Up until now, I’d been the only chef around.
Because of that, there was something I’d forgotten.
—“Oh, then, Sergeant Shin. Would you like to come work at the restaurant where I used to work? As your senior, I’ll teach you well.”
—“And who would that benefit.”
On the morning of Doomsday,
when my junior made that offer to me,
the biggest reason I turned him down was this:
“Then that makes me your senior, huh?”
In the restaurant industry, hierarchy...
is stricter than in the army.
“You said the reason you came looking for this kitchen was because you wanted to cook, right?”
“...Yes.”
“Sorry, but that’s not going to happen.”
The man who had looked shocked until just now
changed his attitude in an instant.
“This is my kitchen, and I’m the law here. A junior who’s this far down the line like you is... yeah.”
He stretched out a finger.
Pointing to a corner of the kitchen, he spoke.
“You start with prepping ingredients.”
“......”
“You saw how I organized everything, right? Just do it the same way. A junior at least knows how to do that much, yeah? If you don’t even have that level of basics, well, then there’s nothing to be done.”
I’d thought, for all his bluster,
that he was more normal as a chef than I expected.
So my mood had softened a bit.
“‘Junior,’ huh. I didn’t get hired to work in your kitchen.”
“Yeah? Even so. If you want to use my kitchen, it’s the same thing, isn’t it?”
“It’s not like I’m going to be using it for long. I just need it for a little while and then I’m gone. If it bothers you, I don’t even have to touch this kitchen’s ingredients—I can just borrow the equipment...”
“Oh, so what you’re saying is.”
He cut off my words and said,
“Even if I don’t want to lend it to you?”
He stared straight into my eyes and spoke firmly.
Only after seeing that expression
did I finally catch on.
“You never intended to let me cook in the first place.”
“Haha... you just figured that out now, friend?”
“Why? It’s not like it’s going to do you any harm.”
“‘Why,’ he says...”
He paused a moment as if thinking,
then scratched his head and said,
“I already told you, didn’t I? That you don’t even have the basics as a chef.”
“......”
“I might sound like some old relic, but you know. Some punk with no basics standing in a kitchen... where I’m from, that was something you couldn’t even imagine.”
Seriously.
So seriously, for a reason like that.
In a moment like this when every second counts,
he was wasting my time like this.
Srrk...
My hand went to my waist.
The kitchen knife I’d bought from the Shop.
Originally, it had a lot of shortcomings if you wanted to use it on a person.
But for me as I was now, that wasn’t the case.
‘...Should I just deal with him.’
My goal here anyway was to cook in this place,
then use the power of that cooking
to bring those “Association” leaders under my control.
Even that alone was already crossing a line.
On top of that, dropping this one guy into the pot...
wouldn’t change much.
“What are you doing? If you get it, then hurry up and get lost, or go over there and start prepping ingredients like I said.”
But...
the reason I couldn’t cut him down
was a practical problem.
‘No matter what, this guy is still an Awakener. There’s no way there wouldn’t be any combat noise at all.’
If Awakeners came running at the sound,
I’d instantly be the guy who suddenly killed their chef. That’d put me in an antagonistic relationship with them.
And the plan to feed them proper food and bring them under my control
would fall apart.
All kinds of methods ran through my head.
I could use Force-Feeding to sneak my food into him,
or I could wait until this man was sleeping, turn on Environmental Assimilation,
and slip in at night to cook in secret.
Honestly speaking,
the fact that he was blocking me right now was just ridiculous.
There were plenty of ways to ignore this man
and still cook.
Back at that “Northern Branch,” I’d chosen to respect them to a certain extent,
so I’d avoided rough methods, is all.
There was no law saying I had to do the same for these people.
Finding a way to ignore this guy and still make proper food—
for me as I am now, that would be easy.
But...
“I don’t even have the basics?”
I’d started out as just a lowly unit cook.
I didn’t have any particular pride in cooking back then.
