The sky in downtown Los Angeles tonight turned purple as if somebody dyed the sky with juice made from rotten grapes. The stars disappeared from the sky, and the large windows of a building shone like stars. The shadow of a luxury sedan passed by the street and a homeless man was pulling a wheelchair behind it.
There was a bar immersed in a light darker than a shadow on the dirty and messed-up street. The atmosphere of the bar was so heavy that one might have felt it would be much brighter with the light turned off. Although some at the corner table laughed merrily, there was sadness on their expressions. Among the bar clients full of affectation and pretense tonight were a man and a woman who looked unusually gloomy and dispirited. The woman who casually shook her black hair loose over her leather jacket, Janet, stared at the glass full of tequila with blown pupils, then poured it into her mouth.
“I don’t understand…”
“Even if you don’t understand, nothing will change. Stop being stubborn and just accept it.”
“How can you say that so easily? Man, you’re really dumb!”
“I don’t think you can tell me I’m dumb,” said Anderson, moistening his lips with beer whose froth was coming up. Janet glared resentfully at his indifferent expression, then took the glass to her mouth. There was no single drop of tequila in the glass she quickly emptied.
Looking at the bartender, she slurred her words.
“Hey, please give me the same thing.”
Usually, at this point, Anderson would have told her to drink moderately, but he didn’t stop her today. He looked at her quietly, then put beer in his mouth again.
He said pretty slowly, compared to Janet, “Remember, you don’t feel comfortable just because you get drunk.”
“I’m drinking because I want to feel uncomfortable, so I can’t think of anything by drinking so much. Seriously. Otherwise, I can’t endure this nausea…”
Janet bit her lips. Her face, always looking proud, was distorted with shame and humiliation.
She had tears in her eyes, which seemed to be shining coldly forever, and there was even resentment and anguish on her face when she tried to control her sobbing.
When the bartender poured another glass of tequila for Janet, she drank it without hesitation. She then turned to Anderson, but he didn’t cast a glance at her.
Watching him, Janet began to lament.
“I really wanted to have a sous chef position. I wanted to get ahead of him by all means.”
“I guess so.”
“I really tried hard. Yeah, I did everything I could to get this position. Why am I so miserable now?”
He couldn’t reply to her question. Actually, he didn’t even want to. He held the glass in his hand tight and looked at the froth ruefully.
She said, staring at him, “Answer me, Anderson.”
“…”
“Answer me, you idiot, Anderson Rousseau!”
Her angry and drunken voice resonated throughout the bar, making other customers look at her for a moment. But even then, Anderson didn’t look back at her. The moment Anderson was about to raise the glass, she grabbed him by the collar, then forcibly turned him to her.
When he looked at her, she growled and opened her mouth.
“Don’t avoid my eyes. Look at me. Why should I feel so miserable like this? Why?”
“…”
“I’m qualified, competent, and experienced. I don’t have any shortcomings.”
“Then stop the nonsense and just accept that position,” Anderson murmured. “You are now Rachel’s sous chef.”
When he said that, she helplessly took his hand off his collar.
She burst into silly laughter then muttered in a low voice, “Yeah, you’re right. I’m her sous chef now.”
Just a few hours ago, Rachel gathered her demi chefs together and announced briefly that Janet would be her sous chef. It was definitely something she wanted to hear. But when she heard that, she couldn’t be happy. Maybe that was because she knew deep down that she was not better than Anderson in any way. She obtained the position thanks to her tireless efforts until now, but she didn’t feel that proud of it.
So, she asked Rachel why she didn’t give the position to Anderson. She asked Rachel how she could be the sous chef of Rose Island’s main store instead of Anderson. But Rachel didn’t reply as if she had nothing to say, or it was not the right time to tell.
Honestly, Janet didn’t even like the way he stayed calm right now. She wished he could get mad at her. She could comfort him if he cried. But he wasn’t mad or sad. He might be full of anguish deep down, but he didn’t try to express it. And that was why she got drunker and more upset. For some reason, Anderson wasn’t so annoyed by Janet’s provocations. Rather, he even thanked her.
She asked as if she could not understand, “Why are you so calm? Or are you pretending to be calm?”
“Well, I’m not sure either.”
“Hey, don’t act stupid like that.”
“Because this is not the path I have to walk my whole life.”
