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“Don’t,” said Sun Xiang, “give me that look.”
Of course the rat didn’t listen. It was a rat. A gross disgusting rat in a jar which Sun Xiang wanted to hurl into the river. But…
“Stupid, stupid,” Sun Xiang muttered, slapping the jar down. The rat bounced from the impact, its squeaks only partially muffled by the glass. Then it went back to staring at him. Eyes brimming with too much intelligence.
He couldn’t kill it. This rat was a better cook than himself.
Not that Sun Xiang was particularly humble. He was supposed to be good. He was supposed to be good. But after just one week at The Excellence his heretofore unshakeable confidence had been, well, shaken. The head chef was a piece of shit trying to sabotage him out. Everyone else was too busy keeping the kitchen afloat to play nice.
Enter the rat, which had, while avoiding everyone’s eye, served a soup so delicious that it earned a glowing review in the press. Everyone thought it’d been Sun Xiang. And Sun Xiang knew what he’d seen.
“Alright, I don’t know what you did there, but you gotta do it again. So here’s the deal,” Sun Xiang said to the jar. “I let you out. You recreate the soup, and get that fuckhead off my ass. Deal?”
A pause, then the rat bobbed its head. Its gray fur had flattened, and Sun Xiang noticed the ring of white around its left eye, like a monocle. A wise rat?
“Here goes,” said Sun Xiang. He unscrewed the lid, and tipped the jar over.
What did he expect? The rat immediately ran, because it was a rat. For fuck’s sake this had been so dumb, yet it wasn’t until he saw the wormy tail vanishing into the shadows that he realized how much hope he had placed on this rat. So maybe Sun Xiang really was stupid, and maybe he should just cut his losses and resign tomorrow. He shut the empty jar, and used it to push himself back to his feet.
And then the shadows shifted. And then something emerged.
The rat, against all odds, had returned.
Ever since Xiao Shiqin was a wee little blind hairless baby rat, there was something different about him. Now, much like humans, every rat is born unique and special, but as Xiao Shiqin grew up, he only grew different.
Even in darkness, he’d known color.
No matter how he explained, no matter what delicacies he presented, the rest of the clan never found that same spark in the food that passed their mouths. To them it was sustenance; to him it was art.
The fifth time Fang Xuecai caught him poring over a cookbook, struggling to turn each page, he told him, “You should go.”
So engrossed was Xiao Shiqin that he didn’t hear at first, but when he did, his whiskers quivered. “You want me to leave?”
“No, no.” Fang Xuecai scurried closer, until they were side-by-side before this human creation. It was all nonsense to him. But it mattered to his friend.
“I don’t want you to leave,” Fang Xuecai emphasized, “but… the great chefs are all human. We rats just don’t get it. If you stay here… we’d just hold you back. Go out there, cook something great.”
“But you’re family,” Xiao Shiqin protested.
“And you’re a genius. Not only your sharp senses, but your mind too. You deserve to pursue your passion.”
Xiao Shiqin looked down at two tiny paws. “...You think so?”
His friend nodded solemnly. “Just visit sometimes, okay?” And thus, with tearful celebration from the clan, Xiao Shiqin darted into the world above.
But Xiao Shiqin was a rat, and rats were not meant to cook. In fact rats were typically banned from kitchens, and it was by sheer luck that he wound up in a jar and not impaled. This journey, perhaps it simply wasn't meant to be.
Yet as he slunk away from that foolish blond boy by the river, in his mind’s eye he returned to that kitchen. The Excellence, the restaurant that once belonged to the greatest chef of all time. Xiao Shiqin had stood within those bustling white walls and he had tasted his dream.
Was it foolish, to cling to absurdity? Then call him fool.
So how was a rat supposed to help? Sun Xiang couldn’t understand all its squeaking, no matter how insistent. And he definitely never ever wanted to feel the horrifying sensation of a rat’s little paws scurrying over his body ever again.
It was by accident that the rat made the discovery that would revolutionize their partnership. The hair-pulling puppeteering was definitely less than ideal, but Sun Xiang, being Sun Xiang, gritted his teeth and endured. Whatever it took to get good.
The results spoke for themselves. The soup was completed, the head chef put the spoon to his lips, and his face twisted through a gruesome sequence before settling on a curdled sneer.
“Congratulations,” Liu Hao said, and with a “I’m sure you can take care of him,” tossed him to the only female chef in the kitchen. Sun Xiang gave the pretty lady a wave, and Su Mucheng’s look knifed through him.
“My job,” she said, “is to keep Ye Qiu’s restaurant open now that he’s gone. Do not get in my way.”
Even without his rat’s prompting Sun Xiang nodded quickly.
It was one thing to read about restaurant kitchens, it was another thing entirely to cook in one. Xiao Shiqin navigated his human avatar around the chaotic field of steel and heat and cooked for his life.
“How is it,” Fang Xuecai asked him, when he snatched free time to visit them all, and he replied that it was more than he’d ever dared hope. Yes, having to hide, having to clumsily use a proxy in a world that wasn’t for him… there were challenges. But it was worth it.
At night, the ghost of the greatest chef whispered to his dreams.
