instead, just replies with, “see you tomorrow, chef.”

—

[three years earlier.]

Ever in Chicago, had just gotten its first Michelin star. The restaurant was fully booked out for the following three months, but she knows the executive chef, Kim Seokjin, and he’s kept a one-top reserved for her tonight. No one else, just her, and their expensive tasting menu for company. Seokjin had offered to comp the bill for her too, but she’s put her foot down and refused.

“Sorry, chef,” she had held up her hand, shaking her head, “I’m refusing your offer. I can pay for my own meal, you know. They pay me enough.”

Seokjin had made a face, pushing a cup of tea towards her. They were sitting around his very expensive looking kitchen table, eating breakfast. Seokjin has a sandwich in his hands, and a cup of coffee on the table in front of him. He looks very pleased with himself, and with his stupid idea of treating her to a meal at his restaurant, just because he can. 

“I don't care how much money you make in Kyoto, but I can treat you to a meal, chef.” Seokjin laughs, “besides, I remember all my juniors at Sketch, and I try my best to—”

“To treat them to meals, yeah, I know,” she laughs, “you're the meal fairy, chef. Of course, I know.”

“Not only meals, chef,” Seokjin rolls his eyes, good-natured, “I try my best to help them in any way I can.”

Mi-ran frowns at him, but Seokjin doesn’t budge. In fact, he smiles placidly at her, his eyes twinkling, “yes, Mi-ran, as your senior from Sketch, I do think I have a sort of responsibility towards you guys. After all, you were some of the best chefs to come out of that kitchen.”

“Sketch is a Michelin-starred restaurant, chef,” she rolls her eyes, laughing, “far greater chefs than me and Vernon have walked in and out of that restaurant.”

Seokjin shakes his head, “nope. Individually? Maybe. Chef Dubois walked out of that kitchen, and he’s possibly better than you two individually.”

“So are you,” she nods, “you keep forgetting that you're’ executive chef at Sketch. The youngest ever from Le Cordon, as far as I know.”

Seokjin preens, “I am the youngest, but this is not about me. You and Vernon are great not because you’re individually the greatest chefs of all time, but the two of you, when you're in the kitchen together—there’s something wonderful about it, Mi-ran. There’s no other duo in the kitchen who work as well as you do, because somehow, by some miracle, or an accident of nature, you’ve managed to get the level of synergy in the fucking kitchen which people beg for their entire lives.”

“So, that’s all I’m good for? My synergy with Vernon?” she mutters, trying not to sound upset, “I’m not even working with him right now. I’m just working at—well, you know.”

“Yes, you’re working with Gordon Ramsey now,” Seokjin laughs, looking like he’s about to be sick, “does he call you an idiot sandwich?”

Mi-ran rolls her eyes, “no, he doesn’t, he would catch a case so fast if he did that,” she laughs, “he’s pretty chill when he’s working with qualified people who know the limits of their own talents.”

“Fair enough, he always did seem very high-strung to me,” Seokjin laughs, “so, Sketch, tomorrow. Vernon will be there; I will be not.”

Mi-ran looks up, “what? You’re not going to be there?”

Seokjin just shakes his head. She tries not to wince.

—

The restaurant had been beautiful, but she hadn’t been able to enjoy anything. The mood lighting just served to make her mood worse, if anything. Minghao had taken one look at hr from across the room and brought out a surprise just because she looked like shit warmed twice over. Vernon had been working in the restaurant just ten feet away from her and she hadn’t even been able to apologise.

When she walks into Gyeonghoeru, it’s six in the morning, and predictably, no one else is there. The day begins with a thorough check of every available surface, and since she’s a paranoid little monster who doesn’t know how to delegate tasks, Mi-ran does everything herself, even cleaning the grease trap. No one else knows that she does this, because she hasn’t told anyone. She’s great. It’s all going very, very well.

“Mi-ran?”

Fuck. She stands up from her position, kneeling in the middle of the kitchen floor, only to look straight at Vernon, who stares at her like he’s been seeing things, and going insane, “yes?”

“Are you checking everything?”

“No, I was participating in a complicated satanic ritual to summon some deities to give us a better shot at the Michelin star, chef,” she snipes, “of course I was checking everything. I do this every day.”

“I know you do,” Vernon sighs, “you used to do that in school.”

Mi-ran chooses not to respond to that statement, because what does he mean why does he remember everything I said and did at culinary school, and decides not to think about that idea and how it made her feel. No. I am grown enough, I don’t want to do this.

“Minghao told me that—” she begins, then clamps her mouth shut halfway through her sentence, then recalibrates her words, “do you have any ideas for the new menu we are going to serve?” she adds in a smile, for good measure, “the Michelin guide people start coming in around six or seven months from now, so we need to uh, figure out a plan that works.”

Vernon blinks at her, “why are you smiling?”

“I smile, chef, of course I do,” she rolls her eyes, “why wouldn’t I smile? I’m a normal person and normal people smile all the time.”

“You haven’t smiled a single time since you came to Seoul,” Vernon points out, “I don’t think this place has ever seen you smiling, chef.”

That hurts. She doesn’t like being handed out physical reminders of her mental illnesses, much less from someone like Vernon, but Mi-ran supposes that she’s earned it anyway; by virtue of being the biggest asshole known to mankind, so she arranges her mouth in a non-smiling position, “is this better, chef?”

“That is less scary,” Vernon concedes, setting his knife roll down, “and yes, I did have some ideas for this, but I don’t think you’re gonna like them.”

Mi-ran has to physically stop herself from jumping at Vernon, “what are they?”

Vernon sighs, smoothing out the roll of cloth, “are you going to listen, or are you going to ignore whatever I say, and move forward with your own ideas again?”

Mi-ran raises an eyebrow, “last I checked, chef, I was still the executive chef in here.”

Vernon’s expression immediately hardens, “right, of course. Sorry, chef.”

“Now, tell me about your ideas, chef,” she says, smoothing down her jacket, “what do you want to do?”

“Maybe a course in a royal-cuisine style,” Vernon begins, looking like he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop, “provide every diner with the feeling of being in a royal palace.”

Mi-ran doesn’t budge. Vernon continues, “and we could make something like a rainbow-style jeon, with—”

She raises a hand to stop him, “chef,” Mi-ran sighs, “how many people do you think dined at royal halls?”

Mi-ran walks out towards the office, and he follows, still talking. The door closes behind them with a thud, and Vernon is still talking. “Not many, which is why it would be marketed as a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” Vernon shrugs, “you can’t really go wrong with marketing to people about royal cuisine that they can just pay money to eat. It’s like we’re erasing the markers of class and caste, and making it easier for people to come and taste what the royals had.”

Mi-ran sighs, “again, I don’t want to argue with you on this, Vernon, but you kind of make it impossible for me not to do it.”

Vernon raises an eyebrow, “you’ve got a problem with this too?”

She doesn’t speak for a minute. Vernon is still staring at her, so Mi-ran opens her big mouth, “look, I don’t mean to rain on your parade or anything, but I also don’t think we should be putting out food for royalty when for years—”

Vernon bristles, visibly, “what?”

Mi-ran sighs again, “when for centuries, only the most privileged of all people got to try the food for royalty. It feels like we’re democratising something that wasn’t meant to be made democratic in the first place.”

Vernon nods, “okay, so what do you have in mind?”

“Something egalitarian. Something to remind people that high quality dining and haute cuisine is not just confined to royal cuisine.”

“Right, so, do you have ideas?”

She just pushes her notebook towards him, “there you go.”

He goes through the pages. Mi-ran knows what he’s going to find. Gukbap, with a milder fish instead of strong flavours. Rice, made three ways. Three different kinds of boiled vegetables and chicken.

Vernon stops in the middle of perusing, and just stares at the pages. Mi-ran stares at him. He stares at her.

“What is this?”

She takes the notebook out of his hands, and looks at the page he’s on. Fuck. Braised duck with an orange reduction, served on rice. “Did you eat this?”

“I went to Seokjin’s restaurant,” she shrugs, “he invited me.”

“No, this is—this is my dish, Mi-ran,” he looks faintly shocked, “you had my dish?”

“You cooked it, you made it, so yes, I had it,” she sighs, “can we not talk about this right now?”

Vernon nods, which just means we’ll talk about this later.

Mi-ran doesn’t want to talk.

—

“End of service, good work today!” Minghao announces, holding up the last ticket, “congratulations everyone, on surviving another day.”

“Good work, chef,” she murmurs, already beginning to clean up her station. Vernon is still staring at her, knife in hand. Does he want to kill me or something?

He hasn’t talked to her during prep, he hasn’t talked to her during service. Hasn’t really talked. Sure, he’s told her about dishes and he’s responded to her “hands, please, chefs,” all throughout, but Vernon has not talked to her. He hasn’t talked to her before, either, but this just seems loaded.

Minghao winks at her, and since Mi-ran is also the biggest coward in the history of everything, she hides out in her office for a full half hour, busying herself with backed-up orders of cutlery and vendor contracts until she’s sure everyone has left.

The kitchen is empty, and when she pulls on her jacket and stuffs her knife roll in her bag, she hopes Vernon is not waiting for her outside the restaurant. She hopes he’s not waiting for her at all, because she doesn’t want to talk to him at all.

And what’s she going to say? “Oh, yes, for sure, I spent a fortune flying out to Chicago to eat your food and it made me cry and I still love you, Vernon?” would that be normal? Or is she going to say, “yes, of course, I’m sorry I took that opportunity at NOMA even though I knew you wanted it but they offered it to me, and there was nothing I could do about it, but I still love you?” would she have to tell him, “yeah, I was hoping that you would be here, and I was also dreading that you would be here, because thinking of you fills me with guilt and regret and I want to let you go but I love you still so I cannot?” Mi-ran is not an idiot; she cannot tell him all this.

He’s not going to be here. It’s late, he’s gone back home.

When she steps out into the street, he’s there, waiting. She almost runs back inside.

“You’re still here?” she says, already walking towards the bus station, “its late, chef. Go back home.”

“It’s not working hours anymore, don’t call me chef,” Vernon responds, following her, “you went to Ever and ate my food without even telling me that you were there.”

“As opposed to what? Telling you and then being thrown out of the restaurant because the sous did not want to cook for me?” she scoffs, “don’t tell me that’s what you would have wanted, Vernon.”

“No, it’s not—” Vernon looks irritated, “you should have told me.”

“Told you?” Mi-ran rolls her eyes, “what difference would that have made?”

“This is why I fucking hate you, Mi-ran,” Vernon seethes, “you keep lying to everyone around you, including yourself.”

“I don’t!” she needs to get out of this fucking alley or she will break down in tears, “we have enough bitterness and hatred between us both to ruin everything good that might come out of our history, Chwe Vernon. Let us not ruin ourselves further.”

“I don’t get it,” Vernon shakes his head, “you went to NOMA even though you knew I wanted that position, and then you stopped talking to me entirely. And now, what? You went to Chicago to eat my dish?”

“It was offered to me!” she snaps, voice cracking and oh god, oh fuck, I’m crying right now, “I went to NOMA because the position was offered to me, and I spent the better part of a decade being guilty over having even a single good thing in my life, because I thought I would be stealing it from you!”

“So, are you saying that I ruined your life?”

There you go, “no, you didn’t ruin anything, Vernon,” she smiles, “I ruined my life by my own hands. This is reparations for everything that I have done.”

She walks away from him. The bus stand is on the opposite side of the road. Mi-ran just needs to cross this, “one course, sinseollo. Make it. I don’t care. Do your fucking royal cuisine.”

—

The following week, Mi-ran spends it like a ghost. She wakes up at four in the morning, and goes on a run. She doesn’t run because she wants to, she runs because there is nothing better for her to do. The voices in her mind get louder, progressively. In moments, she wants to drink.

“You look like shit, chef,” Minghao tells her on Sunday night, standing beside her at the bus stop, “you know, you should get drunk with us sometime.”

“I don’t drink, chef,” she rolls her eyes, “my bus will be here in a minute.”

“You know, when you came to Ever, I thought you would be much more stuck-up and annoying you know.”

“Good to know that you had such a sparkling opinion about me,” she laughs, but Minghao doesn’t.

“Chefs all have big egos, Mi-ran,” he simply says, “it’s how they survive in the kitchen. They all have big egos. And when I saw you sitting by yourself, I thought, youngest CDC at Jungsikdang, must have a massive ego.”

Mi-ran raises an eyebrow, “and?”

“And nothing,” Minghao shrugs, “you just looked very defeated.”

“I looked like a wet cat.” Mi-ran shakes her head, “the bus is here.”

She stands up, and Minghao follows suit, looking at her, “no, Mi-ran, you just looked like you were waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

The bus comes, and she gets on it, swipes her card and gets settled into a seat beside a softly snoring old woman. She doesn’t think about what Minghao has said earlier. She does not.

Waiting for the other shoe to drop. Minghao’s annoying; the read that he has on her is annoying. He knows who she was there for that night. It's a minor miracle that he's not told anyone yet. Not even Vernon, by the looks of it.

And its true. For all her life, she's been waiting for the other shoe to drop, for something worse to happen. Every moment, she was waiting for the moment where she would inevitably hit rock bottom again.

When she gets down from the bus and makes her way to her home, Vernon is standing in front of the front door, still in his work clothes. She knows that jacket. He looks pale and washed out under the lights, and she wants to turn around and go back to the restaurant.

“You’re late,” Vernon says, when she steps aside him to climb the stairs to her home, “this neighbourhood isn’t the safest for you.”

Mi-ran sighs, “I don’t care, Vernon. What do you want to talk to me about?”

He pauses for a moment, “you never told me you came to Ever.”

“I didn’t want to.”

“Why?”

Mi-ran throws up her hands, “what, and make my feelings even more clearer than they already are?”

Vernon steps closer, “what feelings?”

She stares at him, “don't pretend that you don't know—”

Vernon is kissing her, she realises, his hands are on her face and he's kissing her, his lips soft against hers. She thinks of Sketch and culinary school, kisses just like this one, stolen in the middle of busy days, after shifts and classes. Vernon smells like the kitchen still, and she thinks she might go insane. Hands, chef. Right, hands. Hands please, chef, right?

No, I don’t want to think about that right now.

Vernon’s lips are warm against her own, and for a moment, she thinks about the smell of garlic and onions, stuck perpetually to her skin, and for one, stupid, irrational moment, wants to scrub her skin raw because she doesn’t want to let him smell the dirt and the grime on her skin. But this is the same as it was in their Sketch days, with perhaps less explosive feelings than this one. His tongue is in her mouth, and for a floaty, strange, second, she is reminded of a particularly brutal shift, after which they had gone back to her flat, Vernon kissing down her jawline like they both didn’t have four hours to recharge themselves and go back to work again. He’s still the same; single-mindedly focused on her, his left hand now on her waist. Mi-ran needs to stop this. She needs to stop this madness right now, because otherwise, they're going to do something stupid in fucking public and she does not have the wherewithal to fix a case like that.

Her hands are still on her side, when Vernon pulls away, to look at her, “I still hate you, Mi-ran. I still hate you.”

That makes two of us, Vernon. She nods, then turns around to leave.

—

“You locked the menu?” Minghao looks at the sheet of paper that she’s just handed to him, “this is actually good, chef.”

“I don’t do things halfway,” she shakes her head, “make sure everyone is on board for this.”

Minghao looks at her, “isn’t that supposed to be your job?”

Mi-ran doesn’t say anything. It is supposed to be her job, but for the whole of the previous week, she’s been feeling like it doesn’t matter. Vernon could do it just as well as I do, she thinks from time to time, and it doesn’t help.

“Do you think it’s a good idea?”

“What is a good idea?”

“That I am still somewhat running this restaurant, you know,” she shrugs, “I mean, I’m probably the worst person to work for, there are so many things to keep track of, and the profit margin is fucking razor-thin right now, so I can’t really—”

“Mi-ran, chef,” Minghao sighs, “you’re probably the best thing to happen in this restaurant by a long shot.”

She looks up from her desk. “What?”

Minghao doesn’t even bother with changing his stance, he just barrels on, “you have three Michelin stars, and you’re working here. You're the best chef in the world when it comes to Korean cuisine. You’re the best thing that could have happened to Gyeonghoeru, and I don’t know if you know it, but I know it. Vernon knows it, Joshua knows it. Hell, even Chan knows it, I think.”

“Stop glazing me, my god,” she rolls her eyes, “also, we’re not doing royal cuisine, like people wanted us to do.”

“How did the boss take it?”

“Like he doesn’t care very much,” she sighs, “I just don’t want people to come here and be reminded of the fact that their ancestors were being forbidden from eating the food that they can now eat in a restaurant.”

“But you still have one course of sinseollo,” Minghao looks at the sheet, “that’s Vernon’s idea, right?”

Mi-ran nods, “that’s Vernon’s idea, yes.”

“Vernon is the best at royal cuisine in here, no doubt,” Minghao remarks, “but even for him, sinseollo in a restaurant that focuses on elevating normal, day-to-day cuisine, is too much.”

“Let him work with this one dish,” she sighs, “leave Vernon out of it. He’s doing great work as CDC.”

Minghao sets the paper down, and takes a seat, “have you both gotten together yet?”

Mi-ran rolls her eyes, “we are not going to.”

“Pity, it would have been great,” Minghao sighs, “I’ll inform the crew of the updated menu.”

Mi-ran leans back in her rickety chair, and takes a deep breath. She hasn’t talked to Vernon about the kiss, and he doesn’t look like he's willing to have that conversation with her, either. So far, all they have managed to do, is run awkwardly around each other, talking only about the service and the prep. Nothing else. Safe conversations, nothing more. Nothing that could expose their feelings about each other.

I’m not even sure how Vernon feels about me. Wait, no, I am. He kissed me last week, and told me he hated me afterwards.

That’s where they stand, the two of them; on opposite sides of the emotional battlefield, and arm-in-arm, like comrades, when it comes to the kitchen. It gives her whiplash, almost.

She decides to let it go. After all, she has a kitchen to run.

When she walks outside and into the kitchen, Minghao is telling the crew about the new menu, which is different from the chaos menu that they have been practicing for the past month and half, and the relief is palpable. Joshua looks like he hasn’t heard better news in decades, Chan looks like he is about to cry, and Vernon—Vernon looks fairly murderous.

What?

Mi-ran walks outside, and when Joshua spots her, he gives her a smile, “congratulations on locking the menu, chef.”

“It was getting to be a problem with vendors and it wasn’t fair on everyone,” she replies, “sorry, guys, for making you put up with that for so long.” She apologises, moving on to her station. Vernon follows.

“Yes?”

“Sinseollo? After all that spiel about making food that people would identify with, and not royal cuisine?” Vernon scoffs.

“Again, I don’t want to argue with you about this right now, but yes, I did say that, and then I changed my mind, and I told you to put it on there,” she argues back, “I’m not fucking you over, chef.”

“You absolutely are, my god,” he groans, “one sinseollo in the middle of a menu centred around easily accessible food items, and we have a dish that featured heavily in royal cuisines?”

Mi-ran shrugs. She’s not being petty, not at all (slightly) but the sinseollo doesn’t work, will never work in this case, and, “look, chef, if you have a problem with the menu, please come and talk to me personally—”

“I am talking to you right now!”

“When you're a little less hysterical, I mean.”

“Oh my god, stop fighting!” Minghao yells, and Mi-ran suddenly realises that she is standing and arguing with Vernon in the middle of the pass, “stop arguing, you’re scaring the children.”

“Whose children?” they say in unison, and immediately, Mi-ran shuts up.

“You’re the parents, and these are the children,” Minghao makes a sweeping gesture of some sorts, “don’t scare them. Sort this out amongst yourselves.”

“Fine,” she grumbles, turning back to Vernon, “we’ll talk after service, chef.”

—

[three years earlier].

“Reservation for one,” she says to the woman manning the front of house, smoothing down her shirt. The woman looks at her, eyebrows raised, and Mi-ran realises that she needs to provide a name for her reservation, “oh, uh, Chef Kim Seokjin made the reservation, so I don’t know what name he’s put me under.”

“Chef Kim,” the woman types rapidly into her tablet, and thirty seconds later, a young man is next to her, having materialised out of thin air, apparently. His footsteps have been measured and unhurried, but Mi-ran can hear the rapid rise and fall of his breath, “this is Chef Kim’s guest, Kim—Yuna, yes. This way, please.”

Mi-ran wants to throttle Seokjin. Sure, she had asked him to make a reservation under a false name, because if Vernon knew she was there, he would point-blank refuse to even talk to her, much less make her dishes, but Yuna Kim? Of all the names that Seokjin could have picked out, he picked the name of the most recognisable Korean celebrity in the world. What sort of joke was this? At least he didn’t pick the name of a girl group member.

The young man leads her to her table, gesturing to the one-top in a secluded corner of the restaurant, clearly meant for privacy, “we’re very happy to have you tonight, Chef Kim.”

Mi-ran blinks, then takes a seat, “could you keep this between us, please?”

The server smiles, bowing deeply, “of course, chef.”

He’s gone before she can tell him that the bowing can get a bit too much too soon and I don’t want to freak people out.

Mi-ran takes out her phone, texting Seokjin, Yuna Kim? Really?

You asked me to make the reservation under a false name.

Not Yuna Kim, oh my god.

Do you want to make amends, yes or no?

Mi-ran puts her phone away. Seokjin was right. In an annoying, insufferable way, Seokjin was right. She needs to make amends. She needs to make everything right with Vernon, even if it is for a little while, because it’s been six months since she’s had a proper night’s sleep, and she doubts she ever will be able to. Not without talking to Vernon. That’s why she’s here, in Ever, and putting herself through this. She can do it, this is nothing. She’s been through worse.

And then the first course comes to her plate, and it’s just—hell.

She can't eat it. She can't look at the plate because Vernon has made this and it is just a mockery of all their experiences at Sketch. This is them on a plate, the memories of their times together, and she can't fucking swallow anything. This is awful.

The front of house, a tall man, with a name tag on his chest that says Xu Minghao, has been looking at her for the past ten minutes, Mi-ran realises. He disappears into the kitchen somewhere after she’s served her third course, and comes out, holding a plate of something, and says, “this is the main course of the tasting menu.”

Mi-ran peers at him, and Minghao continues, “this is a braised duck leg, served with an orange reduction and on a bed of rice. Enjoy.”

She doesn’t want to, but she takes a bite anyway. Might as well do it.

—

Vernon comes into her office, after a month. A month of nothing but staring at her across the pass, working alongside her without a single word of camaraderie, and she’s trying to keep herself from not going insane. She has been trying her best to not just walk out and drag him by the collar into the office, and demand answers.

“Mi-ran,” Vernon says, and she looks up. It’s after hours, and Mi-ran has been balancing the books for the past hour, “we need to talk.”

She checks her watch, “it’s after midnight, Vernon. What do you have to tell me?”

He shrugs, “look, it’s nothing important, so if you want to talk to me later, I can understand.”

“No, it’s fine,” she sighs, “it’s been a long day, and an even longer month.”

The last sentence was a subtle dig at him, but it’s not as though Vernon is solely responsible for this situation. Still, he takes the dig, with a grimace on his face, “I just thought we should talk about this.”

“This?” Mi-ran raises an eyebrow, “what do you mean by that?”

Vernon sighs, sitting down heavily on the sole unoccupied chair, “you went to Ever. You didn’t even tell me, and you went to the restaurant where I was sous.”

“Seokjin-sunbae invited me, so I went,” she shrugs, “you made the duck breast, and I ate it.”

“That’s what I don’t get!” he stands up, irritated, “you keep talking about eating my food, and you keep telling me that it was the best thing you have ever eaten, and what am I supposed to make out of it?”

Mi-ran sighs. Might as well get it over with. “It means that our undefined relationship back when we were in Sketch was enough for me to spend more than a thousand dollars on round flight tickets to Chicago, and that I ate your food. It means nothing more than that.”

Vernon pauses, eyes terrifyingly still. Mi-ran sighs, standing up, “you want me to be gone? Fine. I’ll give the boss my resignation, and I’ll be out of your hair. You're more than capable of getting a Michelin star by yourself, and I don’t think I need to be in a kitchen where people are constantly on edge regarding our relationship, so I’ll go.”

Vernon scoffs, “go?”

“Yes.”

“That’s the best thing that you can do, right? Just leave?” he snaps, and Mi-ran raises an eyebrow, because Vernon is, for the first time in her life, truly angry, “you can't even stay here and face the consequences for your own actions, all you can do is run away!”

“I’m not running away because I want to, Vernon,” she sighs, “look, you don’t want me here, and I think I have spent enough years feeling guilty about going to Copenhagen, and I can't do it anymore. Fighting with you is pointless.”

“No, it’s not, because I need to have it out with you one time before I go insane,” Vernon seethes, “you come here, come back after years spent in the best kitchens in the world, and you tell me that you want to get a star, which is fine, but then you also make a menu that pisses me off, because it’s the best thing you can do, and then you put my dish in there? What does that mean?”

“It means that I still have feelings for you, you absolute asshole!” she yells, “I shouldn’t have put the sinseollo in the menu, but I did. Why? Because I love you. I came back, even though I shouldn’t have. Why? Because I love you. I went to Chicago to eat your food. Why? Because I love you. Half the things I’ve done so far is because I love you, you giant fucking—”

Vernon crosses the small room in three steps, pressing her to the wall, and she’s back in the London kitchens again, kissing him after a shift, because it’s the same Vernon, the boy who always made her laugh. He’s kissing her like they're both dying, and they need to kiss one last time before they draw their last breath.

Mi-ran pulls at Vernon’s shirt, inhaling the smell of garlic that seems to cling to them both after a gruelling shift, and unbuttons the first two buttons of his shirt. Vernon stops, “you want to do this here?”

Mi-ran makes a faint embarrassing sound in the back of her throat, “I’m going to fire you if you stop right now.”

Vernon raises his eyebrows, but says nothing, just nods, his own hands coming up to unbutton her shirt. She’s about to go insane, but she needs this. She needs to have Vernon inside her, needs to turn him inside out in order to keep him for himself.

Vernon lifts her onto the table, and papers flutter to the floor, but they're both too far gone to care about it, “I don’t have anything on me.”

“I don’t care,” Mi-ran grumbles, “I still have a couple years on my IUD.”

Vernon nods, and kisses her again. She can feel his erection against her core, already leaking, straining against his pants, “I need to eat you out.”

“Doesn’t matter,” she grumbles, hands going to his pants and unbuckling the belt, “just fuck me right now, Vernon, I swear to god I’m going to kill you if you don’t.”

Vernon nods, kissing along her jaw, and she takes a moment to run her fingers through his hair. Vernon is doing the same things that he did all those years ago; biting her neck, sucking on the skin hard enough to leave a bruise, and it’s embarrassing for her how she still has the same reactions to all of it.

He unclips her bra, kissing down to her breasts, and the moan that comes out of her mouth when he lightly bites down on a nipple is truly unholy. Mi-ran wonders for a split second that they are technically in their office, and finds out that she doesn’t really care who finds out.

His hands are keeping her legs apart, and two of his fingers lightly scrape along the outside of her cunt. Mi-ran grabs hold of his hair, and Vernon moans, his lips still around her left nipple. She wants to die. She wants to consume him. She wants to crawl inside his skin and live inside it for the foreseeable future.

