Archive of Our Own

The fallout doesn’t come in the middle of a disaster.

It comes on a Tuesday.

A boring, unremarkable, post‑scholarship‑dinner Tuesday.

Which, Seokmin thinks later, almost makes it worse.

The practicum kitchen hums with its usual afternoon chaos—clattering pans, the low roar of the hood vents, someone laughing too loudly at the stock station. The scholarship dinner glow has mostly settled into memory: a few lingering compliments, some rumours about scholarships, and the quiet, stubborn fact that he and Mingyu pulled it off.

They’re supposed to be riding that high.

Instead, they’re behind.

“Delivery’s late again,” Chan announces, waving an order slip like a flag of surrender. 

“Vendor says the vegetables are ‘on their way,’ which is a bold statement for something that should’ve been here an hour ago.”

“We prep what we can,” Mingyu says, already moving. 

“Start protein, sauces, anything dry. We adjust.”

Adjust.

The word has started to sound like a threat.

Seokmin sets his jaw and goes back to his board, lining up onions for brunoise. Knives tap in uneven rhythm around him. Jun is humming. Soonyoung’s doing some kind of choreography with a peeler. Vernon is pretending a ladle is a microphone.

Mingyu is everywhere.

He moves down the line like a current, checking sauces, correcting heat, flicking a towel at someone’s hand when they reach for the wrong pan.

“Not that one, Chan—that’s the reduced fish stock, not the chicken.”

“Rotate the pans, Jun, you’re crowding the flame.”

“Wonwoo, you updated the spreadsheet, right? Please tell me you updated the spreadsheet.”

His voice isn’t harsh. 

If anything, he’s lighter than he was leading up to the dinner. Looser shoulders. Easier smile.

Seokmin’s chest is still annoyingly aware of him anyway.

He focuses on his cuts.

Rule‑straight edges, neat cubes. Order.

“Seokmin‑ah,” Wonwoo says from the spice shelf, “did you see the new lab assignment? Joshua wants two people to volunteer to test the updated food safety module.”

“I’ll do it,” Seokmin says automatically.

He doesn’t look up.

There’s a pause.

“I was going to ask if you wanted to do it with Mingyu,” Wonwoo says. 

“Since you’re—” he waves a hand vaguely “—co‑leads now.”

The word still does something stupid to Seokmin’s heartbeat.

He keeps his eyes on the onion.

“I’ll do it,” he repeats. “Whoever else Joshua picks is fine.”

Wonwoo studies him for a second, glasses catching the overhead light.

“Okay,” he says simply.

He writes something on his clipboard and moves on.

“Transfer.”

Seokmin looks up.

Mingyu is across the station, one hand braced on the counter, the other holding a pan.

“Can you check the acid on this?” Mingyu asks, nodding at the sauce. “I can’t tell if it needs more lemon or if my tongue’s still traumatized from alum.”

A couple of people snicker.

Seokmin wipes his knife, sets it down, and crosses over.

The pan smells good—sweet shallot, butter, something bright underneath.

He dips a spoon, tastes.

“Needs a touch more acid,” he says. “And salt. You’re going too easy because you’re scared of overdoing it.”

“Who says I’m scared?” Mingyu scoffs.

“You just asked me to double‑check,” Seokmin points out. “That’s not confidence. That’s hedging.”

The words come out sharper than he means.

Mingyu’s brows lift.

“Or,” he says, “it’s called collaborating. You know, that thing we did all week.”

Heat creeps up the back of Seokmin’s neck.

He’s aware—too aware—of how close they’re standing. 

Of the way Mingyu’s hand brushes the small of his back as he reaches past him for the lemon. 

Of the faint, familiar scent of his cologne under the kitchen smells.

He steps back.

“Whatever,” he says. “You asked. I answered.”

He returns to his station a bit too fast, knife hitting the board with slightly more force than necessary.

The onion doesn’t complain.

Someone else does.

“You’re tense,” Soonyoung singsongs as he peels carrots nearby. “Is it midterms? Is it love? Is it both?”

“Midterms,” Seokmin says flatly.

“Lies,” Soonyoung says.

Chan, chopping herbs, glances up. 

“You two have been weird since the dinner,” he says. “Weirder than usual.”

“We’re not weird,” Seokmin says.

“We’re always weird,” Soonyoung counters. “But now it’s, like, premium weird. Artisan weird.”

Vernon leans against the sink, drying a pan. “You went straight from ‘I’ll fight you in front of the whole class’ to ‘we have to make it work’ ” he says. “Whiplash is bound to happen.”

Seokmin’s hand slips.

A tiny nick blossoms on his thumb.

“Shit,” he mutters.

“Language,” Wonwoo says mildly from somewhere behind him.

“Band‑Aid,” Seungcheol calls, already moving toward the first‑aid box.

“I’ve got it,” Mingyu says.

He’s suddenly there, close, reaching for Seokmin’s hand.

It’s a tiny cut. Barely bleeding. But Mingyu holds his wrist like he’s about to replace it.

“You okay?” he asks.

“I’m fine,” Seokmin says, too fast.

Mingyu doesn’t let go.

“Stop moving,” he says softly, tone shifting into the one he uses in real emergencies. “You’re getting blood on the board.”

He cleans the cut with efficient, careful motions, thumb braced under Seokmin’s palm.

The contact is harmless.

It doesn’t feel harmless.

Seokmin’s pulse stutters.

His brain, helpfully, replays all the moments from the last week he’s been trying very hard to not think about in the middle of class.

The walk‑in. The talk about mattering. Mingyu’s voice, low, saying I want you next to me. Not behind. Not gone.

The very deliberate way Mingyu hadn’t asked him to label anything about it.

“You good?” Mingyu repeats, eyes flicking up to his.

There’s something open in them.

Something that looks a lot like the thing in Seokmin’s own chest he keeps trying to shove into a carefully labelled jar.

He panics.

“I said I’m fine,” he snaps, yanking his hand back.

The room goes a notch quieter.

Mingyu’s fingers close on air.

His expression shutters for half a second—just long enough for Seokmin to see the flicker of hurt—before he covers it with a lopsided smile.

“Right,” he says. “Fine. Great. The blood adds flavour anyway.”

“Don’t joke about that,” Seokmin says automatically.

“Relax,” Mingyu says lightly. “I’m not feeding it to anyone.”

He turns away, tossing the used gauze in the bin, shoulders a little too stiff.

The bandage box sits on the counter between them.

Seokmin stares at it.

The cut throbs in time with his heartbeat.

He should say something.

Thanks.

Sorry.

Anything.

He doesn’t.

Instead, he mutters, “I can handle a band‑aid. I’ve worked worse lines than this.”

Mingyu’s back goes even straighter.

“Yeah,” he says, not turning around. “You’ve mentioned.”

The next fifteen minutes are brittle.

They move around each other without touching.

“Behind,” Mingyu says, but his voice doesn’t brush Seokmin’s shoulder like it usually does.

“Left,” Seokmin answers, but he angles his body a little too far away.

They don’t fight.

They don’t talk.

It’s almost worse.

The vegetables finally arrive in a flurry of apologies and cardboard.

“See?” Mingyu says, voice back to bright as he tears open a box. “Crisis averted. We’re fine.”

Fine.

The word tastes like under‑seasoned stock.

“Not really a crisis,” Seokmin mutters. “Just disorganization.”

Mingyu glances at him.

“You got something you want to say, transfer?” he asks.

There it is.

The old nickname.

Sharp as a knife edge.

Seokmin’s irritation spikes.

He slams his knife down a little too hard.

“The order was wrong on the spreadsheet yesterday,” he says. “We wouldn’t be scrambling if someone had double‑checked it before sending it in.”

Wonwoo looks up, startled. “The quantities matched what we discussed,” he says. “Two crates, not one.”

“Yeah,” Seokmin says. “Except the supplier read ‘two’ as ‘one’ because the email said ‘same as last time’ and nothing else.”

He looks at Mingyu.

Mingyu stares back.

“That’s how we’ve always done it,” Mingyu says. “They know our usual order.”

“‘Usual’ doesn’t hold up when there’s new staff in the back office or a different driver or someone misreads a number,” Seokmin snaps. “

That’s literally why we’re taught to be specific.”

Mingyu’s jaw tightens.

“Relax,” he says. “We adjusted. That’s what kitchens do—”

“Why is everything with you about adjusting after something goes wrong?”

The question rips out of Seokmin before he can stop it.

The room goes very still.

He hears his own heartbeat in his ears.

Mingyu’s eyes narrow, slow.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asks.

“It means,” Seokmin says, throat tight, “you keep treating the line like some game where you can just improvise your way out of anything. Wrong jar? Adjust. Wrong order? Adjust. Someone almost seasons with alum? Adjust. It’s exhausting, Mingyu. Not everyone wants to live on the edge of disaster all the time.”

Murmurs ripple at the edges of the station.

Soonyoung’s eyes ping‑pong between them like he’s watching a final boss fight.

Mingyu’s mouth hardens.

“You think I don’t know that?” he says, voice flattening. “You think I like it when things go sideways?”

“You act like you do,” Seokmin fires back. “You act like it’s fun. Like chaos is part of the thrill. Like as long as you can charm your way through service, the mess you leave behind doesn’t matter.”

The words hit harder than he intends.

Mingyu flinches.

“Mess I leave behind,” he repeats, very quietly.

The air in the kitchen shifts.

Seungcheol straightens from the stock pot, watching now. Jeonghan, at the far counter, goes still.

“Seokmin‑ah,” Wonwoo says softly, a warning.

Seokmin hears him.

He can’t seem to stop.

“I’m tired,” he says, voice shaking. “I’m tired of being the one who has to anticipate your next ‘adjustment’ so the whole line doesn’t go down with you. You say you want me next to you, not behind you, but half the time it feels like I’m cleaning up after you while you play hero.”

