Chapter Text
The kitchen is an assault on every one of Gyuvin’s senses.
Bright white lights create a glare against the stainless steel countertops, which is somehow less disorienting than the constant sound of chatter accompanied by clanging pans. On some days, the kitchen sounds like a symphony, but tonight it’s a cacophony—and Gyuvin is the one who is out of tune. Behind him, the scent of garlic blooms in the air at the hand of the chef at the sauté station, hissing sharply as it comes into contact with the heated oil. The noise pulls Gyuvin’s focus away from the cutting board in front of him. In his hand, the knife feels like lead, heavy instead of nimble, off balance even though Gyuvin had sharpened it at the start of the shift. His vision swims, and the white of the onion seems to blend with the plastic cutting board until he can barely tell what he is cutting at all. Still, his arm moves robotically, trained for this repetitive motion even as his brain wanders elsewhere. A member of the waitstaff slams a new ticket down on the line, and Gyuvin unconsciously flinches at the sound.
“Two more orders of the octopus!"
“Yes Chef!” A chorus of acknowledgement fills the kitchen.
Gyuvin is working on garnishes for their appetizers; the order has nothing to do with him. Still, his ears are pricked for any mention of a task that might involve him. A familiar hissing sound informs him that the octopus has made it to the grill. As overwhelming as the sensations are, Gyuvin has come to know this kitchen so well that he doesn’t need to see it; he knows its activities by sound alone.
Being a chef means learning to block all the distractions out.
A chef must be aware of everything while simultaneously not allowing their focus to stray from the task in front of them.
Slice.
A chef must be able to trust their team without question.
Slice.
A chef must remember that everyone in the kitchen is a cog in a mechanism that needs to spin perfectly so that the entire machine doesn’t veer off the road.
Slice.
In the middle of the dinner rush, the kitchen is something like a circus. Chaos in an organized fashion—an outsider can only watch with awe at how all the pieces fit together to form an almost visual performance.
“Hot line start plating!”
Startled out of his thoughts by the instruction, one of his slices comes out too large, too crooked to be served as is. Still, he calls out the obligatory, “yes Chef!” Even though, once more, the direction has nothing to do with him.
Normally, Gyuvin has no problem fitting his cog wherever it needs to be, tying his apron and working at his station with a laser precision that had always been praised by the head chef to the point of jealousy by his peers. Whether he’s the strongman or the trapeze artist, it feels like Gyuvin knows each role well enough to do it blindfolded. He’d helped develop half of these recipes anyway; the steps of their creation felt like they had been engraved into his bones by now.
But tonight, he feels like he’s spinning plates, and every movement makes him worry that he’ll send the whole tower toppling over.
As he struggles to correct his crooked slicing, he can hear the whispers of his instructor in culinary school in his ear.
Too slow!
Every station will fall behind if you can’t keep up.
You have to earn your place in this kitchen.
Every day is a test, and if I was your head chef today, you would have failed.
Gyuvin takes a shuddering breath and begins to chop faster. He’s been out of school for so many years, but the reminders of it still linger, ghosts he can’t escape even when he’d proved time and time again that he deserves his place in this kitchen. His instructor is gone, and his words are nothing but scars that have long healed over.
That doesn’t mean that the phantom pain never stings where the wounds once laid.
He was fine now. Head Chef Lee loved Gyuvin like his own son, and this restaurant felt like more of a home than his actual apartment. Chef would understand a little mistake like this, would never hold Gyuvin’s entire career over his head for one lopsided slice.
“Kim, are you almost done?” A voice yells from across the room. His eyes snap up from the cutting board.
Of course, now that Head Chef Lee is gone, it is unfortunate that Chef Moon has never been as forgiving.
The sudden brightness of the lights make spots form in his eyes as he tries to find his boss amongst all the blurring motion in the kitchen. His coworkers form a maze of white coats and squeaky black shoes, seeming to multiply by the second the longer he waits. Eyes flicking back and forth, Gyuvin wonders if the room is spinning, or if it’s his own mind playing tricks on him once more. Where did the voice come from?
“Yes Chef!” Gyuvin replies on instinct, dropping the knife and wiping his sweaty palms on his apron. Picking up the container of onions, he announces as he weaves through the stations, “On your left! On your right!”
Head Chef Moon appears in front of him. Finally, he sets the tub down.
The man stares at the metal container for a few moments. Gyuvin feels a bead of sweat begin to form on his forehead underneath his bandana. It seems like the noise had gotten even louder, or maybe it had been muffled before by the ringing in his ears.
Finally, he looks up at Gyuvin. The man is a foot shorter than him, but no less terrifying. It almost felt worse to have an opponent that would cut him down at the knees.
“It was supposed to be a mirepoix. This is only the onions.”
