“Min-joon, do you have someone in mind as the winner here? Do you think Peter or Hugo can be the winner?” Martin asked subtly.
Min-joon hesitated for a moment, then shook his head. He already knew the outcome of this contest. He couldn’t even remember if Hugo and Peter participated in this contest, but he knew both of them were not the winner.
So, Martin asked again, “Then who do you expect to win this season?”
“Michael Ohr,” Min-joon answered briefly.
The most likely winner was a professor of physics at Harvard University, over 40 years old. Because of his unique background, Martin could easily find out who he was. If the professor participant survived the preliminary rounds, Martin was going to make him stand out by using his extraordinary and unique career.
Then Min-joon even thought of him as the most likely winner. Thinking he might need to pay more attention to the Harvard profession, Martin asked again, “I remember who he is because I was impressed he was quite good at cooking as a professor. So I thought the world was unfair. Are you cheering for him?”
But Min-joon shook his head again. Martin looked puzzled at his reaction. He said Ohr was the most likely winner, but he would not cheer for the professor candidate. Min-joon must have only peeked into each candidate’s cooking skills. If that was the case, Min-joon must believe the professor had the most outstanding cooking skills. So Martin felt it weird that Min-joon was cheering for somebody else.
“Then, who are you cheering for?”
“Gwen Queen.”
“Oh, that woman?”
Martin could easily recall who the woman was because she also had a unique personality. She was a drug addict from Los Angeles. More precisely, she was a former drug addict. She said she had resorted to cooking to go cold turkey. Her skin was rough, and she was skinny. She seemed to be pretty good at cooking. So, she was one of the candidates that Min-joon and Martin seriously considered as one of the likely winners.
‘By the way…’
Martin looked at him with a strange expression. Gwen Queen. It was hard to say she was exactly in the same situation as Kaya, but she went through hard times just like Kaya. Was Min-joon sympathetic to Gwen because of her same background as Kaya? Martin thought so, but the way Min-joon looked at her was a bit different from Martin.
Gwen Queen was not a genius chef. But no other chef in the competition could beat her in terms of her dedication to cooking and her determination to succeed as a great chef. Min-joon believed that she could advance to the semi-finals at least, given her extraordinary passion and determination. As a matter of fact, not only the participating chefs but also spectators began to think at some point that she could win the competition. Even Gwen thought so.
At the end of the day, she lost to Michael. She won second place.
Min-joon thought her being in second place was not a big deal.
He muttered to himself, ‘Actually, I don’t like her.’
She was not the type of person that he could accept. In some respects, she belonged to the type of woman that he hated the most. Actually, she was the type of person he hated the most.
One month after she won second place at the competition, she killed herself.
Min-joon didn’t know what made her decide to commit suicide. There were many speculative articles about it. And the most persuasive one was that she committed suicide because she was a runner-up, not the winner. He also thought such speculation was probably true.
As far as he remembered, she was pushed to the edge of a cliff. Every time she had an interview with reporters, she mumbled nervously as if she was chased by something. She seemed to think this was her last chance, and that if she failed to win this time, she would be finished.
Many people thought she thought of her situation too seriously. They couldn’t imagine that a woman like her who overcame the temptation of drugs and stood tall on her own feet would bet everything on the competition. But they were mistaken.
‘She regarded even the runner-up results as a failure.’
Back then, Min-joon could understand her feelings, of course. Compared with the winner, the runner-up had no merit at all. All she could get was a little more attention from people. The runner-up could not expect any big reward, Grand Chef’s support, or anything else. Maybe she could end up landing a job at a good restaurant.
But the problem was that when the show was nearing the end, most chefs and spectators believed Gwen would win. It was natural that they believed so because her strong determination to overcome her difficult situation impressed them so much. In terms of chefs’ popularity, she clearly beat Michael.
Even viewers of the competition heightened their expectations of her, which swayed her moods. Actually, at the end of the broadcast, she looked pretty confident about winning the competition. While she was not sure if she could win in the preliminary rounds, she was more and more convinced of her victory as she gradually advanced to the final rounds. But her conviction in her victory collapsed when she failed to win.
Min-joon could not imagine how devastated she felt when she realized that she, who believed she found new hope in her life through her brilliant performance in this competition, lost to Michael. But she didn’t immediately give up because she struggled to overcome her defeatism for one month somehow. Obviously, she desperately struggled to survive. Min-joon wanted to believe so.
Now, what could he do from now on?
‘I’ve got to be harsh toward the participants.’
Min-joon decided to take that approach when he evaluated the participants’ dishes. Even though people said he spat out harsh language to the participants, that was not true. In fact,
it was more correct to say that he curbed his temper, for he often criticized a chef’s dishes, but rarely pointed out the chef’s attitude. Unless the chef presented an absurd dish like Nathan, or unless a chef was not stupid enough to show his or her basic cooking skills, he never crossed the red line.
Perhaps if he had not known about what Gwen would do, he might have stopped short of using harsh language to her because he thought she might get hurt by it. However, none of the Grand Chef judges criticized her easily. Was it because they thought she was good enough as a chef who went cold turkey? How could she not be arrogant when people around her and even judges kept praising, comforting, and cheering for her like that?
Maybe someone might have wanted to influence people, so she could win. But Min-joon felt such efforts were meaningless because even if she won, there was no law that she would not experience any failure in the future. He thought that if she could succumb to failure anyway, it was not important at all if she could win or end up as a runner-up.
And he didn’t really want to bother to promote her as the winner. If he wanted to, he would do the same thing to all the participants. The only thing he could do for her was to make sure the cogs mesh properly.
“Well, I’ve got some expectations for this contest,” he murmured.
Of course, he had Gwen in mind when he said that.
And he intended to be tough to her.
***
“The theme of your cooking mission is mackerel!” Joseph shouted in a loud voice.
At the same time something huge, covered with cloth, was unveiled. It was a tank containing lots of mackerel that seemed to be over 100. The participants looked at the mackerel that was opening and closing its mouth with a blank expression. They looked even more stupid than the mackerel.
“Man, I screwed up!”
Someone groaned as soon as he heard the announcement.
Kaya giggled, watching them curiously as if she thought they were cute.
Just by checking their reactions, she felt the theme of this mission was really appropriate.
Basically, it was hard to cook fish at home because its cooking process was complicated in many ways. And most of the chefs here cooked fish as a hobby a few times at home.
Besides, they were in a worse situation than Min-joon and Kaya when the two attended the Grand Chef. It was a question of whether they could remove the characteristic fishy odor of bluefish like mackerel.
They were given one hour, which was far from long. They were supposed to do everything from trimming the mackerel to cooking and plating within one hour. Some of them were already afraid of dropping out, so they already looked gloomy.
“Fish is a basic ingredient that any chef needs to deal with,” Min-joon said with a calm voice.
“It’s not an exaggeration to say that whether you can cook fish or not depends on whether you can cook fish or not. If you can’t cook fish well anyway, you won’t be able to survive the missions after this.”
Of course, he didn’t want to encourage them to give up. He just wanted to give them a reminder of the reality as well as the meaning of the mission that they faced. To put it simply, he was going to weed out those who were not competent enough at this point. And they seemed to have already figured out whether they were qualified or not after checking the mackerel.
Of course, not everyone looked gloomy. Half of them seemed relaxed as if they had some experience cooking fish. Of course, it was questionable whether they had ever killed and trimmed live fish.