Silence.

Even the hood fans sound far away.

Mingyu’s face is blank.

Too blank.

“Wow,” he says eventually. He laughs, but it’s a short, sharp sound with no real humour. “There it is.”

Seokmin’s stomach twists.

“That’s not—” he starts.

“No, it’s good,” Mingyu says. “Honesty. Joshua would be so proud.”

His voice doesn’t rise.

That’s almost scarier than shouting.

“You think I like being the one who ‘plays hero’?” he asks, fingers flexing around the edge of the counter. “You think I don’t lie awake after service replaying every mistake and wondering which one’s going to follow me to my first real job?”

He shakes his head, lets out a breath.

“You want to talk about mess?” he says. 

“Let’s talk about how you’d rather die than admit something isn’t under control. Or how you sign up for every extra safety module and inventory task and then act like everyone else is irresponsible for not doing three people’s work.”

Seokmin’s throat goes dry.

“Don’t turn this around on me,” he says. “I’m trying to keep things from falling apart.”

“And I’m trying to keep this club from drowning in red tape and burnt‑out members,” Mingyu snaps. “You think I enjoy begging admin for budget changes and making sure we don’t get shut down because someone forgot a signature?”

He laughs again, more bitter.

“No, of course not,” he says. “Because that part doesn’t show up on the spreadsheet.”

Seokmin opens his mouth.

Nothing comes out.

He hadn’t thought about that.

Not really.

Or he had, but only in the abstract, in the way you register background noise without truly hearing it.

Mingyu rubs a hand over his face, the fight bleeding out of his shoulders, leaving something raw.

“Look,” he says, voice rougher, “I get it. You like certainty. Labels. Rules. You had to. Your last place sounds like it would’ve eaten you alive if you didn’t. But this—” he gestures around them, the kitchen, the club, the people watching with wide, worried eyes “—this isn’t that line. You don’t have to act like you’re the only one standing between us and total collapse.”

The back of Seokmin’s eyes burns.

“I’m not—”

“You are,” Mingyu says, softer now. “And it’s not fair. To you. Or to me.”

Seokmin swallows hard.

It feels like there’s a hot stone sitting behind his ribs.

He wants to take it back.

All of it.

He wants to say, I didn’t mean it like that. I’m scared too. I just don’t know how to say it without sounding weak.

Instead, what comes out is, “Maybe I shouldn’t have taken this on if it was going to be like this.”

The second the sentence leaves his mouth, he wants to snatch it back.

Mingyu goes very still.

“Like what?” he asks.

Seokmin’s tongue feels thick.

“Like…this,” he says weakly. 

“Like every week there’s some new fire to put out because we didn’t plan hard enough. Like I’m constantly bracing for whatever corner you’re going to cut next.”

Mingyu stares at him for a long, long moment.

“Got it,” he says finally.

The light in his eyes shutters the rest of the way.

He nods, once. Almost like he’s agreeing with a ticket time, not having his chest carved open at the prep station.

“Message received,” he says. “Chef’s pet project was a bad idea.”

“Don’t call it that,” Seokmin blurts.

“What else would you call it?” Mingyu asks. “He shoved you into my kitchen and said, ‘Play nice, boys, or else.’ You think I didn’t notice how fast he started funnelling opportunities your way?”

Jeonghan exhales quietly across the room.

“Mingyu,” he starts.

Mingyu lifts a hand without looking at him.

“It’s fine,” he says. “Really. We all know what this is now.”

He grabs a towel, wipes his hands, movements clipped.

“Wonwoo,” he calls. “Send me the order templates. I’ll rewrite them tonight.”

Wonwoo hesitates. “I already—”

“Just do it,” Mingyu says, stern.

He doesn’t raise his voice.

Wonwoo nods once.

“Everyone else,” Mingyu continues, “take five. Hydrate. Breathe. Then we come back and finish prep like adults.”

There’s a shuffling of feet. Someone turns a burner down. A timer beeps and is slapped off.

Mingyu turns away.

“Where are you going?” Seokmin asks.

“Office,” Mingyu says, not looking back. “To adjust.”

The word lands like a slap.

He leaves before Seokmin can answer.

The door swings shut behind him with a soft click.

The kitchen exhales, but the air doesn’t get any easier to breathe.

Soonyoung lets out a low whistle. “Ouch,” he mutters.

“Not helping,” Seungcheol says sharply.

He turns to Seokmin, eyes kind but steady.

“You alright?” he asks.

No.

“Yes,” Seokmin says.

Jeonghan crosses the room, towel slung over his shoulder.

“That looked like it hurt,” he says mildly.

Seokmin’s laugh comes out wrong. “We’re just—”

“Don’t say ‘just fighting,’ ” Jeonghan cuts in gently. “You know that’s not what that was.”

Seokmin’s throat tightens.

He stares at the onion half he left on his board.

His hand shakes when he picks the knife up again.

“We still have prep,” he says.

Jeonghan studies him for a beat, then sighs.

“Fine,” he says. “But we’re talking about this later.”

He squeezes Seokmin’s shoulder once, light but grounding, then drifts away.

The noise in the kitchen eventually creeps back up—pans, timers, muttered jokes—but it feels different.

Like everyone’s working around a spill no one wants to mop up.

Seokmin finishes his onions.

He doesn’t go to the office.

For the next few days, nothing technically changes.

On paper, they’re still co‑leads.

In practice, everything feels off by two degrees.

Mingyu still runs lineups, still assigns stations, still takes meetings with Joshua. He still cracks jokes, still flirts with disaster just enough to make everyone nervous.

He just stops reaching for Seokmin while he does it.

“Starters handle their own garnish,” he says in one lineup, eyes flicking past Seokmin instead of holding there. “Mains will adjust plating if something’s late.”

“Dessert fires when mains call it,” he tells Seungkwan. “Don’t wait for a second confirmation.”

He stops asking, “What do you think?” in the middle of menu discussions.

He stops sending late‑night texts about ideas he had while half‑asleep.

He stops hovering at Seokmin’s station after class, picking at leftovers and complaining about paperwork until they naturally end up walking back to the dorms together.

He’s…polite.

Professional.

Careful.

He still says Seokmin‑ah.

He says it like a name, not a hand held out.

“Maybe this is better,” Seokmin tells himself.

It feels like chewing ice.

Their friends notice, of course.

“So,” Soonyoung says one evening in the dorm, lying upside down on Seokmin’s bed. “On a scale of one to ten, how badly did you two divorce?”

“We didn’t divorce,” Seokmin says, shoving his face into his pillow.

“Trial separation?” Vernon offers from the beanbag.

Chan spins slowly in the desk chair. “You went from ‘we’ to ‘I’ mid‑sentence in lineup today,” he says. “That’s new.”

Seokmin groans.

“It’s fine,” he says. “We’re just… recalibrating.”

“That’s like ‘adjusting,’ but with more therapy,” Vernon says.

“Did you talk to him?” Chan asks.

“We talked plenty,” Seokmin mutters.

“I mean after,” Chan clarifies.

Seokmin doesn’t answer.

Soonyoung flops sideways dramatically. “You know, for someone who loves communication and clear labelling, you really suck at saying ‘hey, I didn’t mean to stab you in the soul with my words,’ ” he says.

“Thanks,” Seokmin says flatly.

“I’m just saying,” Soonyoung goes on, “you both care. A lot. It would be a waste if this turns into some cold war because you’re both too proud to take the first step.”

Seokmin stares at the ceiling.

The memory of Mingyu’s face—hurt, then shuttered—won’t leave him alone.

“I don’t know what to say,” he admits quietly.

“That’s a start,” Chan says gently. “You can tell him that.”

Seokmin laughs, brittle. “ ‘Hey, I don’t know what to say, but I’m here to make this more awkward’?”

“Couldn’t be more awkward than you bleeding on the board while making heart eyes at the guy dressing your wound,” Soonyoung says.

“I was not—”

“Sure,” Vernon says.

They drop it eventually.

The silence between him and Mingyu doesn’t.

It settles over the kitchen like a film.

Not thick enough to choke them.

Just enough to make everything taste a little dull.

The fallout doesn’t explode.

It decays.

Small, stupid things start to grate.

“Order says six crisps, you plated five,” Mingyu says once, pointing at a tray.

“I counted,” Seokmin says. “Check again.”

Mingyu checks.

There are six.

“You’re right,” he says. “My bad.”

The words are correct.

The tone isn’t.

It’s too even. Too careful. Like he’s handling something that might break if he breathes wrong.

Seokmin hates it.

He hates how much he misses the easy bickering. The theatrical outrage. The way Mingyu used to bump his shoulder on purpose just to see him roll his eyes.

He hates that he did this.

He hates that he doesn’t know how to fix it.

The crack finally shows itself on a slow Friday.

Most of the club has already left. Joshua cut them loose early with a rare, magnanimous “don’t do anything stupid.”

Wonwoo left with a stack of binders. Jun dragged Chan out, muttering about “reward fries.” Soonyoung and Seungkwan vanished in a whirlwind of gossip and plans to bother Jeonghan.

It’s just them.

The kitchen looks softer in the near‑empty quiet, warmed by the overhead strips and the last smear of sunset through the high windows.

Seokmin wipes down his station methodically.

He doesn’t look at mains.

He still feels it when Mingyu says, “You can go, you know.”

Seokmin startles.

Mingyu’s at his usual spot, leaning against the counter, towel over his shoulder. His jacket is unbuttoned at the throat, sleeves pushed up.

He looks tired.

“Joshua said we’re done,” Mingyu adds. “You don’t have to close with me tonight.”

“I always help close,” Seokmin says.

“Yeah.” Mingyu looks down at his hands. “That might be part of the problem.”

The words land weirdly.