Shit. The ringing in his ears is drowned out by the thundering of his heartbeat. He feels like a trainee chef again on his first day in the kitchen—cowering for his mistakes and afraid of the punishment he knew would follow. Wasn’t he supposed to be working on garnishes, why would he be preparing a mirepoix in the middle of dinner rush? The question is already forming before he bites down sharply on his tongue. The sensation isn’t as painful as he expects, perhaps dulled by the adrenaline coursing through his veins. There is no talking back to the head chef, especially not to Chef Moon.
“Are you even listening to me right now? What am I supposed to do with all these fucking onions? Make French onion soup? Did you forget this is an Italian restaurant, Sous Chef Kim?”
Gyuvin tries to apologize, but the words refuse to form on his lips. They sit heavy in his tongue, forcing his mouth open even though no sound comes out.
Someone taps him on the shoulder.
“Gyuvin,” they say. He can’t answer. He’s busy. It’s rude to ignore them, but it’s even worse to turn away from his boss without managing to properly repent for his failure.
“Gyuvin!” They won’t take no for an answer, shaking him by the shoulders.
Finally, he wakes up.
*
Even more disorienting than it had been in his dream, the waking world swirls back into existence slowly. The more he comes to, the more he feels silly for not realizing that he had been dreaming in the first place. Why the fuck would he be cutting a mirepoix in the middle of a busy dinner service? The prep work should have been done hours before. That was, he supposed, what made it a proper nightmare.
Most people had nightmares about showing up to school naked or falling endlessly into a chasm—genuinely frightening things that weren’t that embarrassing to admit out loud. Not Gyuvin, even in his dreams he couldn’t escape his work.
The sun peeks through an open window, the curtain fluttering as a cool, salty breeze floats through the dining room. Not exactly a nightmare at all either.
Gyuvin’s cheek is pressed to a stack of gray newspapers—the ones Hanbin and Yujin spread over the wooden tables in lieu of a tablecloth to prevent staining the few unmarked surfaces they have left. He must have fallen asleep before their unofficial waiter could set the papers out for the dinner rush. The old paper smells strongly of mildew and chemicals from being kept in the storage closet for so long, causing his nose to wrinkle involuntarily. Straightening up, Gyuvin stretches his sore muscles against the back of the chair, the legs wobbling as he leans backward, nearly tipping over before he catches himself by hooking a foot around the table leg.
In reality, ZeroBase couldn’t be farther from the restaurant in his dream.
With fifteen tables crammed into a dining area barely big enough to fit half of them; some of the chair legs cross in ways that require Yujin to nearly dance between them during lunch and dinner rush when the room is packed with guests chattering over the sounds of a busy kitchen where Gyuvin and Gunwook are working the line. The tiled floor is clean, meticulously so, but cracked in some places—each break of which has been carefully filled in by Hanbin over time to avoid the expense of replacing the entire stone. Most of the tables match, but plenty of the chairs don’t, scrounged up from the second hand shop or the streets nearby when one of the legs of an old chair reached the point that even Hanbin’s handiwork couldn’t put it back together. A noticeboard hangs by the register showcasing local events. Neighborhood kids would put up advertisements in the summer for dog-walking services or tutoring while the elderly customers tittered to themselves about how much so-and-so’s daughter or son had grown up over the years.
Around the corner, the door to the kitchen flaps back and forth, the hinges a bit loose from being slammed so often by an overzealous Yujin every time he picked up a plate to serve to their patrons. A hundred times Hanbin had warned the restaurant’s youngest ‘employee’ not to bang the door, but the waiter danced to the beat of his own drum—and sometimes the music he secretly played in his earbuds when he thought the manager wasn’t looking. No one really gave Yujin a hard-time about it (though sometimes Gyuvin wanted to give him a lecture about proper safety when handling a burning earthenware pot full of soup) because it wasn’t like he was getting paid for his efforts either. A “perk” of being the manager’s son, Yujin often complained, but his protests had as much substance as the steam floating above the dishes he brought out to the tables. Just like Hanbin, Yujin had grown up in these walls; ZeroBase was the only home he’d ever known.
The kitchen itself feels like the size of a postage stamp, but only because it’s organized so poorly. Over the years, appliances were added wherever they might fit instead of going through the effort to redesign the whole place more efficiently. Gyuvin doubted ZeroBase had ever been fully renovated in the thirty years the place had been open. As much as he would like to give the place a makeover, Gyuvin knew the restaurant’s finances were tight. Hanbin would never admit it, would let Gyuvin spend millions of won they didn’t have just to have his dream kitchen, but there was no reason to update the place when it would never be more than a corner restaurant in a small town on a tiny island that no one of note would ever visit.
Hanbin called it cosy. Gyuvin had a hard time seeing past the eccentricity of it all.
Still, ZeroBase might be a mosaic of old pieces, cobbled together with a little bit of love and a whole lot of superglue, but right now, it was all Gyuvin had.