“You're fucking insane, Mi-ran,” Vernon mumble, reaching up to kiss her again, “I still love you, Mi-ran.”

His tongue is in her mouth, and Mi-ran has her hands around his throat. Vernon reaches for her underwear, and she has the insane thought about not being so fucking wet right now, because the squelching sound that fills the air when he presses two fingers into her is unholy.

“Fuck, you're so fucking tight,” he groans into her mouth, “how the fuck are you the same even after seven years?”

“You’re the same too,” she gasps, “just fuck me, faster.”

Vernon obliges, his fingers snapping faster, “I love you, you know that, right? Don’t leave me again.”

Mi-ran wants to cry, but instead of crying, she waves his hands out of her, pulling down his boxers, “just fuck me, please.”

Vernon looks like he wants to cry, but he just nods, pushing inside of her with a groan, and Mi-ran feels an odd sense of fullness. His lips are back on hers in a moment, and her hands are on his back, urging him to go faster, faster, faster. Vernon nods; he’s never once failed to give her anything when it came to this. His hips push forward with an increased sense of urgency, and she just gasps and moans and takes and takes and takes.

“I’m close,” she mumbles, tears forming at the edge of her eyes, “please.”

“You're so fucking beautiful like this, falling apart,” Vernon mumbles, “please don’t leave me again, Mi-ran. Please.”

His thumb swipes across her clit once, twice, and she falls apart with a short cry, stiffening in his arms, desperately grabbing at him to kiss him again. Vernon lasts about five seconds before he follows suit, spilling inside of her.

She still panting when he wipes at her face, pushing errant strands of her hair out of her eyes, “I still love you, you know.”

She’s openly crying now, big fat tears falling down one after the other. Neither of them have to say anything anymore.

“Come home with me tonight,” Vernon whispers, still inside of her, “please, Mi-ran. I need you.”

She nods, holding on to his hands.

—

“Did you two make up?” Minghao peers at her while she’s prepping for service, and his eyes catch onto a rather large bruise on her neck, blooming purple, “ooh, looks like it.”

Mi-ran rolls her eyes at him, “just prepare for the service tonight, Minghao.”

—

The Newest Addition to the K-Michelin guide, Seoul’s Gyeonghoeru, headed by Chefs Kim Mi-ran and Chwe Vernon: elevating the food of the masses to fine dining.

“Why did you come back?”

“What?” 

The air is filled with the steady drip-drip-drip of a water faucet leaking somewhere, and it’s driving her crazy. She’s still looking at the man, though, in front of her, dressed in the same clothes as her, and with the same look in his eyes. Years have passed, but the look remains the same. They aren’t standing outside in a New York alleyway, they’re in Seoul, that’s the only difference. She sighs, looks at him. A beat. 

He holds out a cigarette. She ignores it, “why did you come back? Everyone has been talking about it, you know. The world is not as big as you think.”

“The world is big enough for all of us,” she snipes, “look, I didn't like New York. So, I came back. There’s nothing else to it.”

He steps closer to her. They both smell like onions, she thinks, and the air is too thick with smog at this time of day. There’s something about looking into his eyes; just like all those years before, she can't look away. “You were CDC at the best Korean restaurant in the world, and what, you leave all that to come to this place? We don't even have a star.”

“A star is irrelevant.” She finds herself growing more defensive, more angry, more impatient, “Look, I just needed a break, okay? That’s why I'm here.”

He stares at her. She’s been on the receiving end of it far too many times for her to be flinching away from it now, but she does anyway, “That’s a fucking joke if I ever heard one, you know. You’re a liar.” You’re lying to me again, Chef Kim.”

“Am I now?” 

“Yes, you are, and you will be a fucking liar unless you tell someone the truth.” He snaps at her, “And you know what? I didn't even expect anything else from you. Fuck you, man.”

“Fuck me? Fuck you,” she replies, equally venomous, “fuck you too, man.”

Vernon opens his mouth to say something, but thinks better of it and leaves. She’s still standing in the middle of the alley, looking at him, and realises that she never really took the cigarette from him.

It’s too late for the metro, which means that she has to walk the half kilometre to the bus stop, hoping that the late-night buses are running that night. Behind her, the lights of Gangnam district are as bright as ever—people move in and out of frame, just going about their lives, but she’s out there, feeling like shit.

And really, Vernon wasn’t wrong. She left because she wanted “different things”. That’s the original statement. “I wanted something different, so I came here,” she had said when Cheol had looked at her and asked, “I wanted something that would stay mine, so I came here.”

The bus comes within fifteen minutes of her standing at the stop, which means that she spends ten minutes of those staring at her concept notes for a new recipe. Sketches stare at her, brilliantly coloured, and she can’t help but think back to the pile of drawing pencils sitting in the middle of her drawer at home.

I need a break, she thinks, dragging herself up the short hill to her apartment building. I need a fucking break, and this is not it.

Unfortunately, this has not been it for a long time. Hasn’t been it, notsince New York, hasn’t been anything really, since she graduated from culinary school and had enough accolades under her belt to go around the fucking world, and she was just—just—she was someone. Someone who spent all their time in a restaurant, trying to figure out the rest of their lives. Someone who tried their best to purge the memories of New York from their minds, like it was a blip in the matrix, like they did not spend most of their lives moving from restaurant to restaurant, trying their hands at everything, before leaving it all behind at the peak of fame to come back to fucking Seoul and go back to the same restaurant where they wanted to become a chef for the first time ever. No, that’s a lie. It’s really not a lie.

When she opens the door to her apartment, the silence that greets her is shitty as usual. She tries not to think about it too much, and instead walks over to the cupboard where she keeps her crappy red wines. She could drink beer, but she’s trying not to fuck up her palate too much. Instead of sitting at her table with a bottle of beer, she sits at the table with a glass of wine, trying (and failing) not to think about New York.

Why was there so much to think about, when it came to New York? she wasn’t really trying to do anything, she just wanted to cook good food and become the best. Well, cooking good food was the goal at first, but by the end, she just wanted to be the best. The best in the game. The first female CDC at the only three-starred Michelin Korean restaurant.

The wine is over, so she moves onto the second worst part of her day: trying to go to sleep. Sleep refuses to come to her on most days, and on the others, she stays awake until the light blinks over the skyline, makes enough coffee to keep her going until the next century, and ignores the growing anxiety in her mind that one day she’s going to wake up with a dysfunctional heart and it will all be over soon, and that someone will find her on the floor of the kitchen, dead.

Almost like—

Shut up.

Sleep refuses to come, which means that she’s going to give into her worst impulses and go back to looking at the news again, staring at pictures of herself until they all start blurring into one and she no longer recognises the person staring at her from the screen.

Jungsikdang, New York, a new era: sitting down with Kim Mi-ran.

Kim Mi-ran, making waves in Korean fine dining.

So many headlines, and all the same; Kim Mi-ran, new chef, Kim Mi-ran, the best CDC at the best Korean fine dining restaurant in the world and the hottest new thing on the culinary scene. Her face, looking back at her from the articles, and everything feels off. Everything feels awkward, like she’s not even looking at the same person, like she’s looking at herself, refracted through an unfamiliar lens.

Let’s look him up.

She doesn’t want to, but her hands move of their own accord, because within thirty seconds, she’s looking at the face of Chwe Vernon, standing in front of the kitchen pass, leaning against the wall. He’s dressed in his chef whites and he annoys the shit out of her.

“Fucking Vernon,” she mutters, scrolling up to see the title of the article, The year’s Best New Chef works at Dovetail in London: Chwe Hansol.

She doesn’t want to think about how his name is now Chwe Hansol, and not Vernon. Not anymore, not like she remembers him to be. It’s all her fault, anyway. The article keeps raving about his career as sous at Dovetail London, about the new dish that he was developing, something similar to lasagna, wide noodles cooked in perilla oil with shiitake mushrooms and soy-braised beef scattered on top of it, glittering like jewels. She’s not jealous. She’s not jealous at all, but she wants to make something like this again.

Fuck Vernon. Fuck him and his perfect cooking.

Irritated, she rolls over on the bed, plugging in her phone, and closes her eyes. She doesn’t want to think about Vernon, not at all. She was fine in New York. She was good.

Well now, now she’s nothing.

 —

Chef Kim, refire.

Hands. Hands. Hands.

Pass too slow.

Wake up, Chef. You’re running late.

Her eyes blink open, and the clock on her bedside reads five in the morning. Only three hours, as per usual. Lying in bed, she makes a mental checklist of all the things that she needs to do before she begins work on prep for the day—make breakfast for herself, enough that she doesn’t keel over and die in the middle of service, drink a cup of coffee, text her mother. She needs to text her mother, she needs to text someone. Proof of life, kid. You ned to let us know that you’re here, and not somewhere else.

She needs to go to Gyeonghoeru. She needs to prep mirepoix and she needs to look at the menu for today because there’s a special and there’s always a special but she needs to keep track of everything. She has Vernon as her CDC and she’s fucking terrified that one day people are going to wise up to the fact that she has nothing new to offer anymore. No inspiration. Nothing.

1 unread message from Cheol.

[1:20 am] hey, just checking in. you’ve been offline for a long time. Work still shit, huh? Make sure you hydrate. There’s food at the house when you want to come by.

She hates this feeling. This constant buzzing inside her mind that she’s never going to be good enough, that one day, she’s going to be left aside by people who’ve seen her for so long, and that no one is going to look at her and say shit like ‘Kim Mi-ran, best CDC ever’, that people are going to call her out on her bullshit. Cheol gives that same feeling. Food at the house, when you want to come by. Not if, not an out. When. Like it’s preordained that she’s going to come by, that she’s going to turn up at Cheol’s bustling house full of his family and his friends and all his weird cousins that aren’t really cousins that she never really manages to keep track of, and she’s going to sit down and pull herself a plate. Because that’s what she does. She runs away, then comes back. She always comes back. Like a fucking metronome.

She doesn’t get groceries, doesn’t make herself breakfast. Instead, she stands in front of the coffee machine, contemplates whether to do something about the flickering light, and instead decides against it, before pouring herself a cup. Big cup, black coffee. No cream, no sugar.

The streets of Seoul are still foggy when she steps out of the house, wearing a grey coat with patchwork on it, one that she made or picked up while in Copenhagen, she’s not sure. She misses Copenhagen. Misses London. Misses a lot of things.

Most of all, she misses the feeling of being enthused about something in her life.

There’s a new stage at the kitchen this morning, and he looks fucking terrified, big doe-eyes that blink rapidly as he takes down notes in very cramped handwriting. She peers at him being coached by the front of house staff, and decides not to intervene when someone looks at her. She just shakes her head. There’s no reason for her to do anything about it. The kid’s as terrified as he is, and she’s just going to fuck everything up, so she leaves it.

Coat off, jacket off. Hair slicked back. Pull on your chef whites. Get started on your prep, you’re getting slow.

Her chef whites are actually black, a stark contrast from the rest of the kitchen. She’s not trying to stand out from the crowd, not really. Not in an asshole-like manner. She just likes the black instead of the white.

She’s peeling mushrooms for a light broth when Vernon steps beside her, picking up a knife and a mushroom. It’s annoying, how easily he falls in step with her, like he’s never really had to worry about finding his footing in the middle of a busy kitchen. She doesn’t resist the urge to sneak a peek at his chef whites, the embroidered Chwe Hansol staring back her like a fucking brand. He’s no longer Vernon; he’s no longer the person she knew back at culinary school. She’s no longer the person he knew either. Both of them are posing, standing in the middle of a high-end restaurant, peeling mushrooms in the fucking morning, and trying not to yell at each other. No yelling, chef. That’s another rule. She’s never broken it, not at Madison Park, not at NOMA, not even at Jungsikdang, where she could feel her brains leak out of her ears. Never yell in a kitchen, not in the middle of prep, not in the middle of service. Yelling means you’re losing control. Control. Control. Control. Everything on a plate has to be controlled. Yes, chef.

“Peas back on the menu?” Vernon asks.

She nods, “pre-sear Hanwoo today, chef.”

He nods, and she doesn’t want to imagine it, but his voice sounds more clipped, “heard.”

—

Service begins, and its hands, fire, hands, fire, all over again. Over and over, and by the end of it, she’s struggling to keep her hands under her control. They’re shaking. They didn’t shake before, but now they shake every so often. No one notices. If they do, they're too polite to say anything to her face.

Wiping down her station, she looks at her watch. Midnight again. Vernon is beside her, single-handedly focused on doing the thing that she hates doing the most, but he does it so elegantly, it makes her wonder if she ever looked like that. There’s no one here, and he’s still wiping down the station with her. He’s not doing it with her; he's doing it at the same time as her.

“From tomorrow, you’re on the galbi, chef,” she says, passing him by, and he looks at her, “what?”

Vernon doesn’t mince words, “the galbi is your signature. You formulated it.”

“And I’m asking you to start working on it from tomorrow,” she fires back, “is there any confusion, chef?”

There are no people in the kitchen anymore, and Vernon’s face goes through five distinctly different emotions, before settling on something that is similar to surprise, “you are just asking me to do galbi? Like what is happening here?”

She sighs, placing the towel away and going back into the locker rooms. Vernon follows; there’s no one here, not now. No one to tell him to fuck off. She pulls her chef’s whites off, he looks away. There’s nothing to look at, but still, he looks away.

“Is this charity?”

She blinks, not looking at him. Just sort of in the vicinity of him, she blinks, “where did you get that idea from?”

He takes another step forward, “you always do this, Chef Kim. You always fuck with my head. Me on the galbi? You know you don’t want me to do it, so you’re doing charity.”

She finishes dressing up, pulling her grey wool coat from Copenhagen, “I’m not doing charity, Chef Chwe Hansol.”

“Then what is this,” he scoffs, “you’re finally recognising me? That would never happen, I know you that well.”

“Maybe, Chef Chwe Hansol, you do not know me that well,” she snaps back, “it’s been a long time since culinary school, and Sketch. You cannot think that I’m the same, because I’m not.”

At the mention of London, Vernon flinches, and she wants to smile. There’s a tight thread spooled inside her heart. Sketch. London. Le Cordon Bleu. He looks like he wants to laugh, but he doesn’t. instead, he turns on his heel, and walks out of the locker room. She’s still standing, and all of a sudden, she feels like she’s back at Sketch, back before the whole thing blew up in her face.

—

[London, seven years ago]

Service is brutal.

She knows this. Knows this in her bones, knows this in the way her vision gets slightly blurry after every service ends. Service is brutal, but it is satisfying. She needs the hit of adrenaline to get through every day.

“Good work on the peas, chef,” she doesn’t even need to look at the person to know who’s talking to her, because who else would speak in that voice? In a kitchen, where it tends to get loud as fuck, Vernon is the only person who consistently speaks to people in that particular tone. Like he’s speaking to elementary school children. She likes to think that they’re all elementary school children either way.

“Thank you, chef,” she replies, “good work on shucking the oysters, chef.”

“Likewise, chef.”

She rolls her eyes good-naturedly, following him out of the kitchen and into the locker room, “are you really going to be this way, Vernon?”

“Be what way?” He looks at her, raising an eyebrow, “what happened?”

 She grimaces, “seriously? You’re going to NOMA, and you didn’t tell any of us?”

Vernon sighs, “I didn’t go to NOMA, I applied to NOMA. I don’t know if I’m going to get in. it’s a competitive position, you know. They’re not just going to give it to me because I asked for it.”

She sighs, holding her hand out. He says nothing, just reaches and wraps his hand around hers. It’s grounding, holding his hand. Their calluses match.

No. Vernon will go to NOMA, she’s sure of it. He’s also going to be great at it; she is also sure of this one thing. The rest of it—she’s not sure about that.

“What about you?” Vernon nudges her shoulder, looking at her changing out of her chef whites, “going to finally buy clothes that are not grey or black?”

“Don’t judge the clothes, Vernon,” she laughs, “at least I buy something other than t-shirts.”

“Yes, you buy shirts,” he sighs, “Mi-ran, I’m really just stressed about NOMA. I don’t think I’m going to be hired there, but I would love to.”

“I know, Vernon.” The two of them walk out of the building, into the night, and she looks at the sky, but Vernon is looking at her. She can feel it, that he’s looking at her, with his cheekbones and perfect facial structures and the propensity to treat people with kindness despite being in a stressful work environment—Vernon is looking at her.

“Mi-ran, do you, maybe, next week—”

Her phone buzzes in her pocket. She unlocks it, expecting to find—what? What did I expect to find? An email from National Insurance, telling me about my new health plans?

Instead, it’s something she doesn’t expect.

It’s from NOMA. The executive chef at NOMA, that is.

Chef Kim Mi-ran, this is Adrian—

Her heart stops, and from the way she can hear Vernon's breath hitch, it’s clear. He’s read it too. She shoves her phone back inside her pockets, “I’m not going to go to fucking NOMA, Vernon.”

He stares at her for a long time, and then opens his mouth, “heard, Chef Kim.”

He says something, but the sentence that he’s about to say dissipates into the night like it never existed in the first place. She doesn’t want to think about how much that hurts her. The email from NOMA sits in her email inbox, opened, read, but not answered.

Three months later, she’s flying to Copenhagen.

—

[Seoul, present day.]

On Mondays, the restaurant is closed, so she has free time. Free time to go about making the new menu for the upcoming summer months because that’s one of the duties of an Executive Chef, and she needs to finish the roster for whoever is on cleanup duty the next day, and she needs to do so many things. One after the other, things keep piling up for her, and she needs to finish them.

Instead, she wakes up at four in the morning, and walks down to her nearest convenience store to pick up a pack of cigarettes. She’s not even thinking about the transaction when she slides a ten-thousand won bill across the counter to the bored and cleared sleep-deprived clerk, walking outside to the footpath and lighting up a cigarette in the first light. She likes this, likes watching the sun break out from over the horizon because it signals to her that the cycle will still move on. Despite her not being there, despite her being absent from the rest of it, the cycle will move on, the sun will continue to rise, and she doesn’t need to think too much about it.

She thinks too much about it.

The coffee machine has a flickering light, still, and she ignores it again in favour of making herself a big cup of coffee, drinking it slowly as the hands on the clock tick past her. Six am. Seven am. The restaurant remains closed today. There’s no need for me to go in there.

At eight in the morning, her phone rings. It’s Cheol, and she contemplates only for a minute before pressing answer and holding the device up to her ear, “yes, Cheol.”

“Hey, Kim,” he laughs, “morning, Babygirl.”

“Don’t call me that,” she grumbles, “and why the hell are you up so early?”

“What do you mean?”

“You usually wake up at eleven in the morning, Cheol. It’s eight am now. A whole three hours early. I want to know why.”

He pauses for a moment, “why do you think, babe?”

She pinches her brows, because this is what Cheol always does and she’s feeling a headache come on, and Cheol will not let up until she’s guessed something, “I don’t know, you have work?”

“It’s Monday, babe. We took off work.”

“Most people have work.”

Cheol laughs, “not me, though.”

“Yes, yes, tell me all about your perfect ‘I own a business and employ my best friends and it is profitable as fuck’, Choi Seungcheol.”

He laughs again, an obnoxious sound that she hasn’t heard in a long time, “look, I was calling about lunch. We’re planning a barbecue, in the garden.”

“The garden?” She asks, “your big-ass house’s garden? A barbecue there?”

“Yeah, the cousins are coming over, and I think Mingyu is bringing a new friend of his, some cook, so I thought you guys could bond or some shit, I dunno.”

“I can’t bond with someone just because we’re both cooks, Cheol,” she sighs, “and who is it?”

“Mingyu said it was a secret, so I’m keeping it a secret from you too.”

She nods, “so Mingyu hasn’t told you, huh?”

Cheol doesn’t reply for a moment, “not really, but I would like you to be here.”

She thinks about it for a moment, eating lunch with Cheol's weird family and friends situation that she doesn’t want to keep track of. It’s going to be hot, it’s going to be annoying, but she likes the chaos. And if things go well, he’s not going to let her near any sort of open flame, which is a nice thing. She doesn’t want to cook on Mondays. “Who else is coming?”

“All the family, the friends, and you know, Mingyu’s new friend.”

She sighs, “do you want me to bring something?”

“Bulgogi?”

“Fuck no,” she laughs, “I’m not bringing fucking bulgogi to an open lunch, Cheol, I know my foods well enough for that.”

“It’s a picnic, sort of, you know,” he sighs, “listen, if you don’t want to, then you don’t have to.”

“No, no, I want to,” she exhales, going back to her breathing exercises, “I want to make something for you and your friends and family.”

“Make anything you want,” Cheol smiles into the phone, “I’m sure none of those bastards have ever had anything made by a Michelin starred chef before, so it’s going to be a fun thing, no matter how awful you think it is.”

“I do not think it’s awful.”

Cheol stays silent, “well, yes, it’s going to be awkward,” she replies, “but I can handle that much, you know, I can handle it. It’s not going to be a bad thing.”

“I know it, Babygirl, it’s going to be good.”

—

Cheol texts her after she cuts the call, a litany of emojis with the words do u wanna come for lunch yes or no, and she answers after thinking about it for five minutes, yes, Cheol, I will come to the barbecue, but no Korean food. I need something not Korean for once.

Will do, boss, he replies, hamburgers for everyone.

—

Cheol was lying when he said that the barbecue was going to happen at his house, because the address that he has given her goes to a fucking camping ground on the outskirts of town, where people go to have fun for the weekend, and definitely not meant for someone like her, but she musters up the courage either way. The taxi driver looks at her strangely when she tells him the address, but he says nothing more when she presses two bills into his hands. He doesn’t even spare a glance at the assortment of groceries she has in her hands. He’s also lying to her about being able to cook for everyone, because before she leaves the apartment, he texts her, begging for her to bring some groceries. She debates for a second on whether to do it for him or not, but Cheol just sends her a text, I’ll buy you a drink, Mi-ran, at the Shilla.

Drink at the Shilla means an easy million won on the pocket, so she’s not even upset at Cheol, or at buying food and groceries for his stupid friend outing. Drinks and a dinner at the Shilla, Cheol, don’t go back.

The camping ground looms up at her about an hour later, and she has to fight actively to not give into her desires and tell the driver to turn back and go back to her pick-up point. It’s going to be good, Kim Mi-ran, she tells herself, it’s going to be good.

—

Cheol’s carrying about three thousand blocks of firewood in his arms when she walks up to him, arms full of groceries, “Mi-ran!” he yells, “you made it!”

Thankfully, he doesn’t drop everything and come running to her for a hug, but it’s awkward nonetheless, “I’m here, like you requested,” she holds up the bags, “and I brought stuff that we can cook.”

“You’ll need to pick that up by yourself,” he says, grinning, “my hands are full of wood.”

She chooses not to play into the trap of that innuendo.

Stil, they fall into step alongside each other, and it’s nice. Nice to the degree that she forgets about the restaurant, the fact that she’s going to have to ditch them all at eight in the evening to catch the bus back to Seoul. Cheol will probably be angry with her, but she doesn’t know what else to do.

“Change of plans, baby,” he says, smoothly, placing the firewood blocks near the already set-up tent, “my parents aren’t coming.”

She rolls her eyes. This was bound to happen. “So, what, it’s just the friends?”

“Just the friends,” Cheol nods, “Jeonghan and Mingyu and Joshua, along with Mingyu’s new friend.”

“This friend that you’ve neither seen nor managed to have a conversation with,” she sighs, setting the groceries down, “what about the cousins?”

“The cousins aren’t coming either,” Cheol assures, “don’t worry, it’s just going to be us four, and you’re going to take off at eight, so you don’t even have to spend the night with us.”

She blinks, “how did you know that?”

It’s now Cheol’s turn to roll his eyes, “I know enough about restaurants to know that they need to start prepping at the crack of dawn,” he replies, “don’t worry, I’ve got the car, so I’ll drop you and Mingyu’s friend off at the bus stand at eight.”

She wants to ask why Mingyu’s friend is also leaving at eight, along with her, but then remembers that Mingyu’s friend is a cook and most restaurants need start prepping from the morning, in order to be able to serve their guests. And if he’s working at a small-scale restaurant, then he needs to be working throughout the day, so there’s that. Suddenly, she feels a strange sense of solidarity towards this unknown friend of Mingyu’s, someone who knows her struggles, someone who is on the same boat as her. It’s a bracing thought.

“When are the rest of them showing up?” she asks, rolling up the ends of her sleeves, “I could get started on cooking.”

Cheol shrugs, “Jeonghan will be coming soon enough, but Mingyu will be a bit late. Around noon, maybe?”

“Noon, right.” She can do noon. She can do lunch. She can do a lot of things.

“What do you have in that bag?” Cheol comes over, checking his phone, “Jeonghan’s here.”

“Jeonghan’s here?” and on cue, the tall, almost angelic-looking man appears into her field of vision, grinning from ear to ear, “Jeonghan!”

Jeonghan stops for a moment when he sees her, “Mi-ran?” he asks, “you’re really here? Food and Wine’s Best New Chef at twenty-three is here at a picnic?”

She rolls her eyes, but she likes Jeonghan. Maybe it’s the deceptively angelic looks, maybe it’s the way that he greets her with a hug every time he sees her, like he’s preparing for her to leave again. Maybe it’s that one time she made him a scallop dish, with a caper sauce and stuff, for his graduation from college. Jeonghan hated the dish, told her that it tasted strange, and she told him to fuck all the off to fucking Busan. Still, it was probably the most honest review anyone had given her in her life, so she liked it, likes him. Jeonghan is nice. He’s annoying, but nice.

He hugs her, placing a quick kiss to her cheek before looking at the bags she’s been arranging on the edge of the temporary firepit, “really, Cheol’s making you cook again?”

“I thought I’d bring something for him and his family, but he told me it’s just going to be us four,” she shrugs, “I made food, either way.”

“Yeah, food you’re not gonna eat,” Cheol shouts, “what did you even make?”

She points at the refrigerated bag, “there are some flank steaks in there, trying to actually work on a chimichurri-inspired marinade, but made with Asian ingredients, like shiso and more minty things. There are a lot of cognates within South American and Asian cuisine, so we can do that. And on that side, we have some shikhye, that I have been making for a long fucking time, and in the last bag we have something of a quick and easy yeolmu bibimbap, because I found some young radish kimchi, so we have that—”

“Jesus, it’s enough for a group of ten, not four people,” Jeonghan picks up one of the Ziploc bags with the flank steaks, “do you need help with cooking the steaks? I can do that.”

“No, it’s fine,” she sighs, “I think Mingyu’s new friend is a cook, but I can’t just—”

“You’re gonna make Mingyu’s new friend cook? The first time he comes here?” Jeonghan laughs, “come on, Mi-ran, you shouldn’t do that.”

“Well, I was supposed to have help from Cheol’s family, and the rest of our friends, but that’s not happening, so we now have to make do with something like this,” she grumbles, “I don’t want to make the guy cook in his first hangout either, but what can we do?”

“We can just have Mingyu help you with it,” Cheol replies, setting the logs, “he’s a competent cook, you know.”

“He would have been better if he had some formal training instead of just puttering about in a home kitchen,” she grumbles, “he had so much potential for becoming a chef, you know.”

