Min-joon and his party got on the plane and flew back to New York.
On the way back, Chloe muttered in a depressed voice, “Why do people have to die?”
Knowing that nobody could answer her question, Chloe asked it. She wanted to believe that death wasn’t something sad, but when she saw Lisa, Jack, and Ella, she couldn’t help but be broken-hearted.
It was a long flight from Los Angeles to New York. Leaving their worries behind, Chloe and Kaya soon fell asleep, while Min-joon began to read Daniel’s cooking journal. Each of Daniel’s recipes still made his heart tremble. It wasn’t that difficult to explain the value of Daniel’s journal because all of the thoughts and inspirations he felt while cooking were already contained in Daniel’s journal. The more he read the journal, the more he felt some ambivalence toward it at the same time. In other words, he felt skeptical that he could beat this terrific chef, on the one hand, but he was still full of desire to beat him, on the other.
‘Daniel must have a perfect gastronomic level and a cooking level.’
Looking at people’s comments about him, Min-joon thought Daniel was a perfect chef, to say the least. When he finished reading the journal, he became more convinced. It wasn’t just because of the impression he got by checking out all the recipes there. Daniel’s agonies were in a different league than his. When he was wandering because he got lost, Daniel was confused because he saw too many paths ahead of him. Daniel’s confusion looked so beautiful to Min-joon that the latter even felt jealous of it.
However, after his envy and admiration of him cooled down, Min-joon could understand Daniel’s cooking a little more. He felt like he got a glimpse of what Daniel was thinking about cooking.
But Min-joon still found no clue. He bit his lips. He hadn’t even reached cooking level 9 yet. His gastronomic level was worse than that. After reaching gastronomic level 9, he still did not know what the condition for the perfect gastronomic level was.
‘Is it impossible to reach level 10 without a perfect palate from the beginning?’
Achieving gastronomic level 10 was never easy. In fact, he had never seen anybody having gastronomic level 10 except for Kaya. Rachel was the only chef who had decoration level 10. And he had never seen anybody with cooking level 10 until now.
‘Why did Chef Rachel not reach cooking level 10?’
He wondered about it blankly. Honestly, he felt it, too. He was more convinced after finding out about Daniel’s cooking. There was such a big difference between Daniel and Rachel. In this situation, it would be weird for Rachel to have already reached cooking level 10. Even if her cooking level was the same as Daniel’s, her cooking was not as perfect as his.
Then, why didn’t she have all that? Why did she fail to reach Daniel’s level? It was probably not a problem for Min-joon to agonize over, who didn’t yet achieve cooking level 9, but he was really curious about it. It wasn’t simply because he wanted Rachel to achieve something at this point.
Cooking level 10 was one of Min-joon’s ultimate goals. Even if he was not good at baking or decoration, he didn’t have any regrets because that was not his specialty. But cooking was different. He devoted his life to cooking. He even raced against time. So, if he ended up achieving nothing without overcoming his own limits, he would feel regretful about it for the rest of his life.
‘Well, I’m not in a position to comment about Chef Rachel, given my current situation.’
He once thought that being the best chef was good, but as a chef, he should focus on enjoying cooking when June or Rachel talked about being the ‘best’ chef.
But these days, he hadn’t thought of anything like that at all because he realized what greed was. He realized that some people dreamed of a peaceful life, but such a dream could be a prison for them. But he was a chef who could be willing to regard his dream as a prison.
In other words, he changed like that thanks to June, Rachel, the surroundings around him, and himself, for he wanted to make cooking his own as much as he loved it.
“Shall I look for it?” he muttered blankly.
Rachel was giving up further developing her skills. That was why she was thinking about getting vicarious satisfaction through Min-joon. He couldn’t turn away from her wishes. He also couldn’t turn a deaf ear to her as much as her wishes. He hated seeing her forgotten and disappearing from the cooking world like this.
Rachel was the best chef he ever met. So she had to be remembered as the best.
‘She said she would make me the best chef.’
He clenched his fist.
‘Yeah, I should repay my indebtedness to her.’
“As I received it, I have to return it.”
***
Contrary to what people worried about, Lisa wasn’t as bad as they thought. Her doctor said that the size of her tumor decreased a lot and the metastasis also stopped. And her postoperative condition was also not bad.
So, recently, Lisa became more concerned about Jack’s health than her own. If she tried to say something to Jack, she had to be scolded by him for taking care of her own health, so she hardly had any chance to get her message through to him. But it was true that his condition was getting worse everyday.
After all, Jack’s body was that of an old man in his 90s. The doctor said his body got too old for his age perhaps because he worked too much. Jack simply nodded bluntly at his words, but Lisa tried to take care of Jack’s health totally from the moment she heard the doctor saying it.
That was why Lisa had no choice but to be shocked to see Jack working.
Jack was making bread.
“Dad! What are you doing now?”
“Why are you making such a fuss when the patissier is making bread?”
“I have no problem if a healthy patissier makes bread, but you know how bad your condition is, right?”
“Yeah. My joints are bad and my muscles have been damaged. But my breathing would stop even before my joints or muscles get worse. So, what’s the point of saving them?”
“Dad!”
“Daniel cooked even during his last moment.”
He suddenly changed the topic. When Lisa was at a loss on how to respond, he continued slowly, “At that time, people focused on just useless things. They were just interested in something like he was Rose Island’s owner, how wealthy he was, how Rachel would take over his wealth, which celebrities were his regular customers, and how they expressed regrets. They even talked about how liberal his personality was. But the most important thing was he died as a chef.”
“Dad, you badmouthed him a lot because he didn’t take care of his health well, right?”
“But I’ve never badmouthed him as a chef. He was a chef until his last moment, Lisa.”
He looked at her with an unusually gentle expression, which didn’t fit him at all.
“I want to follow the same path as him. I don’t want to look like an old man who is afraid of death. I want to be a patissier at my last moment. I want to be a baker. I want the traces of flour on my arm, not the traces of IV shots, and that’s my pride. So, I’ll be able to see Daniel proudly even if I die.”
“Why are you saying it only now?”
“Well, because I’ve realized that I was hiding behind my weakness for reasons of my aching arms and my health.”
He realized it belatedly, but it was not too late.
“Starting today, watch me baking bread from start to finish. That’s the last gift I can give you and my legacy. Please keep carrying on the bakery I dreamed of and practiced. That’s my last request to you as an old father.”
“Dad…”
Lisa bit her lips. It was not because he wanted to refuse the request. She also knew that her remaining time was not long, or more precisely, she didn’t have much time left in this world because lung cancer wasn’t that easy to recover from. Even if her metastasis stopped, her surgery was successful, and her tumor decreased, she knew that death was still lurking in her lungs. And she was scared about it.
Jack continued, “After you master it, train your students, so let them continue to carry our legacy here.”
She just looked at him blankly. He didn’t insist on it without any reason. He really believed that she would not die like this. It seemed that he didn’t even think Lisa would die.
So she pretended to trust what her father said.
“Okay, I will do so.”
He smiled at her. At last, he baked bread on that day and the next day. With his arms, which trembled so much that he could hardly grab a spoon, he made countless dough in pain. During that time, Lisa realized how stupid the things she was thinking about. She thought she overtook her father and that there was no big difference between his baking skills and hers.
But that was not true. Only now did she realize when she witnessed her father’s real capabilities. She felt she could master her father’s skills if she could watch him a little more and longer.
Time passed a little more, and she could finally get close to her father’s masterly baking.
And Kaya and Min-joon had to come back to Los Angeles, dressed in black, stricken with sadness, to see Jack off at his funeral on a hot day.
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