Not all that much about the place had changed since Gyuvin used to eat here as a kid in the summer, visiting his aunt, uncle, and cousin Hanbin on Jeju-do during the mid-year break. His parents would rent a little car at the airport and take the long way around the island to get to the village where his cousin’s family lived. The entire ride there, he would watch the white capped waves crash against the golden shore like sweet cream spilling from a pastry onto a vanilla sand beach.
Jeju-do was heaven to a middle schooler trapped in the massive city of Seoul, all blinking lights and skyscrapers that reached up higher into the clouds than Gyuvin could even see—and he had always been tall for his age. He and Hanbin used to play in the sea for hours, digging castles in the sand and dunking each other into the cool blue water. Only when the sun finally started to set would they race to catch the last bus back into town. They had learned the hard way that missing it meant scrounging up coins to use the pay phone by the lifeguard tower to call Gyuvin’s parents so they wouldn’t be stranded by the beach all night.
When they got back to the restaurant, Hanbin’s parents would already have prepared bowls of ice cold noodles for them—Gyuvin’s with extra vinegar, just how he liked it. Crunching on ice and spicy naengmyeon, it was the perfect end to a summer’s day, nostalgic in a way that could never be recreated, innocent from the kind of happiness all too easy to grow out of as an adult.
By the time he started high school, Gyuvin didn’t have time to visit Jeju-do anymore in the summer. What short breaks he had were spent in hagwon or studying for the next semester’s exams that never seemed to end. His mind swam with equations and English literature instead of in the frosted blue sea.
Once Hanbin moved to Seoul for university, Gyuvin seemed to forget about the island entirely, too caught up in his lessons and his newfound interest in cooking to reminisce about the freedom of those summer days.
He grew obsessed with the way ingredients could be prepared into dishes that could only be described as art, and how flavors could dance on the tongue as a feast for the eyes and mouth to behold. A simple carrot could be used in only as many ways as he could imagine—roasted with butter and herbs, julienned to add a crunch to a refreshing cold salad, pureed to add creaminess to soup, or shaved to add a sweetness to a cake. Cooking was like a puzzle with an unlimited number of outcomes, as long as he was creative enough to keep trying them.
It was also an escape from the constant barrage of assignments piled on by his teachers. There was a mounting pressure not to fall behind his peers, even when math never made sense to him the way cooking did. Why did he need to learn how to solve an integral when he could prepare a three course meal using only the leftovers in his parent’s fridge? He would rather spend his weekends searching for the freshest ingredients at the old markets of Seoul than in the stuffy top floor hagwon memorizing passages of Shakespeare he would never need in his daily life.
To appease his parents, Gyuvin survived one year of university as a finance major. Every hour was torture, endured only by the promise that he might be able to use some of the skills he’d learned to open his own restaurant one day. After he returned from his enlistment, he couldn’t stand to pretend he fit in anymore with his classmates who wanted to be bankers or stock traders when all he wanted to do was have his own kitchen to cook whatever he wanted. After a little (a lot) of arguing with his parents, and a little (a lot) of support from Hanbin, Gyuvin convinced them to let him transfer into the university’s culinary arts program. Finally, he was where he wanted to be.
Hanbin had asked him once if it was because of his aunt and uncle’s restaurant that he wanted to become a chef. He’d shaken his head in vehement disagreement. Gyuvin wasn’t interested in the simple foods that Hanbin’s parents served on the island to the sunburnt tourists and retired locals. He wanted to work in a huge restaurant in Seoul—the city was where the real food scene was, the critics and the cutting edge techniques and flavors that would never reach the island.
One day, he dreamed he would have his own restaurant in Hannam or Apgujeong—the kind of place that took months to get a reservation at—on a hotel rooftop that had views of the entire city.
Those dreams felt farther away now than those long forgotten summer days, and not just because he was back on the island he thought he would never return to, working in the very restaurant he had written off all those years ago because it was the only place that would hire him.
Hanbin had said that Gyuvin was doing him a favor, moving out here and helping him get the restaurant back on its feet after his parents had left it to him. Gyuvin knew it was the other way around. After he’d lost his sous chef position at En Garde, he had been listless, purposeless, and lonely in Seoul by himself.
In the first few weeks after The Incident (which was easier to think about in Big Words instead of detailed description that made the pain re-bloom like touching the handle of a hot pan again despite knowing how the sensitive skin would burn even worse the second time), Hanbin suggested he travel—go to all the places in the world that had the foods he’d always talked about wanting to try. It’s not like he didn’t have the money, or the time. But Gyuvin couldn’t bring himself to go on his own, and Hanbin had the restaurant to manage, so in the end there had really only been one choice. Secretly, Gyuvin felt that Hanbin was grateful he didn’t go abroad—at least in Jeju he could keep an eye on him. He would always be grateful for Hanbin, but his cousin could be a bit of a mother hen, wanting to keep all his chicks in a line so they were easy to take care of.