“In your mind, everyone should be a chef,” Cheol laughs, checking his phone, “oh, wait, Mingyu is here.”

“Mingyu is here? Should I get started on the steaks?”

But Cheol is not paying her any attention, and neither is Jeonghan, so she looks up at the two people coming up the field. One of them is Mingyu, his tall frame easily visible even amidst the crowd of people, and on the other side is—fuck, it’s Vernon.

She sighs, standing up, and Mingyu runs up to her, pulling her into a hug again, “Mi-ran! So nice to see you, and this is Vernon—” he makes a gesture towards the man, who’s staring at her, intensely, “I met him in the gym! He’s also a cook, same as you!”

“Yeah, I know him,” she sighs, “he’s my CDC at Gyeonghoeru. He’s excellent.”

That one gets their attention. Cheol stands up straighter, and Jeonghan has a knowing glint in his eye, “really?” Mingyu asks, “you work with him?”

Vernon doesn’t answer at all, just keeps staring and staring at her, not looking away, and she hates her decision to come here again. Instead of running away, she turns to the stove, checking for temperature, “he’s excellent, Mingyu, I’ve told you that.”

—

On Monday mornings, she wakes up earlier than usual. Most days, she doesn’t go to sleep. Instead, she just stays awake, blinking in the darkness of the night, looking at her shitty ceiling and hoping for the morning to come by quicker. On Monday mornings, she gets to the restaurant at five in the morning, hoping for her prep to get done before she has to get wrapped up in the process of making menus and doing other stuff that keeps the restaurant smoothly running, the mundane, day-to-day tasks that she doesn’t really enjoy, but at times like these, they are a welcome reprieve for her.

“Morning chef,” the new stage, a boy whose name begins with Lee and well, she’s never learnt the rest of it, “prep time?”

“Prep time, Lee Jungchan, was it?” She asks, peering discreetly at the apron, “welcome to Gyeonghoeru.”

The boy looks bashful, “it’s just Lee Chan, actually. My parents put an extra syllable on there to make it more symmetrical.”

“Right, Lee Chan, then,” she smiles at him, looking around them at the pristine kitchen, “what else is there at this time of the day?”

He shakes his head, “just thinking about small talk, chef.”

“Small talk is good,” she pulls out her NOMA notebook, we’re doing a ginseng infused broth for the seasonal menu this time around. Have you ever had wild ginseng?”

“Wild ginseng?”

She shakes her head, smiling, “I had it once, and surprisingly enough, it was in Copenhagen. I think about it from time to time.”

“Was it—in a broth, or some sort of other preparation?” he asks, and it’s kind of endearing how he’s hanging on to her every word, and he trips over his words in an attempt to continue the conversation, “I mean, I had your dish at Jungsikdang, and the dol hareubang completely changed my life, I think it’s the best dish I’ve ever had.”

“Thank you, for the compliment,” she smiles, “you went to Le Cordon Bleu, right?”

He nods, “I know you and chef Vernon were both alumni of the same school. And you came to the school, one time, when I was still a student there.”

She frowns, “did I?”

He shakes his head, “I think you just came there to attend another lecture.”

That jogs her memory, “I went there to attend a lecture by Louis Dupont. He was my instructor when I was at Le Cordon, too.”

His eyes grow wide, “you learnt from Louis Dupont?”

“It was really nice,” she sighs, “his recipe for roast chicken is something I still haven’t managed to improve upon.”

“Still?” and in the morning light, she still thinks about the first time she had roast chicken by Louis Dupont, working at Gaspard, nervous as the youngest woman in the entire kitchen. Louis Dupont, who was an old man even when she met him, now positively ancient. Gentle hands teaching her how to truss the chicken, how to prepare a meal with care enough for it to leak out of every element on the meal, so that the people who eat your food will know that someone took the time to care about their meal. About food. She misses that time.

“I liked learning from Louis,” she offers, “he taught me why we should care so much about this.”

He blinks at her, clearly confused, “what?”

She laughs, “wild ginseng, boy. Wild ginseng.”

She’d lied to him when she talked about the wild ginseng. Well, she wasn’t lying, just omitting the truth. It wasn’t NOMA, and it wasn’t even Copenhagen. She had wild ginseng for the first and only time in Sweden, delirious to the point where she imagined that particular root appearing in front of her eyes. NOMA was behind her then; a blur of time that was spent in a small house overlooking the river and where she became convinced that a ghost was haunting her, where her days began at six and ended at midnight. NOMA was a blur of guilt for her, days and nights of attempting to contact Vernon, until she gave it up entirely.

Hey, Mi-ran, I don’t mean to tell you this, but Vernon was there at the reunion dinner last night, and when they asked him about you, he said that he didn’t know what the hell you were doing.

Really?

He was far unkinder than that. Sorry.

I took the NOMA opportunity from him; he should be angry. I don’t mind. It would have been weird if he wasn’t angry.

He also said that the rice and egg broth with the shiitake mushrooms was kind of derivative.

…

Mi-ran?

Okay. He can think that. I don’t mind.

Do you.

I’m telling you the truth. He can think whatever he wants.

If you want my opinion—

Don’t. it’s fine.

I was about to say that the rice and egg broth dish was the best thing I’ve ever had.

Flatterer.

I speak the truth.

Love you.

You don’t really.

I don’t?

You love Vernon.

Lies. Liar.

It’s why you’re forgiving that comment.

I’m not. I’m ignoring it. As I should.

You’re a coward.

That’s why I love you, Millie. You keep me honest.

Both of you are stupid.

—

“Wild ginseng,” she mutters to herself, setting up her station, “wild ginseng.” A close aide of the president was coming to dine with them that night, the front of house had informed them all before, it would be great if the Executive chef made the Hanwoo dish. The not-so-subtle undertone of don’t give this to the CDC and the line cooks remained there, but she really didn’t want to be a part of whatever political game the aide thought he was playing. She was going to be there, as usual, and she would be nice, as usual, and it would be a good service. Like always. She had stages and she had line cooks and she had two sous chefs and a CDC who hated her guts but loved cooking. She could do it; she had the necessary skills. She was skilled, man.

Prep time sulks, but that’s the point. People keep looking at her like she’s an alien, come to earth to figure out the living patterns of human beings. To some of them, she must look that way: the CDC-turned Executive Chef from Jungsikdang, someone who would under no normal circumstances be a part of this kitchen. That’s what Cheol told her too.

“What are you doing here, Mi-ran? You should have gone to another restaurant, someplace better than this one. You know that, right?”

“I do, Cheol,” she’d said, not fully believing herself, “I do. I just needed a change.”

And she did. Fire three Hanwoo. Hands. Refire. Change this, chef. The expo is being held up.

Someone passes a deli container into her hands. She looks up. Vernon just shrugs, “hojicha. Family meal is up next.”

“Right. Family meal.”

The new stage was on the family meal, rice and bulgogi made from the leftover marinated beef they had in the walk-in. She eats it all, because food is fuel, and you need the energy. She wants an energy drink. She wants fried chicken. She wants, desperately, anything other than Korean or Asian food. Her palate is fucked.

After family meal is done, she steps outside the restaurant for a break, stepping away from the gates and into the back alley. A cigarette comes up to her lips even before the doors finish closing behind her, and she walks out to the side of the dumpsters, taking quick puffs to calm herself down. Halfway through the cigarette, she sits down on the curb, hoping that the solidity of the road will do something to her shot nerves.

The prep is over. Now it’s just service that I need to get through.

“Sitting here again?”

She doesn’t even need to look to know it’s Vernon. He takes a seat next to her, their knees touching, and for a moment, she thinks of another time, back in London, back in the timeline before everything went to shit, “you’re still here?”

“What, you thought I’d leave?” he laughs, “I’m not going to, Chef Kim. If you want to, you can leave. I’m not going to.”

“Gyeonghoeru that important to you?” she scoffs, “you said that it doesn’t have a star.”

“Yes, but it could.” Vernon holds his hand out for the cigarette, and she wordlessly hands it over to him, “you know it too. If we all pulled through this one, then we have a chance at getting a star. It’s doable. It’s there.”

“Do you know the process of getting a star?” she turns to look at him, and Vernon is there, with a faraway look on his face, like he’s looking at something beyond her, beyond himself, beyond this restaurant, even. It’s the same look she had seen on his face when he talked about working at NOMA, when he talked about their future, the two of them. It’s the same everything.

She has to look away to not start crying.

“It could be a starred place, you know,” Vernon says, “they genuinely have the potential for that. Everyone here loves cooking; everyone here loves the art of it. They’re hungry for success, and a star would make them even more hungry for it. You know this, Chef Kim, you know they could be better than a restaurant with the potential to get recognition. They could actually have it.”

Chef Kim. All those years of calling me Mi-ran, and now he reverts back to Chef Kim. Fine. Good. “Do you know how hard the process is?” she can’t help the scoff that escapes her, “it’s painful, it’s hellish. Every day is a constant grind in that process, to get a star. People become jaded, people become tired. People start hating each other. It brings out the worst in people.”

“And you think the atmosphere in there isn’t already shot to death?” he stands up, looking down at her, his eyes hard, “everyone is on eggshells around you, everyone is on eggshells around me. People start looking amongst each other the moment we have a conversation, because they know we’re fucked up, and they want us to just stop this mess.”

“I did not start this mess, you did,” she snaps, “you know how many times I called you? How many times I texted, begging for you to listen to my words? I cut myself up daily because I thought I hurt you. That’s what I did. Every day, chef, of course the dynamic is fucked up, because you hate me, and I dislike you just as much!”

He stands very, very still. She knows what she’s just said, she knows the impact of the words, but she doesn’t want to take them back. Not yet. Not now. Vernon knows it’s true. He said your dish was derivative.

Everything comes back to cooking, in the end.

He takes a deep breath, “you wrote all those words to me from NOMA. You wrote them from Copenhagen, Mi-ran. You wrote them from the place where I desperately wanted to be at. You still think I should forgive you?”

She stands up, “then don’t fucking ask me to get you a star!”

“You think it’s just me who’s going to get a star? You’re going to get one too!”

She stares at Vernon for a full ten seconds, before saying “fuck you.” The door slams loudly, in the wake of her leaving. He doesn’t follow her into the kitchen.

“Twenty minutes till the doors open, chef,” the front of house, Minghao, says, loud enough for her to be jolted awake from that fucking daydream. “You feeling good?”

“Never better, chef,” she mumbles, looking away from him, because Minghao unfortunately worked at Ever and is a bitch for getting an accurate read on whatever emotions she’s feeling at any moment, “we’ll be ready this way, chef.”

“Stations need to be prepped, chefs!” she announces, stepping into the kitchen, drawing everyone’s attention, “pre-service meeting, please.”

There’s a murmur of assent, and Minghao follows her to the dining room, bringing the whole front of house along with him. Vernon walks into the kitchen as she follows Minghao out of the kitchen and into the dining, his eyes flicker for a moment before settling onto indifference.

“I’ll oversee pre-service,” he says, and she nods, allowing that bit of lie to fall through. What else was she going to say? That she knows that he didn’t want to talk to her, or that he knew that she was aware of this?

The dining room has approximately ten people in there, split amidst kitchen and front of house. Minghao takes a deep breath, before looking at her, inclining his head just a little. When was the last time that she had seen that particular gesture? Right, at Ever, when Minghao was there along with Vernon, both of them staging, and she had followed Vernon out to Chicago just to try and make amends. She still remembers the look that Minghao had given her across the room. She doesn’t think he recognised her, but at times, Minghao makes her suspicious.

“Chef,” he murmurs, “the pre-service.”

“Right,” she claps her hands, “today, we have some important things on the menu, the new iteration of dol hareubang, served with an orange reduction, so that needs to be mentioned. Also, for the seasonal menu, we have the boiled whole chicken, paired with a shiitake mushroom broth that has been flavoured with ginseng and Chinese whole spices. That’s all.”

She finishes her speech feeling very stupid, and Minghao, thankfully, takes over from her, “okay, guys, listen up! We have a few people of note eating with us today—two public health doctors, who have come here to celebrate their anniversary, and the man has sent a note ahead with his reservation, saying that he will be proposing to his girlfriend. We will be facilitating that, so there will be a special red bean paste dessert for them, and for god’s sake, do not ask them for the check.”

Red bean dessert, with a champagne proposal. She can already think of the multiple ways that she can make this one occasion more special for this couple, to make this one experience an unforgettable one. Red bean parfait, modified slightly from the sorbet that we already are serving for dessert. The tasting menu would have to be changed slightly, but that’s okay. They can do it.

“Pâtissier would be taking point on that one,” she mutters, and Hong Joshua, the pastry chef, looks up from where he’s standing, nodding fervently. Look, he can do it. You’ve got a system now, Kim Mi-ran. You’ve got your own brigade.

“What about the presidential aide?” one of the front of house members pipes up, “shouldn’t we be considering him as a person of note too?”

Minghao looks at her. She sighs, pinching her nose, “if we consider every politician who walks in through those doors as a person of note, we are going to inundated with red tickets like that every day. Politicians are not people of note, the people are. Let’s keep that in mind, everyone.”

“Couldn’t have said it better myself, chef,” Minghao smiles, checking his watch, “ten minutes till doors open, chefs. I’m going to be on expo, so please make sure that everything is running smoothly. Seokmin, I’m counting on you for that.”

Seokmin nods, smiling brightly, ‘you can count on me, chef!”

“I can never get used to that,” she sighs, tucking her notepad into her apron pocket, “let’s go back to work, everyone.”

“Yes, chef!” the chorus follows her all through, even into the kitchen, where she looks at the dessert menu, that has been slightly revamped for the season; matcha and hojicha ice cream, along with a caramel sauce that people poured over their dishes. Joshua did a very good job of it, as expected from hi. She’s come to expect a lot of things from people, she does.

Vernon would never say anything bad about me.

He did, you know.

Derivative.

Derivative.

Derivative.

Chef, we need three shrimp within the next two minutes.

Derivative.

“Chef?”

She blinks, the lights suddenly harsh, “am I having a stroke?”

Vernon stares at her, “no, not really. You’re three minutes out from the doors being open, though.”

“That’s right, everyone. Three minutes till the doors open,” she nods, “faster and cleaner on every dish, chefs. Every second counts.”

Every second counts.

“First tickets coming in,” Minghao announces, “we need three striped jack, three arctic char, please, chefs.”

“Heard,” she says. Her hands work fast, sure, confident. This is the one thing in her life that she’s entirely confident on, cooking. Every second counts, chef. She knows her hands are fast and sure; she knows her hands make art and work at it. She’s sure of it.

Derivative.

—

“That’s it,” Minghao announces, “thank you, chefs!”

Mi-ran throws in her towel with slightly more force than absolutely necessary. Everything had gone well. The presidential aide had shown up with their acquaintances in tow and they had had a good time. Everyone who stepped in through those doors tonight had had a good time.

“Thank you, everyone,” she says, looking at Minghao, who’s walking fast towards her, a smile on his face, “yes?”

“The persons of note wish to send their compliments to the chef,” Minghao grins, “they really enjoyed their meal.”

“You refused to take the check, yeah?”

He rolls his eyes, “of course we did, but now they want to meet you.”

“Why? They should be meeting Joshua instead. The dessert was the surprise one.”

Minghao shakes his head, “the dol hareubang.”

“The dol hareubang.” She sighs, “let’s go.”

When she follows Minghao out into the dining area, she can feel the eyes of the diners on her, looking with heightened interest in the executive chef, who’s coming to grace them with her presence. She doesn’t like this part of her job. One thing she didn’t have to deal with at Jungsikdang, were the meetings. She didn’t have to think about meeting people, just had to be satisfied with the knowledge that her food was good and it was received well by the people.

Minghao stops in front of a pair of people in the corner seat, “there you go.”

“I have to do it, right?”

“You’re the executive chef, not me.”

She sighs. He’s not wrong. Minghao rarely is. “Hello, I’m the executive chef, Kim Mi-ran,” she smiles, bowing at the couple, who elbow each other in excitement, “I trust everything went well?”

The woman stands up, smiling, “thank you so much for this incredible meal, chef. The dol hareubang was out of this world.”

“Thank you, we as a team work very hard for everything to be perfect,” she smiles back, “I trust the surprise went well?”

The brilliant smile on their faces rivals the brilliant cut of the diamond ring on the woman’s finger.

—

“Staff drinks, please,” Joshua whines during cleanup, wiping down his counter, “Saturday, please.”

Minghao looks at her, “I’m not the person who can sign off on that.”

Joshua looks at her, “pretty please, Chef Kim?”

She sighs, “we need to go over the vendor contracts on Saturday. I need Minghao and Vernon for that.”

“We can look over the contracts before we leave for drinks,” Minghao says mildly, trying not to annoy her further, “I’m sure we can finish everything in time and then go out for drinks, the whole staff.”

She looks down at the tile that she had been scrubbing for the past three minutes. There’s a particular red stain on there, that she can’t really get out. She’s been staring at it for the past three minutes, and the smell of soap persistently stays on, within her nostrils. They’re all going to go out for dinner and she’s going to have to go with them, because that’s what a good boss does; go out with their employees during the weekend, commiserating with them over general shitty work life and offering them condolences for ending up in the position where they were.

“Right, I don’t think I can join, sorry,” she says, “but the corporate card is there, for discretionary expenses. I think we can use that.”

Minghao’s expression perks up, “that's right! We can take the corporate card with us. And we've been working so hard for the past couple of months, I think we deserve a break.”

“We do,” Vernon replies. She looks at him. He’s scrubbing the floor, same as her, but unlike her, he’s managed to cover a significant area. She wonders if this is a sign from the universe.

“We’re bringing you too, chef,” Joshua points at her, grinning widely, “you cannot escape the company dinner just because you think it’s going to be a bad thing, you need to come with us.”

“I don’t need to do that,” she grumbles, “I shouldn’t go out and get drinks with anyone.”

—

Minghao leaves her in the middle of brainstorming about the seasonal menu, three of whose dishes need to be changed, citing some vague excuse about a wine vendor who had reneged on their promise for a proper Beaujolais, which means that she’s stuck in the small office at nine in the evening, with only a blinking table lamp for company. She has to be here, because there is work to be done. There is always work to be done. The work never ends, it seems. Not for her.

“Minghao?” the door opens, “I thought you were supposed to me here—oh.”

She looks up at Vernon, who’s wearing a plain white shirt and jeans, looking like he’s freshly showered, clearly expecting someone else, “oh, it’s you.”

“Are you upset that it’s me, chef?” she murmurs, going back to her notebooks, “Minghao has gone off in search of a proper Beaujolais. He’s not here right now.”

“Right,” Vernon sighs, ignoring the jab, “he asked me to meet him here.”

“I was talking to him until a few minutes ago, when he said that he had to leave,” she sighs, “I know you said you didn’t want to be a part of the proceedings, but do you want to take a look at the new seasonal menu? Front of House says that three dishes need to be changed out.”

For a moment, Vernon looks like he’d rather be anywhere else in the world, but shakes his head, sitting down on a stool, looking at er scrawled notes and sketches, “which three dishes?”

“The manduguk, which Joongang Daily didn’t like when they did the review, the LA Galbi, which Hankyoreh thought was the least cohesive of all of our dishes, and finally, the salmon roe, which in everyone’s opinion, is exceedingly difficult, has too many elements, and generally, is a bitch to prepare. Also, no one really goes for it in the a la carte menu.”

“Damn,” Vernon whistles, “that’s a lot of things to go through. You sure you need my help?”

She stares at him, “chef, I don’t know what you think about me, but to me, you’re my CDC. That hasn’t changed, and I don’t think it ever will. No matter what happened between us, I still need your opinion on this.”

He looks at her, “I said that I didn’t want to be a part of this.”

“I know, but I wanted you to be a part of this, so that’s why, I’m asking you for your opinion,” she holds her hand out for her notebook, “never mind, if you don’t want to give your opinion, or be a part of this one, then I shouldn’t force you to take part.”

“You always do business like this?”

“What?”

“I’m asking if you always do business like this.”

“I’m not the one running a business here, chef,” she sighs, “I still need to report to my boss and the accounting department, who always have something to say about the dishes that we have planned, and I still need to get everyone on board for this, so chef, if you don’t want to be a part of this, I’m not going to stop you. You are free to leave this office space.” That part of her sentence, you're also free to leave this kitchen and my life goes unsaid. His face looks like he’s gotten the memo, however.

He hands her the notebook, and she goes back to sketching the dishes. They need to scrap the manduguk. If Joongang Daily hates it, then it was truly not up to the mark. The first time that she heard about that review, she had scoffed. What did the fucking Joongang Daily know about haute cuisine? The second time, she read the review, which called the manduguk ‘unbalanced and not up to the mark’. Hankyoreh thought that the La Galbi was not cohesive and did not ‘speak to the overall quality of the atmosphere’, and that it seemed too much like ‘the Gyeonghoeru was trying to at once be an upscale restaurant and a small-time Korean barbecue joint in the Bay area, and it wasn’t working’. She knows. It never works. They need to change it.

 “Mi—Kim,” he says, and it’s pathetic, so pathetic, how small his voice sounds, and it’s kind of awful on her part, because that small part inside of her, that mean and angry and bitter part inside of her, that preens at this comment. He can’t even say my name out loud. She realises with horror, that she likes it when Vernon gets that tone in his voice. It means that he’s listening to her. It means that her words are affecting him, that he can no longer remain nonchalant and pretend that she doesn’t exist in his sphere outside of service and prep. Am I a fucking monster?

“Yes?” she looks up, and Vernon looks like he’s been thinking about this for a long time, “what do you need to talk to me about, chef?”

That’s just being cruel, she knows it, but she needs this, also; needs the distance of calling him chef, because she doesn’t want to call him Vernon, only to hear the words Chef Kim being thrown back at her. She doesn’t want to be a part of that. She doesn’t think her heart could take that much.

“I’m sorry.”

She blinks. “What are you sorry about, chef?”

“I shouldn’t have lashed out at you like that.”

“It doesn’t matter now, chef,” she sighs, “we should get back to work. That means I need to get back to work, and you can ask Minghao where he is right now. Probably moved on to a Languedoc sweet wine by now.”

“I’m trying to make amends here, Chef,” Vernon huffs, slightly irritated, and she must be crazy, because she really needs to see him lose it for once in his life. She needs to see Chwe Vernon just go insane. Berserk. She needs to see it. He’s snapped at her and he’s gotten irritated with her, but he’s never been angry. She needs to see it.

A sudden, irrational realisation comes over her, and she stands up, the notebook entirely abandoned on the desk, with its brightly-coloured drawings staring at the two of them, “how badly do you want that star, Chef Chwe Hansol?”

He looks up, eyes wide, “you’re considering it?”

“I still think it’s a bad idea,” she sighs, “but that’s not the point. Do you want it, or not?”

A moment.

Vernon stares at her like they’re back at le cordon, like they're back working side by side at sketch, like the last few years had never really happened, like they're not on other sides of a burning bridge. “Do you want this too?”

She nods, “I think we could get you a star, Chef Hansol. I’m not going to ask why you want that star or why you’re so intent on getting it in fucking Korea, making Korean food, when the process would have probably been a lot easier in the United States. I’m asking you, do you want the star?”

Vernon looks at her for a moment, then nods, “yes, I want it.”

She sighs, “well, let’s see what we can do about it.”

—

Mi-ran, what’s your deal with Vernon?

Vernon? He’s a friend.

He cannot be just a friend.

He is.

Have you seen the way he looks at you? Not a friend. Not by a long shot.

You’re lying hehe

—

On Saturday, she hands a typed-out card to Minghao, with the title ‘Non-negotiables’.

“What’s this?” he asks, without even looking at it, “cannot be the new menu, you just locked it last night. You haven’t even given it to everyone yet.”

“I think we should get a star.” She says, without any preamble. Minghao sputters, then does a double take.

“What?”

“I mean, it’s been long enough with me here, I think we need to work towards getting a star.”

“I’m sorry, chef,” Minghao says slowly, as if he’s trying to get it through in his own head, “you mean a Michelin star, right? This is not some other sort of award that I am not aware of?”

“No, chef, this is a Michelin star that I’m talking about,” she replies, “I want one.”

He blinks at her, “you’ve been talking to Chef Hansol again, I see.”

She turns her head so fast that her neck would have snapped, “no. I want the star.”

“Is this some ego thing?” Minghao looks like he might have a conniption, “it hasn’t even been a year since we opened, and the boss brought you into this ship as a last-ditch attempt to keep this restaurant alive. Chef Hansol joined after you did, so I want to be clear on this one thing.”

“I’m clear, chef,” she pulls on her apron, “we need to get a star if we want more people to come here.”

“Getting a Michelin star is not a publicity stunt, chef,” Minghao sighs, “are you sure about this?”

“One hundred percent sure,” she walks back into the kitchen, “we will get a star.”

Over at pastry, Joshua perks up, “a star?” he walks over, “are we talking about getting a star?”

“Chef Kim here is talking about getting a star,” Minghao sighs, “chef, please. Think about this. We cannot afford to fail if we start. We cannot stop on this trajectory.”

“I know, which is why I wrote those regulations,” she turns back to her finished prep, “we’ll get a star.”

Joshua and Minghao share a look amongst them, “is this about—” Joshua begins, and she holds up a hand, silencing them both.

“This is an ego thing,” she says, blatantly ignoring Vernon, whose looking at the three of them from his position on the pass, “I retained two stars at Jungsikdang, and I got another star for the restaurant the next year. I want Gyeonghoeru to have a star too. I want this for myself, and I want this for everyone else.”

Minghao takes a look at her list, “this is all on par for the course for fine dining, but what is this thing about a ‘chaos menu’?”

“The menu changes once a week,” she shrugs, “similar ingredients, because vendors will refuse to give us a good discount without larger orders, but we shift the dishes. Every week, the menu will change.”

Minghao looks like he might really have a heart attack now, “chef,” Joshua says, “I doubt pastry would be able to pull that off.”

“The dessert menu can be locked,” she concedes, “but the rest of it, I will change that. We are all capable of following through on a challenge, and I think—no, I know that this will do well.”

Footsteps. She knows who this is, because only one person walks like that, even within a kitchen, “chef,” Vernon says, voice clipped, “please, can we talk about this?”

She gives Minghao and Joshua a nod, following Vernon into the office.

As soon as the door closes behind her, he turns around, looking irritated, “a chaos menu? Really?”

“I thought you wanted a star, chef.” She replies, trying her best to be nonchalant, “we need to do this.”

“Doing this would harm us more than it would do us any good,” he snaps, “you know this, chef.”

“I was not the one who wanted a star, chef.”

A moment. One. Two. Vernon looks like he wants to storm out of the office, but finally decides otherwise, standing a bit taller. Doesn’t matter, he’s still the same height as me, she thinks, not a hint of malice in there. He’s still the same. Even if he had changed his name and adopted another person’s skin, he’s still the same.

“You’re going to make everyone suffer,” he bites out eventually, not looking away, “you’re going to make everyone suffer with your rules and this chaos menu that will be changing every three days—”

“Every week.”

“—every week, then, because you have no idea how these people work—”

“I have enough of an idea, thank you very much.”

“—which just means that you’re going to put everyone through the ringer for nothing!”