“What does that mean?” Seokmin asks.

Mingyu shrugs one shoulder.

“Means maybe you should go home,” he says. “Take a night. Be a student. Let me adjust for once.”

There’s no bite in it.

That makes it worse.

“I’m not here out of pity,” Seokmin says, defensive. “I just…want to help.”

Mingyu huffs a breath that’s not quite a laugh.

“I know,” he says. “That’s kind of the point.”

He turns, picks up a pan from the rack.

“I’m going to test something,” he says. “New idea. You don’t have to stay for that.”

Seokmin’s feet stay glued to the floor.

He hears himself say, “What are you testing?”

Mingyu hesitates.

“Doesn’t matter,” he says. “It’s just…for me.”

The implication burns more than it should.

There was a time—not that long ago—when “for me” had quietly included “for us.”

Menu tests. Taste checks. Stupid late‑night experiments that ended with Chan sneaking in for bites and Vernon declaring something “emotionally offensive” in a good way.

Now, apparently, it doesn’t.

“Okay,” Seokmin says.

The word tastes like defeat.

He turns back to his station, wipes the same spot three extra times.

His chest feels too tight.

He should leave.

He doesn’t.

He stays.

Long enough to hear the low sizzle of something hitting a pan.

Long enough to smell butter and garlic and something warm, like roasted tomatoes and thyme.

Long enough to realize he’s not ready for this to be their new normal.

He sets the towel down.

“Mingyu,” he says.

There’s a beat.

Mingyu doesn’t answer.

Seokmin turns.

Mingyu is at the stove, back to him, stirring something in a shallow pan. The overhead lamp pools warm light over his shoulders, throwing his face into partial shadow.

His posture is...tense.

Too straight.

“About the other day,” Seokmin starts.

“Which other day?” Mingyu asks, without looking back.

“The fight. The order. What I said.”

“Right.” Mingyu’s knuckles whiten on the spoon. “That.”

“I was—” Seokmin’s voice catches. “I was unfair.”

Silence.

The soft glug of something reducing.

“You were honest,” Mingyu says finally.

“That doesn’t make it okay,” Seokmin says. “Not the way I said it.”

Mingyu stirs, slow and precise.

“You said what you’ve probably been thinking for a while,” he says. “That I’m messy. That you’re tired. That this—” his free hand flutters briefly in the air “—is too much.”

“That’s not—” Seokmin steps forward, then stops, forcing himself to stay on his side of the invisible line. “I don’t think you’re…too much.”

A humourless smile curves Mingyu’s mouth, visible in the reflection off the oven door.

“You literally said I treat the kitchen like a playground,” he says. “It’s fine, Seokmin‑ah. You don’t have to walk it back to spare my feelings.”

“I’m not—”

Seokmin swallows.

His heart is hammering.

The words in his head feel clumsy and too big all at once.

“I’m scared,” he blurts.

That makes Mingyu pause.

He doesn’t turn.

But the spoon stops moving.

Seokmin grips the back of a stool.

“I’m scared all the time in here,” he says, the admission spilling out in a rush now that it’s started. 

“That I’m behind. That I’ll mess something up and Joshua will decide I’m not worth the recommendation. That the scholarship committee will forget my name. That I transferred too late and I’m just…pretending to be on the same level as everyone else.”

His chest feels like it might split.

“And you,” he says, “you’re not scared. Or you don’t look like it. You move like you belong here. Like the kitchen trusts you back. And when things go wrong, you just…adjust. Like it’s nothing. It makes me want to shake you and also—”

He chokes on the rest.

“Also what?” Mingyu asks quietly.

Seokmin’s face burns.

“Also,” he says, very quietly, “I’m jealous. And I hate that I’m taking it out on you.”

The spoon clinks against the side of the pan.

Mingyu turns.

Finally.

His expression is impossible to read at first—surprised, wary, something softer under both.

“You’re jealous of me,” he repeats slowly.

“Don’t make it sound stupid,” Seokmin mutters, staring at his own shoes. “You asked for honesty.”

“It’s not stupid,” Mingyu says.

He leans back against the counter, crossing his arms loosely, watching Seokmin like he’s a sauce he’s trying to read.

“You think I don’t get scared?” he asks.

“You don’t act like it,” Seokmin says.

“Yeah, well.” Mingyu huffs a humorless laugh. “Turns out acting is part of the job.”

He looks away for a second, jaw working.

“You weren’t wrong about some things,” he says. “I do adjust a lot. I do rely on instinct more than I should. I have gotten too comfortable with chaos because it’s…familiar.”

The admission stings more because it’s honest.

“But you were wrong about one thing,” he adds, eyes flicking back.

“Which?” Seokmin whispers.

“That you’re the only one standing between us and collapse,” Mingyu says. “You’re not. I’m here too. So is Seungcheol. So is Wonwoo with his cursed spreadsheets. You’re allowed to not catch every falling pan.”

Seokmin’s throat tightens.

“I don’t know how to not try,” he says.

“I know,” Mingyu says quietly.

He sets the spoon down.

The pan continues to simmer on its own.

“I was hurt,” Mingyu admits. “When you said you were tired of cleaning up after me. When you made it sound like I was just…playing at this. Like I hadn’t been killing myself behind the scenes to keep this club from getting cut from the budget.”

He doesn’t raise his voice.

The hurt is in the way his hands curl, empty, at his sides.

“But I was also…relieved,” he says after a beat.

Seokmin blinks.

“Relieved,” he echoes.

“Yeah,” Mingyu says. “Because it meant you cared enough to be that mad.”

Seokmin stares at him.

“That’s a terrible metric,” he says weakly.

“Maybe,” Mingyu says. “But it’s real.”

He takes a tentative step forward.

“I don’t want this to be…whatever it’s been the last few days,” he says, gesturing vaguely between them. 

“Polite. Careful. Like we’re coworkers who nod at each other over the salad station.”

Seokmin’s chest hurts.

“Me neither,” he says.

“Then we can’t keep doing this thing where we only say the ugly stuff when we’re cornered and exhausted,” Mingyu says. “Or where we use ‘adjust’ and ‘fine’ as code for ‘I’m actually losing my mind, please help.’”

A strangled laugh escapes Seokmin.

“That’s…accurate,” he says.

“So we try something different,” Mingyu says.

His eyes are steady, a little scared, a little hopeful.

“We tell each other when we’re scared,” he says. “When we’re annoyed. When we want to change something. Before it turns into a battlefield in front of twenty people.”

He hesitates.

“And we stop assuming we know what the other person meant,” he adds. “Or what Joshua meant. Or what the committee saw. We ask, instead.”

Seokmin swallows.

He thinks of labels.

Of jars.

Of how much he hates reaching into something he can’t name.

He also thinks of the last week.

Of the cold politeness.

Of Mingyu saying It’s just for me.

“I don’t know if I can…suddenly be good at that,” Seokmin says slowly.

Mingyu’s mouth twists.

“Me neither,” he says. “Have you met me? I solve feelings with food and bad jokes.”

“Terrible jokes,” Seokmin corrects.

“Rude,” Mingyu says.

The corner of his mouth lifts.

Relief washes through Seokmin so hard his knees feel weak.

“But,” Mingyu says, sobering again, “I can try. If you’re willing to.”

He tilts his head, studying Seokmin.

“And,” he adds, quieter, “we can go back to being a ‘we.’ If you still want that. If not, tell me now. Don’t just…slowly back out because you think it’s what you’re supposed to do.”

The question hangs in the air between them.

It feels bigger than the kitchen.

Bigger than the club.

Bigger than the scholarship.

Do you still want to be next to me.

Seokmin takes a breath.

His heart is still doing that stupid off‑beat thing.

“Yes,” he says, voice shaking but steady. “I still want that. I don’t…I don’t want this without you.”

There.

It’s not a confession.

Not fully.

But it’s more honest than anything he’s managed in days.

Mingyu’s shoulders drop like someone let air out of a too‑tight balloon.

“Okay,” he says, a small, real smile spreading. “Good. Because I was going to have to dramatically quit the club if you said no, and that would have been a paperwork nightmare.”

Seokmin laughs, for real this time.

“You’re an idiot,” he says.

“I know,” Mingyu says easily. “You’ve mentioned.”

A comfortable quiet settles.

The fallout has stopped spreading.

What’s left isn’t tidy.

It isn’t labelled.

But it’s theirs.

And it’s enough to carry into the quieter, stranger intimacy that comes after.

There… was something more intimate lingering. 

Seokmin can’t point it out ever since the short fallout he and Mingyu had, and now that they’ve become more familiar with each other’s feelings at face value, he can’t help but think he’s being cautious.

Cautious in the sense that Mingyu would still cook for him when everyone had departed for the night of closing, but the staring. 

Mingyu would stare at Seokmin, and it’s not like he couldn’t feel it. 

With the way his bigger figure loomed over his, the shadow under the warm fluorescent overhead lamp reflecting, Seokmin didn’t wanna assume too much.

But everything shatters when Seokmin looks back straight at him. Mingyu flusters, and he goes back to trying to look busy with something, possible making a new menu item.

“Are you going to actually cook that,” Seokmin says, nodding at the pan, “or just intimidate the ingredients into flavour?”

Mingyu startles, then huffs a laugh. “Wow,” he says. 

“Rude. This is a delicate process.”

“You’ve been stirring air for two minutes,” Seokmin points out. “Even water boils faster than your commitment right now.”

“Okay, chef,” Mingyu mutters, reaching for a bottle of oil. “Since you’re suddenly the patron saint of follow‑through…”

He drizzles a thin line of oil into the pan. 

It shimmers over the heat, catching the yellow light.

“Garlic?” he asks.

Seokmin hesitates, then steps closer before he can talk himself out of it. 

“Always,” he says. “Thin slices. Don’t burn it.”