Suddenly, Gunwook burst out of the kitchen, fully waking up the lazy parts of Gyuvin’s brain that were still trapped in his thoughts. “Oh good, you’re awake. I thought you were going to sleep all the way through family meal. Don’t worry, I saved you a sandwich. Well, Yujin got to half already but…”
Nodding without really listening, Gyuvin accepts the plate, steeling his nerves before looking down to see what concoction awaited him.
On the outside, it looks like a regular sandwich. Toasted sourdough bread crumbles beneath his fingers, still warm to the touch. Had Gunwook made it fresh? He wondered, absentmindedly poking at the crusts. When he flips it over to check the inside, he feels his eyes widen as kimchi juice drips from between the two thick slices of cheese on each piece of bread.
“Wait!” Gunwook shouts, pointing directly at Gyuvin before disappearing back into the kitchen in a flurry of white and blue. Gyuvin freezes, sandwich still in hand. A line of kimchi juice begins to run down his pointer finger. He doesn’t know whether to be intrigued or terrified.
The line chef returns with a little cup of red liquid. “Tomato soup,” he offers by way of explanation when the confused expression doesn’t drop from Gyuvin’s lips.
“When did we get tomatoes?”
It’s the least important question of all the questions on the tip of his tongue, but as the head chef, it’s part of his job to know every ingredient that’s in his kitchen. When he had fallen asleep on the newspapers, he was certain there were absolutely no tomatoes to be found on the premises.
“From Grandma Choi. She stopped by to give us some as a thank you to Hanbin for watching baby Nara the other day, and since you didn’t have anything with tomatoes on the menu, I just thought—”
Gunwook rambles like he’s going to be in trouble for making tomato soup and sandwiches to feed the small staff a bit of dinner before they have to get back to work again.
“That was nice of her.” Gyuvin cuts him off before Gunwook can work himself into an even more panicked frenzy. He waves a hand over the plate and bowl in a questioning gesture. “What is this supposed to be exactly?”
“Tomato soup,” Gunwook says, then he pauses, like he’s gearing himself up for a big reveal, “and grilled kim-cheese! What do you think? It’s a clever name right?”
The younger chef looks so excited that Gyuvin nods automatically even when his first instinct is to cringe at the silly pun. “Very clever.”
“Go on, try it. It’s really good. Yujin had a whole one, plus half of yours. He’ll vouch for me.”
Privately, Gyuvin thinks that Yujin would eat anything as long as it was handed to him on a plate. The high schooler was always Gunwook’s first test subject when it came to his recipes. Though, to be honest, the grilled kim-cheese was tame compared to some of the other dishes Gunwook had made for them using the leftovers from the day’s menu. Greek olive, mango, and spring onion kimchi salad had been served the week prior, and during one particularly slow evening in winter, Gunwook had prepared an entire flight of Korean flavor-inspired deviled eggs.
Dipping his sandwich into the soup, Gyuvin takes a big bite, his teeth sinking through the soft cheese but crunching on the crispy bread and sour kimchi. He chews thoughtfully. It’s not actually half bad. About to voice the thought aloud, he feels his mouth start to burn. As soon as he swallows, he turns to Gunwook, betrayed.
“Why was it so spicy??”
Gunwook flushes. “Oh. Maybe a bit too much chili paste in the soup, then.”
“You put chili paste in the soup?”
“I saw it online in a recipe for tomato pasta, and I thought, tomatoes are tomatoes, so why not!”
Gyuvin breathes heavily though his mouth, unable to shake the lingering heat from his tongue.
“So, is it good?” Gunwook looks at him with such sparkly eyes that Gyuvin doesn’t even think about saying no.
“It’s great,” he coughs out, flashing a thumbs up.
Gunwook was a good chef, and sometimes more creative than even some of the highest up in the restaurant business in Seoul, but there was a reason only Gyuvin was allowed to set their menu. A soup like this might actually kill one of the grandmas that came to eat lunch here, and they needed to keep all the regulars they could if they didn’t want to lose the restaurant to one of the mega-complex builders who have wanted to put condos on this half of the island since Hanbin’s parents still owned the place. Gyuvin still didn’t really understand why—there wasn’t much to do out here besides visiting a tiny waterfall up in the hills compared to the towns nearby—but he supposed their greed just knew no bounds. If they built hotels, tourists would come stay in them, even if they had to drive out the local businesses to do it.
Forever his savior, Hanbin sets an iced americano down in front of him, the ice still rattling in the cup. He takes several sips before Hanbin can even take the seat across from him.
“Thank you,” Gyuvin says gratefully between gulps. Even after years of training himself to consume the drink, he still can’t stand the bitter taste. But when he’d still worked in Seoul, the order was a sign of seriousness, a critical part of the walls he had put up in order to survive the competitiveness of his coworkers. They weren’t around anymore, and Gyuvin was the boss now, but it was a habit at this point. “How much do I owe you?”
“Nothing.” Hanbin brushes him off like always. “It was a two for one deal.”
