Work Text:
It’s not enough
A plate crashes against the wall, He can hear the fragile china shatter into a kaleidoscope of mess he will need to clean up later.
Ten years. Ten years on the top reduced to nothing because of some stupid, stupid fusion restaurant.
Stupid just like how Hiroshi is.
He was never enough. He could try to be positive, to be a good man to his employees, to be a great chef. But some idiot making goddamn fake sushi could just take his place like that!
It’s not fair!
Not fair at all!
Another crash, somewhere distant. A clatter of something metal and sharp. It does not matter, nothing matters when the room is spinning around him and his chest is tight.
It does not matter when this is going to be how his reputation ends.
A pathetic bastard who was unable to keep his own restaurant intact and who failed his customers by not being enough.
Nothing he does is enough and it just isn't worth it anymore if he is not perfect.
NOTHING is worth it if he’s unable to maintain a position on top.
Sure his restaurant is still acclaimed, sure he has the best staff he could ever ask for, he would consider them closer than his own blood family in fact.
But it’s not enough, he needs to be the best.
He needs it.
He needs it, needs perfection like an addict craves the bottle or needle, the withdrawal of his only vice makes him sick to his stomach, chills wracking his body as he struggles to stay upright.
Perfection is not just a want but a biological need, something that spurs him deeper into despair.
No one loves a failure, no one could ever look at him like this, he’s disgusting and debauched. A horrid sight of failure and someone who should never reenter society after this great, horrible, terrifying, failure.
It would be unjust to those who are oh-so better.
Wouldn’t it?
Those fakers and improper chefs who twist tradition like fools!
And yet, they would be disgraced by a person like him. Hiroshi is nothing but a freak, a stark traditionalist within cooking.
Another crash, another broken plate. The shards create a grotesque mosaic testament to his own failure.
Taunting him, mocking him.
It’s disgusting. Everything about him is disgusting.
It won’t work, it will never work. He’s a terrible person who deserves nothing and if he’d just been better this would have never happened.
Why should he create now?
It would be sordid.
His only purpose and good creation seemingly only comes from the act of his own self-destruction. The only seemingly “passionate” and “expressive” piece he can make, made from the shards of his own disgusting outburst.
He is a consummate professional, he should not be acting like this goddamnit!
He should be better than this, he isn’t supposed to have outbursts.
And yet, he feels hot and cold and why there’s something wet sliding down his cheeks, clinging uncomfortably in his beard.
It doesn’t make any sense, it will never make sense. Nothing works and nothing will ever work for him because he is pathetic, pathetic, pathetic, patheticpatheticpatheticpatheticpatheticpatheticpathetic—
They knew he would never amount to anything and he would never be good enough for the people around him, it just doesn’t work.
Nothing he does will never work due to the simple, uncontestable fact that he is not good enough. That nothing he has ever done or will do is good, he is inherently inadequate due to this failure. Nothing should be done in his place, and he should just stop while he is ahead.
His tightening chest seems to agree, the lack of oxygen a fitting punishment for his sin of imperfection. He can never repent, he isn’t good enough for that.
Nothing he does is good. He was beaten by a faker, it wouldn’t work. It would never work, because if he can’t be better than that disgusting thing, he shouldn’t cook anymore. It would be a waste of energy since people don’t appreciate fine cuisine, seemingly enough!
Or maybe just his, maybe he just isn’t good enough for that and nothing he ever does will work, maybe nothing will come of it and no one will be able to help his corrupted, no good, terrible soul as if he can’t cook, then he can’t love.
Each recipe took a piece of him and now it wasn’t worth it anymore to create these recipes for people. It was stupid just like him. His passions led him to fight with his family and now he wasn’t even able to be perfect. And those who are imperfect aren’t deserving of love, they never were. He learned that lesson many times.
If one B on a test could get him shunned for weeks, losing his status as one of the best chefs in the country would get him disowned, he’s certain of it.
Why does he keep hearing that goddamn crashing? He isn’t throwing anything anymore. His arms have lost all feeling so it can’t be him. If the world is moving through molasses around him.
The air thickens each moment, then it doesn’t make sense for it to be him throwing things. He can barely move as is, the world collapsing and tightening and constricting and his chest hurts and he can’t breathe. He needs to breathe– but maybe he doesn’t deserve it, he doesn’t deserve anything.
He slips, something sharp on the table near him sliding and slicking up, he barely registers it in his numbed limbs, a new liquid pouring out. One he doesn’t register as any different then the red hot enraged tears slipping down his face and making him feel worse and better, lightheadedness takes over and he stumbles forward slightly.
A new, blooming saturated color joins the mosaic of white plate shards. Finally bringing an inventive touch to his piece, no? Maybe he can finally be a risk taker like that other chef.
The words in the change of best restaurant ring in his head clear as a sunny summer day.
“His food is good but he doesn’t take enough risks in his cooking”
That’s a load of bullshit! He is just traditional, a real chef. None of this fusion-cuisine bullshit that people seem oh-so obsessed with these days! What is the point of cooking professionally if not to be perfect and normal? If you want to do experimental shit it should stay in a home kitchen and not bring it into the damn workplace!
It’s so stupid stupid stupid!
His head pounds and spins, nausea quickly starting to set in, bile rising in his throat. Which is his fault for being disgusting, perhaps his food is so bad that even being around it this long gave him food poisoning? That seems like an appropriate option. The bare minimum punishment for his failure honestly.
The room spins again and he almost teeters over. Steadying himself on a table as his knuckles white out and spots appear in his vision.
But it isn’t enough, just like everything else he doesn’t isn’t enough.
He falls forward, joining his mosaic, his testament to imperfection.
His disgusting shrine to his failings.
He attempts to scramble out, to claw back to some sort of fame, but he has no oxygen, the world is too hot, too cold, too everything. None of it works, and nothing can be thought of to even make him able to get out as the shards dig into his skin and pierce, tiny clay needles embedding into his skin and instead of sewing, pulling him apart at the seams.
He screams.
No one cares.
No one ever cared if he couldn’t do something for them, his only purpose is to create, to help, to be useful and if he can’t do that? Well, then he doesn’t deserve any kindness.
He’s too weak to do anything but hope that when he wakes up, Norman won’t find him like this. Poor kid has enough on his plate with his mother getting more ill and with college work piling up.
If the kid saw him like this… Hiroshi doesn’t know what he’ll do. The boy he sees as something akin to a son(though he would never admit that out loud) would never see him the same if he knew how disgusting and filthy Hiroshi is.
Another part of him however, relishes in the opportunity to drive him away, to protect the janitor from his own filth. No one should see him like this, ever. Even if his eyes attempt to slip closed, it doesn’t matter.
Maybe he’ll be able to protect someone from his disgusting failure of a “personality” and “personhood” after all.
What a comforting lie, he can sleep easily now.