“Yes, sir.”

Mingyu pulls a clove from the basket, knife moving in quick, even strokes. The sound of blade on board is a quiet, familiar rhythm. He slides the garlic into the pan; it sizzles softly, perfuming the air almost immediately.

The smell wraps around them—garlic, oil, the faint sweetness of something already reduced in the pot from before. Underneath it, Seokmin catches the clean, peppery trace of Mingyu’s cologne, warmed by the stovetop heat.

He hates how much comfort that mix brings him.

“What is this supposed to be?” he asks, watching the edges of the garlic go translucent.

“Dunno yet,” Mingyu says. 

“That’s why it’s a test. Tomato base, maybe cream. Something we could—” He breaks off, corrects himself. “Something I could use for the competition stuff, if it works.”

The word lands heavier than the garlic.

“Competition,” Seokmin repeats, trying to keep his tone neutral.

Mingyu glances over, then reaches for the container of prepped tomatoes. 

“Yeah,” he says, tipping them in. The pan hisses, steam fogging briefly in front of his face. 

“You saw the signup sheet, right? Joshua’s practically foaming at the mouth about the restaurant concept showcase.”

“I saw it,” Seokmin says.

Of course he saw it.

The email from the department had been everywhere for the past week—bulletin boards, inboxes, half‑crumpled printouts under stacks of menus.

‘Culinary Institute Annual Restaurant Concept Showcase.’

Team or solo entries. Winner gets a sponsored pop‑up week in the training restaurant and a meeting with an alumni‑investor.

Mingyu had lit up like someone switched him to high heat the first time Joshua mentioned it.

“This is the one,” Joshua had said at lineup, tapping the poster. “If you’re serious about restaurant work after graduation, you want this on your portfolio.”

Mingyu hasn’t stopped buzzing since.

Now, in the quieter light of the empty practicum kitchen, it feels bigger. Closer.

“Joshua wants us to submit something,” Mingyu continues, stirring the tomatoes down. 

“Not just the club. Us. Like, ‘our’ concept.” His mouth twists. 

“He literally said, ‘Between my star leader and my ambitious transfer, we might actually embarrass the alumni.’ ”

Seokmin looks at the back of Mingyu’s head.

Star leader. Ambitious transfer.

It should feel good.

Part of it does.

The other part tightens in his chest.

“He cornered me after lab,” Mingyu adds, dropping a sprig of thyme into the pan. “Said if we do this right, it’s a direct line to the restaurant track. Real investors, real exposure. Not just school events.”

His voice goes a little soft on real.

“What’s ‘right’ supposed to look like?” Seokmin asks, because it’s easier to interrogate logistics than the way his lungs feel too small.

Mingyu shrugs, but it’s a looser motion than it would’ve been a few days ago. “Cohesive menu. Clear concept. Good cost analysis so they don’t think we’re delusional. And, you know.” 

He gestures with the spoon. “Flavour.”

“You make that sound like an afterthought,” Seokmin says.

“Flavour is a given,” Mingyu replies. “You’re here.”

The compliment lands so casually that it takes Seokmin a second to process it.

“I’m not the only one cooking on this imaginary menu,” he mutters.

Mingyu hums. “No. But if I’m serving anything to people with money, I’m not doing it without you triple‑checking my seasoning.” He says it like it’s obvious. 

“My dream restaurant can’t get roasted in the first five minutes because the chef leader mislabelled salt again.”

There it is.

Dream restaurant.

Heat creeps up the back of Seokmin’s neck, and this time it has nothing to do with the stove.

“You’ve…named it already, haven’t you,” he says quietly.

“The restaurant?” Mingyu asks.

“Yeah.”

Mingyu’s mouth curves, sheepish and fond all at once.

“Since second year,” he admits. “It’s dumb.”

“Tell me,” Seokmin says.

“It’s really dumb.”

“Mingyu.”

Mingyu sighs, theatrically put upon. “Fine. ‘Between Courses,’ ” he says. 

“Like…a place that feels like the pause between one part of your life and the next. Or like the way a good second course makes you forget the first one was ever there because you’re too busy being excited for what’s coming.”

He stirs, a little more aggressively than necessary.

“And it sounds pretentious enough to charge extra without anyone blinking,” he adds.

Seokmin blinks.

“That’s not dumb,” he says.

“It’s a little dumb,” Mingyu argues.

“It’s…weirdly sentimental for you,” Seokmin says. “But not dumb.”

Mingyu’s ears go faintly pink.

“Well, that’s the working title,” he says. 

“Nothing’s real yet. But if we do this competition right, it’s the closest I’ve been to making it feel like more than a Pinterest board and a Notes app graveyard.”

We.

He keeps saying we.

“What’s the menu like?” Seokmin asks, because he hates how much his chest tightens on that one word.

Mingyu’s eyes light up immediately. He steps away from the stove, leaving the sauce to burble on a low simmer, and reaches for the nearest clean corner of the counter like it’s a whiteboard.

“Okay, so.” He draws imaginary plates with his finger. 

“Small dining room, open kitchen. Nothing too fussy, but we flex when we want to. We start with something that looks simple but isn’t—a ‘bread course’ that’s actually like, savoury choux with cultured butter and three different salts—”

“Labelled,” Seokmin cuts in.

“Labelled,” Mingyu concedes, grinning. “Then maybe a crudo or tartare for the second course. Seasonal, bright. You’d murder the seasoning on that, by the way.”

He looks up as he says it, eyes snagging on Seokmin’s face.

There’s no hesitation in the way he adds, “Obviously you’d run that station.”

“Obviously,” Seokmin repeats faintly.

“Then mains,” Mingyu continues, oblivious to the way Seokmin’s pulse has kicked up. 

“I want a chicken dish that doesn’t bore people, and a fish dish that proves you can do ‘light’ without it being an apology. Two options, same plate structure, different heart.” He slices his hand through the air, drawing invisible lines. 

“You and I would time it together. I call fires, you call plating. Like we did for the scholarship dinner, but sharper.”

You and I.

Seokmin’s fingers curl against the edge of the counter.

“And dessert?” he asks, because his voice needs something to do that isn’t cracking.

“Dessert’s where we let Seungkwan have a meltdown in a controlled environment,” Mingyu says. 

“Something citrus and something dark. Maybe olive oil cake with burnt sugar ice cream, and then a lemon…thing you can bully into balance.”

He looks back at the stove, then at Seokmin again.

“All of this,” he says, tapping his finger on the metal. 

“That’s what this competition is, you know? It’s a dress rehearsal. One shot at showing people what ‘Between Courses’ could look like. Feel like.”

He doesn’t say ‘what we could do.’

He doesn’t have to.

It’s woven into every sentence.

We’d run that station. You’d handle that course. We’d time it together.

Seokmin swallows.

“You’ve thought about this a lot,” he says, because everything else in his head is too big to voice.

“Every time I’m in here,” Mingyu says simply. “Every time we pull off a service we had no business surviving. Every time Joshua yells at us and then secretly smiles into his coffee.”

He says we again.

Seokmin’s eyes drop to Mingyu’s hands.

Big, capable hands that move easily from chopping to stirring to lazy gestures while he talks about a future that feels so solid in his head he could probably map out the light fixtures.

Hands that had held Seokmin’s wrist so carefully over a stupid tiny cut.

“Do you ever…” Seokmin starts, then falters.

Mingyu tilts his head. “Ever what?”

“Do you ever think about doing it alone?” Seokmin asks, forcing the words out before his courage evaporates. 

“The restaurant. The concept. The competition. Just…you.”

Mingyu blinks, taken aback.

“Why would I want that?” he says, genuinely confused.

Because you’d have a cleaner story, Seokmin thinks. 

Because everyone already expects you to win. Because if I trip, you’ll be the one who hits the floor in front of the investors.

Aloud, he says, “Because it’s your dream.”

Mingyu’s brows knit. “And?”

“And I’m—” Seokmin gestures vaguely at himself. 

“Late. Messy. Still catching up. Half the time I’m more worried about not poisoning anyone than about making something ‘conceptually interesting.’ ”

Mingyu stares at him like he’s suddenly started speaking a different language.

“You know that’s not how I see you, right?” he says slowly.

“You see what I can do in a kitchen,” Seokmin says. “That’s…different.”

“It’s not,” Mingyu says, a little sharper than before. 

“I see how you think. How you move. How you panic and then fix it anyway. That’s part of why I want you there when I do anything that matters.”

The pan behind him gives a soft, impatient bubble.

“Stir,” Seokmin mutters, because if he doesn’t break eye contact, he’s going to combust.

Mingyu turns back to the stove with a quiet curse, giving the sauce a few quick swirls. Tomato has broken down into something glossy and thick; the garlic has gone sweet. He splashes in a little cream and watches it bloom pale at the edges.

“Look,” he says, tone dropping a notch. “If this competition was just about me proving I can shout at a line, I’d sign up solo. Take the stress, take the credit, whatever. But that’s not what I want my restaurant to be.”

He glances over his shoulder.

“I don’t want to be the guy alone at the pass screaming ‘my kitchen’ while everyone’s terrified of messing up,” he says. “I want people who can call me out when I’m about to be stupid. Who can see things I miss. Who aren’t just following because my name’s on the menu.”

He holds Seokmin’s gaze.

“You’re…that,” he finishes, a little helplessly. “Whether you like it or not.”

Seokmin’s heart does that off‑beat thing again.

He believes that Mingyu believes it.

He doesn’t know if he can let himself keep believing it too.

“You realize,” he says slowly, “that if we go into this as a team, and it goes badly, the committee won’t just see ‘Mingyu with vision.’ They’ll see ‘Mingyu with the transfer who couldn’t keep up.’ ”

Mingyu’s jaw tightens.

“If they’re that shallow, I don’t want their money,” he says.