Gyuvin knows there isn’t really a deal. Hanbin goes to the same bakery cafe every afternoon across the street and uses some variation of the same excuse each time. Gyuvin has been to the cafe too once when he tried to return the favor. Unless the guy who works there is in love with Hanbin—which isn’t impossible now that Gyuvin thinks about it—the deal doesn’t exist. Maybe Gyuvin should go over one of these days to let the man know that Hanbin is happily taken and that he can stop pining over the manager and plying him with extra iced americanos as bribery for the date he’ll never agree to go on.
It’s more likely that Hanbin just pays for the second coffee out of his own pocket because he knows Gyuvin needs the caffeine to get through the busy evening shift. Hanbin has always been kind to the point that sometimes it pisses Gyuvin off.
Gunwook sets another sandwich in front of Hanbin, along with a cup of the soup. Wisely, Hanbin skips the tomato broth and takes a large bite of the sandwich. His eyes widen, almost to the point of confusion, but maybe that is just because of the assault of flavors that is Gunwook’s grilled kim-cheese. “Pretty good!” He flashes Gunwook a closed-mouth grin, his cheeks puffed out like a hamster as he chews his sandwich.
Satisfied, the line cook returns to the kitchen to continue prep work, leaving only the restaurant manager and the head chef in the dining area.
Gyuvin finishes the last bite of his sandwich. It’s not bad at all, one of Gunwook’s best creations if he is honest, the kind of thing that would be delicious on a summer day after a long morning at the beach. It just isn’t something that would do well at the restaurant, whose patrons expected the kind of traditional Korean food Hanbin’s parents had served year after year without ever changing the menu.
Boiling cauldrons of broth for gukbap and stew, steeping cold noodles in vinegar, and preparing vegetables for bibimbap wasn’t glamorous, but if that was what people wanted to order, then Gyuvin had to accept that his days of inventing vibrant seasonal menu each week were over. Still, it hurt a bit to deny Gunwook, who hoped that his seaweed pasta or doenjang chowder might one day earn a place on the menu, but the wheels of the restaurant had been turning for thirty years—there was no need to change it now.
Gyuvin wipes his greasy fingers against the newspaper table covering, surprised when he sees a slick of oil begin to spread over his own face printed on the gray page, the ink having begun to fade with time.
Pushing the plate out of the way, Gyuvin picks up the newspaper, which makes a smacking sound as he stretches it wide to read the full headline.
Local Talent Takes Top Prize: Kim Gyuvin of Michelin Starred Restaurant En Garde Wins International Cooking Competition
Hanbin must notice it at the same time Gyuvin does. “Shit,” he mutters to himself. “I thought I got rid of all of those already.”
Gyuvin stands on shaking legs, snatching up the paper from the next table over. How had he missed it before? It was like sitting in a hall of mirrors reflecting the better version of himself—a version that was nowhere to be found one year later.
“Yujin must have grabbed the wrong pile from storage.” Hanbin tries to make excuses but the damage is already done. Standing quickly, Hanbin goes to gather the newspaper from the other tables as well. With horror, Gyuvin realizes that his face is on every single one. There must be a dozen copies just in his field of view alone.
Maybe this is the real nightmare, his brain playing a trick on him by making him think he’d woken up when he’d only fallen deeper into sleep. His fingers grip the wooden backrest of the chair until they turn white in an attempt both to steady his shaking legs and wake himself up. But Hanbin keeps talking, so it’s not a nightmare but a very unfortunate reality that Gyuvin can’t actually dream of escaping.
“I swear I thought they were all tossed out. It’s just, you know, the whole family wanted one, and my parents were just picking them up whenever they saw them. They were giving them out at the restaurant at some point. but there just so many that they got moved to storage and—”
Well, there was a reason no one was interested in a copy of the year-old paper now, Gyuvin thought sardonically.
It felt a bit ironic that his greatest achievement had been reduced to scraps used to absorb spilled stew and wipe greasy fingers instead of hanging in a frame on the wall.
“I think I’m going to go out for some air.”
*
It’s only when Gyuvin is confident that Hanbin hasn’t followed him outside, when he has no one for company but the brick wall at his back and the dumpsters by his side, that Gyuvin feels like he can finally breathe again.
The newspaper is still crumpled in his fist. He debates tossing it out—the recycling bin is barely half a meter away—but that feels dramatic, and Taerae had made him promise that he would work on that in their last therapy session. So instead of using the scrap paper as an opportunity to demonstrate why he hadn’t been picked for the high school basketball team despite standing over six feet tall, Gyuvin unfolds it against the red brick, staring at his own image like past-Gyuvin might see him through the looking glass and take it as a warning of the shitstorm that was to come a few weeks later.