One day Su Mucheng slapped the daily paper on the counter. “The Little Demon King is coming.”
“Who?”
It was a sign of improvement that she answered Sun Xiang’s question. “Food critic, one of the best despite his youth. He used to love this place, but, well.” Her mouth thinned, and she pointedly didn’t look at the head chef at the other end of the kitchen.
One of the other chefs spoke up. “He’s giving us another chance because of our recent good reviews. Thanks to Little Sun here,” he nodded toward Sun Xiang, who projected a smile that was strained by the little weight on his head.
Unfortunately, that was when the head chef chose to start listening.
“Really? All thanks to Little Sun, yes,” he said, sliding over. “Why don’t you head the kitchen that night? I’m sure someone as remarkable as you would uphold our excellence. When our demon king hears your name, why, that’ll guarantee your career!”
Rat paws tightened painfully against his scalp, and it was all Sun Xiang could do to keep his expression neutral. “Yes chef,” he said, because he knew enough to know he wasn’t ready, but what choice did he have?
It started poorly, when Sun Xiang walked into the kitchen on the night of only to see Su Mucheng, livid. “—crazy? Feed this to Qiu Fei? We’ll be eviscerated!”
Liu Hao shrugged, not even bothering to conceal his smile as he faced the woman. “It was all they had today.” Across the kitchen, Sun Xiang spotted the source of the argument—the most unappetizing selection of what could hardly even be called produce.
Su Mucheng had started pacing, as the rest of the kitchen cowered. “Look, I know you never liked Ye Qiu, you don’t like anyone better than you, but I thought you’d have basic professionalism—but you would tank this restaurant just to—to what?”
“It’s time you started looking at the bigger picture. When a knife breaks, do you keep it around? No, you replace and move on.” Liu Hao scoffed, flipping his hand. “Women, always so emotional.”
The air froze. Nervous eyes darted between the ugliness of the head chef, and the sudden, unnerving calm on Su Mucheng’s face. The anger had been wiped clean.
“You’re right,” she said smoothly. “I think I’ve done my best here.” She spun on her heel and in silence, head lifted, she walked out.
The rest of the staff muttered uneasily amongst themselves. At last, one of them said, simply, “I’d rather follow her.”
Thirty seconds later, the kitchen was empty. Liu Hao glanced around as though expecting an elaborate joke, but the nervousness soon melted away into irritation. “About time I cut my losses,” he muttered, and the door slammed shut behind him.
And then, it was just Sun Xiang, and a rat, and the murmurs of the patrons waiting outside.
In the empty kitchen, the human’s hand lifted Xiao Shiqin carefully off his head. It was shaking.
Xiao Shiqin, too, felt like shaking, because it was simply impossible for the two of them to run a full kitchen restaurant. They may as well just go home.
But then, Sun Xiang looked him in the eyes, and said, “I don’t want this to be the end.”
Somehow, that simple admission shocked awake his determination.
Despite humble origins, Xiao Shiqin had found his way to cooking. He wanted to keep cooking. He might be just a rat, but he was a chef all the same. And more than that, he was the genius of Clan Thunderclap.
They could salvage this.
“Don’t panic,” he said to the human, even if he couldn’t understand, and sprinted home to retrieve his family.
Su Mucheng couldn’t stay. But as she rode her motorbike through the darkening city streets, she realized that she couldn’t stay away, either.
The Excellence was her brothers’ dream. She would not let the selfishness of a petty man sink the place. Not today. And Qiu Fei… he who'd once been the restaurant’s most devoted fan, he deserved better.
Back at the kitchen, she pushed open the doors, and—
Rats.
Everywhere. They swarmed.
It was a testament to her unusual upbringing that she didn’t scream. Not that she wasn’t horrified. But before she could flee, a hand on her arm stopped her, “Wait, let me explain—”
She fixed her eyes on a thankfully-still-human Sun Xiang. “You have ten seconds.”
Qiu Fei had moderated his expectations carefully. Yes, word was that The Excellence had recovered its spark. But people often saw what they wanted to, not what was actually there.
What Qiu Fei wanted was something he would never eat again.
He eyed the plate that was placed down in front of him. Presentation, smell, he noted it down. And then—he lifted the first bite to his mouth—
—taste.
“The Excellence is not what it once was—but today, I mean this as praise. Here is the birthplace of a new harmony of flavor, and I look forward to their regrowth.”
On his fourth reread, Xiao Shiqin finally allowed himself to believe. The critic who had best known his idol’s food had awarded such words to him.
Chef Ye Qiu, he thought, can you take pride in us, your legacy?
In the end, most of the kitchen staff returned, with one notable exception. But the change drastically improved the quality of life in the kitchen, so no one minded.
The rat was preferred, anyway. Sun Xiang had taken to cooking independently, so now it moved with full freedom around the kitchen, cooking up a storm.
Su Mucheng eventually asked. “So what did you end up doing with Liu Hao?”
The rat squeaked.
“Actually, never mind, I don’t want to know.”
One day, a plain-looking man entered the restaurant. His slender fingers slid over the offered menu, and when the waiter came to take his order, he merely smiled.
“Please,” he said, “surprise me.”