“That’s not how careers work,” Seokmin says quietly. “People remember the crash before they remember who was at the wheel.”

“So your solution is what?” Mingyu asks. 

“To not get in the car?”

Seokmin opens his mouth.

Nothing coherent comes out.

He doesn’t have a solution.

He only has a knot of fear that’s been tightening since he first stepped into this kitchen and realized how much he wanted to stay.

“You told me you wanted this,” Mingyu says. The words are gentle, not accusing, but they still make Seokmin flinch. 

“To be here. To be…next to me.”

“I do,” Seokmin says immediately.

The answer is automatic, the only true thing in the mess of his thoughts.

Mingyu’s shoulders ease, just a fraction.

“Then trust me when I say I’m not dragging you along out of pity or obligation,” he says. “If I wanted a prop for my dream restaurant pitch, I’d stick a fake plant on the pass and call it ambience.”

“That is the worst metaphor you’ve ever come up with,” Seokmin says, weakly.

“Top five at least,” Mingyu agrees.

The edge of the conversation blurs—for now. 

The knot in Seokmin’s chest doesn’t untie. It just settles lower, like a weight he’s quietly agreed to carry a little longer.

“Here,” Mingyu says, grabbing two spoons. “Before you overthink yourself into the walk‑in, taste this.”

He ladles a small pool of sauce into a shallow dish and hands Seokmin a spoon.

Their fingers brush.

The contact sends a stupid little jolt through him.

Seokmin focuses on the sauce instead.

He takes a bite.

Warmth spreads over his tongue—sweet tomato, the softness of cream, garlic humming underneath, thyme a whisper instead of a shout. It’s good. Cozy. Safe.

Too safe.

“Balance?” Mingyu asks.

“Good,” Seokmin says. “But if this is for a concept pitch, it needs teeth.”

“Teeth,” Mingyu repeats.

“A bit more acid. Maybe a roasted tomato folded in at the end so you’ve got pops of brighter flavour. Right now it tastes like…something you’d make for staff meal after a long shift, not something you’d bet an investor meeting on.”

Mingyu’s eyes crinkle.

“See?” he says. “This is exactly why I need you there.”

Need.

The word lands and lodges somewhere behind Seokmin’s ribs.

He reaches for the salt, the lemon wedge, anything to keep his hands moving while his brain tries to sprint in two directions at once.

You’re part of his dream, a small, reckless part of him whispers.

You’re going to ruin his dream, the louder, familiar part counters.

He squeezes the lemon into the pan, watching the sauce wake up at the edges.

“You’re going to make some investor very confused when you show up with labelled jars and feelings,” he says lightly.

“Good,” Mingyu says. “If they can’t handle that, they definitely can’t handle Saturdays.”

He bumps Seokmin’s shoulder with his own.

The touch is brief, but it’s enough to make Seokmin’s breath hitch.

He forces a smile, forces himself to meet Mingyu’s eyes.

“Then we should at least make sure they don’t leave thinking we under‑seasoned your dream,” he says.

Mingyu grins, bright and unguarded. “We,” he repeats.

The word tastes like everything Seokmin wants and everything he’s suddenly, painfully afraid of.

He looks back at the stove, at the sauce they’re coaxing into something more than it was a few minutes ago.

He does like this.

He likes it so much it scares him.

And somewhere under the warmth of Mingyu’s cologne and the hiss of the pan, a new thought settles in the back of his mind, sharp and insistent:

If this is what Mingyu’s betting his future on—

do I really have the right to stand beside him when the judges are watching?

He doesn’t have an answer yet.

So he does what he’s always done.

He stirs. He adjusts. He pretends that’s the only kind of balancing act he’ll have to do.

The smell of garlic follows him all the way back to the dorm.

It clings to his sleeves, his hair, the inside of his throat. Under it, faint but there, is the memory of Mingyu’s cologne—clean, a little sharp, the kind of scent that makes you think of crisp shirts and sun‑warmed skin.

Seokmin scrubs his hands twice at the sink anyway.

The smell doesn’t really go away.

He stares at his reflection in the tiny bathroom mirror for a long second. His eyes look tired. There’s a faint pink line near his hairline where he must’ve scratched himself without noticing.

“You look like you got into a fight with a sauté pan,” he mutters.

He turns the light off before the mirror can argue and pads back into the dark room.

Chan’s bed is empty. Soonyoung’s is a crumpled heap of blankets and chaos, but there’s a note stuck to the wall above Seokmin’s desk in Soonyoung’s messy scrawl.

Went to bother Jeonghan. If you’re not back by 1 I’m filing a missing chef report. – S

Seokmin snorts under his breath and flicks on the small desk lamp. A cone of pale yellow spills over his notes, casting the rest of the room in soft shadow.

The competition email is still open on his laptop.

He hasn’t closed it since the afternoon Joshua forwarded the updated info.

He drops into the chair and stares at the screen.

Culinary Institute Annual Restaurant Concept Showcase.

Teams of up to three. Solo entries permitted. Evaluation criteria: flavour, coherence, originality, feasibility, leadership.

There’s a highlighted line under that last word, courtesy of Joshua.

Leadership demonstrated in planning, execution, and delegation.

Mingyu’s name is written all over that in invisible ink.

Seokmin leans back, letting the chair creak under his weight.

The kitchen scene plays back in his head in fragments.

Mingyu’s hands sketching invisible plates in the air.

Between Courses. We’d run that station. You’d murder the seasoning on crudo. We’d time mains together.

There was no hesitation there.

No doubt.

Mingyu saw a future and he’d casually slotted Seokmin into it like it was always supposed to be that way.

Seokmin’s chest tightens.

He drags a hand over his face and forces himself to look back at the screen.

Entry deadline: two weeks. Concept pitch: one week after. Service: live, in front of judges, investors, alumni, and selected guests.

He scrolls.

Students in leadership positions are strongly encouraged to participate.

He can practically hear Joshua’s voice under that line.

My star club leader and my ambitious transfer.

Ambitious.

That had felt good at the time. Like proof he hadn’t entirely imagined being taken seriously here.

Now it sits heavy.

How much of that ambition is mine, and how much of it is just me trying to keep up with him?

He thinks of the scholarship dinner.

The plates flying. The stress. The rush.

Joshua’s rare, quiet, “You both did well today. As leads.”

He’d clung to that like a lifeline.

But even there, even in that clean, bright moment, the story had been clear in everyone else’s mouths:

“Mingyu’s service.” “Mingyu’s menu.” “Mingyu’s team.”

The “and Seokmin” had been there, but softer. An add‑on. A surprise.

He knows what the competition brochure will say, if they do it together.

Lead: Kim Mingyu. Co‑lead: Lee Seokmin.

He knows what it will say if they don’t.

Lead: Kim Mingyu.

No caveats. No questions about why a transfer got bumped to the front of the line.

He hates himself for even thinking that way.

It feels disloyal.

It also feels true.

He props his elbow on the desk and drops his forehead into his hand, fingers pressing into the skin just above his brow. The little line Mingyu had teased him about earlier throbs there.

“You realize that if we go into this as a team, and it goes badly, the committee won’t just see ‘Mingyu with vision.’ They’ll see ‘Mingyu with the transfer who couldn’t keep up.’”

He’d said that like a hypothetical.

The more he thinks about it, the less hypothetical it feels.

He thinks of all the small ways he slows things down.

How he double‑checks labels, times, temperatures. How he insists on re‑reading specs before service. How he won’t let anyone skip tasting, even when they’re already in the weeds.

How during scholarship dinner prep, he nearly lost his mind when Mingyu wanted to re‑plate the main at the last minute and only barely stopped himself from snapping in front of everyone.

How today, in the kitchen, a tiny delivery slip error had turned into a public autopsy of everything they do differently.

He thinks of how easily Mingyu moves.

The way he can see a problem, make a call, and live with it. How he can charm a vendor into running a late order, talk Joshua into bending rules, spin a mistake into an opportunity.

Investors will eat that up, a bitter part of Seokmin thinks. They’ll see a born leader, not the kid who almost seasoned lemon cream with sugar because the jar wasn’t labelled.

Seokmin knows how people look at transfers.

Temporary. Unproven. Late.

It’s not that anyone has said it to his face here.

They don’t have to.

He’s heard versions of it before. Seen the way people’s expressions go politely blank when he says he only joined this program last year. The way they nod a little too slowly when he mentions he worked before this—real kitchens, not practicum—and then immediately ask about his grades.

It’s not paranoia if there’s a pattern.

He scrolls back to the top of the competition brief.

Team or solo entries.

He stares at the word team until the letters blur.

Next to me, not behind me, Mingyu had said.

The problem isn’t behind, he thinks now. The problem is in front.

Standing in the way of the light.

If this really is the dress rehearsal for Between Courses—if this is the thing that decides whether Mingyu’s dream gets taken seriously by people with money and influence—then what right does he have to gamble his own insecurity in the middle of that?

You’re part of his dream, that small, reckless voice whispers again.

He remembers the way Mingyu had looked in the kitchen tonight—talking about the name, about the courses, about a place that feels like the pause between one part of your life and the next.

There had been room for him in that picture.

He knows that.

He also knows that dreams change under pressure.

What if the judges don’t see it?

What if all they see is a slightly crooked line where a straight, clean one could’ve been?

He drags his hand down over his mouth, nails scratching lightly at the stubble on his chin.

There’s a safer version of this, his brain supplies.

A version where Mingyu goes forward as the face of the concept. The one whose name the judges remember, whose story they latch onto. Class president of the club, golden boy leader, restaurant track from year one.

And Seokmin stays where he’s good at staying.

In the back.

Helping.

He pictures it:

Mingyu at the front of the room, pitching Between Courses to a half‑circle of alumni and investors. Joshua hovering in the back like a proud, annoying ghost.

