When he got on a plane bound for America for the first time, Min-joon liked to fly. He liked the sensation of his body being pulled toward the ground as if he was riding a roller coaster when the plane took off, and the feeling of being deaf when the plane was in a high altitude.
Now that he has flown so many times that he can’t even count the number of flights, he started to realize how troublesome and hard it was to fly. He felt out of sorts, and time passed slowly. When he thought about flying every week, he wondered if it was really worthwhile to keep doing so.
‘Businessmen who have to fly frequently are really miserable guys,” he thought, chuckling to himself.
These businessmen spent more days flying than living on the ground. When Min-joon first heard about them, he thought that their lifestyle was wonderful and glamorous. But in reality that was not true. Even if they travelled first class, they didn’t feel more comfortable about flying than they did on the ground. The sky was a beautiful thing to look at, but it was not a place for people to live in.
Feeling out of sorts brought back unpleasant memories to Min-joon. He thought about Hugo.
‘No fun in his dish…’
How would he feel if he was in Hugo’s shoes and heard such feedback? How miserable would he feel if he had to face the reality where he could not even satisfy his friends that he regarded as his rivals? Perhaps Hugo would be in the same situation as now even before he decided to participate in this competition again.
“I just feel sorry for Hugo,” Kaya muttered blankly as if she felt the same way at that moment.
Min-jun glanced back at her quickly and opened his mouth.
“Hugo will overcome it too.”
“Yeah, he hasn’t been eliminated yet.”
In fact, Min-joon even thought about the situation where he could be eliminated. Except for the fact that his team’s cuisine had no fun, their dishes were excellent. But in terms of cuisine itself, there was nothing special about their dishes. Even if the chef of a neighborhood restaurant where people just stopped by to satisfy their hunger appeared on a TV cuisine show, not many people would expect something big from such a chef.
No chef would enjoy watching people visiting their restaurants just to satisfy their hunger. They should make the kind of dish that people thought they received as a gift while eating. They should make a dish that would make customers feel happy to be alive because they could enjoy the food.That’s the kind of chef that Min-joon always had in mind.
Hugo was a chef. So, when he heard that his dish had no fun, he must have felt such feedback was more cruel than he was eliminated from the competition.
Therefore, to say that it was not fun would have been a harsher evaluation than rejection.
‘Fun…’
Min-joon hasn’t heard about it often these days. At some point he didn’t care about it. He just took the fun in food for granted, and only focused on making his dish perfect.
He felt like he was acting pompously these days.
When such thoughts overwhelmed him, he rubbed his neck a bit with both hands when Kaya held out her hands to message it.
While he was enjoying her massage with his eyes closed, he just leaned his head against her shoulder.
“Well, it makes me exhausted.”
“Yeah, I guess so. As you know, we’re working too much these days. And we’re expecting too much.”
He did not deny that. There was a lot of difference between him, who appeared in Season 3 of Grand Chef, and him now. Above all, he was much more greedy now than before.
He knew one thing clearly, which was that being more greedy didn’t determine how happy one was or not.
Min-joon just felt tired. He closed his eyes, recalling his old friends.
He suddenly missed them.
<hr />
“I taught you to call me Daddy. Say Daddy!”
“Da…da…”
“Yeah, you’re almost there!”
“Daa…”
Catherine gurgled with delight when Anderson praised her adorably. But Janet shook her head while watching her husband smile faintly, for he was expecting too much from her baby who couldn’t yet coo and gurgle properly.
But Janet hardened her expression whenever Catherine tried to say ‘Daddy.’
In her opinion, her baby should not succeed in calling him Daddy right because it was Mom she thought her baby had to say first.
“Stop teasing Catherine. I’m afraid she can’t breathe while she is gurgling at you.”
“Do you think I’m teasing her now?’
“It doesn’t matter how you think about it. ㅆhe problem is that it’s not good that she is gurgling too much. Come out with Catherine in your arms. I’m going to feed her baby food. Please put her in the chair.”
Although he was making a dissatisfied expression,he got up immediately without complaining. Before he had a child, he wouldn’t get up from the bed once he lay in her bed, but he was so busy taking care of Catherine whenever Janet mentioned her baby’s name. So much so that she felt he felt her baby was more important than her. She wondered if she had to be upset because of that.
When she was lost in such childish thoughts, she turned her head so that Anderson couldn’t see her, then smiled.
These days she was so busy, but at the same time she was so happy every day. Anderson was as busy as her. Since both of them could be away from home in the evening, they had to hire a babysitter to take care of Catherine for several hours. Of course, that didn’t mean they didn’t pay attention to their baby. It was natural that they slept fitfully because of their baby, and whatever they did during their break time was usually related to Catherine.
Janet felt something strange about her married life. They got married because they fell in love with each other, but they focused on their baby rather than themselves. All she did was that she gave birth to Catherine, but before she got married, she had never thought about a baby, not to mention the fact that her life would be pretty much affected by her baby.
To be honest, she was a little scared at first because Catherine, not she, would change her life, but come to think of it, that wasn’t true. She didn’t have to think about it logically. The thing was she didn’t feel gloomy day by day, like she used to be before she got married. Rather she was happy. Wasn’t it more than enough for her? She could not satisfy her thirst for some lofty ambition before she got married, but she began to satisfy it now.
Sitting around the dining table, Anderson and Janet started having a simple breakfast. Their breakfast was always simple, as always. Well-baked omelettes and pancakes, maple syrup and whipped cream, plus bacon and sausages.
“It looks like Min-joon and Kaya are having a good time at the Grand Chef competition.”
It was Janet who spoke first. Anderson replied, carefully pulling the spoon out of Catherine’s cute mouth.
“I guess so. People like them so much.”
“Well, it looks like they were just ordinary chefs in Los Angeles.”
“Yeah, you’re right.”
“They are going to be back soon, though.”
“Really? Any news?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say it’s news to you, but as you know, the original Rose Island. They are remodelling it right now.”
When she said that, he took his eyes off Catherine and looked at her.
Catherine was waving her hand, insisting he should look at her, but he was struck by what she just said because it’s really shocking.
“So Min-joon said he would come back?”
“Well, I don’t think so. It seems Rachel is just remodelling it for some purpose.”
“Man, she still loves him…”
Anderson smiled bitterly. EVen though he felt he overcame it by now, Rachel’s favoritism toward Min-joon was a thaw in his throat for a long time.
He glanced at her sneakily because she could be jealous, given that it was her who was working with Rachel as her sous chef at Rose Island now. But Rachel had been preparing to reopen the Rose Island on Venice St after remodelling it, then make Min-joon its head chef.
But Anderson could understand Rachel’s decision because he had no choice but to admit that Min-joon was ahead of him and Janet. It’s not just Min-joon’s popularity among people, but his overwhelming cooking talent that made Anderson admit it.
Suddenly, Anderson looked at the dining table. It’s the morning of the day. They just woke up, so they had no appetite and they were tired. However, their pretty simple breakfast menu, which could never be called a chef’s breakfast menu, suddenly provoked something in his subconscious.
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