God of Cooking

Lisa smiled bitterly and opened her mouth.

“I’m going to the cathedral these days. Are my intentions so clear?”

“A lot of people are like you. They look for God when they need him. Faced with death, they are supposed to become weak. How great they are.”

“And usually, God doesn’t answer. But I hope God could listen to my prayers this time. Although I didn’t fold my hands together and close my eyes, I was shouting so loudly to God, ‘Please save me. Save my life. Get me out of this mud.’ I prayed so hard.”

“Did you hear His reply?”

“Well, I’m not sure if He replied to my prayers or not. Maybe Ella was His gift to me. So, I’m going to shout out to Him one more time and pray that I should be able to stay with His gift a little longer.”

Then Lisa asked with an awkward expression, “If there is God, He won’t take back the gift He has given me, right?”

Actually, Lisa was speaking out what she wanted to say deep down, not knowing who the other party was. She just prayed earnestly, relying on coincidences and miracles, hiding behind her own shabbiness.

“God may turn a deaf ear to my prayers for gold and wealth, but...” Lisa said.

Then she asked Rachel, God, herself, and her own fear deep down, “Shall God turn away from my prayers for being with my daughter?”

***

“What did you say?” Kaya asked as if she couldn’t believe it.

Instead of replying, Min-joon bowed his head because he knew she didn’t hear him wrong.

Perhaps she didn’t want to confirm it from him by asking this and that because it was too painful for her to believe what she just heard.

A heavy silence fell. Neither Kaya, Chloe, nor Min-joon knew how to cope with this situation. Actually, this was something so sad for them.

“It looks like something bad keeps happening these days.”

Chloe muttered in a heavy voice. She knew Lisa wasn’t healthy, so she was always up to her neck at work, but she had never thought that her work would put her life in danger.

Kaya put down the chocolate on the table, whose wrap she opened by half before she heard from Min-joon about Lisa. Leaning on the sofa as if she collapsed, she recalled Ella’s face blankly. At that moment, Ella’s face came to her mind, for the main focus of this tragedy was Ella, not Lisa in this situation.

Without a father, she had no other person than Lisa that she could rely on. Even Jack, her grandfather, was also not feeling well, so he wondered if he could take care of Ella properly.

‘No, I shouldn’t think Lisa can’t survive.’

Probably her survival rate was not 0%. If that was the case, she wanted to have hope for her survival. She wanted to cheer for Ella’s mom.

“The only thing we can do is cheer her up,” Kaya muttered in a low voice.

It had been a long time since she felt so helpless.

Min-joon opened his mouth with a sigh.

“Please take good care of your health. If you guys are sick, it will be really hard for me.”

“Hey, you do some exercise first.”

“I’m working out these days.”

“What? You mean one hundred push-ups?”

When Kaya pointed it out, he turned his head with an embarrassing expression.

But there was a reason why he asked them to take care of their health. As a matter of fact, Kaya and Chloe ran into some difficulties these days.

That was what Min-joon just pointed out, namely their stamina.

What Kaya and Chloe did wasn’t just cooking. They had to take care of the main cooking process while supervising the sales for the restaurant, customers’ orders, and their staff’s work.

As a result, they were literally snowed under with work because they served not only as head chefs but also sous chefs and demi chefs. And this was the blind spot of Kaya and Chloe’s idea. Their idea that they would be responsible for all the main tasks with the help of only a few chefs was good because it would produce the most efficient results as long as their chefs were competent.

But being the most efficient meant the most tiring. While talking about efficiency, Kaya and Chloe have not thought about their lives as chefs.

So when they heard about Lisa’s condition, Kaya suddenly felt she was consumed by fear.

She could not conclude that the reason Lisa got lung cancer was because of her overworking, but it would be quite difficult to deny that it had nothing to do with her illness. What if the same thing happened to her someday? What if the kitchen staff worked like her? Of course, customers would be able to access good food at a relatively inexpensive price, but the working environment for the kitchen staff will be terrible.