But after going through countless struggles in this world,
I’d come to feel pride in the fact that I was a chef.
“...All right, Senior.”
And this guy.
Had to poke right there of all places.
‘Coming in at night to cook in secret... that still takes time.’
Either way.
The fastest way to get cooking in here
was to persuade this guy.
“What is it, Junior.”
“From what I know... the hierarchy between seniors and juniors in this field is pretty strict. But I’ve also heard there’s a standard that’s stricter than that.”
If that was the case,
this would be the fastest way.
“What are you trying to say?”
“Skill.”
Even if you’re lacking in years worked as a chef,
if your experience and skill are overwhelming,
a chef like that never gets ignored.
Arms folded,
I looked slightly down at the man in front of me and said,
“Let’s see if your skill is really worthy of being called my senior.”
****
“What the hell is that supposed to...”
The man frowned,
and only after a good while did he seem to understand my words.
“So you’re saying you want to compare cooking skills with me?”
“Yes. You’re talking about kitchen authority based on being my senior... in other words, because you’re the better chef, right.”
“...That is how it is.”
“But you’ve never actually compared who’s the better chef, have you. Then all we have to do is compare and settle it, don’t you think?”
He let out a short, baffled laugh.
“So you want a cooking battle with me?”
“Simply put, yes. That’s what it comes down to.”
“...Pff!”
He laughed at me and said,
“You even have the skills for that?”
“To you, I probably look like a punk who doesn’t even have the basics. But I’ve got my own thing going. They say you don’t know what’s longer or shorter till you line them up, right?”
“Sure, I suppose you do...”
He narrowed his eyes.
“If I win that match.”
Eyes running over me, the man said,
“In this kitchen, you won’t be making any food for that ‘goal’ you talked about... that’s what it’ll mean. Am I understanding you right?”
“Yes. If you win, then the authority over this kitchen belongs entirely to you, Senior. If you don’t give permission, I’ll quietly back off.”
“And if you win?”
“I become the one who rules this kitchen, and you’ll have to work under me.”
“...You’re not joking. You’re serious.”
He fell into thought, like he was turning something over in his mind,
then soon nodded.
“Fine. You’re right. No matter how much you talk about hierarchy and whatever else, that only really works between people of similar level. In this line of work, skill is supreme, and if your skill is good enough, even if your career is short, you’re the senior.”
“Then...”
“A junior says he can’t accept his senior, huh. Guess I’ll give you a proper lesson.”
And just like that,
“‘Back when I crossed into Gyeonggi Province, I never imagined this would happen.’”
I ended up having a cooking battle
with this guy.
“What conditions are we using?”
“Let’s do this. We each put out one dish, using only the ingredients in that food storage. But the recipe and cooking method are entirely up to the chef.”
“What? With that setup, I’m going to be the one at an advantage, you know?”
Maybe because he was serious about competing in cooking skill, too,
he actually bothered to point that out.
“I’m the one who’s been cooking with those ingredients here all the time. I’ve already got recipes I’ve developed and methods I’ve tried. If we do it this way, you’ll be at a disadvantage. You okay with that?”
“That much... a junior has to give way when he challenges his senior, doesn’t he.”
“...Ha. I have no idea what you’re thinking.”
Arms folded, he asked,
“Then how do we decide the result? If we need someone to eat the food and judge which one tastes better, I can call someone in.”
“No. I’d prefer it if you didn’t bring anyone else.”
The fact that I’m a chef,
is basically dangerous if it gets out to other people.
“Then we won’t be able to decide a winner, you know? A match without a judge—what’s the point of that.”
“We taste each other’s food and decide, that’s all.”
“...With that kind of setup, both of us are just going to insist our own food is better.”
“I won’t.”
Anything else, maybe.
But if it’s a place where we’re testing our skills as chefs,
I’ve got my own pride, too.
In this match,
at least I wasn’t going to play games.
“Or what, are you the type who’ll deny it even if the difference in taste is obvious, Senior?”