She doesn’t say anything when he finishes his sentence, just keeps staring at him. Theres a shuffling noise outside the door. About three people, listening in, two of them have to be Minghao and Joshua, and they must have recruited someone from the kitchen, probably to get another witness to this—whatever they were having right now. Was this a lovers’ spat?

“If you want to get a star, chef, you need to follow the rules and regulations. If you don’t wish for that, then you’re free to go. I’m sure London would be very happy to have you back, working in their kitchens,” she says finally, and although it’s bitter and mean and nothing like what she wanted to say to him, it comes out like she’s tired and exhausted, like she’s been holding her exhaustion in for months and weeks and days.

“Are you firing me?”

“I’m telling you to get with the programme that you built, chef, not the other way around,” she groans, “god, I’m so fucking tired.”

“Right, message receives,” he nods, “do let me know about the rules and regulations, I will be following them to the dot.”

“I would really hope that you do, chef, because my kitchen is not a place for idleness,” she replies, “make sure that you are on board with everything.”

Vernon steps aside, and she opens the door, yanking it back with so much force that the three people waiting outside almost fall over, and she glares at Minghao, Joshua, and Chan.

She scoffs, levelling another withering stare at Minghao and Joshua, who have the decency to look slightly abashed, “roping in the stage on their first month?”

Chan blushes almost immediately, “no, no, chef, I just wanted to show you this idea that I had been working on, and Chef Xu said that I could come to the office and show it to you, and Chef Hong said that I could—”

“They filled your heads with bullshit, right?” she rolls her eyes, “really? I did not expect that from the two of you, man.”

“You expected worse from us, be honest,” Minghao looks unashamed, and Joshua just giggles as she makes her way back to the kitchen and picks up her knife again. The fucking knife. She had got it back in NOMA, as a present from a friend in Japan, a beef knife that was half a joke, half serious. Still, she stuck with the utensil, even going so far as to travel to fucking Gifu to repair it one time.

“Hey, chef,” Minghao follows her into the kitchen, whispering low, “do you really think that fighting with him like this is going to help?”

“There is nothing to fight about,” she mutters, chopping up onions for the mirepoix with more anger than necessary, “look, chef, I’m thankful for the support, I really am. But there is nothing to help with, and I need you to focus and follow the regulations.”

Minghao sighs, “I worked at Michelin-starred restaurants too, chef. But this is too—”

“Everyone here is trained formally, yes, but Michelin star is a different ballgame altogether, you know. We need to get together and get our heads in the game.”

“Yes, that’s all well and good for you, chef, but I’m not jeopardising the well-being of the whole team because you wanted to have a Michelin star.”

“I did not want a Michelin star. I’ve got enough of them, and I hate the idea of it,” she snaps, not really understanding the implications of those words. I don’t want a Michelin star. I’ve got enough of them.

Minghao stares at her for a while, then a slow, understanding smile spreads all over his face, “understood, chef.”

She looks at him, hands still methodically chopping onions, “no, do not go there.”

“I knew there was something there when you came to fucking Chicago and waited around at Ever for a lifetime,” he snickers, “there’s so much I want to know about this.”

“There will be nothing that you get to know about this, you fucking asshole,” she rolls her eyes, “go run service. Prep will be over in an hour.”

He snorts, leaving her on the pass. Vernon comes up behind her, eyes red, like he’s been crying in the office, which is not true, because Joshua would know and Joshua cannot keep a secret to save his life, “chef, the prep.”

“Right, the prep, chef,” she mutters, bringing out her notebook, “we have two and a half turns tonight, so, prep accordingly, chef.”

“Two and a half turns,” he mutters, under his breath, going back to his station. She doesn’t want to hurt him, and she doesn’t want to argue with him, but she also doesn’t want to hurt herself.

—

“Coming for drinks?”

She stares at Minghao’s outstretched hand, blinking twice to refocus, after the Saturday service. Why is it that all Saturday services were shitty? They are all wiped out, Joshua almost cried during service, Chan actually cried during service, and Vernon was—Vernon was doing whatever his idea of a cold shoulder was, which was nothing.

And Minghao is looking at him with Seokmin in tow, all hopeful about a dinner, and she doesn’t really have the emotional bandwidth to deal with this anymore.

You have to, you’re executive chef now.

“I’m going to opt out of this one, chef,” she sighs, reaching into the drawer to get the corporate card they save for these occasions, “no expensive wines and shit, please. The discretionary budget has been shot to hell.”

Minghao makes a face, “what, you want me to wreck my palate?”

“Yes, please, chef, wreck your palate on cheap soju and beer, because that is the extent to which the company will be funding our team dinners to.” She rolls her eyes, “I spoke with the boss yesterday about it, and he said there was a discretionary budget in place for this. It’s not much.”

“Yeah, no shit, we’re gonna have to get fucked up on cheap liquor tonight, I guess,” Minghao pockets the card, “you're not coming?”

She stares at him. Is he kidding, or does he actually want me to come with him? “I’m not so stupid as to butt into the affairs of my subordinates, Minghao,” she shakes her head, “I need to work through this couple of vendor contracts before I can even get out of this office.”

Minghao takes a step forward, then takes a look at the giant spreadsheet that she has open on her computer, “I’m not going near that with a ten-foot pole, chef. That looks awful.”

“Yes, well, I have to deal with it, that’s my job,” she sighs, “tomorrow is a state holiday, and on Monday, we’re all off.”

“The restaurant's closed for two days, yes,” Minghao says, narrowing his eyes, “wait, are you planning to come back in here? Why?”

“I’m not, I just had an idea for a dish, we can put it in the menu maybe when we’re a bit more uh—financially solvent,” she wants to wring her hair out, “I’m going to go over the numbers again.”

“Don’t you need to see the accountant for that?”

“I’ve got enough experience at this, I think, chef,” she says, “if there is nothing that I can do, then I’ll talk to the accountant.”

“Yeah,” Minghao takes a seat on a stool, “no drinks, then?”

She shakes her head, “sorry, chef. No drinks tonight.”

When Minghao opens the door to walk outside, she can see Vernon standing outside, staring at her like she’s a problem he cannot really solve. She doesn’t return that look. I don’t care.

When she gets home that night, the clock is striking three in the morning. The spreadsheets were so complicated that she almost bled from her eyes, but she had to get through them. We need a star, she thinks, if not for me, then for the rest of the people in there. Joshua. Minghao. Seokmin. Chan. Vernon.

Vernon.

She reaches for her phone, turning blindly towards the place where she’s sure that she’s kept it. Minghao has added her to his Instagram, and like a fucking masochist, she opens his profile to see the story that he’s uploaded. Fucking idiot. What, you want to see how well they're doing without you?

It’s a photo taken at a cheap roadside bar. Minghao stares into the camera, grinning, and behind him, the rest of the crew. Chan is halfway through his drink, and Joshua is holding up a victory sign. Great. Vernon is there too, on the edge of the picture, smiling, holding his hands up in a gesture that means what—what does it mean? She doesn’t know. She never does.

[on this day seven years ago]

She doesn’t want to click on that notification, but she has to. There’s some sort of magnetic pull towards that notification that brings her to that memory from seven years ago, just when they began working at Sketch, her and Vernon, grinning, a cigarette dangling from her lips, and a can of coke in Vernon’s hand. Is she pathetic if she remembers everything about that one night?

She doesn’t care. She doesn’t care at all. She’s so good at this. She’s thirty and she’s a genius and she’s an executive chef and she misses Vernon and misses cooking in a way that actually mattered to her.

—

I don’t think this is working out.

How so?

I keep thinking about the burner.

The burner?

The burner. In the kitchen. I keep thinking about it. When it’s on, I think that it’s going to be easy. So easy.

To do what?

To just let the fire continue. To just let it burn everything and me along with it.

Have you done anything about it?

I just turn the knob off the moment the voices get too loud.

That’s good, Miss Kim.

That’s nice to hear. Miss Kim.

Why?

I get called ‘chef’ all the time. This is a welcome change.

I see.

—

She blinks awake in the middle of the morning. It’s eight o’ clock, too late, which means that she has one call from her mother, waiting for her.

“Mi-ran,” she hears on the second ring, when she calls her mother, “are you coming to lunch today?”

“I don’t want to, mom,” she sighs, “I just go home and start cooking, and I am taking a break from it for two days.”

Her mom sighs, “and what makes you think that I’m going to ask you to cook when I know that it’s a holiday?”

Shit. “I’m sorry, mom, it’s just that so many other people—”

“I know, honey. I know. Just come home. It’s going to be fine.”

“Okay,” she thinks about it, “I’ll come home in the afternoon, mom.”

“Love you.”

She doesn’t say it back.

She is so fucked. She keeps thinking about it while packing up for a night at her childhood home. Her mother would no doubt pack her with enough side dishes to last a whole month. The only person who’s been excited by the prospect of her returning, have been her parents. Her father would no doubt tell her to buy a car instead of hiring a car every time she made the trip, because getting a taxi costs money. Everything costs money. She’s not even interested.

She doesn’t want to go, but like a good daughter, she does. She opens her fridge and looks at the dismal selection of ingredients and thinks to herself, what can I make for my parents, and comes up with nothing, and still moves. Takes a shower, brushes her teeth. Feels like her insides are going to crawl out of her skin.

She can still see the Instagram story that Minghao had uploaded, with Chan and Joshua and Vernon, and feels like she’s messing everything up.

—

Her parents live in a middle-class area, where they bought their house in the years before the IMF crisis. Most of the people she grew up with were all the same: children of middle tier government workers, who had a set life course ahead of them even before they began to understand what life meant. Lawyer, doctor. Engineer. One became a prosecutor. Teacher. Bank worker.

“Mi-ran!” her mother says, the moment she walks through the front door, “come in! you look so tired, did you drive here? Why did you take so long to come? We’re all done with lunch.”

“Mother,” she replies, extricating herself from her grasp, “I just have two days of vacation. I spent the morning cleaning.”

That satisfies her mother, because cleaning is a good thing, right? Cleaning means that you were thinking about the space where you lived in, took care of the people who shared the same space as you. Cleaning was good. Cleaning was appropriate. Cleaning was what adjusted people did.

She’s a well-adjusted woman.

“You’re here,” her father says, “your sister was supposed to be back, but she’s not here yet.”

Did she mention that she has a sister?

“Yeah, right, I called her, and she said she’s not going to make it this time around.” She replies, looking intently at the floor design, “you called her? She picked up?”

“She didn’t pick up,” her father sounds irritated, but she can ignore that as much as she likes, “she just sent me a text. God knows what she’s doing right now.”

Mi-ran has an idea about what her sister might be doing at the moment, but she says nothing, and instead, she chooses to keep her mouth shut. She’s a wise woman. She’s wise and she’s a genius.

“Right,” she mutters, stepping beside her father, “I’m going to take a nap, mom. Don’t worry.”

—

“Don’t you ever rest?” her sister asks, lounging on her bed, “Copenhagen’s so beautiful. You should go gout sometime.”

She laughs, “eonnie, this is my first day off in—like, months.”

Her sister sits up, “months?”

“Months,” she repeats, “I think my hands are just, sixty percent julienned carrots right now.”

Her sister laughs, easy and relaxed, and Mi-ran allows herself to relax too, bringing the glass of coke up to her mouth. Her sister is here, visiting her at NOMA, and she’s having fun with her sister. She’s having fun with her sister right now. So much fun.

Her sister sits up on the bed, “I’m sure your hands are carrots right now. My hands perpetually smell of that same ink they use for evidence documents. It never goes away, man. I keep thinking, maybe today is the day I can finally scrub it all off me, but no. nothing happens. I still smell of ink.”

She snorts, “like Lady Macbeth?”

“Like Lady Macbeth,” her sister makes a show of scrubbing her hands, “all the perfumes of Arabia would not sweeten this hand.”

“You're always so dramatic.” She laughs, “you didn’t bring your husband along this time.”

Her sister stays silent for a moment, “hey, Mi-ran, you know something?”

Mi-ran sits up. She doesn’t want to admit, but am odd feeling runs all over her skin, because that tone of voice is something that her sister has used only once with her, a long, long time ago.

Mi-ran, tell me the truth. Do you want this for yourself?

“What happened?”

Her sister reaches for Mi-ran’s can of coke, and takes a drink, “your brother-in-law has been cheating on me.”

Mi-ran goes stock still. She knows her brother-in-law, knows the man who seemed sweet to her sister whenever he came over to the house, the man who cried like a baby when her sister appeared in her wedding dress, “he’s been cheating?”

“Yes,” her sister nods, “it’s his secretary. He’s like a walking stereotype, my god.”

Mi-ran takes her coke back, drinking from it. For a moment, she’s back in a side street in Seoul, passing a cigarette back and forth beside a convenience store. Don’t worry, no one’s going to tell on you. Do you want this, Mi-ran?

“Divorce him.” She makes a face, and her sister laughs, “what? I’m right.”

“I already filed the paperwork for it,” her sister shrugs, “I just—well, I’m kind of scared.”

“Scared?” Mi-ran can’t believe her ears. This was her sister, the girl who was her idol for the longest time, the one person who didn’t give a shit about how they were living their lives, and she’s saying this? It doesn’t make sense.

“Scared?”

Her sister shrugs again, “mom and dad told me that I shouldn’t think of getting a divorce so soon after getting married.”

She gives a short, self-mocking laugh, “he was sleeping with his secretary. I’m supposed to let that go, because people will say shit?”

“People always say shit,” Mi-ran sighs, “they kept saying shit about me, and now they're going to say shit about you. You shouldn’t be afraid of what people are going to say, and make ourself unhappy in the process.”

“I know, but it’s still, slightly uncomfortable,” her sister says, which means that it is very uncomfortable for her, “maybe when I have enough of my braincells about me, I’ll think differently, but for now, I’m not really willing to go and face the music. You must think I’m a big coward, right, Mi-ran?”

Mi-ran nods, and then stands up to look outside the window. Copenhagen is a beautiful city, no doubt, but it’s even more beautiful in the night. Everything seems bathed in moonlight, in this corner of the city. Her apartment is silent, “you can hide here. I don’t mind.”

Her sister stands up, “hide?”

Mi-ran nods, “yeah, hide. You can hide here. Running away from problems isn’t a bad thing. You’re nor a coward, sis. You can stay here.”

Her sister laughs, “my little sister is offering me shelter?”

Mi-ran makes a face, “I’m not little anymore. You hid me from the world when I asked you to, so now, even before you're asking me, I’m telling you. Hide in here for as long as you want. Take all your vacation days, and then some. I earn enough from NOMA. I’ll feed you, and we can live here. Get a transfer, to someplace other than Seoul. Run to Busan, sis. I’ll look after you.”

“The parents are not going to be happy about it.”

“They don’t always know everything about our lives, sis,” she laughs, “we’re people. Normal people. Normal people are allowed to run and hide from their problems. That’s what family is for. To give shelter.”

“That’s wat they're teaching you at NOMA?”

“They teach me how to farm, how to create things out of everyday produce,” she smiles, “I can make an haute cuisine puree out of parsnips that I harvest in the gardens, I can make something out of anything, almost. We can make a life in here, for you, for as long as you need.”

Her sister stares at her for a long while, “I think I would like that, Mi-ran.”

—

She wakes up in the middle of the evening, with a headache that threatens to blind her. Am I finally going blind? Swinging her legs out of the bed, Mi-ran goes to find her mother in the kitchen, stirring a pot of soup, “your father likes this, so I made some. You want?”

She takes a look inside the pot. Ground loach soup, with ginger and radish. Pulling a spoon from the dish rack, she tastes it, feeling her mother staring at her while she tries not to think about how much she fucking hates loaches, “needs a bit more salt, but you have to be careful with it, otherwise it’s just going to be a salty mess. Here, let me,” she takes out the container of salt from her mother’s hands, “dad is still on his blood pressure medications, right?”

“Right,” her mother says, eyeing the container like Mi-ran’s about to defuse a bomb, “let me do that, Mi-ran.”

She shakes her head, “no, it’s fine,” she says, but her mother is already gripping it with both hands, and trying to take it from her, “mom, just give it back. Let me salt.”

“No, your dad is going to find it salty, and then he’s going to complain, let me.”

“Mom just—shit!”

The entire container of salt spills into the soup, the crystal granules melting into the soup faster than she can pick it out of the pot, “I was doing it!”

“You always manage to do this,” her mother sighs, “I told you to stay out of the kitchen!”

Mi-ran snaps back, “and you told me to taste it! Of course I’m going to change things! I’m a chef!”

“A chef?”

“Yes, just let me change the—” but it’s too late for that. Her mother, upset, takes the whole pot, and throws it down the garbage chute. Mi-ran just nods her head, stomps back up the stairs, and debates jumping in front of oncoming traffic for the next half hour.

Ground loach soup. Not even samgyeopsal for the kid who is coming home for the first time in months. Not even that.

When she finally comes down for dinner, the table is set for a simple dinner, a miso soup that has no ingredients other than tofu and bean sprouts in it, from what she can see, and rice and kimchi. Her father sits at the head of the tale, surveying everything with a critical eye, “your mother was making loach soup, right?”

“Well, there was an accident,” Mi-ran gives a half-assed explanation, “miso soup is great, mom. Thanks.”

She takes a seat, and even before she can take a first bite, her father says, “how is the restaurant coming along?”

She puts her food down, “it’s fine, dad. We’re running okay.”

“COVID hit a lot of restaurants really badly, you know that, right?”

“Yes, dad,” she says, dutifully, “we have a very affordable menu because of the budget cuts, and we’re thinking of—” he holds a hand up, and she shuts her mouth. Why am I even explaining myself to him? Why am I doing this?

“I just hope you're thinking about the future,” he says, sharing a look with her mother, and immediately, she knows what this is about. Of course.

Her mother, taking a look at her father, begins, “you know, there’s this very nice boy, lives right around the corner, works in the district governmental office. His parents attend the same church as we do, and it would be really nice to—”

“I’m not really looking to get married right now, mom,” she sighs, “I’m thinking of getting a bigger profit from the restaurant. We’re barely making profits as it is, right now.”

Bad thing to say. Her father looks up, “and you're still there?”

Mi-ran blinks, “what?”

Her father sighs, taking a bite of his food, “you refuse to get married. You refuse to even consider the prospect of moving into a proper career.”

“This is a proper career, dad,” she sighs, “I’m not having this conversation with you again.”

“It is not when you are constantly worrying about shutting down!” he shouts at her, and she thought that it was rare, when her father yelled at her, but nowadays, she keeps remembering occasions when he was yelling, shouting, like he is right now, “we kept telling you, to take up a proper career, but your head was filled with crazy nonsense about becoming a chef, and going to some fancy school in another country—”

“I worked my ass off to be in that school!” she shouts back, “I had jobs and I applied for scholarships and I worked day in and day out, just to be there, dad. It was my dream!”

“It was a fool’s errand!”

“Then you shouldn’t have taught me anything like that!”

“Mi-ran,” her mother says, clearly annoyed, “sit down and finish your food.”

But Mi-ran cannot hear anyone. She can’t even see her parents, all that is in front of her eyes is an open flame, flickering, waiting. Enticing. Burn it all down.

She stops yelling, but her voice is no less angry, “you shouldn’t have taught me how to dream, dad. You should have taken and strangled that dream for me when I was a child, but no, you taught me how to dream, and then you refused to let me follow them! Of course I left!”

“Mi-ran!”

She stands up from the table, pushing her miso soup away from her, “I’m going back home. This was a stupid decision.”

At the gate, she turns, “the miso soup has no salt, mom. And I have three Michelin stars, so I think I know what I’m talking about.”

—

The clock reads midnight when she reaches home, utterly exhausted. She doesn't want to fight with her parents, but every time she goes back to that house, she's reminded of her sister, and that one evening in Copenhagen, where she had looked at her and said, I'm scared, Mi-ran.

Every time. This happened every fucking time she went there.

She closes her eyes, and all of a sudden, she’s back in that one moment at Jungsikdang, her hands outstretched over the pass, a large knife in her hands.

Lower it. Lower the knife, cut into skin. You know what to do. You can butcher almost any game within three and a half minutes. You can do this, Mi-ran. You know what to do. You couldn’t burn it down, so you need to do this one thing. One thing, and you’re free of this kitchen. For the first time, and forever.

No.

Do it.

She’s always standing in that kitchen, over the burner. Doing nothing, just standing there. Sometimes, there would be the buzz of the kitchen all around her, moving like a well-oiled machine, not a cog out of place. Everyone in their right place, as it were. Everyone, except for her.

Mi-ran flops down on her bed, thinking about the whole fiasco. Her sister is not going back to their home anymore, not unless their parents actually apologise to her, which they’re not going to. Not at all. Going back home means going without her sister, means going back into the house of people who always meat well, but eventually meant a little too well.

“You know that they’re never going to forgive you for this, right?” her sister says, unloading her luggage from the taxi, “they're here because of a formality. They don’t really want you to go.”

“I bombed the college admission test, I can’t even get into a university if I tried,” she sighs, “I’m sorry, eonnie, I really tried.”

Her sister smiles, then wraps her into a hug, “I know, I know. You really tried. I know that.”

Mi-ran feels like she’s halfway in the middle of heaven and hell. She’s supposed to be happy, she knows, but the faces of her parents keep reminding her that her happiness is coming at the cost of theirs, and that she shouldn’t even think about being happy. She’s breaking her parents’ hearts, by not doing what they wanted for her. Essentially, by being herself.

I’m just seventeen, she thinks, I’m just seventeen.

The departures gate at Incheon airport is crowded, again, but she feels like she’s free. For the first time in a long time, she’s moving towards her dreams, without someone telling her to not follow them. Without someone holding her back. Or maybe she’s walking right off a cliff.  

“Be good,” her sister whispers, giving her a hug, “call me from time to time, okay?”

“Okay, I will,” she smiles, “I’ll be successful, eonnie. I’ll be successful.”

—

You have three missed calls.

She doesn’t bother checking who’s called her, because it’s always the same: her parents, Cheol, Mingyu, Minghao, someone from the restaurant, or a spam caller. Hopefully a spam caller.

The last text exchange with her sister is Mi-ran sending her pictures of dishes at Gyeonghoeru and her sister replying to her with pictures of her home and from around her workplace in Busan. Good for you, she replies, I’m trying to keep my eyes open today.

Good day or bad day?

Does it matter? Is it a good day for you?

It is a good day for me. I have a date tonight, so I’m going to get off work an hour early.

Ooh, look at you, going on dates. Proper young lass, I say.

I prefer the term ‘normal woman’, thank you very much.

I’m just saying, it would be nice if I could permanently move to Busan. Hang out there all the time.

You have a proper high cuisine restaurant to run, Mi-ran. You're an executive chef, and I keep telling all my colleagues about you.

About your sister who returned to Korea after trying to kill herself in the middle of her house? Very nice.

Haha, and have you told mom about that? She would want to know.

No, I haven’t, and mind your own business, sis. Going around talking shit about me, huh?

I tell them about my sister who was CDC at Jungsikdang, and got three Michelin stars for that restaurant.

Technically, I just got one. The restaurant already had two to begin with.

I’m going to hit you so hard.

Lol you should join the line.

Of?

The people who want to kill me.

You’re very morbid, Mi-ran.

I prefer ‘pragmatic’. Most line cooks want to kill their executive chef.

Did you?

Every day.

You’re very insane. Also, how the tables have turned, eh?

How the turntables, indeed.

When are you letting me come to Gyeonghoeru

I never came to Jungsikdang, so I want to come and eat at your place

When we have a star

So next week?

Fuck off, man.

Mi-ran sighs, drops her phone to the bed beside her, and rolls over to look for a pack. I’ve run out, she realises, sighing, I’ll have to go out and get some today.

Minghao send her a text, you need to talk to Vernon about the new menu if you really want a star.

Irritated, she calls the man, who picks up within a couple rings, “really, dude? I'm not going to call Vernon. I'm not going to call him at all.”

“Are you just being combative or annoying?” Minghao laughs, “you really need to call Vernon. He feels very bummed out that you didn't include him in the planning.”

Mi-ran rolls her eyes, “he’s not a child, Minghao, Vernon can come and join the process of planning the menu, it’s just that he doesn’t really want to. Ive asked him multiple times to come and join, and he hasn’t replied to any of my requests. That’s wild.”

“No, that’s just Vernon,” Minghao laughs, “just give him a call next time you need to workshop a new dish, because he was crying about it on Saturday.”

Mi-ran doesn’t respond for a moment, and then says, “he should have come to me, instead of telling you all about it.”

Minghao sighs on the other end, “look, Mi-ran, I’m not going to tell you how to deal with your issues, but you need to communicate better with Vernon. He’s the only person you have these issues with, and he’s the CDC. It’s hurting the restaurant, and if we want a star, we need to have better communication between you and him.”

“You think I don’t know that?” she scoffs, “fine, I’ll give him a call, but if he doesn’t respond, then I can’t do anything about it, and I tried my best.”

“Was that so hard?” Minghao laughs.

Yes, she wants to say, but instead, just replies with, “see you tomorrow, chef.”

—

[three years earlier.]

Ever in Chicago, had just gotten its first Michelin star. The restaurant was fully booked out for the following three months, but she knows the executive chef, Kim Seokjin, and he’s kept a one-top reserved for her tonight. No one else, just her, and their expensive tasting menu for company. Seokjin had offered to comp the bill for her too, but she’s put her foot down and refused.

“Sorry, chef,” she had held up her hand, shaking her head, “I’m refusing your offer. I can pay for my own meal, you know. They pay me enough.”

Seokjin had made a face, pushing a cup of tea towards her. They were sitting around his very expensive looking kitchen table, eating breakfast. Seokjin has a sandwich in his hands, and a cup of coffee on the table in front of him. He looks very pleased with himself, and with his stupid idea of treating her to a meal at his restaurant, just because he can. 

“I don't care how much money you make in Kyoto, but I can treat you to a meal, chef.” Seokjin laughs, “besides, I remember all my juniors at Sketch, and I try my best to—”

“To treat them to meals, yeah, I know,” she laughs, “you're the meal fairy, chef. Of course, I know.”

“Not only meals, chef,” Seokjin rolls his eyes, good-natured, “I try my best to help them in any way I can.”

Mi-ran frowns at him, but Seokjin doesn’t budge. In fact, he smiles placidly at her, his eyes twinkling, “yes, Mi-ran, as your senior from Sketch, I do think I have a sort of responsibility towards you guys. After all, you were some of the best chefs to come out of that kitchen.”

“Sketch is a Michelin-starred restaurant, chef,” she rolls her eyes, laughing, “far greater chefs than me and Vernon have walked in and out of that restaurant.”

Seokjin shakes his head, “nope. Individually? Maybe. Chef Dubois walked out of that kitchen, and he’s possibly better than you two individually.”

“So are you,” she nods, “you keep forgetting that you're’ executive chef at Sketch. The youngest ever from Le Cordon, as far as I know.”

Seokjin preens, “I am the youngest, but this is not about me. You and Vernon are great not because you’re individually the greatest chefs of all time, but the two of you, when you're in the kitchen together—there’s something wonderful about it, Mi-ran. There’s no other duo in the kitchen who work as well as you do, because somehow, by some miracle, or an accident of nature, you’ve managed to get the level of synergy in the fucking kitchen which people beg for their entire lives.”