In the photograph, he grins wide enough that his smile seems to take up his entire face. Innocent in his chef’s white coat, his name is visibly embroidered on the right pocket. He would probably be embarrassed to see himself now, cooking in an old threadbare apron that belonged to his aunt or uncle over a graphic t-shirt probably from Hanbin’s high school days. All of his white coats were still hanging in his closet—he couldn’t bear to get rid of them and the memories they held—but he couldn’t bring himself to wear them again either. Besides, out here there was no one to tell him off for wearing an improper uniform but himself.
Though his body had been a bit smudged over by kimchi brine, Gyuvin can still make out the face of Chef Paik, bringing Gyuvin’s arm up victoriously above his head to declare him the winner over his competition. The newspaper photo doesn’t capture the four massive cameras recording the spectacle to be replayed on television a few weeks later. He doesn’t remember much from that day besides the fact that he had been on top of the world.
Taerae says that he’d probably trauma-blocked most of it out but the happy feelings of winning, and that maybe it was better that way.
Why should he want to remember the way he’d walked into En Garde, expecting to be hailed as a champion only to be met with silence? But maybe even the silence would have been preferred to the whispers, when his coworkers realized that no one had told him what happened while he was away. Rumors that Chef Lee was in the hospital, but more importantly, that he hadn’t decided yet who was going to replace him as the Head Chef of En Garde. Gyuvin couldn’t understand it. The man had practically raised him into the chef he was today, had taught them all to earn the restaurant its second Michelin star, and all they cared about was who was going to take his place when he was gone.
He shakes off the memories. It was no use trying to drown himself in the past when he couldn’t change what happened. Tossing the newspaper into the recycling bin, he watches as it floats to the bottom to lay beside the flattened cardboard delivery boxes that Hanbin always made Yujin unfold when he was particularly full of energy.
The screen door rattles as Gunwook slams it open. Gyuvin winces to himself. Maybe he was going to have to ask Hanbin to have a talk with both of the youngest members of their staff about respecting the restaurant and not running around like they were trying to give Gyuvin a heart attack every time they wanted to speak to him.
“Family meeting,” Gunwook reminds him. Had so much time passed already? He looks down to check the old watch around his wrist, a gift from Chef Lee that he’d never replaced, still shiny silver, out of place against his old t-shirt and jeans. ‘Family meeting’ was Hanbin’s excuse to get everyone together before a big service. Of course, it was still early spring, so there was no telling whether there would be a queue out the door of tourists or only lonely Grandma Choi to serve that night. Still, every night at ZeroBase was like preparing for a war of dolsot pots and banchan dishes. Gyuvin huffs out a noise of agreement, steeling his nerves for whatever chaos inevitably awaits him inside.
A surprise greets him just inside the entryway.
“Hao!”
The man stands out with his briefcase and tailored slacks in the rundown doorway of ZeroBase, but he is no less a sight for sore eyes.
Gyuvin bounds towards the door, scooping the thin-framed man into a bear hug. When they’d both lived in Seoul, Gyuvin had seen Hao much more often—even entertaining some of the older’s wealthy clients with private reservations at En Garde. He could count on one hand the number of times he’d seen the other since he moved out to Jeju-do.
“What are you doing here?” Reluctantly, he releases Hao from his grip, letting him get enough oxygen to answer his question. He wracks his brain for the exact date. “Shit, is it your anniversary already?”
Hao bats Gyuvin’s lingering limbs away. “No, no. Not yet.”
Gyuvin gasps, “Is it a surprise then?” He whips around, peering around the corner for any sight of the restaurant manager, hoping that he hadn’t ruined Hao’s plans with their noisy reunion.
“Not quite,” Hao tells him, more amused than anything. “I’m here for work.”
Gaping, Gyuvin feels his brows scrunch together in confusion. “You? Working here?” Was the entertainment industry that slow these days? Hao probably made more money as an agent than Gyuvin had even when he was a sous chef at En Garde. There was no reason for him to come ‘work’ out here unless it was a ploy to spend more time with his long-distance boyfriend.
“Not for me.” Hao shakes his head.
Even more confused, any further questions are temporarily cut off by the arrival of the rest of the ZeroBase team. Gunwook manages to greet Hao with a side hug before the unexpected guest is captured by Hanbin and everyone averts their eyes to give the couple a moment to reunite properly. Gyuvin keeps his eyes glued to a particularly interesting stain on his shoe, knowing how the two of them always embrace like Hao has returned from war instead of just having caught an hour-long flight from the capital city. Yujin hangs back, waiting for the pair to separate before he makes his presence known.
Hao and Yujin have always had an interesting relationship, if Gyuvin were forced to choose a word to define it. When Yujin had been younger, he was inseparable from the older man whenever he came to visit the island—or so Hanbin claimed when Gyuvin first asked him to explain why Yujin acted like he was too cool to admit he missed Hao too during the months when he was gone. Now that he was older, maybe he was embarrassed to remember the days when he would cling to Hao and cry when he had to return home.