Seokmin at the prep table somewhere out of direct sight, making sure the crudo is balanced, the sauces don’t split, the plates hit the pass on time.

No one needs to know his name for him to do that.

Mingyu could still win.

The restaurant dream could still move one step closer to real.

And if something goes wrong, if timing slips or a dish underwhelms, it’ll fall on the person who chose to stand in the spotlight.

Not on the transfer who should have known better than to grab for it.

“Cowardly,” he mutters.

The word tastes ugly.

But the idea doesn’t go away.

It curls up careful and insistent in the back of his mind.

Step back.

Not out of spite. Not because you don’t want this.

Because you do.

Too much.

Because wanting it this much makes you dangerous. To yourself. To him.

He thinks of that stupid bet he made at the beginning.

If I nail this service, you drop the nickname. If I don’t, I’ll back out of your way.

They’d laughed it off later.

Mingyu had voided it with that soft, stubborn look on his face. I’m not interested in winning because you gave up. I want you next to me, not behind. Not gone.

But the promise is still there, scratched into the underside of his ribs.

Back out of your way.

What if this is what that actually means.

Not storming off in the middle of a shift. Not quitting the club.

Just…not putting his name on the line when it matters most to someone else.

His gaze drifts to the corner of the desk where the scholarship dinner folder still sits, edges worn from being opened and closed too many times.

That had been his line in the sand.

Prove you belong here.

He did.

He has the bruised knuckles and the quiet nods from Joshua to show for it.

Maybe that’s enough.

Maybe he doesn’t need his name on this next thing too.

He reaches for the trackpad before he can talk himself out of it and scrolls down to the registration link at the bottom of the email.

Register team / solo concept here.

The form opens in a new tab.

Team lead: __________ Co‑lead(s): __________

His fingers hover over the keyboard.

It would be easy to type their names.

Kim Mingyu. Lee Seokmin.

Two lines.

Two clicks.

He can almost feel the shape of it. See the schedule grid forming in his notebook. Imaginary tickets. Imaginary plates.

His heart does that off‑beat thing again.

He pulls his hands back.

What are you doing?

For a second, he considers closing the tab and pretending he never saw it.

Let Joshua decide. Let Mingyu bring it up again. Let the momentum carry him along like it always does.

He stares at the blinking cursor.

If he does that, if he just lets the current take him, he knows exactly where he’ll end up.

Next to Mingyu.

Cooking.

Wanting.

Terrified.

He thinks of the look on Mingyu’s face when he’d talked about the restaurant.

Not the teasing. Not the bravado.

The little crack in his voice on real.

The quiet way he’d said, Every time we pull off a service we had no business surviving, it feels closer.

He closes his eyes.

“This is yours,” he whispers to the empty room.

The words feel like a confession and a sentence at once.

“Yours first. It was always yours first.”

He opens his eyes again.

The form is still waiting.

Team lead: __________ Co‑lead(s): __________

His mouth is dry.

He doesn’t fill in either line.

Instead, he clicks the small blue link under the fields.

Change / withdraw interest form for registered participants.

A separate page pops up.

For students wishing to modify or withdraw from a previously indicated interest list, please contact the program coordinator directly or submit the following:

Name. Student ID. Brief reason.

He hadn’t even realized he’d checked the “interested” box in the first place, but of course he had. Joshua had all but stood over his shoulder while he did it.

He stares at the blank fields.

His fingers move on their own.

Name: Lee Seokmin.

Student ID: …

Reason:

He sits there a long time with the cursor blinking after that last word.

What is he supposed to write?

“Because I’m scared I’ll ruin the future of someone I—”

He stops the thought before it finishes.

He types instead:

I would like to step back from a co‑lead role for the showcase and support from a non‑competing position. I believe this will give our club’s lead a clearer shot at representing our concept.

It sounds…reasonable.

Professional.

Cowardly.

He adds, after a second’s hesitation:

I’m still fully committed to prep and back‑of‑house work.

Because he is.

He can be useful without being seen.

He reads the paragraph back twice.

It doesn’t say I’m not good enough.

It doesn’t say I don’t want this.

But the shape of those truths is there, in the spaces between the words.

His hand shakes just a little when he moves the cursor to the submit button.

You could still close it, a traitorous part of his mind says.

You could still talk to him first.

You could.

He clicks anyway.

The page refreshes with a bland confirmation message.

Your request has been received.

He sits very still.

The garlic smell in the room has gone faint, drowned out by detergent and whatever cheap air freshener the dorm uses.

He feels…hollow.

Lighter, in a way.

Like he’s set down a weight he wasn’t meant to carry.

Like he’s just thrown something fragile off a bridge.

He closes the laptop gently, the click of the lid too loud in the quiet.

When the desk lamp goes off a second later, the room is swallowed by soft dark.

Lying on his back, staring at the ceiling, Seokmin presses the heel of his hand over the little line between his brows.

This is better, he tells himself.

Mingyu will have a cleaner shot.

The judges will see exactly what they’re supposed to see.

And Seokmin…

Seokmin will still be there. In the kitchen. In the prep.

Next to him.

Just not where anyone with a clipboard is looking.

It should be enough.

The email finds him between classes.

He’s halfway across campus, hands jammed into his jacket pockets, brain still marinating in food safety notes, when his phone buzzes.

From: Hong, Joshua
Subject: Competition Interest Form

His stomach drops.

He opens it anyway.

Lee,

Come to my office before practicum today.

– JH

No smiley face. No “don’t panic.”

That’s never a good sign.

Joshua’s office smells like coffee and vanilla bean.

It always does. There’s a tiny bottle of actual extract on the shelf above the espresso machine, the real stuff he uses to “fix” student hot chocolate when winter hits too hard.

Right now, it smells…stronger.

Like he’s already on his second cup.

“Close the door, please,” Joshua says without looking up.

Seokmin does.

The soft click sounds louder than the kitchen hood vents ever have.

Joshua is behind his desk, sleeves rolled up, tie slightly askew. A stack of competition packets sits to his left; his laptop is open to what looks dangerously like an email thread with the program coordinator.

He clicks something, then finally looks at Seokmin.

There’s no anger on his face.

That would almost be easier.

“Sit,” he says, nodding to the chair in front of the desk.

Seokmin sits.

His hands curl around the edge of the seat to keep them from fidgeting.

Joshua laces his fingers together and rests his forearms on the desk.

“So,” he says. “You sent an interesting form last night.”

Seokmin swallows. “Yes, chef.”

“Remind me what it said,” Joshua replies.

He knows exactly what it said.

The confirmation email is still sitting in Seokmin’s inbox like a bad grade.

“I…” Seokmin clears his throat. “I requested to step back from a co‑lead role for the showcase. To support from, um. A non‑competing position.”

Joshua’s expression doesn’t change.

“And,” he prompts.

“And I said I believed it would give our lead a clearer shot at representing the concept,” Seokmin finishes, voice shrinking on the last few words.

Joshua nods once.

“Right,” he says. “That’s the part I want to talk about.”

He leans back slightly, studying Seokmin the way he studies a plate he isn’t sure about yet.

“Tell me,” he says, “in your own words, why you think stepping back gives Mingyu a ‘clearer shot.’ ”

There’s no judgment in his tone.

That doesn’t make the question any easier.

Seokmin drags his gaze down to his own hands.

“Because…” He has to force the sentence out. 

“Because this is…tailored to him, chef. Leadership criteria. Restaurant concept. Investor interest. He’s been on this track from day one. I only transferred in last year. If there’s noise about why I’m there, it could distract from what matters.”

“Noise,” Joshua repeats.

“Yes, chef.”

“Noise like?”

“Like…” Seokmin’s throat feels tight. 

“Like people wondering why a transfer’s name is on the concept pitch instead of one of the students who’ve been here from the beginning. Or why you’re pushing me when there are other candidates. Or why he’s not going solo if he wants to be taken seriously as a restaurant lead.”

Joshua listens without interrupting.

When Seokmin runs out of words, the silence is almost worse.

“And you think investors care that you transferred,” Joshua says eventually.

Seokmin lets out a humourless breath. “Investors care about stories, chef. They like things that make sense on paper. ‘Mingyu, star club leader, restaurant track since year one’ makes sense. ‘Mingyu and the guy who switched programs halfway through and keeps signing up for extra safety labs’ just looks messy.”

Joshua’s mouth twitches.

“Careful,” he says mildly. “You’re insulting my taste in messy.”

Seokmin blinks.

Joshua sighs and leans forward again, forearms back on the desk.

“Lee,” he says, softer now. “You know I read every word of those forms, right? Including the ones you send at midnight.”

Seokmin looks at the corner of the desk.

“Yes, chef.”

“Good. Then you know I’m going to ask you this.”

He tilts his head.

“Is this really about investors and ‘noise’?” he asks. “Or is it about you being scared you’ll mess up something that matters to him?”

The question lands too cleanly.

Seokmin’s fingers dig into the underside of the chair.

“I don’t want to be the reason his shot gets…blurry,” he says, after a beat. 

“You said yourself this is a direct line to the restaurant track. If I’m on that line with him and we trip, that’s on both of us.”

“And if you’re not on that line?” Joshua asks.

“Then at least it’s on him,” slips out before Seokmin can edit it. “At least it’s his story. His risk. Not…mine hijacking it.”

Joshua exhales through his nose, slow.

“Do you hear yourself?” he asks quietly.

Seokmin presses his lips together.

Joshua taps a finger once against the desk, thinking.

“Let me make sure I understand,” he says. “You’re willing to do the work. Prep, testing, tasting, late nights. You’re willing to put your hands all over the menu. You’re just not willing to let anyone with a clipboard know you did it.”

When he says it like that, it sounds…worse.

“I’m willing to support,” Seokmin says weakly. “Where I’m actually useful.”

