It was strange. Obviously, Kaya gave her the recipe, but even if she made Six Meats based on the recipe, she could not bring out the same taste as Kaya’s.
While Gwen was agonizing over the taste of Six Meats, Peter found it so hard to get the shape of pomegranate toppings right. At first, he failed to even blow air inside, so he had to recreate the toppings over and over again.
“You have a long way to go to get it right.”
She looked away for a moment. They said life was an endless journey, so when she thought about it, she just had no choice but to sigh first.
Peter glanced at her sneakily. Even he knew to some extent what she was thinking. In fact, he read her mind better than anyone else. So, he could figure out that she might have thought in extremes.
He wanted to help her. At the same time, he asked himself if he could afford to help her when he could not manage his life properly. What would she think if he reached out?
“Gwen.”
“Uh?”
“… Nothing.”
“Come on. You make me curious.”
“I just forgot what I wanted to tell you.”
She just looked at him blankly as if she was dumbfounded by his absurd attitude. She then turned her eyes to the kitchen island. Now was not the time for her to waste her time gossiping. But Peter seemed different. He opened his mouth again.
“What are you going to do if you fail in this competition?”
“If you want to distract my concentration, you’ve already achieved your goal!”
“I’m sorry, but that’s not what I mean…”
“Well, I applied to Lotus Bridge.”
“Lotus Bridge?”
“If I fail here… I don’t know. Let me think about it later.”
Peter bit his lip at her reply. After all, he would part with her after this competition was over. To be honest, he felt he was not qualified to work at Lotus Bridge. He found it difficult to deal with Min-joon and Kaya as his supervisors everyday.
She would walk a different path from him, regardless of whether she won this competition or not. That was all. Whatever relationship he made with her at this competition would disappear when it was over.
He suddenly felt empty.
‘… Min-joon, you have really achieved everything.’
He succeeded as a chef and he won over Kaya’s heart. He grabbed all he wanted. But he had a hard time even getting the shape of the pomegranate toppings right, so he had to stay up all night. The more he cooked and the more he tried to catch up with Min-joon, the more he realized that Min-joon was really great.
It was the judges who woke up first the next morning. This might sound strange because it should be the participants, not the judges, who should have woken up earlier than them. But it was just absurd to compare the judges who went to sleep without any worries and the participants who had to stay up all night working out the best strategy for their cooking.
Joseph glanced over the kitchen island. All the kitsch islands assigned to Gwen, Michael, and Peter were strewn with all kinds of stuff. Obviously, they had no time to clean it up. Perhaps they were deeply asleep even now.
Glancing at the pantry, Kaya opened her mouth, “What do you want to eat?”
“Well, I don’t really have an appetite.”
“Then let me cook anything for you.”
It wasn’t difficult at all for her to stimulate somebody’s appetite. She went to the pantry alone. All kinds of mixed smells from the various ingredients were quite familiar to her. In fact, she smelled lots of them here a few years ago when she participated in the Grand Chef competition like them.
‘I feel like I’m back in my hometown.’
She suddenly thought like that. No wonder she thought so. In New York where she spent most of her childhood days, she had more scratches on her heart than any good memories. Accordingly, it was this place that she really missed, where she had lots of memories. And her perceptions of this place would never change even in the future.
She came back with some ingredients in an instant. What she was going to make was simple. A simple soup made by boiling tomatoes and eggs, and a few slices of bread to accompany it. As always, it was very simple for a famous chef like her.
But neither Joseph nor Min-joon complained about it. Although it was simple, it was not funny.
In fact, Joseph, who said he had no appetite, could not stop spooning. The moderate acidity of the tomato mixed with the soft taste of the egg brought out a great savor. It was a magical taste that made Joseph forget what he said.
Kaya put a little soup on a crispy butter roll and put it in her mouth, and said, “By the way, I don’t know how long these three guys will sleep. They don’t have much time left.”
“Did we make an unreasonable demand on them by giving only 24 hours?”
“What’s the big deal about making an unreasonable demand? Anyway two of them will survive. After all, it also shows how competent they are if they survive here.”
That was correct.
“Actually, no matter how well they make it, it’s hard for them to get good grades from us. We made the dishes based on our recipes, so don’t you think we can find flaws in their dishes more easily?”
“That’s right.”
In the end, the key to this mission was that they should avoid being marked down as much as possible rather than trying to get good marks. In other words, the one who got pointed out less rather than being praised a lot would be the most likely winner. It would never be easy for them to meet the judges’ demands, who were more picky and demanding than usual.
Looking at Kaya, Min-joon asked with a soft voice, “Are you willing to be nice to them?”
“How about you?” she asked back.
He smiled meaningfully, so did she.
It was Gwen and Peter who came to the venue first. They looked at the judges who were having breakfast. They then frowned as if they were dissatisfied.
Gwen and Peter knew that the judges had done nothing wrong with them. But they had no choice but to feel fury when they watched the judges having breakfast in a relaxed mood when they stayed up all night to master their recipes.
“Would you like some?”
“Nope, I’m going to starve because I’ll have to eat a lot anyway.”
Gwen was completely on the warpath. She replied in a feeble voice, then walked up to the kitchen island. She seemed slower with her hands now. Actually, she was.
She glanced at Peter. Peter was inflating the pomegranate toppings with an unfathomable expression.
‘He’s at it again all day long.’
She tasted the pomegranate dessert that Peter had made. There was not much difference between his and Min-joon’s. It tasted good not because Peter was good at it, but because of the characteristics of the recipe. Min-joon not only marked the amount of each ingredient in the dessert in grams but also showed how to cook it.
Maybe that was why Peter was so obsessed with it. Right now, the most appropriate way to evaluate Peter in this dish was how well he got the shape of the pomegranate toppings.
It was funny. To be honest, Gwen didn’t think that the shape of the toppings had much of an effect on the perfection of the dish. Eventually, the judge would break the toppings, then put the crushed jam and ice cream in his mouth anyway.
“Does this make any sense?”
When Peter was busy making it, Gwen thought a lot about it. She even felt sorry for him. She knew how he had lived until now. And she knew how he felt while cooking. Because of that, she could not understand that his fate would be determined by the way he used his hands to make the dish, which could not even be called cooking from her point of view.
It was funny. Peter came to this competition to prove his cooking skills, but he was on the verge of being eliminated from this competition because of a dish that didn’t seem like cooking at all.
“Oops!”
At that moment, Gwen shouted instinctively. While she was distracted for a moment, she got a cut on her finger from a knife. She quickly washed her finger with water and put it in her mouth.
With a worried expression, Peter approached her.
It was Gwen who had a cut on her finger, but Peter made a much more worried expression than her. She immediately noticed what his expression was.
He asked, “Are you okay?”
“Uh, I’m fine…”
“Wait, let me bring you some medicine.”
“No, it’s not a deep cut…”
Even before she finished, he was already heading for the competition staff. Shortly afterward, he came back with a band and ointment. He gently began to put the band and ointment when she gave her hand without any resistance.
She asked quietly, “Don’t you feel any regrets?”
Peter asked back, “What are you talking about?”