“So, that’s all I’m good for? My synergy with Vernon?” she mutters, trying not to sound upset, “I’m not even working with him right now. I’m just working at—well, you know.”

“Yes, you’re working with Gordon Ramsey now,” Seokjin laughs, looking like he’s about to be sick, “does he call you an idiot sandwich?”

Mi-ran rolls her eyes, “no, he doesn’t, he would catch a case so fast if he did that,” she laughs, “he’s pretty chill when he’s working with qualified people who know the limits of their own talents.”

“Fair enough, he always did seem very high-strung to me,” Seokjin laughs, “so, Sketch, tomorrow. Vernon will be there; I will be not.”

Mi-ran looks up, “what? You’re not going to be there?”

Seokjin just shakes his head. She tries not to wince.

—

The restaurant had been beautiful, but she hadn’t been able to enjoy anything. The mood lighting just served to make her mood worse, if anything. Minghao had taken one look at hr from across the room and brought out a surprise just because she looked like shit warmed twice over. Vernon had been working in the restaurant just ten feet away from her and she hadn’t even been able to apologise.

When she walks into Gyeonghoeru, it’s six in the morning, and predictably, no one else is there. The day begins with a thorough check of every available surface, and since she’s a paranoid little monster who doesn’t know how to delegate tasks, Mi-ran does everything herself, even cleaning the grease trap. No one else knows that she does this, because she hasn’t told anyone. She’s great. It’s all going very, very well.

“Mi-ran?”

Fuck. She stands up from her position, kneeling in the middle of the kitchen floor, only to look straight at Vernon, who stares at her like he’s been seeing things, and going insane, “yes?”

“Are you checking everything?”

“No, I was participating in a complicated satanic ritual to summon some deities to give us a better shot at the Michelin star, chef,” she snipes, “of course I was checking everything. I do this every day.”

“I know you do,” Vernon sighs, “you used to do that in school.”

Mi-ran chooses not to respond to that statement, because what does he mean why does he remember everything I said and did at culinary school, and decides not to think about that idea and how it made her feel. No. I am grown enough, I don’t want to do this.

“Minghao told me that—” she begins, then clamps her mouth shut halfway through her sentence, then recalibrates her words, “do you have any ideas for the new menu we are going to serve?” she adds in a smile, for good measure, “the Michelin guide people start coming in around six or seven months from now, so we need to uh, figure out a plan that works.”

Vernon blinks at her, “why are you smiling?”

“I smile, chef, of course I do,” she rolls her eyes, “why wouldn’t I smile? I’m a normal person and normal people smile all the time.”

“You haven’t smiled a single time since you came to Seoul,” Vernon points out, “I don’t think this place has ever seen you smiling, chef.”

That hurts. She doesn’t like being handed out physical reminders of her mental illnesses, much less from someone like Vernon, but Mi-ran supposes that she’s earned it anyway; by virtue of being the biggest asshole known to mankind, so she arranges her mouth in a non-smiling position, “is this better, chef?”

“That is less scary,” Vernon concedes, setting his knife roll down, “and yes, I did have some ideas for this, but I don’t think you’re gonna like them.”

Mi-ran has to physically stop herself from jumping at Vernon, “what are they?”

Vernon sighs, smoothing out the roll of cloth, “are you going to listen, or are you going to ignore whatever I say, and move forward with your own ideas again?”

Mi-ran raises an eyebrow, “last I checked, chef, I was still the executive chef in here.”

Vernon’s expression immediately hardens, “right, of course. Sorry, chef.”

“Now, tell me about your ideas, chef,” she says, smoothing down her jacket, “what do you want to do?”

“Maybe a course in a royal-cuisine style,” Vernon begins, looking like he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop, “provide every diner with the feeling of being in a royal palace.”

Mi-ran doesn’t budge. Vernon continues, “and we could make something like a rainbow-style jeon, with—”

She raises a hand to stop him, “chef,” Mi-ran sighs, “how many people do you think dined at royal halls?”

Mi-ran walks out towards the office, and he follows, still talking. The door closes behind them with a thud, and Vernon is still talking. “Not many, which is why it would be marketed as a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” Vernon shrugs, “you can’t really go wrong with marketing to people about royal cuisine that they can just pay money to eat. It’s like we’re erasing the markers of class and caste, and making it easier for people to come and taste what the royals had.”

Mi-ran sighs, “again, I don’t want to argue with you on this, Vernon, but you kind of make it impossible for me not to do it.”

Vernon raises an eyebrow, “you’ve got a problem with this too?”

She doesn’t speak for a minute. Vernon is still staring at her, so Mi-ran opens her big mouth, “look, I don’t mean to rain on your parade or anything, but I also don’t think we should be putting out food for royalty when for years—”

Vernon bristles, visibly, “what?”

Mi-ran sighs again, “when for centuries, only the most privileged of all people got to try the food for royalty. It feels like we’re democratising something that wasn’t meant to be made democratic in the first place.”

Vernon nods, “okay, so what do you have in mind?”

“Something egalitarian. Something to remind people that high quality dining and haute cuisine is not just confined to royal cuisine.”

“Right, so, do you have ideas?”

She just pushes her notebook towards him, “there you go.”

He goes through the pages. Mi-ran knows what he’s going to find. Gukbap, with a milder fish instead of strong flavours. Rice, made three ways. Three different kinds of boiled vegetables and chicken.

Vernon stops in the middle of perusing, and just stares at the pages. Mi-ran stares at him. He stares at her.

“What is this?”

She takes the notebook out of his hands, and looks at the page he’s on. Fuck. Braised duck with an orange reduction, served on rice. “Did you eat this?”

“I went to Seokjin’s restaurant,” she shrugs, “he invited me.”

“No, this is—this is my dish, Mi-ran,” he looks faintly shocked, “you had my dish?”

“You cooked it, you made it, so yes, I had it,” she sighs, “can we not talk about this right now?”

Vernon nods, which just means we’ll talk about this later.

Mi-ran doesn’t want to talk.

—

“End of service, good work today!” Minghao announces, holding up the last ticket, “congratulations everyone, on surviving another day.”

“Good work, chef,” she murmurs, already beginning to clean up her station. Vernon is still staring at her, knife in hand. Does he want to kill me or something?

He hasn’t talked to her during prep, he hasn’t talked to her during service. Hasn’t really talked. Sure, he’s told her about dishes and he’s responded to her “hands, please, chefs,” all throughout, but Vernon has not talked to her. He hasn’t talked to her before, either, but this just seems loaded.

Minghao winks at her, and since Mi-ran is also the biggest coward in the history of everything, she hides out in her office for a full half hour, busying herself with backed-up orders of cutlery and vendor contracts until she’s sure everyone has left.

The kitchen is empty, and when she pulls on her jacket and stuffs her knife roll in her bag, she hopes Vernon is not waiting for her outside the restaurant. She hopes he’s not waiting for her at all, because she doesn’t want to talk to him at all.

And what’s she going to say? “Oh, yes, for sure, I spent a fortune flying out to Chicago to eat your food and it made me cry and I still love you, Vernon?” would that be normal? Or is she going to say, “yes, of course, I’m sorry I took that opportunity at NOMA even though I knew you wanted it but they offered it to me, and there was nothing I could do about it, but I still love you?” would she have to tell him, “yeah, I was hoping that you would be here, and I was also dreading that you would be here, because thinking of you fills me with guilt and regret and I want to let you go but I love you still so I cannot?” Mi-ran is not an idiot; she cannot tell him all this.

He’s not going to be here. It’s late, he’s gone back home.

When she steps out into the street, he’s there, waiting. She almost runs back inside.

“You’re still here?” she says, already walking towards the bus station, “its late, chef. Go back home.”

“It’s not working hours anymore, don’t call me chef,” Vernon responds, following her, “you went to Ever and ate my food without even telling me that you were there.”

“As opposed to what? Telling you and then being thrown out of the restaurant because the sous did not want to cook for me?” she scoffs, “don’t tell me that’s what you would have wanted, Vernon.”

“No, it’s not—” Vernon looks irritated, “you should have told me.”

“Told you?” Mi-ran rolls her eyes, “what difference would that have made?”

“This is why I fucking hate you, Mi-ran,” Vernon seethes, “you keep lying to everyone around you, including yourself.”

“I don’t!” she needs to get out of this fucking alley or she will break down in tears, “we have enough bitterness and hatred between us both to ruin everything good that might come out of our history, Chwe Vernon. Let us not ruin ourselves further.”

“I don’t get it,” Vernon shakes his head, “you went to NOMA even though you knew I wanted that position, and then you stopped talking to me entirely. And now, what? You went to Chicago to eat my dish?”

“It was offered to me!” she snaps, voice cracking and oh god, oh fuck, I’m crying right now, “I went to NOMA because the position was offered to me, and I spent the better part of a decade being guilty over having even a single good thing in my life, because I thought I would be stealing it from you!”

“So, are you saying that I ruined your life?”

There you go, “no, you didn’t ruin anything, Vernon,” she smiles, “I ruined my life by my own hands. This is reparations for everything that I have done.”

She walks away from him. The bus stand is on the opposite side of the road. Mi-ran just needs to cross this, “one course, sinseollo. Make it. I don’t care. Do your fucking royal cuisine.”

—

The following week, Mi-ran spends it like a ghost. She wakes up at four in the morning, and goes on a run. She doesn’t run because she wants to, she runs because there is nothing better for her to do. The voices in her mind get louder, progressively. In moments, she wants to drink.

“You look like shit, chef,” Minghao tells her on Sunday night, standing beside her at the bus stop, “you know, you should get drunk with us sometime.”

“I don’t drink, chef,” she rolls her eyes, “my bus will be here in a minute.”

“You know, when you came to Ever, I thought you would be much more stuck-up and annoying you know.”

“Good to know that you had such a sparkling opinion about me,” she laughs, but Minghao doesn’t.

“Chefs all have big egos, Mi-ran,” he simply says, “it’s how they survive in the kitchen. They all have big egos. And when I saw you sitting by yourself, I thought, youngest CDC at Jungsikdang, must have a massive ego.”

Mi-ran raises an eyebrow, “and?”

“And nothing,” Minghao shrugs, “you just looked very defeated.”

“I looked like a wet cat.” Mi-ran shakes her head, “the bus is here.”

She stands up, and Minghao follows suit, looking at her, “no, Mi-ran, you just looked like you were waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

The bus comes, and she gets on it, swipes her card and gets settled into a seat beside a softly snoring old woman. She doesn’t think about what Minghao has said earlier. She does not.

Waiting for the other shoe to drop. Minghao’s annoying; the read that he has on her is annoying. He knows who she was there for that night. It's a minor miracle that he's not told anyone yet. Not even Vernon, by the looks of it.

And its true. For all her life, she's been waiting for the other shoe to drop, for something worse to happen. Every moment, she was waiting for the moment where she would inevitably hit rock bottom again.

When she gets down from the bus and makes her way to her home, Vernon is standing in front of the front door, still in his work clothes. She knows that jacket. He looks pale and washed out under the lights, and she wants to turn around and go back to the restaurant.

“You’re late,” Vernon says, when she steps aside him to climb the stairs to her home, “this neighbourhood isn’t the safest for you.”

Mi-ran sighs, “I don’t care, Vernon. What do you want to talk to me about?”

He pauses for a moment, “you never told me you came to Ever.”

“I didn’t want to.”

“Why?”

Mi-ran throws up her hands, “what, and make my feelings even more clearer than they already are?”

Vernon steps closer, “what feelings?”

She stares at him, “don't pretend that you don't know—”

Vernon is kissing her, she realises, his hands are on her face and he's kissing her, his lips soft against hers. She thinks of Sketch and culinary school, kisses just like this one, stolen in the middle of busy days, after shifts and classes. Vernon smells like the kitchen still, and she thinks she might go insane. Hands, chef. Right, hands. Hands please, chef, right?

No, I don’t want to think about that right now.

Vernon’s lips are warm against her own, and for a moment, she thinks about the smell of garlic and onions, stuck perpetually to her skin, and for one, stupid, irrational moment, wants to scrub her skin raw because she doesn’t want to let him smell the dirt and the grime on her skin. But this is the same as it was in their Sketch days, with perhaps less explosive feelings than this one. His tongue is in her mouth, and for a floaty, strange, second, she is reminded of a particularly brutal shift, after which they had gone back to her flat, Vernon kissing down her jawline like they both didn’t have four hours to recharge themselves and go back to work again. He’s still the same; single-mindedly focused on her, his left hand now on her waist. Mi-ran needs to stop this. She needs to stop this madness right now, because otherwise, they're going to do something stupid in fucking public and she does not have the wherewithal to fix a case like that.

Her hands are still on her side, when Vernon pulls away, to look at her, “I still hate you, Mi-ran. I still hate you.”

That makes two of us, Vernon. She nods, then turns around to leave.

—

“You locked the menu?” Minghao looks at the sheet of paper that she’s just handed to him, “this is actually good, chef.”

“I don’t do things halfway,” she shakes her head, “make sure everyone is on board for this.”

Minghao looks at her, “isn’t that supposed to be your job?”

Mi-ran doesn’t say anything. It is supposed to be her job, but for the whole of the previous week, she’s been feeling like it doesn’t matter. Vernon could do it just as well as I do, she thinks from time to time, and it doesn’t help.

“Do you think it’s a good idea?”

“What is a good idea?”

“That I am still somewhat running this restaurant, you know,” she shrugs, “I mean, I’m probably the worst person to work for, there are so many things to keep track of, and the profit margin is fucking razor-thin right now, so I can’t really—”

“Mi-ran, chef,” Minghao sighs, “you’re probably the best thing to happen in this restaurant by a long shot.”

She looks up from her desk. “What?”

Minghao doesn’t even bother with changing his stance, he just barrels on, “you have three Michelin stars, and you’re working here. You're the best chef in the world when it comes to Korean cuisine. You’re the best thing that could have happened to Gyeonghoeru, and I don’t know if you know it, but I know it. Vernon knows it, Joshua knows it. Hell, even Chan knows it, I think.”

“Stop glazing me, my god,” she rolls her eyes, “also, we’re not doing royal cuisine, like people wanted us to do.”

“How did the boss take it?”

“Like he doesn’t care very much,” she sighs, “I just don’t want people to come here and be reminded of the fact that their ancestors were being forbidden from eating the food that they can now eat in a restaurant.”

“But you still have one course of sinseollo,” Minghao looks at the sheet, “that’s Vernon’s idea, right?”

Mi-ran nods, “that’s Vernon’s idea, yes.”

“Vernon is the best at royal cuisine in here, no doubt,” Minghao remarks, “but even for him, sinseollo in a restaurant that focuses on elevating normal, day-to-day cuisine, is too much.”

“Let him work with this one dish,” she sighs, “leave Vernon out of it. He’s doing great work as CDC.”

Minghao sets the paper down, and takes a seat, “have you both gotten together yet?”

Mi-ran rolls her eyes, “we are not going to.”

“Pity, it would have been great,” Minghao sighs, “I’ll inform the crew of the updated menu.”

Mi-ran leans back in her rickety chair, and takes a deep breath. She hasn’t talked to Vernon about the kiss, and he doesn’t look like he's willing to have that conversation with her, either. So far, all they have managed to do, is run awkwardly around each other, talking only about the service and the prep. Nothing else. Safe conversations, nothing more. Nothing that could expose their feelings about each other.

I’m not even sure how Vernon feels about me. Wait, no, I am. He kissed me last week, and told me he hated me afterwards.

That’s where they stand, the two of them; on opposite sides of the emotional battlefield, and arm-in-arm, like comrades, when it comes to the kitchen. It gives her whiplash, almost.

She decides to let it go. After all, she has a kitchen to run.

When she walks outside and into the kitchen, Minghao is telling the crew about the new menu, which is different from the chaos menu that they have been practicing for the past month and half, and the relief is palpable. Joshua looks like he hasn’t heard better news in decades, Chan looks like he is about to cry, and Vernon—Vernon looks fairly murderous.

What?

Mi-ran walks outside, and when Joshua spots her, he gives her a smile, “congratulations on locking the menu, chef.”

“It was getting to be a problem with vendors and it wasn’t fair on everyone,” she replies, “sorry, guys, for making you put up with that for so long.” She apologises, moving on to her station. Vernon follows.

“Yes?”

“Sinseollo? After all that spiel about making food that people would identify with, and not royal cuisine?” Vernon scoffs.

“Again, I don’t want to argue with you about this right now, but yes, I did say that, and then I changed my mind, and I told you to put it on there,” she argues back, “I’m not fucking you over, chef.”

“You absolutely are, my god,” he groans, “one sinseollo in the middle of a menu centred around easily accessible food items, and we have a dish that featured heavily in royal cuisines?”

Mi-ran shrugs. She’s not being petty, not at all (slightly) but the sinseollo doesn’t work, will never work in this case, and, “look, chef, if you have a problem with the menu, please come and talk to me personally—”

“I am talking to you right now!”

“When you're a little less hysterical, I mean.”

“Oh my god, stop fighting!” Minghao yells, and Mi-ran suddenly realises that she is standing and arguing with Vernon in the middle of the pass, “stop arguing, you’re scaring the children.”

“Whose children?” they say in unison, and immediately, Mi-ran shuts up.

“You’re the parents, and these are the children,” Minghao makes a sweeping gesture of some sorts, “don’t scare them. Sort this out amongst yourselves.”

“Fine,” she grumbles, turning back to Vernon, “we’ll talk after service, chef.”

—

[three years earlier].

“Reservation for one,” she says to the woman manning the front of house, smoothing down her shirt. The woman looks at her, eyebrows raised, and Mi-ran realises that she needs to provide a name for her reservation, “oh, uh, Chef Kim Seokjin made the reservation, so I don’t know what name he’s put me under.”

“Chef Kim,” the woman types rapidly into her tablet, and thirty seconds later, a young man is next to her, having materialised out of thin air, apparently. His footsteps have been measured and unhurried, but Mi-ran can hear the rapid rise and fall of his breath, “this is Chef Kim’s guest, Kim—Yuna, yes. This way, please.”

Mi-ran wants to throttle Seokjin. Sure, she had asked him to make a reservation under a false name, because if Vernon knew she was there, he would point-blank refuse to even talk to her, much less make her dishes, but Yuna Kim? Of all the names that Seokjin could have picked out, he picked the name of the most recognisable Korean celebrity in the world. What sort of joke was this? At least he didn’t pick the name of a girl group member.

The young man leads her to her table, gesturing to the one-top in a secluded corner of the restaurant, clearly meant for privacy, “we’re very happy to have you tonight, Chef Kim.”

Mi-ran blinks, then takes a seat, “could you keep this between us, please?”

The server smiles, bowing deeply, “of course, chef.”

He’s gone before she can tell him that the bowing can get a bit too much too soon and I don’t want to freak people out.

Mi-ran takes out her phone, texting Seokjin, Yuna Kim? Really?

You asked me to make the reservation under a false name.

Not Yuna Kim, oh my god.

Do you want to make amends, yes or no?

Mi-ran puts her phone away. Seokjin was right. In an annoying, insufferable way, Seokjin was right. She needs to make amends. She needs to make everything right with Vernon, even if it is for a little while, because it’s been six months since she’s had a proper night’s sleep, and she doubts she ever will be able to. Not without talking to Vernon. That’s why she’s here, in Ever, and putting herself through this. She can do it, this is nothing. She’s been through worse.

And then the first course comes to her plate, and it’s just—hell.

She can't eat it. She can't look at the plate because Vernon has made this and it is just a mockery of all their experiences at Sketch. This is them on a plate, the memories of their times together, and she can't fucking swallow anything. This is awful.

The front of house, a tall man, with a name tag on his chest that says Xu Minghao, has been looking at her for the past ten minutes, Mi-ran realises. He disappears into the kitchen somewhere after she’s served her third course, and comes out, holding a plate of something, and says, “this is the main course of the tasting menu.”

Mi-ran peers at him, and Minghao continues, “this is a braised duck leg, served with an orange reduction and on a bed of rice. Enjoy.”

She doesn’t want to, but she takes a bite anyway. Might as well do it.

—

Vernon comes into her office, after a month. A month of nothing but staring at her across the pass, working alongside her without a single word of camaraderie, and she’s trying to keep herself from not going insane. She has been trying her best to not just walk out and drag him by the collar into the office, and demand answers.

“Mi-ran,” Vernon says, and she looks up. It’s after hours, and Mi-ran has been balancing the books for the past hour, “we need to talk.”

She checks her watch, “it’s after midnight, Vernon. What do you have to tell me?”

He shrugs, “look, it’s nothing important, so if you want to talk to me later, I can understand.”

“No, it’s fine,” she sighs, “it’s been a long day, and an even longer month.”

The last sentence was a subtle dig at him, but it’s not as though Vernon is solely responsible for this situation. Still, he takes the dig, with a grimace on his face, “I just thought we should talk about this.”

“This?” Mi-ran raises an eyebrow, “what do you mean by that?”

Vernon sighs, sitting down heavily on the sole unoccupied chair, “you went to Ever. You didn’t even tell me, and you went to the restaurant where I was sous.”

“Seokjin-sunbae invited me, so I went,” she shrugs, “you made the duck breast, and I ate it.”

“That’s what I don’t get!” he stands up, irritated, “you keep talking about eating my food, and you keep telling me that it was the best thing you have ever eaten, and what am I supposed to make out of it?”

Mi-ran sighs. Might as well get it over with. “It means that our undefined relationship back when we were in Sketch was enough for me to spend more than a thousand dollars on round flight tickets to Chicago, and that I ate your food. It means nothing more than that.”

Vernon pauses, eyes terrifyingly still. Mi-ran sighs, standing up, “you want me to be gone? Fine. I’ll give the boss my resignation, and I’ll be out of your hair. You're more than capable of getting a Michelin star by yourself, and I don’t think I need to be in a kitchen where people are constantly on edge regarding our relationship, so I’ll go.”

Vernon scoffs, “go?”

“Yes.”

“That’s the best thing that you can do, right? Just leave?” he snaps, and Mi-ran raises an eyebrow, because Vernon is, for the first time in her life, truly angry, “you can't even stay here and face the consequences for your own actions, all you can do is run away!”

“I’m not running away because I want to, Vernon,” she sighs, “look, you don’t want me here, and I think I have spent enough years feeling guilty about going to Copenhagen, and I can't do it anymore. Fighting with you is pointless.”

“No, it’s not, because I need to have it out with you one time before I go insane,” Vernon seethes, “you come here, come back after years spent in the best kitchens in the world, and you tell me that you want to get a star, which is fine, but then you also make a menu that pisses me off, because it’s the best thing you can do, and then you put my dish in there? What does that mean?”

“It means that I still have feelings for you, you absolute asshole!” she yells, “I shouldn’t have put the sinseollo in the menu, but I did. Why? Because I love you. I came back, even though I shouldn’t have. Why? Because I love you. I went to Chicago to eat your food. Why? Because I love you. Half the things I’ve done so far is because I love you, you giant fucking—”

Vernon crosses the small room in three steps, pressing her to the wall, and she’s back in the London kitchens again, kissing him after a shift, because it’s the same Vernon, the boy who always made her laugh. He’s kissing her like they're both dying, and they need to kiss one last time before they draw their last breath.

Mi-ran pulls at Vernon’s shirt, inhaling the smell of garlic that seems to cling to them both after a gruelling shift, and unbuttons the first two buttons of his shirt. Vernon stops, “you want to do this here?”

Mi-ran makes a faint embarrassing sound in the back of her throat, “I’m going to fire you if you stop right now.”

Vernon raises his eyebrows, but says nothing, just nods, his own hands coming up to unbutton her shirt. She’s about to go insane, but she needs this. She needs to have Vernon inside her, needs to turn him inside out in order to keep him for himself.

Vernon lifts her onto the table, and papers flutter to the floor, but they're both too far gone to care about it, “I don’t have anything on me.”

“I don’t care,” Mi-ran grumbles, “I still have a couple years on my IUD.”

Vernon nods, and kisses her again. She can feel his erection against her core, already leaking, straining against his pants, “I need to eat you out.”

“Doesn’t matter,” she grumbles, hands going to his pants and unbuckling the belt, “just fuck me right now, Vernon, I swear to god I’m going to kill you if you don’t.”

Vernon nods, kissing along her jaw, and she takes a moment to run her fingers through his hair. Vernon is doing the same things that he did all those years ago; biting her neck, sucking on the skin hard enough to leave a bruise, and it’s embarrassing for her how she still has the same reactions to all of it.

He unclips her bra, kissing down to her breasts, and the moan that comes out of her mouth when he lightly bites down on a nipple is truly unholy. Mi-ran wonders for a split second that they are technically in their office, and finds out that she doesn’t really care who finds out.

His hands are keeping her legs apart, and two of his fingers lightly scrape along the outside of her cunt. Mi-ran grabs hold of his hair, and Vernon moans, his lips still around her left nipple. She wants to die. She wants to consume him. She wants to crawl inside his skin and live inside it for the foreseeable future.

“You're fucking insane, Mi-ran,” Vernon mumble, reaching up to kiss her again, “I still love you, Mi-ran.”

His tongue is in her mouth, and Mi-ran has her hands around his throat. Vernon reaches for her underwear, and she has the insane thought about not being so fucking wet right now, because the squelching sound that fills the air when he presses two fingers into her is unholy.

“Fuck, you're so fucking tight,” he groans into her mouth, “how the fuck are you the same even after seven years?”

“You’re the same too,” she gasps, “just fuck me, faster.”

Vernon obliges, his fingers snapping faster, “I love you, you know that, right? Don’t leave me again.”

Mi-ran wants to cry, but instead of crying, she waves his hands out of her, pulling down his boxers, “just fuck me, please.”

Vernon looks like he wants to cry, but he just nods, pushing inside of her with a groan, and Mi-ran feels an odd sense of fullness. His lips are back on hers in a moment, and her hands are on his back, urging him to go faster, faster, faster. Vernon nods; he’s never once failed to give her anything when it came to this. His hips push forward with an increased sense of urgency, and she just gasps and moans and takes and takes and takes.

“I’m close,” she mumbles, tears forming at the edge of her eyes, “please.”

“You're so fucking beautiful like this, falling apart,” Vernon mumbles, “please don’t leave me again, Mi-ran. Please.”

His thumb swipes across her clit once, twice, and she falls apart with a short cry, stiffening in his arms, desperately grabbing at him to kiss him again. Vernon lasts about five seconds before he follows suit, spilling inside of her.

She still panting when he wipes at her face, pushing errant strands of her hair out of her eyes, “I still love you, you know.”

She’s openly crying now, big fat tears falling down one after the other. Neither of them have to say anything anymore.

“Come home with me tonight,” Vernon whispers, still inside of her, “please, Mi-ran. I need you.”

She nods, holding on to his hands.

—

“Did you two make up?” Minghao peers at her while she’s prepping for service, and his eyes catch onto a rather large bruise on her neck, blooming purple, “ooh, looks like it.”

Mi-ran rolls her eyes at him, “just prepare for the service tonight, Minghao.”