Joshua’s brows lift a fraction.

“And you think you’re not useful in front,” he says. “After the scholarship dinner. After you rewrote half the menu for that and then executed it without losing your head.”

“That was different,” Seokmin mutters.

“How?”

“It was school,” Seokmin says. “Internal. You. Faculty. Alumni, sure, but…” He shakes his head. 

“This is money, chef. Future jobs. Real‑world stakes. People won’t just forget a bad impression.”

Joshua is quiet for a moment.

Then he opens a drawer, pulls out a thin folder, and sets it on the desk between them.

“Do you know what this is?” he asks.

Seokmin glances at the tab.

It has his name on it.

“Your recommendation drafts,” Joshua says. “Notes from instructors. Service reports. Feedback from the scholarship committee.”

His stomach does something unpleasant.

“You’ve already—”

“I prepare early,” Joshua says. “Occupational hazard.”

He flips the folder open.

“There’s a line in here,” he says, “from one of the alumni who sat in your section during the scholarship dinner. Want to hear it?”

Seokmin doesn’t, particularly.

Joshua reads anyway.

“ ‘Impressed by calm, precise execution from student Lee. Clear communication with team lead. Shows strong potential for leadership in collaborative environments.’ ”

He looks up.

“That doesn’t say ‘fine as long as nobody’s looking at him,’ ” Joshua says. “It doesn’t say ‘only safe behind the scenes.’ It says ‘strong potential for leadership in collaborative environments.’ This”—he taps the competition packet with two fingers—“is a collaborative environment. Or it should be.”

Seokmin’s throat works.

“I’m not…arguing I can’t do it,” he says quietly. “Just that maybe I shouldn’t. Not when it’s his dream on the line.”

“Whose dream do you think I was talking about when I sent your names to the coordinator as a team?” Joshua asks.

Seokmin looks up, startled.

“I…”

Joshua’s gaze is steady.

“You keep framing this like it’s purely his,” he says. “Like you stumbled into someone else’s story and the best you can do is avoid smudging the ink.”

He leans back.

“Let me ask you something blunt, Lee. Do you want to work in restaurants after this?”

The answer is immediate.

“Yes,” Seokmin says.

“Do you want to be on a line like the one we ran for the scholarship dinner?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to be in positions where your decisions affect more than your own station?”

Seokmin hesitates.

“Yes,” he says again, though it comes out smaller.

Joshua nods.

“Then it’s your dream too,” he says simply. “Maybe it took you longer to find the door. That doesn’t make the room any less yours.”

The words hit a place Seokmin has been very carefully not looking at.

He swallows.

“This competition,” Joshua continues, “is not ‘Mingyu’s destiny with special guest—you.’ It’s a chance for both of you to show what you can build together. Because whether you like it or not, that’s how half the faculty already talks about you.”

He gives a tiny, wry smile.

“Do you know what Seungcheol called you last week?” he asks.

Seokmin blinks. “No, chef.”

“ ‘Two sides of the same knife,’ ” Joshua says. 

“One cutting, one dulling the blow so nobody loses a finger. Very dramatic. He’s been hanging around Jeonghan too much.”

A weak laugh escapes Seokmin, despite himself.

Joshua’s smile fades.

“Look,” he says. “I’m not going to force you to stand in front of judges if you truly don’t want to. I can’t make you want to be seen. But I am going to ask you to be honest about why you’re stepping back.”

He holds Seokmin’s gaze.

“If the real reason is ‘I don’t want this,’ that’s one thing,” he says. “If the real reason is ‘I want this so much it scares me and I’d rather sabotage myself than risk failing out loud,’ that’s another.”

The second one lands like a knife point.

Seokmin’s fingers tighten on the chair.

“I don’t…” He trails off, then forces himself to continue. “I don’t want to sabotage anything.”

Joshua’s voice softens.

“Lee,” he says. “You already did. Just not the way you think.”

Seokmin’s head jerks up.

“What?”

“You pulled your name,” Joshua says calmly. 

“Without talking to your partner. Without talking to me. You made a decision about a team entry like it was a solo mise list.”

He doesn’t raise his voice.

The disappointment is in how even it stays.

“I understand the impulse,” he adds. “Truly. I’ve seen a lot of very talented people convince themselves they’re a problem to be solved instead of a person to be trusted. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to pat you on the back for it.”

Shame crawls hot and prickling up Seokmin’s neck.

“I…” He clears his throat. “I thought—”

“You thought you were protecting him,” Joshua finishes. “And maybe, in your head, you are. But from where I’m sitting? You’ve just told your co‑lead and your instructor that your fear gets more say in your future than your skills do.”

The words punch the air out of Seokmin’s lungs.

He stares at the edge of the desk until it blurs.

Joshua lets the silence sit for a few breaths.

Then he sighs.

“I’m not here to write your story for you,” he says. 

“If you tell me, ‘Chef, I absolutely cannot do this, I will tank under that pressure, I want out,’ I will respect that. I’ll be disappointed, but I’ll respect it.”

He leans in, eyes sharp.

“But I need to know it’s you talking,” he says. “Not the ghost of some past chef who made you believe you only belong as a name in the prep notes.”

Something in Seokmin flinches.

Joshua notices.

“Thought so,” he murmurs.

He closes the folder with a soft thump.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” he says. “For now, your withdrawal request is marked as ‘pending.’ I told the coordinator we’re…clarifying roles. You have—” he glances at his watch, “twenty‑four hours to decide if you actually want your name off that roster.”

Twenty‑four hours.

It feels both too long and not nearly enough.

“In that time,” Joshua continues, “you’re going to do two things for me.”

Seokmin forces himself to meet his eyes.

“First,” Joshua says, “you’re going to sit with the possibility that you’re not a hindrance. Not argue with it, not immediately look for reasons it’s wrong. Just…let it exist in your head for a bit. Like a dish you don’t quite understand yet.”

He holds up a second finger.

“Second, you’re going to talk to Mingyu.”

The chair creaks under Seokmin as he shifts.

“Chef, I—”

“I am not running this kitchen like a reality show,” Joshua cuts in, gentle but firm. “If you’re going to step back from his competition entry, he deserves to hear it from you, not from an updated spreadsheet or a coordinator’s email.”

The idea of that conversation makes Seokmin’s stomach twist.

“I don’t know what to say,” he admits.

Joshua’s expression softens.

“Start with that,” he says. “Then tell him what you told me. The real version, not the polished ‘clearer shot’ nonsense. He’s not made of glass. And he’s not as oblivious as he pretends.”

He pauses.

“And,” he adds, “listen to what he says back. You keep making decisions based on what you think other people want. Maybe try…asking one of them.”

Seokmin’s throat burns.

“Yes, chef,” he says quietly.

Joshua nods once.

“Good.”

He glances at the clock on the wall, then back at Seokmin.

“Practicum in twenty,” he says. “Go wash your hands. Clear your head. We’re not bringing this into my kitchen like a raw chicken on a pastry board.”

A startled, shaky laugh escapes Seokmin.

“Yes, chef,” he repeats.

He stands, the legs of the chair scraping softly against the floor.

At the door, Joshua calls his name.

“Lee.”

Seokmin turns back.

Joshua’s gaze is steady, kind and sharp all at once.

“For what it’s worth,” he says, “when I picture that pass on competition day? I see two people running it. Not because of politics. Because that’s how the line works best.”

He lets that hang there for a beat.

“What you do with that picture,” he finishes, “is up to you.”

Seokmin nods, because anything else might come out wrong.

Outside, the corridor feels too bright.

He leans back against the closed office door for a second, letting the cool wood press between his shoulder blades.

Twenty‑four hours.

Sit with the possibility that you’re not a hindrance.

Talk to Mingyu.

His heart is already racing at the thought.

He pushes off the door and starts down the hall toward the practicum labs, the echo of Joshua’s words trailing him like the smell of coffee and vanilla.

When I picture that pass, I see two people.

He doesn’t know yet if he’s brave enough to keep himself in that picture.

The kitchen feels louder than usual.

Not in any measurable way—same hood vents, same clatter of pans, same overlapping voices—but every sound seems to hit Seokmin a split second too hard. His nerves are already stretched thin from Joshua’s words echoing in his head.

Sit with the possibility that you’re not a hindrance. Talk to Mingyu.

He’s managing the first part badly. He’s been avoiding the second.

“Transfer, your onions are about to stage a coup,” Soonyoung calls from across the station.

Seokmin blinks down at the pan in front of him. The diced onions are sweating in a shimmering pool of oil, just shy of catching.

“Got it,” he says, turning the heat down and giving them a quick stir.

From mains, Mingyu’s voice carries easily over the noise.

“Don’t burn my fond,” he warns, not looking up from the chicken he’s trussing. “I’m issuing a formal complaint if the whole kitchen smells like regret.”

“Smells like your last sauce test,” Vernon mutters from dish, just loud enough to be heard.

“Traitor,” Mingyu says, but he’s grinning.

Everything looks normal from the outside.

It isn’t.

Every time Seokmin glances up, he catches these little flashes—Mingyu’s hand moving without looking for a pan that isn’t where it usually is, the tiny wrinkle between his brows when he double‑checks a ticket, the way his smile lingers a beat too long when someone praises a dish, like he’s daring himself to believe it.

It would be easy to let the shift run its usual course.

Prep. Service drills. Clean‑down.

Then let twenty‑four hours turn into forty‑eight, and forty‑eight into a polite email from Joshua saying the coordinator has processed the withdrawal.

It would be easy.

It would also be exactly what Joshua called it.

Letting fear talk louder than anything else.

“Seokmin‑ah.”

Mingyu’s right in front of him when he looks up, towel slung over his shoulder, a smear of something red near his wrist.

“Yeah?”

“Can you taste this real quick?” Mingyu asks, lifting a spoonful of sauce. 