It was only then that Kaya could understand those chefs who complained about her working style. She also came to realize how dangerous and terrifying the consequences of her approach could bring about. As a matter of fact, she felt she herself became weak these days. Anyway, she had been used to a tough life in the market when she was young, but she could not help but feel exhausted after work. That would be the same with other chefs.

Given that their restaurant opened only a few months ago, she and her kitchen staff were clearly overworking themselves. In a typical restaurant, the higher the rank of a chef, the more the chef was freed from lots of kitchen work, but here at Irregular Lab, it was the opposite. Kaya and Chloe found themselves busiest with kitchen work. Even if time passed, the day would not come when they would be freed from cooking by themselves. Would the kitchen staff like their lifestyle? And could Kaya like her current working style?

***

Min-joon could not stop thinking about Lisa’s illness just like a thorn stuck under his nail.

As a result, he went to work and came back home like a person who was out of his senses. Fortunately, he was more focused than usual when he was cooking as if he wanted to forget about her by concentrating on his work.

In fact, most of the kitchen staff didn’t even think that he was so strange because whenever he got in trouble, he cooked better while he could not focus on anything else.

But the problem was that he kept doing it longer than they thought this time. In the past, it usually took one week for him to pull himself together, but this time, he seemed to get better, but let out a sigh with a gloomy expression repeatedly.

June didn’t really say anything to him about that because she knew his situation very well.

So, she sometimes sighed with him, too, because she also knew Lisa.

That night after work, June took him to not a banquet hall or seminar, but a cocktail bar downtown. As soon as June entered, a woman in her neat black semi-suit welcomed her.

“Hi June, it’s been a long time. Are you here with your boyfriend?”

“He’s not my boyfriend. He’s my chef.”

“Oh, your sous chef. Where’s Dobby?”

“He’s become a head chef.”

“What drink do you want? Any favorite?”

“Well, give me a Mojito. I need something refreshing. Min-joon, how about you?”

“The same thing.”

“Are you okay? You don’t drink well.”

Instead of answering, he smiled gently. Watching him for a moment, she nodded.

She thought he needed alcohol for now. But he didn’t put the straw to his mouth when a glass of Mojito was placed before him.

“You know what? Some people say if they look at something that is so delicious, it tastes so good as to ruin their health, but they wouldn’t care. Well, I have also said that sometimes, but I’m afraid I can’t from now on.”

Instead of answering, she bit the straw in her mouth. Mojito, which was sucked up into the narrow hole, wet her mouth sweet and sour, but it tasted bitter.

“Well, that’s how cooking is about. Most of the delicious dishes are not healthy. Do you want to advocate naturalism?”

“I just don’t know. I just feel bitter.”

“Then just stay like that,” she said in a calm voice. “It’s a bitter situation. What can you do other than to feel bitter when you are not a doctor?”

“I don’t like the fact that I can’t do anything for her.”

“You can’t help it. Even if you want this Mojito to be salty and not sweet while drinking it, it will still be sweet, no matter what you want and expect.”

Min-joon looked at the Mojito quietly when she said that.

He put the straw to his lips gently. It was sweet.

If he could not remove the thorn under his nail and forget the pain, what could he do?

The answer was simple. All he had to do was just endure it.

So, he put up with it. While enduring it, he just focused on what he was supposed to.

Lisa had to overcome her illness. All he could do was cheer her up with comforting words one day when she got over her illness.

Min-joon decided to focus on the task he was assigned right now.

First was his cooking level, the second was his gastronomic level, and lastly, sorting out what kind of cook he could make as his signature dish.

Just saving the taste of the sauce could not give people the impression that he made his own signature dish. He wanted to develop something unique that could clearly give them the impression that it was his dish.

He thought that he could master the so-called sensuous dishes and kitchen leadership, the conditions for cooking level 10, over time. As a matter of fact, his third task might have something to do with sensuous cooking.

“Downey, bring me some tomatoes and lettuce.”

“Yes sir.”