At some point, he was more concerned with being recognized by Rachel than succeeding as a chef. In other words, he cared more about how to satisfy Rachel rather than satisfying himself,
he admired and liked Rachel. Because of that, however, he found himself trying to define his future within her cage. Was it because of that? Now that he was kicked out of the cage, he felt rather strange than angry, for he felt that even though his life was off the tracks of Rose Island, he was still rolling somewhere.
“What are you going to do in the future?”
“I’m going to Gluto’s as a sous chef there. They have an opening soon.”
“Oh, I see.”
Janet drank for a long time after that. So much so that she could hardly walk with her pupils blown and her legs wobbly. Eventually, he helped her walk out of the bar, reeking of whisky. She looked up at him when he called a taxi. Looking at her, he momentarily got alert because he felt her face was close to his.
“Hey, stay away from me. I’m not going to forgive you even if you make a mistake because you got drunk.”
“What if I want to make a mistake…?”
Janet put her face closer to his.
He said, “You will regret it.”
Finally, her face touched his when she said, “I’m used to it.”
<hr />
At Lisa’s house.
“Anderson didn’t get promoted?”
Chloe, who was touching her cheeks to Ella’s, who was sitting on her lap, opened her eyes wide.
Min-joon said, shrugging, “More precisely, he kept his original place because he was a demi chef, and now he is.”
“Anyway, he was expecting to be a sous chef this time, right? What is he doing now?”
“Well, he went out to have a drink with Janet.”
“They are a very strange match, aren’t they? How can they drink together when one of them has become a sous chef, and the other didn’t?”
“As you know, Anderson and Janet often hang out for a drink, so they want to talk a lot over drinks.”
When he said that, Chloe sighed and shook her head. When she was a child, she imagined that all of her friends would take their steps toward the future at the same time, but she now knew how difficult it was because not everyone could move forward equally.
“Then what would happen to Anderson in the future?”
“Well, I heard him saying the other day that he would go back to his parents’ restaurant, but I have no idea. I had no chance to talk with him about his next move. Besides, I could not ask him today when Janet, not he, was chosen as Rachel’s sous chef.”
Marco, who was next to Min-joon, sighed.
He said, putting a pretzel dipped in sugar syrup into his mouth, “Well, I thought all your friends would come back to Los Angeles, but you guys are going to break up again.”
“Marco, I’m sorry for you. I called you here in Los Angeles, but I’m going to New York.”
“Oh, you don’t have to feel sorry. I didn’t call you to come by my side, but I wanted to introduce you to Lisa and Jack. I’ve learned a lot…”
“Come to think of it, you and Kaya are going to New York…”
Chloe opened his mouth as if she hadn’t thought about it.
At that moment, Ella took her fingers off her cheeks and buried her head on her chest with her head down with a gloomy look. They looked at her.
Chloe stroked her head, looking at her as if she understood.
“Ella, don’t worry too much. Min-joon and Kaya are not leaving here forever.”
“But they come back in several weeks or months when they say they would be back quickly.”
But this time, she would never know when they could come back. That’s why Ella hasn’t even spoken to Min-joon and Kaya for some time as if she wanted to protest by shutting her mouth.
At that moment, Kaya spoke to Chole after staring at Ella for a long time.
“Chloe, when I think about it, I have something to tell you.”
“Go ahead.’
“If I go to New York this time, I’m thinking of taking over a restaurant.”
“So?”
“I want you to be with me there.”
At that moment, Ella turned her head suddenly as if she was so surprised that even Chloe would leave her.
“So, are you willing to work with me?”
“With me?”
“I know you are good at cooking.”
At that moment, Chloe felt rather embarrassed. People often said she was good at cooking because she was a chef who had been most exposed to the public because of her broadcasting activities on a TV show. But she was often not recognized as a chef because of that.
But on the contrary, one of her chefs she valued the most recognized her cooking skills.
So, she cautiously opened her mouth.
“You know that I haven’t even worked at a restaurant, right?”
“Who cares? I’m not much different from you. You know my background, right?”
“So, you want me to work with you at a restaurant?”
“Well, the thing is we can make good dishes, and then our customers will like our food and our restaurant. That’s the way we can succeed. So, won’t you join me?”
“Let me think about it since you suddenly made an offer like that.”
The moment Chloe said that, Ella stood up from her seat, then walked back to her room in a grumpy mood. Hearing Ella closed the door with a bang, Kaya muttered with her eyebrows wriggling, “Gosh, she must hate me!”
