“But you said I didn’t show my abilities as a head chef, right?”
“Do you really need to be obsessed with being a head chef?”June asked in a calm voice.
When June asked something she never expected, Kaya looked at her with a blank expression. June understood her. As a chef, it was so natural for her to dream of becoming a head chef, for it was the highest position a chef could climb, or it seemed to be so.
“You are for real,” June calmly admitted. Kaya was like a gemstone that was as good as Min-joon. More precisely, it was a gemstone that had already been processed to some extent.
“Irregular Labs is a restaurant perfect for showing the customers how great your talent is. All you have to do is use part-times fully just as much as you want. Look at the reality. How many are there who have more glory and reputation than you among those great head chefs?”
Kaya seemed to understand to some extent what June was trying to say. Actually, she knew it a long time ago.
June continued, “The head chefs are shining all the same. But you don’t have to. Even if you don’t borrow the light of another star, you’re already noticed by others. What I mean is that you don’t need to be another constellation.”
“What if I want to be a constellation?”
“I don’t want to say your choice is right or wrong. But it would be a stupid choice.”
“Do you want to say that a foolish choice is wrong?”
“No. But stupid people usually make success.”
“So which side are you on? Are you cheering for me or stopping me?’
“Can I stop you even if I want to? Out of sight, out of mind. You didn’t come here to accept my opinion, but just to check if it’s really okay to do what you want to?”
June got up. She turned her back and looked out the window into the streets of New York. An indescribable smile crept on her face.
“I like being stupid so much.”
<hr />
“Well, I’m going to quit from Irregular Lab soon,” Kaya said.
“Really?”
Min-joon was not surprised because he already heard it. When he sent Kaya to June, frankly he had a premonition that he was going to hear something like this.
“I thought that I really want to be a head chef.”
A real head chef.
She said it briefly, but he could instantly understand what she wanted.
“Did you tell Chloe about your plan?”
“Actually I told her a long time ago when I would quit from Irregular Lab. As you know, I launched this restaurant for the purpose of making memories,” she said with a bitter smile.
Her work at Irregular Lab was sort of memory-making and a message like, “A restaurant like this could exist in the world. So, if you have an idea, don’t hesitate to give it a try. Who knows, you can also be successful like us?”
“Then what are you going to do next?”
“Well, I might find a job as a demi chef or sous chef. I don’t know. So I want to tell you this.”
She crossed her arms and looked at Min-joon Cho. There seemed to be some subtle dissatisfaction in her eyes, so he became a bit uneasy.
“I think we should get married.”
“Uh?”
“You told me last time that I should propose to you when you open a restaurant. That means you are going to open a restaurant when you have to propose to me first, right? It doesn’t matter whether you open the Rose Island Venice branch or open one in another place. So, you had better be independent gradually.”
“Come on, wait a minute. What the hell are you talking about?”
“Propose to me first!” Kaya said in a husky voice. “Then I will accept it.”
Min-joon was so embarrassed that he was speechless. He had never imagined the day would come when he was forced to propose to a woman, and so openly at that.
He asked in a bewildered voice, “Do you want to be a head chef? Or do you want to get married?”
“You always tell me to judge a situation in a complex way, but why are you trying to act stupid now? I want them both. And I don’t want to postpone both.”
He made an awkward expression at that. There were many reasons for the results of something in this world. That was what he used to say to her, but he never expected she would say the same thing back to him.
Whenever she was impatient to get married, he always had some strange feelings. His feelings for her never changed. Of course, he wasn’t as thrilled as he was when he saw her first. Even though there was no more thrill and excitement between them, they got even closer to each other.
As the days passed, her stake in his life grew more and more. When he was at the end of his life, it would be her who would still be beside him.
Nonetheless, he was hesitant. She was still young. Although he lived in a different place from her, she was still younger than him, so it was natural that he wondered why she wanted to get married at such a young age. More precisely, it was no wonder that he wondered about it as a Korean.
For Kaya, the situation was completely different. It was her common sense that if she loved somebody, she wanted to get married to him. Of course, some people were satisfied with living together instead of getting married. Their logic was that they wanted cohabitation because they wanted to meet each other in freedom and excitement without binding each other to something like marriage.
But Kaya didn’t dislike such bondage. Actually, she led a life that had been neglected like a wild dog until now. She wanted to live a life in bondage to someone, and she wanted to be fettered by Min-joon, in particular. She wanted to make him her man completely, so no other woman could touch him.
‘Should I have him get tattooed? Something like ring tattoos is popular these days. Oh, should I have him wear a couple of rings? No, I’d rather just have my name engraved on his forehead or his neck when he gets tattooed.’
She was looking at him intensely.
Feeling a bit scared by her sharp eyes, he said, “Give me some more time.”
“Mooooooooore time?” she slowly extended her words in her sarcastic voice.
But he understood her feelings. He told her repeatedly that he would propose to her, but he had never formally done so. He was thinking of something like a surprise party for his proposal. He was about to say that when she opened her mouth first.
“I already gave you enough time and waited for you long enough. You don’t have to act grand. Just tell me that you want to be with me. That’s all I want.”
Her eyes were filled with tears at that moment. Only then could he feel that she was quite nervous, even though she said in a light tone. And he also knew she said that with great difficulty.
“Sure, I’ll be with you.”
It was the second time that she told her that she just wanted him to confess.
He couldn’t think straight at the moment, unable to think what he should say first.
While he was struggling to find the right words, he just froze the moment he saw her face.
Actually, she was not simply expecting his words.
He realized that she was waiting for his decision as well as his genuine commitment to marriage. She didn’t expect any flowery words from him.
He said, “Sure, let’s get married.”
“Gosh, did you say ‘Let’s get married?’ Huh?”
“Then, will you marry me?”
Their decision to get married was not immediately known to everyone, for they didn’t want to go to the trouble of publicizing it yet. They decided they had better inform people of their marriage after they set the date for marriage.
But they admitted that they didn’t have to hide it from those close to them.
Ironically, it happened to be Chloe who got to know about their marriage first.
“Are you getting married?”
“Yeah. If we go to Los Angeles this time, we want to get married before we open a restaurant.”
“I see. That’s great. Congratulations!”
Chloe smiled calmly. While smiling, she felt a bit strange. She had never thought she would be able to smile so calmly. She thought she might not be able to manage her expressions the moment she heard they were going to get married someday. Was it because she was not close enough to Min-joon to have any lingering affection for him? Or was it because she imagined this kind of scene so many times? Was she already ready for this kind of shock?
Come to think of it, she wondered if she really liked Min-joon. At some point, her obsession with a romantic relationship with him began to diminish. Although she didn’t like a man that much, her feelings toward Min-joon inevitably began to wane because he had never given her a chance to date him.
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