—

The Newest Addition to the K-Michelin guide, Seoul’s Gyeonghoeru, headed by Chefs Kim Mi-ran and Chwe Vernon: elevating the food of the masses to fine dining.

📂 Case File: anamnesis by @woncheolisms

🔦Administrators: Choi Seungcheol x reader

⚡️The Ghostchase: five years ago, your company became a big enough threat to the existing tech ecosystem to cause an attack on your life. five years ago, said attack killed your husband. after spending so long picking up the pieces, you are quickly racing to the top again, which means your life is threatened once more. but the assassin sent your way is a little too familiar, even if he’s not exactly the same as the day he got “killed”.

The Malware 🚫 The Code

📂 Case File: VOID by @hannieoftheyear

🔦Administrators: Yoon Jeonghan x f!reader

⚡️The Ghostchase: Everything humanity has ever wanted is now at reach with the touch of a button, yet, the world is as empty as ever. Most prefer to live their lives in the digital reality, where you can be cities away in the blink of an eye and where the sun shines uninterrupted. The only ones left are those who first developed the idea, stuck in an abandoned world and cursed to watch as their families deteriorate inside machines. When a malfunction opens up the possibility to break the system, they seize the opportunity to make those who used a falling city as the stepping stone for their empire pay once and for all.

The Malware 🚫 The Code

📂 Case File: systematic error by @straylightdream

🔦Administrators: Joshua Hong x f!reader

⚡️The Ghostchase: it’s not unusual for artificially intelligent robots to blend in seamlessly to society. many years ago you found a android and upgraded his programming. As time passed you often forget he’s not a human, unfortunately he can’t escape the feelings and tainted thoughts that he’s just an android. after falling in love, you’ve become companions as you navigate the dark neon city together, and attempt to take down the biggest corporation.

The Malware 🚫 The Code

📂 Case File: PRIME by @joshujin

🔦Administrators: Wen Junhui x f!reader

⚡️The Ghostchase: Six years ago, you unknowingly changed the course of Arcadian Prime forever. Five years ago, you erased your own existence and went into hiding. And approximately half an hour ago, the very first image of you, the city-state's most wanted fugitive, went online. Now… now, you run.

The Malware 🚫 The Code

📂 Case File: The Ground by @mylovesstuffs

🔦Administrators: Kwon Soonyoung x f!reader

⚡️The Ghostchase: on the ground, the poor starve. in the sky, the rich live like gods. six months of playing the clumsy, star struck girl from the slums boils down to a single night in a luxury penthouse. to avenge and save her father from their misery, she has to trap the elite’s most untouchable corporate heir, hoshi, in a game of her own making— and then betray him.

The Malware 🚫 The Code

📂 Case File: The Shadow District by @thestraybunny

🔦Administrators: Jeon Wonwoo x f!reader

⚡️The Ghostchase: Skyfall Industries is taking over the city, where the rich will benefit while the poor will suffer. With body modifications, sex, drugs, and alcohol there to help numb people from reality of it all. Your world is small, and is just getting smaller. So, when Skyfall Inds is finally at your door and threatening your home, you and Wonwoo will have a choice to make.

The Malware 🚫 The Code

📂 Case File: PROJECT: KILL SWITCH by @callisrecords

🔦Administrators: Lee Jihoon x f!reader

⚡️The Ghostchase: On a trip to the Wastelands, you don't expect to find much that's intact. Definitely not an escape pod or a man still inside it. Lee Jihoon seems to be unregistered, unchipped and jarringly not from this century. In a city held together by a network no one can escape, he is the only thing it cannot read, cannot follow, and cannot override. As details about a mission that predates everything you’ve ever known begin to surface, you realise Jihoon’s existence is more than just an anomaly. Somewhere within the structure of the megacorp that controls the city lies a failsafe: a kill switch tied to an authority long believed dead. Except maybe it isn’t.

The Malware 🚫 The Code

📂 Case File: through the haze by @aeristudios

🔦Administrators: Lee Seokmin x f!reader

⚡️The Ghostchase: You're the star of Neo City Nights, the hottest nightclub in the city. Your voice brings in people from all over, including the handsome stranger Seokmin who you can't stay away from. Too bad you don't remember him from your past life, before the accident that happened, which changed your life forever.

The Malware 🚫 The Code

📂 Case File: butterfly by @sailorsoons

🔦Administrators: Kim Mingyu x f!reader

⚡️The Ghostchase: In a city where technology makes it possible to shed your body as easily as changing clothes, Mingyu has built his reputation hunting criminals who disappear behind new faces. So when you become the prime suspect in a brutal string of serial murders, he should have no trouble closing the case. Except... the more he investigates you, the less he's convinced you're guilty.

The Malware 🚫 The Code

📂 Case File: REMNANT by @wheeboo

🔦Administrators: Xu Minghao x f!reader

⚡️The Ghostchase: In the year 2197, Xu Minghao works as a government shadow operative, hired to hunt down political dissidents. After surviving a catastrophic accident that should have ended his life, his body had been rewired to become nothing more than a living weapon solely engineered for one purpose: obedience. You live a different kind of double life. By day, a reclusive digital artist curating an elite art gallery; by night, a ghost hacker where you siphon secrets from the city’s corrupt core. But when your latest hack uncovers an unsettling truth, a target is painted on your back—and Minghao is assigned to terminate you.

The Malware 🚫 The Code

📂 Case File: synapse//ZERO by @cheollollipop

🔦Administrators: Boo Seungkwan x f!reader

⚡️The Ghostchase: when Synapse//ZERO launches, thousands of players eagerly enter the world's first fully immersive neural VR game. hours later, they're trapped. with her younger brother and best friend seungkwan among them, YN enters the game's sprawling cyberpunk metropolis, determined to bring them home. but in a world where the system adapts, remembers, and watches, escaping may not be enough. inspired by sword art online!

The Malware 🚫 The Code

📂 Case File: kingslayer by @100vern

🔦Administrators: Chwe Hansol x f!reader

⚡️The Ghostchase: it's been years since you worked for the ministry of welfare. since you were partnered with hansol as a rookie inspector in the criminal investigation unit. since the two of you were assigned to a case so devastating it cost hansol his freedom and sent you into hiding. it's been years, but there's no time limit on vengeance—and there's nothing you wouldn't do to protect hansol.

The Malware 🚫 The Code

📂 Case File: got you (in my sights) by @minisugakoobies

🔦Administrators: Lee Chan x f!reader

⚡️The Ghostchase: when a job goes bad, elite assassin lee chan ends up the victim of a botched memory wipe. lost on the streets of new seoul and in need of help, he turns to the only person he can remember - just a face, a name, and a feeling. you have no idea why a rival assassin is begging on your doorstep, but agree to help him, thinking it will be an opportunity to steal his clients. but when the client who ordered the memory hit learns he hasn't been wiped, they target you both. can you trust chan enough to work together to save yourselves? or will you lose more than your memories?

The Malware 🚫 The Code

Verse 3 — milmyeon. 

Gukbap is a strange dish. All the ingredients that go into making it are found in a typical Korean kitchen. Rice, salted shrimp, onion, noodles, kimchi, garlic. A bit of pork, if you want it. All of them are found in the kitchen we inhabit—the same spaces that see us moving in and out of them on a daily basis. I wonder sometimes, how long does it take for us to realise that the kitchen is where we spend most of our lives—and for women, it becomes an accepted form of prison. I don’t know about the politics of it, but growing up, the kitchen was an unlikely refuge for me. Away from everyone else, a space where even the relative solitude of my room was unmatched. 

It’s not like I enjoy cooking, or that I'm any good at it. Most of my experiences with cooking have ended in disaster, or at the very best, something barely edible. It was not until I was 17 that I learnt how to move beyond the realm of instant noodles and got over my fear of the gas flame. Even so, I spent hours in the kitchen, watching my mother and grandmother, making meals for people like us, who didn’t even learn to appreciate it. 

My father enjoys gukbap. It’s a homely dish, one that my mother whipped up on a daily basis when she got tired from all the work that needed to be done around the house. Simple ingredients for a rice soup that seems to be a representation of all that we are. Even when he goes out to eat, he gravitates towards gukbap. ‘If the restaurant doesn’t have good gukbap, it’s not really a good restaurant’. These are words to live by, of course, but from time to time, I think: would he still like gukbap if it wasn’t something my mother cooked all the time?

The gukbap here is good, because of course it is. The first time I had it, it was garnished with abalone because the owner ran out of other protein to put in it. I should be calling him out on this, but I don’t, instead, tucking into the soup with all the grace of a starved salaryman. Like every time I’ve had food at the diner, he says nothing, just smiles as I eat it. There’s a bit of guilt in there as well, for bothering him so late at night, but all of it fades away as my nose gets a whiff of the sesame oil put in the last step. 

It’s nostalgic. I’m transported back to the kitchen of my younger days, in a stuffy apartment where I shared a bedroom with my sister, five years older than me, going through puberty under the worst possible conditions. All the anger, all the arguments, even the misplaced passion of my youth, condensed in the soup, my own nostalgia trap laid so carefully, so unintentionally, all in a stone bowl garnished with abalones.  

Nostalgia is a hell of a drug, I’m afraid. 

—

“Did you know that Haeundae Beach has a sea life aquarium? I’ve never really seen an aquarium that big, the pictures were all so gorgeous,” my father says as soon as he steps onto the train platform, “KTX was crappy, as usual.”

“It always is,” I laugh, wheeling his luggage out of the train station, “how long are you here for?”

“A week, if everything goes well,” he replies, taking the cart from me, “do you want to have lunch outside?”

“Lunch outside?” I’m a bit surprised at this tone, to see my father who never really ate out if he could help it, voluntarily suggesting a diner for lunch, “so suddenly?”

“You kept talking about that one diner and their rice soup, so of course I’m a bit interested,” he shrugs, “you’ve never really talked about Busan in all these years that you’ve been here. The only time you said anything about this city was when you talked about that diner two weeks ago.”

“Really?” I shake my head, “I doubt that it took me three years to tell you anything about Busan. I remember talking to my mom about the city all the time.”

“You only talked about the places you visited, which were the house, and your office,” He laughs, “I don’t think we ever heard anything about what Busan was actually like, until six months had passed. Your mother had started to worry by that point.”

I turn away, trying to ignore the question, “well, I was busy trying to hold down my job, dad, I didn’t exactly have a lot of time to explore the city.”

“One would think that moving to a comparatively slower city would afford one more time to take care of themselves, but here we are,” he laughs, “how far is your home from the train station?”

“We’ll take a taxi,” I reply, getting onto the first taxi at the line. My father grumbles, but allows me to take his luggage and place it in the trunk of the car. It’s a small thing, but it’s  important for me, to be able to take care of him, even in trivial ways like these. He’s never once allowed us to lift heavy bags by ourselves, even when we grew older and could very well do so. My father, the strongest man I knew, was now old and frail, sighing as he handed me the suitcase he’d brought with him for a week-long trip to my city.

“I didn’t bring any side dishes with me,” he says, as soon as I finish giving my address to the driver, “it’s going to be New Year’s next month, so she’s making both you and your sister’s favorites, for you to take back home.”

“Really?” I perk up, “is she making kimchi from scratch?”

“She’s saving all the work for when you get home to help out,” he replies, “she’s not as young as she was, you know. She needs a lot of help right now.”

I raise an eyebrow, “and you left her to fend for herself? She’s stuck in Seoul while you’re in Busan? Not cool, dad.”

“She’s visiting your sister,” he answers, “your niece and nephew are kicking up a fuss daily, demanding to see their grandmother. As if they don’t see her on a weekly basis,” he adds, disgruntled at the prospect of living away from my mother for a week, “she would have liked to come here too. She likes the beach a lot more than the mountains.”

“I know that,” I reply, “she’s always been the one to suggest seaside trips whenever we could manage to get a holiday.”

“She has not been on a holiday since she came here two years ago,” he replies, “I keep telling her to take a break, but no, she can’t go a day without working herself to the bone.”

“She’s still teaching at the hagwon?” I ask, although I’m not really that surprised, given how my mother loved to teach, “I thought she would have quit the hagwon by now. Even if she owns it, she doesn’t have to work that hard every day. She can take it easy now.”

“She might own the institute, but she’s under a lot of pressure to make sure all her students get excellent grades,” he replies, “she was a schoolteacher half her life, and now when she’s retired, she opened up her own private coaching centre just so she wouldn’t get bored. Your mother has worked hard all her life.”

“So have you,” I pause, as the car pulls up on the street in front of my apartment complex, “you still teach, don’t you?”

He doesn’t meet my eyes. Bingo. “Still taking lectures at the university, even though you’ve retired years ago,” I shake my head, “still working, and you come here to gossip about my mother.”

“That’s not what I meant,” he sputters, but I’m already out of the car, pulling out the suitcase from the trunk, “come on, dad, I’ve got lunch ready for you.”

—

As I had predicted, my father spends an enormous amount of time cleaning up around the house. He spends about two hours dusting every surface, because I do not “maintain a hygienic standard of living”. It is annoying, but at the end of the day, he does make the house look better than what it was before he stepped foot inside. It’s funny, actually, how he managed to make my relatively clean apartment spick-and-span in a matter of minutes. At least he didn’t find my stash of cigarettes. 

“Do you still love playing chess?” I ask casually, placing a bowl of rice in front of him, “mom told me you still go out to play at the park.”

“I do, actually,” he nods, looking appreciatively at the meal, “I play chess all the time. Your mom hates it so much she’s told me to stop on three separate occasions.”

“And you haven’t.” I sigh, placing the big bowl of tofu stew in the middle of the table, “hey, you could go out to play at the nearby senior citizen’s park if you get bored. I’m going to be at the office, so you can go there to play against all the oldies.”

“Not interested,” he mutters, “I doubt there’s anyone in Busan who can beat me at chess.”

I say nothing in response. 

—

After dinner, I peel an apple and cut it into slices for my father to eat, and we sit in silence, chewing thoughtfully on the apples, when my father reaches into his backpack and brings out a copy of my book. Yes, there’s no doubt about it; it’s my book all right, the cover art, the pseudonym, everything points to it being my book. I try my best to not cringe away from the sight. 

“Your sister gave this book to me,” he says, “I actually enjoyed it a lot.”

“Hmm,” I say, “didn’t know eonnie was into reading collections of fictional essays.”

“You’ve read this?” my father perks up, “it’s really good, and the author is from this city, too, they won the Daesan Literary award for their second book, but I do like this one better.”

“What’s your favorite essay?” I ask, unable to resist, “out of the ten in the book, which one do you like the most?”

He has to think for a while, “the one about high school.”

“The high school essay? I enjoyed the one about university and family life much more,” I say, “the one about high school was so—vague. It barely made any sense to me.”

And it’s true. Even while writing it, I had felt no sense of connection to the place I called my school, all of my memories having faded into unpleasant nothingness. Save for one person, I don’t think I remember anything from my school life. To think that the most formative years of my life were reduced to fleeting memories is a humbling thought, “why did you like that one the most?”

He pauses, “it reminded me of you.”

Ah. There it was, the inevitable moment where my father figured out it was me who wrote that book, “why did you think so?”

He says nothing for a long time, chewing on the apple slices I place in front of him. After five minutes pass, he speaks, so low I barely catch it, “you were the same in high school.”

“I was vague in high school?” I snort, “Dad, I was seventeen. Of course I was vague, I barely knew what the hell to do with my life.”

“Not that, of course,” he waves a hand, “you always seemed to be struggling back when you were in high school. At first, your mom and I thought it was just puberty, but towards the end, we all grew anxious about it.”

“I was just stressed,” I laugh, “we all were, it was the final year of high school, of course we were stressed, dad. I wasn’t struggling.”

A lie. Of course I was struggling. Yes, we were all struggling, but mine took on a different form altogether, morphing itself into the many-eyed monster of my childhood nightmares, even after I finished high school and moved on to university. I just thought I had managed to hide it pretty well from everyone. Hadn’t realised my parents knew all about it. 

“It looked like you were,” he waves a hand, ‘and I thought it was the same as what your sister had gone through, and left you to your own devices, because that’s what we did with your sister. It’s only after all these that I took some time to think to myself, and I came to the conclusion that maybe, we should have been a bit more proactive.”

“Dad,” I sigh, “I was fine in high school. I did well in my exams, I got into Hankuk university like my sister did, and I even had friends to share the burden of exams. Don’t worry too much.”

Blatant lies. High school was where my existence was a mere blip on the radar of most people—to the extent that I don’t know if anyone from my school even remembers who I was. Three years—three years spent in the middle of a crowd, and I walked away with nothing. 

“Oh, I heard Doyeon got married,” he says, “did you hear?”

“I didn’t, actually,” I reply, shrugging, “she got married? Didn’t realise she was into the whole marriage thing.”

“You didn’t know your high school classmate got married?”

“No, I just didn’t know she was so keen on getting married in the first place,” I reply, “did she invite you?”

“She did, actually.” 

“Huh?! Why the hell would she do that?”

“Because she’s also our neighbour?” He makes a strange gesture with his hands, “her mother invited us, actually. We’ve been close friends for years.”

It’s strange, because my memories of Doyeon from all the time that I have known her, are restricted to vague recollections of a girl who ignored me in the hallways. We used to be close friends in middle school, which had petered out upon entering high school. Now, she was a married woman, had been for some time, and I wasn’t even aware. Apparently, my parents were. 

“Are you still in contact with anyone from high school?” my father asks, “everyone from the neighbourhood went to the wedding. We didn’t go, but we got the pictures.”

“Yes, of course,” I mutter, “I don’t know why you’re bringing it up right now. I didn’t go because I wasn’t invited.”

“It’s not that,” he fidgets, “you know what I’m trying to get at, right?”

I groan, “stop doing this, dad. I’m not looking to get married right now.”

“It’s not about getting married,” he sighs, “I don’t understand why you have to be so needlessly difficult about everything. It’s marriage, not a death sentence.”

“You still don’t get it, right?” I stand up, grabbing a hold of the plate of fruit, “it’s fine, really. I just don’t want to get married, not right now.”

“You’re not getting any younger,” he replies, “all your peers are getting married and settling down, and here you are, living in the middle of Busan. Do you even want to think about us?”

Deep breaths. Don’t lose your temper. “It’s really nothing to be angry about, Dad. I just don’t want to get married right now, that’s all.”

“It’s been five years since you’ve told us that, you know.” He doesn’t let up, “I’m not the only one who’s worried about you, we all are. Your mother keeps asking your sister if you’ve told her about someone. We’re all worried.”

“Great, good for her, it’s just that I don’t want to get married. Not right now, probably not ever.” 

My father stands up, and he’s obviously about to berate me again, for deciding against marriage so early in my life, but I hold up a hand, “get some rest, dad. It’s been a long journey for you. We’ll go out for dinner, yeah?”

—

My father mentions nothing about the interaction after his afternoon nap. Instead the two of us spend the rest of the evening at the supermarket, picking out groceries for me to prepare for the coming week. Sure, I can get the store-bought side dishes that everyone my age uses, but according to my parents, nothing beats the health benefits of cooking everything by yourself. 

“Sometime it’s really apparent, that you never grew up in a largely capitalist economy,” I grumble, watching my father place a box of unpeeled garlic in the shopping cart, “I barely have enough energy to make myself a single meal after work, how do you expect me to prepare these on a weeknight?”

“I’ll peel the garlic, if that’s what you’re worrying about,” he mutters, throwing in more groceries, “you always seem to eat out for dinner. I found nothing in the fridge other than fruit. Is this how you plan on living?”

I scowl, he has a point. “I wasn’t planning on doing that,” I grumble, but push the cart obediently, watching with increasing horror as he places the expensive soy sauce in my cart. Everything goes in, and it’s becoming increasingly evident that my father is planning a cooking session for a family of four, not a single-person household. And I can’t even return some of the things. 

“Isn’t this a bit too much for one person?” I ask, after he’s placed a cut of salmon in the cart, large enough to feed me for a week, “do I really need this much food? I’m just cooking for a single person, not a whole family.”

“Huh?” he turns around, holding a whole skirt steak, “oh, right, of course. Silly of me to forget, really.” 

He places some of the groceries back, more notably the half salmon and the skirt steak, but I can’t help the feeling that I’m missing out on something important. Sure, there’s a sense of familiarity in this, us shopping for groceries like I am back to being seventeen again, impatient waiting for my parents to hurry up and finish shopping so I could go back to studying. 

When we get to the counter, the cashier gives us a strange look, obviously judging us for the sheer amount of stuff that we dump onto her desk, sorting it out with a level of efficiency that is almost frightening. Dad helps her in putting things away, but as soon as the time comes to pay for things, I swat away the proffered card, instead offering mine. 

“I’ll be the one eating all of it anyway,” I say, without giving him a chance to counter the argument. 

It’s fine, really. I’m going to be home soon, back in my room, where there will be no one standing between me and the futon and I can finally get some rest. The day has been a long one. 

—

It’s not over, apparently. The next day, he makes me go through the same ordeal, and as soon as we get out of the supermarket, dad takes it upon himself to go to the diner. When I ask him why, he just shrugs, saying, “I want to try eating gukbap at a diner”. This is a lie, because he’s eaten that dish at diners more times than I can count, but I let it go, instead following him obediently along the wharf, dragging the folding cart behind me like I’m back in elementary school, only instead of dragging my school bag behind me, I am dragging groceries. It’s no less humiliating, unfortunately. 

The place is as bustling as I remember, and the dinner rush makes it difficult for the two of us to get a table at first. It’s only the third time that I’ve been here, but the additional time spent waiting allows me to look closely at the walls; covered in memorabilia from Paris, interspersed with small trinkets from different cities in Korea. It’s as if Jihoon has made the walls of his diner into a shrine for all his memories, a living time capsule of all his experiences. I don’t want to, but I can’t help comparing it to my apartment; bland walls, devoid of any personal touch, almost like a hotel room. It’s been three years since I’ve lived here, and I haven’t even made any memories worth putting up on my walls. 

“Table for two?” This time it’s a random part-timer, a wide smile in place as he shows us to the table, set against a large bay window, overlooking the beach, “order when you can, right?”

And he’s gone, tending to other customers, leaving behind my father with a disapproving grimace on his face, “we never treated customers like that when we were young.”

“You never worked a retail job, dad,” I shake my head, calling out, “two gukbap, please!”

“How would you know?”

“You’ve told us at least fifteen times, dad,” I set out chopsticks and spoons for the two of us, “you never knew anything other than studying when you were a young man, and you expected us to be the same. You went on and on about it, actually.”

He looks affronted, “I lied.”

I make a face, “no, of course not. You wouldn’t lie about something that stupid, right?”

He sighs, “never mind.”

The part-timer (whose name tag reads Kevin) places two steaming bowls of rice soup in front of us, and a plate of chicken skewers, smiling, “this one is on the house.” I look up, and of course, there is Jihoon, smiling and waving at me like he’s done something great. Great. Now my father is going to go after me and force me to tell him everything about my relationship with Jihoon, no matter how non-existent. And if he’s feeling adventurous, he’s going to go over to him and ask him about his relationship with me, which has historically meant that Jihoon is not going to ever talk to me again, which would not bother me in the slightest, but I would hate losing out on such a good diner, just because my parents want me to get married to someone I can tolerate at the earliest—

“You must be a regular here,” My father mutters, taking a sip of the soup, “oh this is good, let me take a picture to show your mother. She keeps worrying that you don’t really get to eat well.”

“You were the one who went shopping two days consecutively,” I reply, pointing to the shopping cart, “the cashiers were all staring at us, didn’t you see? They were wondering who the hell are we, going shopping on a regular basis.”

“No one was staring at us.”

“They were! They probably thought we opened up a restaurant or something,” I groan, “really, we did not need two large steaks, dad. One would have been enough.”

“You cannot possibly survive on a single steak for a week,” he says, as if I am not allowed to consume anything other than protein, “you look like you’ve lost weight, again. Do you want to make us worry by living like this?”

Again with that line. They mean well, but they don’t really know the proper way to go about things. “It’s fine,” I shrug, dumping half my rice into the soup, “I’m set for two weeks, at least. More than that, even.”

“You know, this would not have been the case at all, if you were—”

“Dad!” My tone is perhaps unnecessarily harsh, because it makes at least two people (one of them is Jihoon, not that I care) look over at us, “stop with the marriage thing! We’ll discuss this later.”

I want to keep my mouth shut for the rest of the twenty minutes that we spend eating dinner, not telling him what I really wanted to say, I keep telling the two of you that I don’t want to get married now, and you keep ignoring me, pushing for me to do what you want me to, and it’s fucking suffocating me. I might have left Seoul for a different reason, but I think I’m never going to return if you keep asking me to hitch myself with the first man you find appropriate. 

“Your sister has got a promotion at work,” he says, halfway through his meal, “she keeps saying she wants to come to Busan to visit you, but I don’t think she has  the time to take a holiday.”

“She also has two kids to take care of, dad,” I mutter, “even if my brother-in-law takes on the larger share of the housework, a lot of childcare falls on her. She doesn’t have the time to go on holiday right now.”

“She talks to you?” my father asks, eyes narrowed, “she never told us that she talks to you.”

“Probably because you’d rope her into your idiotic schemes to get me married off.”

“It’s not a scheme, and I don’t appreciate the two of you keeping secrets like that from us,” he replies, “at least sign up for a matchmaking service or something like that.”

“When my sister doesn’t force me into thinking about marriage, why should I give into societal pressure?” I shake my head, “really, dad, you both think too much about what other people are going to think. If and when I get married, I’m the one who has to spend my life with someone, not random aunties with whom my mother goes on walks.”

He shakes his head, and there’s five minutes of blissful silence, until, “there was an invitation from your high school alumni association for their reunion next month. I don’t think you changed your address.”

“High school reunion?” I shrug, “good for them, but I don’t really think I’m going to get the time off to go to Seoul for a reunion, dad. Maybe next time.”

“You’ve never gone to a reunion, have you?” he asks, although it’s more of a statement when you think about it, because of course I have not. 

We do not speak for the rest of the night. 

—

[Ten years earlier]

“Of course, it’s no question,” Yura, the class president, laughs, loud enough that it grates on my nerves, “she’ll do it.”

The task in question is to stay behind and clean the classroom in place of the president and one of her friends, who had fallen sick in the middle of school, while also being conveniently on duty for staying back and cleaning the classroom after school got over. And now, they were all giggling over delegating their work to someone else, and who else was better suited for the work than me, right. 

“Sowon,” Yura’s now standing beside me, a smile on her face, “Kim Sowon.”

I stay silent, pencil tapping on the thirtieth problem in the math chapter. Being an outsider is better than doing her bidding. “Kim Sowon,” Yura wheedles, “Jiyeon’s sick.”

“Tell her to go home early,” I reply, moving on to the thirty-first problem. Integral calculus, chapter two. The double integral of a positive function of two variables represents the volume of the region between the surface defined by the function (on the three-dimensional Cartesian plane where z = f(x, y)) and the plane which contains its domain. Multiple integrals will calculate the hypervolume of a multidimensional function, “if she’s sick, she shouldn’t be here in class. She should go to the nurse’s office.”

“She’s not that sick,” Yura’s still smiling, and I have to physically restrain myself from lashing out at her, “you’ll help her, right?”