“...You sure run your mouth. If you’re that confident, fine. Let’s do it that way.”
He got to his feet,
and as he walked toward the food storage, he said,
“Then we start right now.”
“Yes.”
Just like that,
the two of us moved far apart from each other
and started on our own dishes.
Even as I worked on mine,
I watched him from a distance as he cooked.
And.
After watching for just a bit, I could be sure.
‘As expected...’
His personality is absolute trash, but.
That guy—
‘When it comes to cooking skill, he’s the real deal.’
No.
More than that...
‘There are definitely areas where he’s better than me.’
In the end, I’m a unit cook.
I never got any real training in cooking.
I got dragged into the army more or less against my will.
There, I just happened to get assigned this position,
and I learned “cooking” methods for military food, that was all.
‘There are even Legion members who know more than me when it comes to chef-level knowledge.’
Even if their awakened job isn’t chef,
there were people who worked in food service before the world collapsed.
Unlike people like that,
I don’t even know who that famous chef he said trained this Howard guy is—
that something-or-other Park...?
I don’t know who that person is.
That knife master old man Park who was supposedly a big name in this field.
I didn’t know the knife workshop he ran, either,
that workshop called Park’s Workshop.
I’m someone who honed myself on practical, real-combat cooking in a ruined world, but.
If you’re being strict about it,
my “chef” knowledge
is extremely shallow.
On the other hand...
‘What the hell is that machine.’
This guy,
pulled out a machine I’d never seen once in my life and put his food into it,
and—
‘He’s doing it like that...?’
even in processing ingredients,
he used methods I couldn’t have imagined.
The truth is...
even just as a unit cook, once you get out into society,
that’s usually enough to get you called “pretty good” among ordinary people.
But you can’t compare that to a real chef.
‘This guy is the real chef.’
In the world before it collapsed.
That academic discipline called cooking that Earth had built up over a long time.
He’d spent a long time studying that discipline and engraving it into his body.
A genuine chef.
True to the confidence he’d shown,
he poured a huge amount of focus into every single part of the cooking process.
Even in his small hand movements or gestures,
you could feel the subtle control applied for the sake of the dish.
And like that—
“Eat.”
Howard Jin handed me
the finished dish.
Using limited ingredients,
he’d created something through a complex cooking method I couldn’t even guess at.
Back when I was just a unit cook, I’d have thrown a fit that there was no way to cook with stuff like this,
made a whole fuss, and then said to just make do with rations for today’s meal.
“...It’s good.”
But a dish a genuine chef makes with limited ingredients...
was pretty damn excellent.
“Hmph, guess you really can’t lie, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“...?”
“Like you said, I really can’t lie. It’s amazing.”
He was a man who rubbed me the wrong way in every possible way, but.
“To get this level of flavor out of these ingredients... really amazing.”
As a fellow chef,
I could honestly show him respect.
“...What is this. Are you admitting defeat?”
“Well... let’s see how it goes.”
I humbly acknowledged his skill,
and brought over the dish I’d made and held it out to him.
“This is mine. Go ahead.”
“Hmph... from what I saw, you didn’t take long to cook, and you didn’t really make use of the equipment either. I hardly even see a reason to try it.”
Talking like the match was already decided,
he swaggered up to the food I’d made.
“Well, I’ll give it a taste.”
He
picked up a spoon and put my food into his mouth.
And.
A moment later.
“......”
“......”
With my food in his mouth,
the man planted both hands on the table where the dish was set,
and just stared blankly down at it.
****
“How long are you planning to stay like that?”
“...Uh.”
Cold sweat was running down his cheeks.
Both eyes were shaking like there was an earthquake.
“Uh... how.”
He...
looked at me with a trembling voice and asked,
“Th-this flavor, what the hell...? What did you do to this food...!”
Unable to hide his shock, he questioned me.
Arms folded, looking down at him, I answered,
“Is that how you talk to your senior when you ask a question?”