For a while, Gyuvin had been convinced that Yujin was the reason Hanbin had yet to propose. He’d joked a dozen times that Hanbin should lock Hao down before he became too busy with the models and idols and actors of Seoul to make regular trips out to Jeju-do anymore. But after one too many awkward silences, Gyuvin had realized the situation was more complicated than that. Gyuvin knew that Hanbin secretly worried that he wasn’t enough compared to Hao’s glamorous lifestyle back on the mainland. Which was a statement that held not even a teaspoon of truth—Hao was the only person in the world that Gyuvin thought could challenge him in a ‘loving Hanbin the most’ competition aside from Yujin.
“You just missed dinner,” Yujin tells Hao, coming across nonchalant in the way only a teenager trying to play it cool can, careless but with a bead of worry underneath that threatens to undercut the facade.
“That’s alright, I’m not here to eat,” Hao replies playfully, “unless you’re finally taking over in the kitchen? Going to put our Gyuvinie out of a job?”
“Not yet,” Yujin replies, “I’m still stuck on table duty.” Though he pretends to be reluctant about it, Yujin still buries his face in the side of Hao’s neck when the older pulls him into a hug.
Though meant just to tease him, Hao’s words do sting a bit. Gyuvin knew better than anyone else there what it was like to be replaced. Even Hanbin nudges Hao, reminding him not to go too far. Still, Gyuvin tries to shake it off, knowing that Hao’s bluntness is a part of his personality but doesn’t really mean any harm.
“Then I guess I can go into retirement early.” Gyuvin plays it off as a joke, which seems to lighten the tension in the room.
“Well, speaking of work.” Hao pivots slightly towards the door, but Hanbin is still attached to his hip, so they both turn awkwardly and the rest of the group follows, expectant but confused. “In case you were looking for a protégé, I think I’ve found you the perfect candidate.”
Gyuvin hadn’t noticed the stranger standing just beyond the threshold, who takes the introduction as his cue to step inside. The little bell that Hanbin had hung at the top of the door jingles merrily, but Gyuvin feels his heart drop to his feet.
He looks more like he belongs on a runway than in ZeroBase’s postage stamp-sized kitchen. Tailored black slacks match his perfectly pressed button-down shirt, as dark as the dolsot clay pots at their highest temperature from being heated directly over the open flame of the stove. A shock of red hair as bright and waxy as a ripe apple is curled artfully over his forehead, drawing attention to the sharpness of his eyes lined by a perfect wing. Silver earrings dangle from both of his ears, and Gyuvin notices a tiny beauty mark under one of his eyes shaped like a sesame seed. Somehow, he makes Gyuvin feel underdressed in his own restaurant, like he’s back in the early days of working in Seoul to meet the every whim of the demanding businessmen that frequented En Garde for their client meetings. Even one toe out of line or hair out of place could result in an hour long lecture from the manager.
The mystery man makes a deep bow of greeting to Hanbin, nearly 90 degrees if Gyuvin had to pull out a protractor to measure it. “My name is Shen Ricky, please take care of me. I’m grateful to join your team as a trainee chef.”
Hanbin coughs awkwardly as Ricky rises from his bow. “Yes, er–well, we’re happy to have you, but our head chef is actually right here.” He wraps his arms around Gyuvin’s shoulders, and would be pushing him towards Ricky if the head chef hadn’t planted his feet firmly into the ground, refusing to move an inch towards the stranger. “This is Kim Gyuvin.”
Gyuvin absolutely does not notice the way Ricky’s eyes soften into round tapioca-shaped pearls apologetically before he turns to face Gyuvin instead. He has all the grace of a slightly skittish cat, his body betraying him despite the confidence in his voice. “I’m sorry,” he apologizes, dropping into another bow. “Chef,” he adds as an afterthought.
“You don’t have to do that,” Gyuvin waves him off, unused to formalities after so long at ZeroBase where he hears more teasing from Gunwook and Yujin than actual respect. For a few moments, the entire restaurant falls into silence—a rarity because someone or something is always making noise. It’s like everyone else is watching to see what will happen next, like Gyuvin is the alley cat that begs for scraps behind the restaurant and hisses when provoked instead of a functioning human being that can address his problems in a normal way.
As the pressure mounts, Gyuvin finally breaks the silence. “Sorry, would you mind if I have a few words with Hanbin hyung?” Gyuvin does his best to extricate the manager from his boyfriend. When he doesn’t budge, Gyuvin clarifies, “in private?”
*
Hanbin’s office is cluttered with papers. He vaguely makes an attempt to straighten them, but gives up when he realizes it will be a fruitless task.
“Sorry, I wasn't expecting guests,” Hanbin excuses, pushing a particularly daunting pile into a drawer before Gyuvin can catch a glimpse of the official looking address on the letter.
They stand diametrically opposed on either side of the desk, but the distance between them is more emotional than physical. The two cousins didn’t keep secrets from each other, not about their personal lives, but especially not about work.