“Tell her to go to the nurse’s office, Class President,” I reply, focusing again on the math problems at hand, “if she’s not that sick, then she can do her share of the work. And if she’s that sick, then she should go to the nurse’s office, not sit here and gossip.”

Yura gives me a look, which can be interpreted in two ways, do it while I’m being nice, or, of course you’re going to be this way, huh. “Don’t be this way, please?” she’s batting her eyelashes at me, which means, of course, that there is something else that she wants out of me other than free labour for her friend, “you promised me you’d get me Mingyu’s sns, and you still haven’t—”

“I asked him, and he said no,” I replied, standing up, “I asked you very nicely, Yura, to keep me out of your little games. I don’t want to be involved in this bullshit. Go ask him yourself if you want to get close to him that bad.”

“Really, Sowon?” another one of her lackeys pipes up, “she’s asked you so nicely, and you still don’t want to give it to her? Are you interested in Mingyu?”

This one elicits a loud gasp from the rest of the class, as though my feelings towards Mingyu were important enough for Yura to stop with her dogged fucking pursuit of him, “I don’t care, Yura. date him or don’t, that’s not up to me. Just leave me out of these stupid games.” 

I can feel them staring at me when I leave the classroom, heading towards the playground. If there’s any place where I can find Mingyu in this school, it’s the playground, where he’s almost certainly playing football right now. 

Pushing past a gaggle of underclassmen, I make my way to the edge of the field, where Mingyu is showing off his skills in dribbling to a bunch of enamored football club mates. He’s even posing for the crowd, that vain idiot. He’s two compliments away from dumping a bottle of water all over himself in an attempt to look sexy.

 Five minutes pass before he even catches sight of me, running over to where I stand, far apart from the crowd, “what’s up, Tteowonie?”

“Go on a date with Yura,” I reply, ignoring the childish nickname, before following him to the water fountain, “she’s going to make my life hell if you don’t, so I’m asking you nicely, just go on a single date with her, okay?”

“I don’t like her,” he shrugs, “she smiles too much, and that creeps me out.”

“Smiles too much? Is that why you’ve been blowing her off every time she asks you out?” I scoff, “is that why you hate the idea of going out with her? At least you have options, man, unlike the rest of us, who must survive on your cast-offs. Just go out with her one time, and then she’ll finally get off my back about asking you what the fuck you think about her.”

He looks up from drinking his water, “Is that why you came to find me?” 

“Yes,’ I nod, “I don’t have time to be bullied because Yura hates that she can’t get you. I need to get into Hankuk university, not waste time in high school.”

“So, you’re pimping me out?”

“Now that you say it like this, I hate that idea,” I shake my head, “never mind, I’ll tell Yura you have a girlfriend or something.”

“But I don’t.”

“That’s not important, you idiot,” I shake my head again, “she just needs to know that you’re off the table when it comes to getting into relationships.”

“I don’t get it,” he mutters, picking up his bag and following me to the classroom, “why is she so hell-bent on dating me? She’s popular and pretty, she’s got boys dying to hang out with her. Why me?”

I turn around, “Kim Mingyu.”

He stares at me, “the tone is making me scared for my life.”

I scowl, “What do you think makes someone sexy?”

Mingyu gapes at me, “what? Why would you say that?”

“You’re missing out on the point,” I shake my head, “Yura doesn’t want to date you because you’re more attractive than everyone else in the class.”

“Way to make a man feel better about himself, Kim Sowon.”

“She wants you precisely because you’ve got no interest in her,” I reply, making a venn diagram with my hands, “she’s not interested in the people who pay her attention, but you, precisely because you’ve got the air of being unattainable.”

“I’m unattainable?” Mingyu looks shocked, “that’s nice of you to say.”

“Unattainable because you don’t pay her attention, not because you’re some kind of god,” I mutter, “she’ll lose interest if you go out on a date with her one time.”

“Pimp.”

“Jerk.”

The door to the classroom opens, and Yura’s still sitting at her desk, surrounded by the members of her entourage, but she smiles as soon as Mingyu steps foot into the room, running over to me, “Sowon!” she giggles, “did you ask Mingyu to come over to help us out?”

“I thought you were going to take Jiyeon to the nurse’s office,” I say blandly, “or is she fine enough to do her share of the cleaning chores now?”

“She’s still sick,” Yura makes a face, turning to Mingyu, “Will you help me take her to the office?”

“Huh?” Mingyu, who’s already made his way to my desk, looks confused, “why? I’m here to solve math questions with Sowon for our academy class.”

Never mind. He’s got no hope. 

—

Even now, I’ve never been to a high school reunion. Not when they asked me right after university, when emotions were at an all-time high, and I was practically on cloud nine after landing my first job, and certainly not after I had made the decision to move away to Busan. Of course, every time the invite lands in my inbox, I spend a moment reading it, and promptly deleting it off of my inbox. No need to go to a place where there were so many people reminding me of whatever I did wrong. 

Which was why, when my dad asked me, “You’ve never gone to a reunion, have you?” with all the certainty of old age, all I could think of was the endless veiled insults and taunts of the people around me, the late nights and the hours spent poring over practice problems and English exercises. I used to walk to school with a notepad of English words to practice; not a moment spared, because as everyone around me liked to point out, all the people of my family had gone to either Seoul National or Korea University, and anything else from me was a sign of failure. 

“I have not, actually,” I reply, “I didn't think it would have been important. Who did you meet?”

“Choi Yura,” my father says, picking at his meal, “she’s getting married a week after the New Year, and asked us to invite you. She said she was trying to get in contact with you, but apparently you’ve changed your number since high school, and she could not get in contact.”

“I had a very good reason to change my number, “ I sigh, “really, did she ask you to get her wedding invitation to me? If I have not responded to her invitation, then it means I don’t want to go.”

“Her parents are close friends,” he replies, in that tone of his, “it would be a good thing for you to go. Especially since you’ve been spending all your time in this city, working even on the weekends. This is why you should have gone to law school.”

“Except I didn’t really want to go to law school, you wanted me to go to law school,” I point out, “we wanted different things at that point.”

“It’s not about wanting different things, it’s about wanting what’s the best for yourself,” He points out, “you even got accepted into a doctoral program, and now you’re working on what—the newest HR communications model?”

“Maybe don’t look down on my job, please,” I sigh, “fine, I’ll go to her wedding. It’s a matter of a few days, anyway, I don’t mind spending my time in the middle of those people.”

Dinner is over before it even begins, but the inside of my mouth feels bitter as I pay for our meals and follow my dad out onto the patio where he’s looking at the sea. He’s always had a habit of doing that, looking intently at things, trying to figure out their flaws. It makes me wonder every time he looks at me, if he’s trying to find a fault in me too. 

“You’re looking at the sea pretty intensely,” I say lightly, standing next to him, “anything on your mind?”

He sighs, “you’ve always been like this.”

“Like what?”

“Stubborn, hot-headed. Always going your own way, even if you didn’t have to. Your sister was the one who fought all the time, but you always went ahead and did whatever you wanted anyway. We all told you not to get a transfer, but you did anyway, moved to Busan, where we knew no one.”

“You make it sound as though being stubborn is something to be ashamed of,” I reply, trying to laugh, “why all of a sudden?”

“Sitting back there, I realised something,” he says, “you don’t need us anymore.”

I make a face at that, “what do you mean?”

“You live in a different city, away from your parents, away from the life you’ve known, and you seem at ease here. Maybe it’s just me and your mother, who have been waiting for you to come back.”

“I’m comfortable here, dad. I don’t even miss Seoul anymore.”

“Do you miss us?”

To that, I can’t say anything. 

—

My father leaves three days after that, making me promise to go to Seoul for Yura’s wedding, and for the New Year. It’s only half a month away, I realise. A new year, in a place that I’ve only known for three. I wave him off at the bus stop, before walking back to the diner for an early lunch. 

It’s empty, with only Jihoon behind the counter, who smiles when he sees me walk in, “did you come here with your father the other day?”

“How did you know that?”

“You both look exactly the same. You’ve got all his features,” he explains, “it would have been strange if he was not your father.”

“You got me,” I sigh, “he was doing what they call a ‘welfare check’.”

“A welfare check?”

“Yeah, they do a six-monthly check on how I’m actually coping with living on my own.” I sigh, “do you have something other than gukbap? My father craved it so much this past week; I feel like I’ve had enough of it for a lifetime.”

Jihoon laughs, “what do you feel about cold noodles?”

“In the middle of winter? I’m not averse to it, but will I get a cold?”

“Not if you’re used to it,” he shrugs, “okay, one milmyeon it is.”

“Cold noodles in the middle of winter?” I laugh, “are you trying to get me sick?”

“Not at all, actually,” Jihoon replies, not at all fazed, “just thought that having cold noodles would help with the whole situation that you have going on right now.”

“It’s not a situation,” I try to defend myself, but who the hell am I kidding. It is a situation, one that could potentially turn my carefully curated life into a pile of smoking ruins. “All right, fine. You got me. It’s a situation. But it’s nothing I cannot control on my own.”

He sets out a bowl of noodles in front of me, with bits of ice floating around the soup. I sigh, before digging in; delicate wheat flour noodles, floating in a gentle meat broth, seasoned just right. Even the ice is not overpowering, and cools down the broth enough for me to start eating without fear of burning the roof of my mouth. 

“They made this when resources were scarce after the war,” Jihoon says, sitting down on his usual chair, “when the northerners, who moved to Busan, didn’t have buckwheat flour to make their usual noodles with, they changed it to wheat flour.”

“Quintessentially Busan, eh?” I make a feeble attempt, and he does not laugh. 

He does not speak until I have finished my entire bowl, and then starts speaking again, “What I mean is, human beings are endlessly adaptable. People moved from North Korea, and made this dish using things they did not have, just to get a taste of home. People move on, people adapt. Situations that seem difficult right now, you’ll probably get used to them in some time.”

“That is funny,” I laugh, “it’s been three years since I moved, and I cannot seem to get used to anything.”

“You might just need more time,” he smiles, “it’s been a long time for me too, and unfortunately, what I thought of as a cataclysmic, world-changing event, just seems like a mild inconvenience in hindsight.”

“Why do I have the feeling you are lying to me?”

“Probably because I am.”

I laugh, “do you want to come to a wedding with me?”

—

New Year in Seoul is less like a family occasion, and more like a battlefield; I spend the day before my vacation obsessively going over every little detail of my pending work; I had to beg my supervisor to let me work from home in order to be able to attend Yura’s wedding, on top of New Year’s. 

Damn Yura and her timing to get married. I should not be angry; the week after New Year is when wedding venues are slightly cheaper because no one wants to attend, not after a week of eating the unhealthiest food known to mankind, and drinking more booze than is healthy for even a grown horse. Hence the random wedding date. Saving costs on people who are trying to lose weight, and also making sure they don’t have to take time off in an inconvenient month. 

“At least prepare the bean sprouts normally,” my sister scolds from her vantage point in front of the television, where she’s currently busy with helping her little children with their homework, “you were the one who volunteered to do this, not me.”

“Making the kids do the homework is probably easier,” I mutter, “is this why you all asked me to come a day before New Year's? So I could be a glorified slave? Just get them prepared, no one does this much work nowadays.”

“Imagine the amount of money they’d have to shell out on every important day,” my sister muses, “and do you think our parents would do that? Miserly Lawyer and Penny Pinching Professor?”

“Miserly Lawyer never had a ring to it. And yes, they’d rather die than give out money to other people to do this bullshit,” I mutter, peeling my thousandth bean sprout. 

“Still, we get to see your face in something other than a video call. When mom told me you were going to come here before New Year's, I was excited, actually. Who knew my little sister, the runner of the family, would come back for New Year like an obedient child?”

“Prodigal daughter?” I laugh, “mom threatened me, actually. And between the two days spent in Jeju and Yura’s wedding, I doubt you’re going to see much of my face around here.”

“Yura’s wedding?” My sister yells, “that b—girl is getting married?” The swear word is, of course, censored, for the sake of my young nephew and niece, who have the awkward ability to become Einsteins when it comes to learning swear words. 

“Apparently, yeah. Her husband works at Samsung as a production engineer, I think.” Of course, my parents had heard of this from her parents, and repeated it to me about twenty times, but I keep that from my sister, who’s jaded and bitter from marriage, “anyway, she’s asked our parents to pass on the wedding invitation to me. Plus one included.”

“The girl who kept hanging around Kim Mingyu in high school?” My sister still cannot believe her ears, “the one who hated you because she thought you were ruining ‘her chances’ with Mingyu? She’s getting married? And what? A plus one? This is not an American wedding, who the hell brings a plus one?”

“Many people, actually.” I reply, “calm down, eonnie. I’m going to her wedding, that’s decided.”

“You even refused to apply to law school because she was going there, even if she never really made the cut,” my sister sighs, “god knows why the hell you’ve been this scared of her, but if you’re going to go to her wedding, then at least dress up well.”

“What’s wrong with the way I dress?” I ask, and she gestures to the outfit I was currently wearing—patterned pajamas, and a black sweatshirt, “please do not judge me on the basis of this.”

“Do you even have clothes appropriate enough to wear to a wedding ceremony?”

“Aren’t people supposed to not outdress the bride at her wedding?”

“Not if the bride was their high school bully.”

“Mom,” Ui-jun pipes up, “what’s a bully?”

“A bully is someone you should never become,” I say, loud enough that his curiosity is satisfied, “you need to get them earplugs.”

“They’re amazing, aren't they?”

“This is not a product launch, you idiot, that’s not how children work. Stop swearing around them.”

“You’re avoiding the question,” my sister makes an accusatory jab with Ui-jun’s crayon, “no one goes to a wedding in casual clothes unless they are a celebrity, which you aren’t. So, do you have clothes for a wedding reception?”

I shake my head. 

“Knew as such,” she sighs, “we have to go shopping the day you come back from Jeju.”

“You’re going to make me shop for clothes after I land from Jeju?”

“Are you swimming to the mainland?” She makes a face, “you’re going to take an early morning flight, no traffic either. Shopping will be fine.”

“Ugh, whatever,” I groan, “fine, I’ll go shopping with you.”

“And the plus one?” She’s still skeptical, “no way you got a plus one to go to a wedding with you.”

“What if I ask Kim Mingyu?” I make a face, “he’s going to say yes, right?”

“And Yura will kill you,” she snorts, “no, seriously. Who is going with you to the wedding? If you show up with someone random, they’re never going to let you, or us, hear the end of it.”

‘Don’t worry about people talking nonsense, just tell me who’s coming with you to the wedding.”

“Really?” I narrowed my eyes, “and you are not going to tell the parents?”

“Scout’s honor, I promise.” She makes a cross on her chest, but the whole effect is kind of destroyed when a three-year old Seoyeon starts yowling for her favorite stuffie that her brother had stolen from her. 

“Fine,” I sigh, wrestling the stuffed toy from Ui-jun and giving it back to Seoyeon, “he’s a restaurant owner. Back in Busan.”

“A restaurant owner?” it takes her about a whole minute to realise who I was talking about, and she stands up immediately, half in shock and half in genuine surprise, “don’t tell me you are going to Yura’s wedding with the guy who owns the diner you’re a regular in?”

“Yes, actually,” I settle back down on the sofa, “the very one. He’s agreed to go with me as my wedding date.”

“Doesn’t he live in Busan? Why the hell would he come to a wedding in Seoul, just to go to a wedding with you?” She stares at me, “no, you’re too boring for a love affair. You’ve probably befriended him or something.”

“At least have some faith in your sister’s flirting skills,” I mutter, “why the hell do you think I am some sort of annoying caveman with no sense of social cues?”

“Because you are one,” she replies, grinning shamelessly in the face of my despair, “you have no sense of shame, and you behave like an annoying caveman.”

“Anyway,” I pick up Seoyeon, who’s now beginning to get fussy, “I’m going to go back to peeling my bean sprouts because mom will kill me if I am still stuck on them by the time she comes home.”

“You’re going on a wedding date with the diner owner, and you’re worried about the bean sprouts,” she sighs, joining me at the dinner table, “at least tell me why he agreed to be your date.”

“He’s going to be in Seoul that week, so he just moved around a single plan to make sure he can accompany me to the wedding,” I shrug, “and for your kind information, he’s not a diner owner. They have an Orange Ribbon, and he used to be a music producer and composer before he changed careers.”

“You’re arguing like you’ve been dating for years,” she raises an eyebrow, “no matter, mom and dad will blow their top off either way. Imagine Sowon, the baby of the family, dating a man. They’re all going to go insane.”

“Which is why I need you to keep your mouth shut.” I sigh, “it’s already awkward as is.”

“Just make sure you don’t make a mistake,” my sister says, half of her attention on the kids, “remember what happened at university? Do you want a repeat of that?”

“It’s a miracle I got Jihoon to agree to come with me to the wedding, so please don’t bring up random stuff from my past,” I mutter, and she drops the subject, but the final words remain; do you want a repeat of what happened at university? 

Hey, at least Jihoon said yes to this ridiculous idea. 

—

“A wedding?” If this was a comedy, there would be a funny sound effect right about now, but this is not a comedy, and so, I stare at Jihoon, who’s staring right back at me, looking as though I have handed him a marriage registration certificate. “Why would you want me to go to a wedding with you?”

“It’s a high school classmate's wedding,” I offer as little explanation as I can, “nothing more than that.”

“But you are asking me to go with you to their wedding.”

“Yeah,” I sigh, “well, the thing is, I’ve not been on good terms with them, not since high school.”

“And you want them to know you are not a loser?” He’s smiling now, which would actually be very attractive if I was not actively trying to remain sane. 

“Sort of. I don’t want them to think I left Seoul for them or something like that.”

“I thought you ran away from Seoul.”

“Yes, but no one needs to know that,” I reply, “although, in retrospect, they probably already know.”

“So, you want to show up with someone in order to prove rumors wrong,” he’s smiling now, “am I going to be your trophy boyfriend?”

I promptly spit out the water I was drinking, “what are you talking about?”

He’s still smiling, “I mean, asking me to go to a wedding with you, isn’t that slightly romantic? And I still don’t know your name.”

“Is my name really important to you?” I scoff, “I doubt people at my work know my name either. It’s always Miss Editor or Miss Kim to them.”

“Kim is the most common surname in the country,” he replies, “and I would like to think I am slightly more important than the people at your work. You’ve been eating here for a month now, and I don’t think I've ever seen you with any of your coworkers. Is the food not good?”

“If it was not, would you think I would be coming here for a month?”

“Touche.”

I sigh. Who knew convincing someone to come to a wedding with you was this difficult, “if you want to know that badly, it’s Sowon. Kim Sowon. My parents were not terribly imaginative with their naming of me and my sister.”

He shakes his head, “the name means hope. That’s a nice name, actually, Kim Sowon.”

I stare at him. The way he says my name, it’s different. Not the Kim Sowon my parents use when they are angry with me, nor the Sowonie that my sister uses when she wants to tell me something sad or heartbreaking. It’s my name, but why does it feel like he’s saying it like no one has ever before?

“That’s the name. Kim Sowon. So, will you be coming to the wedding, or not?”

“Depends. Will I be introduced as the boyfriend?”

I laugh at that, “me, with a boyfriend? My friends are going to catch on to that little deception sooner than you think. I’ve been single almost my whole life.”

“Almost? Do I need to look out for potential ex-boyfriends to come out and attack me while I am sipping on martinis?”

“That is a very detailed mental image you have there, Lee Jihoon,” I laugh, “but no. No exes, at least none that will come out and attack you. They might tell you to dump me at the first opportunity, but no, they will not attack you for dating me.”

“That seems self-deprecative.”

“It’s the truth, actually,” I smile, picking up my coat and bag, “give me your number, I need to send you the details of the wedding venue.”

“You just told me your name. Aren’t you moving a bit too fast for anyone’s liking?” He laughs, but holds out his phone anyway. 

—

“You have his number?” my sister says, who’s been holding it in while I relay the incident of me asking Lee Jihoon to come to the wedding. “You have his number, and you didn’t even tell me?”

“Babe,” her husband pats her shoulder, “maybe this is not something you want to discuss in the middle of the day.”

We are all piled into my room. The children are splayed out on my bed and sleeping after lunch, and the three of us—me, my sister, and her husband—areall lying down on the heated floor, trying to get some rest before the evening meal is to be prepared. 

“I did not think it was important, really. When have I ever told you anything about my love life?”

“Oh, so you are admitting it is something related to your love life,” she grins, “let me see his Kakaotalk profile picture.”

“And what will you do with it?” I make a face, “you never let me see my brother-in-law’s picture until you were dating for a good seven months.”

“I am slightly hurt by that.” The man in question says from his spot in the corner, “why didn’t you show her my picture for seven months?”

“She was making sure you were the one,” I shrug, “I told her not to bother me with showing me a man if I was not going to get him as my brother-in-law.”

“That’s nice.”

“Anyway, that was your condition, not mine,” my sister announces, “I want to see who this man is, that you managed to strong-arm into going on a date. That too, to a wedding.”

“It’s not a date,” I groan, but I hand over my phone anyway, and she eagerly opens up the messaging app to check out his profile picture. I know what the profile picture is. I would not admit it to anyone, but I had the whole thing memorised; a snapshot of the sea from his diner window, in the middle of winter, with rolling clouds on the horizon. I’ve seen it thrice too, hoping that he would change it into a picture of his own, something that I could see whenever I missed Busan. 

“He doesn’t have a profile picture!” she says, annoyed, and the sound wakes up Ui-jun and Seo-yeon, who immediately start calling for their parents. With my sister and her husband busy with the kids, I look at the photo again, smiling softly to myself. What’s the menu at the diner tonight? Milmyeon? Or gukbap? Or do they have samgyeopsal on the menu for tonight? Or a special New Year menu? Should I have stayed back to see what he was cooking? 

I miss Busan; I realise with a shock that I miss the city and the sea. It’s different from missing Seoul; in my first few months in Busan, I missed Seoul so much I had to physically restrain myself from buying a ticket back home. Seoul is where I was raised; I remember the streets of my home, filled with old-fashioned houses built back in the sixties. I even longed for my old home, the two-bedroom apartment where we lived until my parents could afford a house. Seoul is a city I will never be able to escape, I realised in those few months, no matter how much I hate it, I will still carry bits of it with me. It will always be the same—suffocating, oppressive—but I will still miss it. Much like a caged bird once freed thinks about the cage, I too, think about Seoul. 

If there was a word that conveyed both love and hate, I would use it for the city I grew up in. 

But I miss Busan differently. I miss Busan’s beaches and the way people speak and the slight lilt in my voice that has crept in after three years. I miss the way it has made a place in my heart despite my desire to close off everything. Like the sea, like water, it has managed to creep into my heart and make a place for itself, despite how much I tried to resist. Most of all, I think about the diner; my sole place of refuge, the place I wanted to keep hidden from everyone in the world for as long as I could. Just the diner, or Jihoon as well, a voice whispers in my mind, a voice that sounds suspiciously like my sister, the drama addict in the family. 

Either way, I miss it. 

Before I can stop myself, I send a text. 

What’s the menu for today?

—

Jihoon doesn’t hate New Years. He’s simply not interested in it anymore. Why celebrate a meaningless turn of the Earth around the Sun? They should be congratulating the Earth, not themselves. Still, he makes a new, celebratory menu for the diner, meticulously prepares everything on the menu, and makes sure to set out a notice in front of the door, that tells passers-by, new menu!

Even the group chat is silent, which is to be expected, really. Wonwoo’s company was launching a new update for a game, and Wonwoo had been working overtime to make sure the code was up to date and not crashing when someone tried to tweak it the slightest bit. Crunch time was hell, apparently. Both Jeonghan and Seungcheol were busy preparing for Hoshi’s comeback in the first quarter of the new year, and he was expected to send in his final composed scratch track by the end of January. 

“Boss,” the part-timer, Kevin, saunters into his line of sight, “two tteokguk for table four.”

“Coming up!” He’s fine. Jihoon is not thinking about the dead group chat and definitely not thinking about Sowon. She really was an enigma. Who else would come into the restaurant they were a regular at, and demand the owner to go on a date with them? He even talked to Jeonghan about this, which just showed how desperate he was getting. 

“Hyung, how would you react if the woman you were thinking about just showed up at your doorstep, and asked you to go to a wedding with her?” Jihoon is doing fine. He really is, but the twin laughter from Jeonghan and Seungcheol on the opposite end of the phone call confirmed whatever suspicions he has had—those two were listening on to the whole thing. 

“So? Did you manage to get her name or did you agree to go to a wedding with her without knowing her name?” Seungcheol laughs, “yes, Jeonghan told me everything.”

“Wow, you’re still a married couple after ten years, huh,” Jihoon mutters, not displeased, but feeling slightly betrayed, “and why the hell would you think I would agree to accompany someone to a wedding without knowing their name?”

“Because it is something that you would do, Jihoon,” Jeonghan says, “you would go to the wedding even if you did not know her name. You’d print out a sign that said ‘Diner regular’ and hope that she showed up.”

“Glad to see my oldest friends have so little faith in me,” he grumbles, “no, she actually gave me her number and her name.”

There’s a scramble on the other end, and Seungcheol’s indignant voice floats through, “her number? She gave you her number and her name? The same woman who told you straight up that it was not required for you to know anything about her?”

“Well, I did say that finding the correct wedding venue would be impossible if I did not know her name, so maybe, I asked her and she gave in,” he muses, and Jeonghan laughs, “why the hell are you two laughing?”

“I just think it’s funny. Lee Jihoon, the man who only pined once in his lifetime, is openly down bad for a woman he’s met maybe five times.”

“She’s been to the diner at least ten times. Besides, I even saw her father with her the other week.”

“Meeting the parents already?”

“Shut up!” He’s yelling in the middle of the night, and oh god his neighbors are going to report him for real, “I did not meet her parents. Just tell me what the hell do I do to make this thing go in my favour.”

“Wear something good, for one,” Seungcheol offers, “I’m pretty sure she does not want to see you wearing the same uniform that you wear all the time. Ditch the apron, wear something fashionable.”

“Right, yes.” Jihoon mutters, “something fashionable. Now what would that be?”

“You’re fucked,” Jeonghan replies, “what do you mean you don’t know your personal style? You used to wear so much black leather stuff when you were here.”

“And I was also in my twenties then,” Jihoon snipes, “maybe wearing the same style in your twenties is not the best idea you can give me.”

“Wear something nice, not flashy. Understated is the way to go,” Seungcheol says loudly, talking over Jeonghan, “and for god’s sake, wear an expensive watch. You used to have a really nice one, what happened to that?”

“I still have it. It’s kind of inconvenient to wear it on a daily basis, so I keep it in my closet.”

“Then wear it for the date,” Seungcheol groans. “You really like her, huh?”

“Apparently, I do,” Jihoon doesn’t even fight the smile on his face, “it’s strange to feel so strongly about someone this fast, but I can’t help it, it seems.”

“Why?”

Why, huh? He’s asked himself this about ten times, and always comes up empty. Why do you like her? Does he even like her? “I don’t know what I feel just yet. All I think about when I look at her is how much she reminds me of myself.”

“And?”