“You’ve seen my place,” Gyuvin brushes him off. The little villa he rented from Grandma Choi was filled to the brim with his belongings from Seoul that he never bothered unpacking. There were rows and rows of cookbooks, recipe cards, and other trinkets still sealed away in unlabeled brown boxes stacked to the ceiling. At the beginning, part of him had hoped this arrangement would just be temporary and that in a few weeks he would be carting everything back to the city. Now, it was clear Gyuvin was going to be here for a while, but it felt strange to mix the life he’d left behind with the empty shell that was his life in Jeju-do.
He changes the subject to what he really wants to know, not wanting to dally with small talk knowing that the longer this took, the more likely it would be that they found three nosy eavesdroppers behind the door. “Did you know?”
“Know about…?” At first, Hanbin tries to play it off, but at Gyuvin’s sharp expression, he drops the act. “Hao did ask me for a favor, yes.”
“And you agreed just like that?” Gyuvin scoffs. He knew that Hanbin loved Hao, would walk through hell and back for him if he asked, but this wasn’t his decision to make. Gyuvin was the head chef. The kitchen belonged to Gyuvin just like this office belonged to Hanbin. “Without even asking me first?”
At this, Hanbin has the nerve to look guilty. “I just thought—”
“You thought you would just adopt the next stray to come knocking on your door?” Gyuvin grumbles, knows he’s being unfair, but he’s upset. It’s not fair for Hanbin to make choices like this without asking him. A kitchen works because it’s run by a team, it doesn’t when an outsider tries to usurp the leader. He’s tired of people walking on eggshells around him all the time. He isn’t broken glass, he won’t lash out unless someone gives him a reason to first. “Did you think I was going to say no?”
Sheepishly, Hanbin admits, “Hao didn’t think you would agree to it in advance.”
Gyuvin tries to keep his voice down, not wanting the others to hear him from outside. And because he can’t help but voice his fear aloud, the one that tells him that Hanbin wants him gone and this is his way of pushing him out politely, he asks, “Is it because he’s a better chef than me?”
“No! No!” Hanbin moves from the other side of the desk to try to grab onto Gyuvin’s shoulders, holding him steady even as he panics. “That’s not it at all. Well, you should really get to talk to him yourself but–”
Seeing as his words don’t seem to provide any of the comfort he’s trying to get across, Hanbin scrambles to explain further, “He wants to learn. That’s why he came here.”
“He looks like he belongs on the YSL runway, not in the kitchen.”
When Hanbin doesn’t reply, Gyuvin begins to put the pieces together. “No–don’t tell me. Really? He did?”
“He’s one of Hao’s clients. That’s all I know.”
“Do you even have the budget to pay him a salary?”
“He doesn’t want to be paid.”
Gyuvin’s eyes widen, then narrow, then widen again, unable to comprehend just what kind of person moves to a small island to cook in a restaurant with absolutely no claim to fame besides its history among the locals. “How did Hao hyung even find this guy?”
“I have no fucking clue.” Hanbin seems more calm now that Gyuvin is more intrigued than angry, or at least, Gyuvin is trying to convince himself that he is. “Just, give him a chance, okay?”
No promises.
“I’ll try,” Gyuvin tells him, pushing open the office door. To his surprise, none of the three usual gossips are loitering outside pretending to sweep the floor or adjust the permanently crooked menu board with prices that hadn’t been changed in at least five years.
“Where is everyone?” Hanbin asks, the same question on his mind.
It’s quiet. Too quiet.
There’s a hissing sound followed by a shout from the kitchen.
Gyuvin takes off, Hanbin hot on his heels. A million scenarios flash through his head. Had he left the stew on high through his nap? Had it boiled over everywhere onto the freshly mopped floors? What if something had fallen in the walk-in, and Yujin had gotten locked inside trying to clean it up?
Pushing through the kitchen door, he barely notices the sound of it slamming against the wall behind him.
“What’s going on?”
A chaotic image greets him. Gunwook and Yujin are gathered around a surprised Ricky, who seems to be covered in soot if the dark streaks on his borrowed apron are any indication. In front of him is a blackened pan, what is left of… Gyuvin honestly couldn’t even tell still smoking. Behind them, the oven light is flashing, though the door is closed. The pieces come together quickly after that.
“Is that the galbi-jjim for tonight’s dinner service?” He had left it in the oven to keep the pot warm without burning the meat. Notably, the oven had been turned off at the time.
“I think it would be more appropriate to say, ‘was that the galbi-jjim,’” Gunwook interjects.
As Gyuvin takes a step forward, all three of them take a step back.
Though it feels like his ears must be boiling red by now, Gyuvin doesn’t hold back as he shouts, “Everyone out!”
When no one makes a move, perhaps paralyzed by fear, he adds, “Now!”
Scrambling like scattering mice, Gyuvin holds an arm out to stop Ricky from fleeing with Gunwook and Yujin. “Not you. We need to talk.”