“And I would like to be there for her, if I can. The wedding seemed like it was a big deal to her, so I said yes. She really needed someone to be there for her, at least at that moment.”

Seungcheol whistles, “wow, you’ve gone mad. You’re entirely gone. Good luck with the date, huh? Call us to the wedding later on.”

—

He’d even brought out the watch collection and pondered for an hour straight on which watch to wear to a wedding. Nothing too flashy, his mind had supplied, it’s a wedding. Don’t draw attention to yourself. 

Then he thought about what Seungcheol had said. Good luck with the date. Even though he had tried to ignore it, it really was a date; even though they both drew strict boundaries, there was no mistaking what this was: a date. 

In the end, he had picked out the flashy one. If I have to make an impression on her, I need to pull out all the stops. 

—

“Boss,” Kevin’s voice brings him back to reality. “Three japchae for the bar.”

“So many people are ordering bloody japchae,” he grumbles, but he gets started on the order anyway. Sales for today have been higher than the entire month, and he really should not be complaining when it concerns money. 

Still, half an hour later, when they’re all tired out from the lunch rush and he’s contemplating closing up the diner for the night, his phone rings with a message notification. He’s really not hoping for anything, but it’s her. 

What’s the menu for today?

Jihoon bolts upright, scaring Kevin, and starts pacing around nervously. What’s the menu for today? Realistically, he should be able to answer this easily, but he cannot find himself to type out the words. He’s not chickening out; he’s just nervous. 

“What was the menu for today?” He asks. Kevin, who’s still staring at his boss pacing the entire length of the diner floor, shakes his head, “tteokguk, manduguk, bindaetteok, three kinds of jeon—”

“Fine, I get it,” he sighs, typing out the words on his phone. Tteokguk, manduguk, bindaetteok, three kinds of jeon. Finished, he holds it up to Kevin, “is this a good text?”

“Depends, are you her private chef?” He raises an eyebrow, “why the hell are you sending her a menu?”

“Because she asked!” He’s fully aware that he’s yelling, thank you very much, but he also can’t help himself, “oh god, why the hell did I ask you? Go back to what you were doing, Kevin.”

Kevin shrugs, “my name is not Kevin.”

Jihoon stares, “you wrote Kevin on the application form.”

“Yes, but it’s kind of a pseudonym I’m trying out,” Not-Kevin shrugs, “I have other ones, do you want to know?”

“Now you’re gonna tell me you’re not Korean-American or something.”

“I am not.”

“Oh dear,” Jihoon sighs, “what other names were in consideration?”

“Dino, for one,” the other man shrugs, “Dino.”

“Short for Dinosaurs?” Jihoon asks. 

“Correct. The actual name is Chan, though. Lee Chan.”

“Stupid fucking name,” he mutters, but there’s already another text from her, a reply to his earlier message. 

That’s a lot. We made tteokguk and jeon only. Couldn’t manage so many things. 

“She replied! Hah!” Jihoon waves the phone excitedly, “see this, Kev—I mean, Chan.”

“Wow, you’re weird,” Chan sighs, picking up his bag, “your mother called, she asked you to go home for tteokguk in the evening. I am out of here, since I have a date to go to, unlike you.”

“Little shit,” Jihoon mutters, but it’s really nothing bad, because he has a proper excuse to talk to her now. 

I run a diner, Kim Sowon-ssi. 

Sorry, forgot about that one, really. Shouldn’t you be spending time with your parents?

Will go to drink ceremonial new year’s soup at their home after I close up. 

Fun. I'm packing for two days in Jeju. 

Jeju?

Seungkwan, my friend, invited me. To be fair, his sisters did, so now I’m going to crash their family holiday. 

Make sure to carry gifts for the whole family. 

I’m a competent houseguest, thank you very much. 

Jihoon looks out of the window as he begins to gather up his things. Winter is here, with snowflakes that have fallen fast and unyielding over the past weeks, but he’s really never paid them any attention. Today, though, he takes some time to bask in the beauty of nature. He’s never really liked winter, despite being born in the middle of November, when the tips of his nose turned pink from the cold, but today, it’s different. Today he can think about the snow in January, in the longest month of the year. He hopes it snows next week as well. 

—

“You look good,” Jihoon’s mother remarks as soon as he enters the house, dusting off the snow from his hood, “did something happen?”

“Nothing worthwhile,” Jihoon shrugs, toeing off his shoes, “where’s dad?”

“Waiting for you,” she replies, “something good has happened, I can feel it.”

Tteokguk is fine, as usual; his mother had brought out the recipe from her mother, and Jihoon pays his respects to his parents before settling into a meal with them. He even takes a picture of his soup bowl before tucking in. 

“That’s new,” his father notes, “you never take pictures of food.”

“That’s not true,” Jihoon lies, “I take pictures of food all the time.”

“He’s met someone,” his mother sighs, throwing down her chopsticks, “really, do you think we are going to tell you to not date them or something like that? You’re thirty, we’re glad you found someone to date.”

“Is it a therapist?” his father asks, “the last time, with Seungcheol, you said he was seeing a therapist. Are you seeing his therapist, too?”

“God, no!” Jihoon exclaims, a bit louder than he should have, and the self-satisfied smiles on their faces give away the whole thing; they’re onto him. “Look, it’s nothing yet,” he reasons, “it’s not even a date, or attraction. I just know someone.”

“Leave him alone,” his father says, silencing his mother, who looks like she’s bursting at the seams to grill Jihoon about his love life, “you know how he is, he’s never going to tell us anything. At least you’re going to be taking the next week off, right?”

“Yes, but I have to go to Seoul,” Jihoon replies, “I have an appointment there.”

“With the boys?”

He hesitates, for a split second. That’s all it takes for his parents to zero in on him. Seriously, they’re like sharks, tasting blood. “Don’t ask me what I am going to do.”

“You’re going to meet her, right?” his mother asks, excited, “who is she? What does she do?”

Jihoon sighs. Even his father shrugs, indicating that he really cannot help him out in this case. He doesn’t even look sad or guilty. Traitors. “I’m going to a wedding,” Jihoon says, settling on the least exciting version of the events, “an acquaintance of mine is getting married the week after the New Year.”

“Strange time to get married,” his mother muses, but his father does not look convinced. 

“It’s her, right?” he drags Jihoon out for a smoke as soon as the dishes are cleared, “you’re going to meet her in Seoul, aren’t you?”

Jihoon really hates how perceptive his parents are. Sure, it’s worked out in his favor mostly, but right now? Right now he wants to get some alone time to figure out his feelings in peace, before being accosted by his parents into divulging whatever secrets he has. 

“Why wouldn’t I tell you if I was meeting her in Seoul?” he argues, “it’s nothing, really. I’m attending a wedding.”

“With her.” his father nods. “Well, you’ve never really been one to maintain secrets, so I’ll let you have this one.”

“How—how did you know?”

“Well, since you’ve brought her up every time you’ve come over to our house, I figured out she was someone important, but I did not know that she was accompanying you to a wedding.”

“I am accompanying her to the wedding,” Jihoon sighs, “she’s going to a wedding, and she asked me to come with her.”

“As a date, or as a friend?” His father stubs out his cigarette, “it’s important you make the distinction yourself. Make sure of what you are, before you go around getting hurt in the process.”

“I’m thirty, not thirteen,” Jihoon sighs, “I’ll manage myself just fine.”

“Just because you are thirty does not mean you can’t get hurt over matters of the heart,” his father says, serene, “your heart can always get hurt, Jihoon. Don’t be careless with it, just because you’re over a certain age.”

“Really, there's nothing to it, dad.” Jihoon argues, but he’s getting slightly tired of saying this too, “I’m not even interested in her romantically. She just reminds me a lot of myself when I was younger.”

—

“Do you have anyone to take with you to the wedding?” My mother asks, on the morning of my flight to Jeju, “you can ask Seungkwan if he can go.”

“He’s busy with hosting New Year celebrations at his ancestral house, mom,” I reply, “he’s definitely not interested in coming to a wedding with me.”

From across the table, my sister squints at me, mouthing what is wrong with you? Just tell her the truth, but I shake my head. If I tell her the truth now, she’s going to have expectations of me later on. She’s going to ask me where I met Jihoon, what are my plans with him,  do I see a future with him—questions that seem routine to her, but to me, really, it does not make any sense to me. Whatever he said about me, the flirting, the talk of being a trophy boyfriend, all of that was for show, I know it. 

“So you seriously have no one to go with?” She asks, more insistent now that I have ruled out Seungkwan as a possibility, “Yura’s getting married. You should make some effort at least.”

I keep silent. I want to say, I’m going to the wedding of the girl who ruthlessly antagonised me in high school. Is that not enough? It’s true as well, while Yura was not someone to be an outright bully, she used her words and her influence to her advantage, and knew exactly where to hit, in order for it to hurt the most. 

Hey, Kim Sowon, are you sure you’re not hanging out with Kim Mingyu just to sleep with him?

Hey, you know, Sowon just goes around with Mingyu all the time, don’t you think the two have something going on between them?

No wonder she tried to keep everyone away from Mingyu. I feel sorry for him, having to put up with her. 

It’s all meaningless high school gossip, I’ve told myself. Nothing matters in the end. I left that school, went to Hankuk and left it behind. Still, on days I barely feel like a person, I think, would things have worked out better if I had told them all off? Took a stand for myself? They knew they could say whatever they wanted about me and I would not antagonise them. It’s easier to ignore the hurt than to do anything about it. 

“Do you want me to set you up with someone?” My mother prods, “he’s a doctor, you know, and he’s got a clinic of his own—”

“Mom,” I sigh, “I doubt anyone would like to think of me romantically when I don’t even recognise myself as a person anymore.”

“I don’t understand why you keep talking like this,” She grumbles, “you keep making us all uncomfortable when we are just trying to help you.”

“Sorry for making you feel uncomfortable, mom, but I really don’t think I’m ready to be dating anyone right now,” I reply, standing up from the table, “and tell the aunties to stop the matchmaking. I’ve been here for two days and they’ve already accosted me thrice to tell me about their eligible matches. I don’t care about getting married right now, and doing all this is making me uncomfortable.”

“They’re just being nice, you know. Would not hurt to let them be nice to you for once.”

“They are not being nice!” I really should learn how to control my temper, “they’re not being nice. I hate the way they look at me, as though I’m some kind of exhibit, a zoo animal to be paraded around for their entertainment. Why do you want me to be nice to them anyway? They hated me all throughout high school, they spread rumors about me all throughout university, they even gossip about me now that I’ve finally left and moved to Busan. When does this end?”

“Watch your tone, Sowon,” my sister warns. I ignore it. 

“They did not care about our family, so I suggest you stop caring about them too much, mom,” I  say, picking up my luggage, “take it from me; don’t waste your time on people who do not care about you.”

—

“Noona!” Seungkwan has kept his promise, waited for me at the airport to pick me up in his family car, “how long are you here for?”

“Just two days, thank you,” I mutter, picking up my suitcase for him to stash in the boot, “nothing too much for me right now.”

“Two days?” He’s pretty surprised, “I thought you had tickets for at least five.”

“Yes, except I have to attend a wedding in three days,” I shrug, “I need to go shopping for clothes as soon as I get back. Then I have to work on the draft again, which I have been ignoring for far too long to be normal, and then get started on work-from-home.”

“They didn’t give you a vacation?” Seungkwan scoffs, “hey, noona, just leave the damn job. You’re popular enough that you can do it. Just leave the damn job and start writing full-time.”

“I need twenty million more in savings, and then I can think about resigning,” I shake my head, “besides, you know why  I keep this job.”

“So that your parents don’t bother you about it,” He nods, “but if you get a proper contract, you should leave the job. They don’t pay you enough, and you clearly hate working there.”

“Not all of us are blessed with workplaces that let us do whatever we want, Boo Seungkwan,” I sigh, “although you’re still stuck at Associate Editor. Why the hell don’t they promote you?”

“You’re what they’re looking for, noona,” Seungkwan has a tight sort of smile on his face, “until you bring out another book, they’re not going to promote me. I’m busy with the day-to-day goings as is.”

“Basing your promotions on my work seems a bit silly and counterproductive,” I grumble, “and why the hell won’t they promote you? Should I write that I want my editor to be promoted for all his work?”

“And that will not help,” Seungkwan grips the wheel a bit tighter, “I can come off as pushy and annoying, which does not help my chances of getting promoted in my company.”

“I thought they liked that you were slightly pushy.”

“Now they think it’s annoying,” he points out the window, “look, there’s the village.”

Seungkwan is trying to change the subject. Well, it’s bound to be difficult for him, I think, being solely responsible for my success, but I do wish he opened up to me, from time to time. Beyond the usual editor-writer relationship, Seungkwan is probably the only person left in my life who I can consider a friend. Whatever happens, he’s always been there for me, something which I have come to appreciate much more than I did in the beginning of the relationship. 

“By the way,” he says, “the series is working out really well.”

“Series?” I ask, “oh, the diner series?”

“Yes, the very one. Over five hundred thousand hits on the magazine website, not to mention subscriber count has increased. Even your writing style has changed, which might be why so many young people are reading it.”

“Hold on, five hundred thousand?” I ask, “who the hell is reading a column about what I eat every week at the diner?”

“A lot of people, actually,” he points to the tablet sitting beside him, and I pull up the publishing house’s website. I could have looked at a physical copy of the magazine, but the website seems easier, and Seungkwan insists on me looking at the comments people have been leaving. 

“How did this get so many views?”

“Apparently, a lifestyle blogger read that column,went to the diner, and then made a video about it. Don’t worry, they didn’t show the owner, but they talked a lot about the food. It became very popular, surprisingly.”

“The diner has been in the running for an Orange Ribbon, of course they’re going to be popular,” I sigh, “let’s see the comments, shall we?”

The column was about the gukbap I’d had before my father came to visit, written evidently in a hurry, with grammatical errors and typos in the first draft that had taken me ages to clean up. Still, it’s not a bad piece of writing, and it’s something that I do take pride in. 

There are about five hundred comments, and I managed to read the first few before giving up: 

—it’s pretty obvious she’s in love with the owner, LOL

—when’s the wedding?

—she’s not wrong, though. Gukbap is the representative dish for Korea

—need to go to the diner she’s talking about, stop gatekeeping

—this reads less like a column and more like a lovestagram haha

“They’re all speculating,” I shrug, setting the tablet down, “there’s really nothing of importance in the column itself.”

“Really? Not even the bit where you wax eloquent about his cooking skills—which might I suggest, are not Michelin-level?”

“He’s good, Seungkwan.”

“Yeah, he’s good. He’s not Marco Pierre White.” Seungkwan sighs, “look, what you do with your life is not my business. It will never be my business either. But you’ve got to stop writing lines like ‘I wonder what secrets he has been hiding behind those perfectly manicured nails’. Frankly speaking, it looks a bit desperate.”

“I’m not desperate,”  I resist the urge to snap at him, “I’m not anything but exhausted right now.”

“We’re almost there,” Seungkwan swerves from the main road to another one, driving through a traditional village, “welcome to the casa, noona.”

“Casa,” I scoff, “we are not kids trying out new Spanish names, Seungkwan.”

“While you’re here, write a few lines about the famed Jeju hospitality too, eh?” Seungkwan gets the bag out of the boot, yelling, “look who’s here!”

—

“Thirty pages?” Seungkwan is more surprised at the volume of the pages than at the fact that I have been able to write anything, really, after the first twelve hours of non-stop feeding, “you write thirty pages in half a day?”

“Had twenty of them written down, actually,” I mutter, snacking on candied tangerine slices, a Jeju specialty (the tangerines) and a Seungkwan’s mom specialty (the candied bit), “just needed ten more, and wrote them in the middle of the night.”

“Why the hell would you write ten pages in the middle of the night?” Seungkwan asks, “you look like you’ve been well-rested, though.”

“It’s probably the weather out here,” I stretch my limbs like a cat, yawning, “I haven’t had a nice rest like this in a long time.”

“Yeah, too bad you’re going back to working from home in two days, and be out of here,” Seungkwan sighs, looking at the PDF on his tablet, “you know, if you want, you can just stay here for the rest of your life.”

“At your grandmother's house?” I raise an eyebrow, “I give it three days before they all kick me out of here.”

“You were given a plate of dried persimmons, and I was given only one,” he points to the empty plate next to the one with the candied orange slices, “they like you more than they like me, you know that, right?”

“Is it because I am the daughter they always wanted?” I smile, and he scowls, “the youngest daughter, so charming she has her family wrapped around her thumb?”

“You’ve already got my family under your thumb, why are you even crying about it,” Seungkwan mutters, “this is good enough for an introductory chapter, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” I shrug, “but I’m not really looking to publish right now. Just see if these pages are good enough to put on the company website. Not even the literary magazine, just the website for serialisation.”

“Well, they are, but why the sudden need to not serialise?” Seungkwan asks, “have you been caught by the sophomore novel bug? But wait, you’re on your third novel already, that cannot be the reason, right?”

“I just don’t want to rush into publishing something when I know the material is not good enough,” I shrug, “why do you want me to publish so fast?’

“Because public opinion is always shifting,” Seungkwan smiles, “and they want something new, every few months.. And you’re one of those people who doesn’t have an active social media presence, not that I can fault you for that, but you have to admit, it goes against object permanence. If they are not seeing you at all times, they’re going to forget about you. Public memory is like that of a goldfish.”

“And I don’t make public appearances, either,” I say, “that was partly why I agreed to the serialisation.”

“Glad to see you’re still taking your literary career seriously, noona,” Seungkwan replies. 

“Hey, your parents home?” I ask after a beat, “do you mind me smoking?’

“Really? Smoking while on holiday at the family home?” Seungkwan laughs, “go ahead, they’re all busy. Besides, we’re sitting in the back courtyard, so I doubt they’re going to notice. The only witnesses are the vegetables, and I doubt cabbages can speak.”

“Do you think I should write about the wedding?” I ask after lighting a cigarette, puffing out smoke away from Seungkwan, “they’re going to have a buffet there.”

“Noona,” he turns to look at me, “you’ve never once told me about them, and now you’re going to go to someone’s wedding when you haven’t been in contact with them for what, ten years? A whole decade? Do you even want to write about that experience?”

I scoff, “really, Seungkwan, I don’t need the damn lecture. And I would not be going to fucking Yu-ra’s wedding, but my parents promised them that I would, and now my sister is treating this like it’s some sort of personal project. Revenge for all the times that I did not allow her to dress me up.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I just got sent a Chanel catalogue,” I show it to him, and his face falls, cringing, “I wish I was kidding when I said that this was a nightmare of my worst proportions. Never did I think once that I would be going to see those people again, not after whatever went on during those years.”

“Seriously? You didn’t have a single friend during high school?” Seungkwan narrows his eyes, “what about Mingyu? You were really close to him.”

“I feel very grateful that Mingyu existed in my life, at least in that moment,” the cigarette is halfway gone, and Seungkwan, who leans forward to listen to me better, catches a whiff of the smoke, wincing, “he’s the only person I think I would talk to, if I ever ran into him on the streets.”

“And the rest?”

“Running in the opposite direction,” I shudder, “no way. No way in hell.”

This is nice. Seungkwan doesn’t push, and I don’t say anything. Our relationship is not based on total transparency—god knows what secrets of his own he has hid from me, but it’s easy. It comes easy to both of us, or me, at least, to sit in the silence of a winter afternoon and smoke cigarettes one after the other, ignoring all his warnings. He doesn’t need to know how my school life was, nor does he need to know anything about my growing pains. For the both of us, companionship is easy—it means staying when the other one needs you. And he doesn’t need to know.  It’s better this way. 

And to think I haven’t even told him about the transferring of book contracts. 

—

“Seriously?” My sister throws her hands up in despair, looking at the outfit I had picked out for the wedding the next day, “you’re going to the wedding of your high school friend, and you’re wearing work clothes?”

“They’re not work clothes, eonnie,” I sigh, “they’re what I wear for going to funerals. Excellently made, and comfortable in the biting cold. Look, it’s going to snow tomorrow morning. I’ll need all the help I can get for this one.”

“Do you have something against dressing up?” She asks, sitting on the foot of the bed, “you used to dress up all the time when you were a kid, saying it made you feel special and like a princess. Now, you cringe at the very idea of wearing something other than funeral clothes to a wedding.”

“They’re not funeral clothes,” I protest, “it’s just that I have worn them to funerals.”

“That’s the same,” she sighs, “what happened at high school?”

I freeze. “What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean. You used to be such a normal kid, then you clammed up entirely during high school, and never seemed to recover from that. I want to know what happened during those years, that made you like that.”

I sigh. How do I tell her that it was no one’s fault, but my own? I went into the situation with higher expectations than I should have. It’s my fault, really. 

“I just got lonely,” I replied, “high school was lonely, and I got too used to it, I think.”

“You had Mingyu, right?”

“I couldn’t depend on Mingyu all the time,” I mutter, holding out a white dress shirt for her inspection, “and besides, everyone got so busy during that time, with studies, with work, with everything. I didn’t think my problems would have been very appreciated in the midst of all that.”

“Now you’re making us the bad guys.”

“I’m just stating what happened. I’m not making anyone the bad or the good guys out here.”

“And this has nothing to do with all the rumors about you in university?” She asks, “yes, I heard them too. Everyone talked about you for months, Sowon, and you never gave me an explanation for that.”

“Why do I have to give you an explanation?” I snap, “why is it that my life revolves around me being accountable to everyone—you, our parents, my boss, my editor, my friends, everyone? Yeah, there were rumors about me at university, and I did not tell anyone, because I didn’t want to repeat the damn situation over and over again!”

“Telling someone your problems is not making yourself repeat the situation, Sowon.”

“Yes, but I am doing it, even right now. When you’re asking me for an explanation about what happened, you’re assuming that I was in the wrong.”

“Were you? Were you in the wrong?” She snaps back, “at least tell me what exactly happened, so I can make some sense of the situation!”

“You’re supposed to be on my side!” My brain has gone into overdrive now, and I can feel it, feel the inevitable panic attack, the shortness of my breath, “you’re supposed to be on my side, because if I had done something wrong, I would have come to you. To this family. But I didn’t, and I’m still being interrogated like I’m some sort of common fuck-up instead of your sister.”

 I pause, chest heaving, breathing shallow, and my vision is blurring right now. All I want is to be able to breathe normally, but even that seems impossible. It’s okay. You’ve got experience with this, haven’t you? Just focus on the breathing. Seeing what’s in front of you is not important right now. 

“You’re not in your right mind now, we’ll talk about this tomorrow,” she mutters, without casting a second glance at me, leaving the room. I manage to take three steps to my bed, before I collapse on top of it, breathing heavy and shallow. It’s fine. It’s all fine, I tell myself, don’t worry about it too much. I’ve gone through this. 

In the end, I go with what I know, as usual. The only time I have strayed from what I know, has been when I left this city and went to Busan. 

All my life, I’ve knowingly or unknowingly, done exactly what my parents wished of me. Got into the top public school in the city, the one that we moved school districts for. My sister got in, and so did I. I went to Hankuk University on a scholarship, because my parents told me I had to. Studied Pre-Law, because my father was a lawyer, and he wanted at least one of his daughters to follow in his footsteps. Graduated from the university to train at a law firm, just like my father wanted me to. Even before I applied formally to Hankuk Law school, I was poised to become a lawyer, just like him. Even a prosecutor, if I put my mind to it. 

And I left it all to get a random job at a random company, and moved to Busan as soon as my transfer application was processed. 

What a pathetic life, I think, the only time I’ve tasted freedom, has been when I went to another city. What a life you’ve led, Kim Sowon. 

—

He’s really not waiting for anyone. Jihoon’s standing in front of the hotel, waiting, nonchalant in the way he shoves his fists inside his pockets. I’m not waiting for anyone. This is not a date. 

Really, she’s not even said this was a date. This was merely an arrangement for her, a way to get out of a sticky situation and come out of it unscathed. He’s trusted, that’s what he is. She trusts him enough to ask him to accompany her to this wedding, and he’s out here, thinking about her in terms she does not want to be thought of, imposing his feelings on her like some kind of idiot. 

I’m an acquaintance, he repeats to himself, I am an acquaintance, nothing more. The snow falls thick around his ears, the sound of it rushing around his brain. He should really go inside, he thinks, he should go inside where it’s warm and he’s not in danger of freezing over—

The sound stops. Pure white snow. No sound. All that remains is the loud thudding of his heartbeat, over and over as it reaches a hundred twenty, racing against time and space. 

Because in front of him, is Kim Sowon, dressed in her usual black suit, the same smell of menthol cigarettes wafting around her. Her face is pale, devoid of makeup as usual, and her hair is cut short for ease of movement. 

But he still can’t say anything, because even a single noise would destroy the landscape in front of his eyes. He’s transfixed, waiting helplessly for her to say something before his knees give out. He’s reminded of a line he read in a book a long time ago: 

The train came out of the long tunnel into the snow country. 

“Shall we?” She doesn’t smile at him, merely squares her shoulders. Jihoon offers her his arm, and they wordlessly set off into the hotel. His heart is still racing, and he hopes she doesn’t notice. 

This is—this is bad. He wants her to think of him as a friend, not like this, not like someone who is halfway in love with her already. 

Still denying your feelings, huh? The voice in his mind suspiciously sounds like Seungcheol, and Jihoon wants to hit himself for letting his stupid words affect him like this. Nothing will happen. I’m here as a friend. As a helping hand. 

When it came to Kim Sowon, Jihoon, runner extraordinaire, found that his feet would not move. 

—

I wish I never came here. 

Even for a hasty post-new year wedding, the ballroom is filled with people. Did she even have that many acquaintances? I think to myself, before signing the register and depositing my gift money (50 thousand won only). Guests keep filing into the foyer, looking at the wedding venue, the names written in fancy script, congratulatory bouquets from the couples’ acquaintances. 

“Wow, a lot of people here,” Jihoon whistles, and I wish I could have a cigarette right now. 

“Too many people, I think,” I sigh, “let’s go visit the bride.”

Yeah, this is easy. This is what I am supposed to do, as the bride’s high school classmate. “It’s good manners, I think,” I laugh, hoping it does not give away how nervous I actually am, “we should go there.”

“And why are you going to visit the bride?” Jihoon asks, “you did not seem that enthused when walking into the actual building. And I’m supposed to just take you at your word?”

“It’s good manners, Lee Jihoon, “ I reply, “and I’m trying not to come off as an asshole here.”

There are people coming out of the bride’s reception room, and I can recognise the people I went to school with; Jiyeon, Soyeon, all the people who had, at one point, ignored my very existence. Not that they’re doing anything else right now, I sigh, as Jiyeon passes me by without a second glance; there are always people who will fall behind, huh? 

I knock politely on the door, Jihoon standing right behind me, and Yura calls out, “Come in!” 

The first thing I can think of when I walk into the room is how vulgarly pink. Everything is pink, everywhere, from the pale pink of the peonies to the pink gemstones on her wedding tiara, everything is draped in pink. And so very distasteful. 

“Kim Sowon?” Yura stands up, all smiles, “I didn't think you’d be coming to my wedding! Oh my god, what a nice surprise!” She stumbles over her feet in her excitement to get to me, and I rush forward to catch her, half in my arms and half-dangling, precarious, but not too much.