“I adjusted the acid like you said last time, but I can’t tell if it’s fighting the thyme now or if my tongue’s just bored.”

The ordinary familiarity of the request almost undoes him.

He takes the spoon, tastes.

The sauce is good. Needs a pinch more salt, maybe a breath of lemon, but it’s balanced.

“Salt,” he says. “Tiny bit. Everything else is fine.”

“See?” Mingyu says, already reaching for the salt. “What would I do without you?”

It’s a throwaway line.

It hits like a punch.

Seokmin’s throat goes dry.

He’s going to throw up or bolt or both if he keeps putting this off.

“Hey,” he says, before his courage can bleed out through his shoes. “After practicum. Can we—” his voice hitches, “—talk? Just us?”

Mingyu pauses mid‑sprinkle.

His gaze flicks up, searching Seokmin’s face.

The joking edge softens.

“Yeah,” he says. “Of course. Everything okay?”

“Fine,” Seokmin lies. “Just…not here.”

Mingyu studies him for half a second longer, then nods.

“Okay,” he says. “After clean‑down. Don’t let Wonwoo steal you for inventory.”

“I heard that,” Wonwoo says mildly from the dry storage door.

“Good,” Mingyu replies. “I meant it.”

By the time Joshua calls for final wipe‑down, Seokmin’s pulse has been in his throat for so long it feels normal.

Counters get scrubbed. Pans soak. Knives are checked, dried, put away.

One by one, people peel off.

“Going for boba,” Soonyoung announces, flinging his apron at a hook and missing by a full foot. “Anyone who needs emotional processing has twenty minutes to catch up.”

“I’m not doing your therapy via tapioca,” Seungkwan says, but he follows him out anyway.

Wonwoo lingers a little, stacking labelled containers in the fridge with near‑religious care.

“Lab notes on the new sauce are on the clipboard,” he tells Mingyu. 

He looks to Seokmin, “If you two break the kitchen again, text me first so I can back up the spreadsheets.”

“We’re not—” Seokmin starts.

Wonwoo’s lips twitch.

“Goodnight,” he says, and leaves.

The door swings shut behind him.

The sudden quiet feels dense.

It’s just them.

Mingyu tosses his towel onto the counter and leans back against it, crossing his arms loosely.

His sleeves are pushed up; there’s a faint line where his watch usually sits during service.

“Okay,” he says, eyes on Seokmin. “You said ‘talk.’ That’s usually my line.”

Normally, that would earn at least an eye‑roll.

Today, Seokmin just exhales.

“Joshua emailed you, didn’t he,” Mingyu guesses. “About the competition schedule.”

“Yes,” Seokmin says. 

“And about me.”

Something flickers in Mingyu’s expression.

“He talked to you?” he asks carefully.

“In his office,” Seokmin says. “This morning.”

Mingyu’s jaw works for a second.

“Right,” he says. “So I’m guessing this is about the email he forwarded me labeled ‘pending modification request.’ “

Heat crawls up Seokmin’s neck.

Of course.

“Right,” he echoes, voice small.

Mingyu huffs out a breath that’s not quite a laugh.

“You tried to step back,” he says. “From the showcase.”

It’s not a question.

Seokmin grips the edge of the nearest stainless table.

“Yes,” he says.

“Without telling me.”

The words aren’t sharp.

That makes them worse.

“I—” Seokmin starts, then stops. “I was going to. I just…”

“Did it first,” Mingyu finishes quietly. “Talk later.”

Seokmin flinches.

Silence stretches, filled only by the low hum of the fridges.

“Why?” Mingyu asks at last.

Not what were you thinking. Not how could you.

Just.

Why?

It’s somehow harder to answer.

“Because I thought—” Seokmin’s voice catches. He forces himself to meet Mingyu’s eyes. “I thought you’d have a better chance without me on the roster.”

Mingyu stares at him like he’s just started reciting recipes in reverse.

“A better chance,” he repeats. “Without you.”

“Yes.”

“Explain,” Mingyu says.

The word has no heat in it.

That’s Joshua’s influence, Seokmin thinks distantly. Light tone, clean knife.

He drags in a breath.

“Investors like neat stories,” he says. “Restaurant track from year one. Club leader. Consistent record. That’s you. I’m…not that. If this really is a dress rehearsal for your restaurant dream, it made more sense for me to be in the back, where I’m actually useful, instead of on the paperwork where I look like a question mark.”

Mingyu just…looks at him.

No immediate protest. No quick joke to defuse it.

“ ‘Your restaurant dream,’ ” he says slowly. “You keep saying it like you’re not in the picture.”

“Because I wasn’t,” Seokmin says, a little too fast. 

“Not at the start. You picked this. You’ve been building toward it for years. I’m the one who showed up halfway through and started rearranging your stations.”

Mingyu’s mouth twists.

“You realize rearranging my stations is one of the reasons we’re still allowed to use the good pans, right?” he says. “Joshua doesn’t tolerate chaos without spreadsheets.”

Seokmin huffs a broken laugh.

“I know I help,” he says. “I’m not pretending I’m useless. I just—” he swallows, “—don’t want my name on the line the first time you stand in front of people who can actually change your future.”

Mingyu’s brows draw together.

“So you do the work,” he says. “You help design the menu, you test sauces, you fix balance, you stand on the line. But when it comes time to say, ‘This is who did it,’ you want to fade into the back wall.”

“Yes.”

“Because you think that protects me.”

“Yes.”

Mingyu exhales, sharp.

“Did it cross your mind,” he asks, “for even a second, that maybe I don’t want to be protected from you?”

Seokmin’s grip on the table tightens.

“It’s not about—”

“It is,” Mingyu cuts in, not unkindly. 

“You’re making decisions about my future based on an assumption that I’d be better off without you standing next to me. And you didn’t even give me a chance to disagree.”

He pushes off the counter and takes a few steps closer.

Not crowding. Just closing the distance enough that Seokmin has to tip his head up.

“When Joshua forwarded me that email,” Mingyu says, “he wrote ‘pending’ in big, annoying letters. And then he came down to labs, leaned on my station, and said, ‘Talk to him before you freak out.’ ”

“Did you?” Seokmin asks, voice small.

“Freak out?” Mingyu snorts. “Internally? Obviously. Externally? I charmed the fish vendor and made three sauce jokes at Wonwoo until he threatened to revoke my spreadsheet access.”

He swallows, humor fading.

“And then,” he says, “I got mad.”

Seokmin braces for shouting.

It doesn’t come.

“I got mad,” Mingyu repeats, “because I thought we were past this part. The part where you decide you’re the problem in every equation that has my name on it.”

Seokmin looks away.

“I’m not—”

“You are,” Mingyu says, but there’s no bite in it. “You’re so busy trying not to take up space you don’t notice you’re vacuum‑sealing yourself out of your own future.”

“That’s dramatic,” Seokmin mutters.

“Says the guy who tried to ghost a competition entry,” Mingyu shoots back.

Silence settles again.

Mingyu lets out a breath, shoulders loosening a fraction.

“I get it,” he says. “Okay? I do. Big stakes. Investors. The word ‘restaurant’ in a font size large enough to make you nauseous. I’m not immune to that. I just…hide it better.”

He tilts his head.

“But here’s what I don’t get,” he continues. “You say you don’t want to risk my dream. But you’re acting like my dream doesn’t already have you baked into it.”

The kitchen feels suddenly too warm.

“Don’t,” Seokmin says, barely above a whisper.

“Don’t what?”

“Say things like that like they’re obvious,” he says. “It’s only obvious to you.”

Mingyu’s expression softens.

“I thought it was obvious to both of us,” he says quietly. “That’s on me.”

He reaches up, rubs the back of his neck.

“You think Between Courses exists in my head without you in it?” he asks. 

“Because it doesn’t. Not anymore. I can’t picture that kitchen without you hassling me about labels and balance and whether my crudo looks like it wants to die.”

A startled sound escapes Seokmin that might be a laugh.

He covers his mouth with the back of his hand.

“But that’s here,” he says. “School. Club. Controlled disasters. Real investors don’t care that we survived Joshua’s practicum with only minor trauma. They care about…pedigrees. Clean lines. Easy stories.”

“Then we give them one,” Mingyu says. 

“Mingyu and Seokmin. Club leaders. Pulled off a scholarship dinner no one thought students could manage. Built a menu that impressed faculty and alumni. Applied that to a restaurant concept that actually works. Clean enough for you?”

“It’s not about clean,” Seokmin says, frustration cracking through. “It’s about risk. You’re already enough of a wildcard. You don’t need a transfer co‑lead with imposter syndrome stapled to his jacket dragging their perception of you down.”

Mingyu’s eyes flash.

“Stop talking about yourself like you’re bad PR,” he says, more forcefully. 

“You know what actually drags me down? When you vanish. When you decide I’m better off alone and then put space where there wasn’t any before.”

The words land square in the center of Seokmin’s chest.

He hadn’t…thought of it like that.

Of course he hadn’t.

He’s been too busy cataloguing all the ways he might break things.

“I was trying to do the opposite,” he says weakly. “Give you room.”

“I don’t want room,” Mingyu says. “I want you where you’ve been this whole time—in my line of sight, telling me when I’m about to be an idiot.”

He takes a breath, steadies it.

“Look,” he says. “If you really don’t want this—if the idea of standing in front of judges with me makes you want to throw up more than it makes you want to cook—I will back off. I’ll go solo. I’ll pretend this was always the plan. I’ll do my best not to resent you for letting fear drive.”

The honesty in that last line stings.

“But if you do want it,” Mingyu says, “and you’re just scared of what it means to want something this much and fail in public?”

He shakes his head.

“Then I’m asking you not to run,” he finishes. “Not from them. Not from me. Not from yourself.”

Seokmin’s heartbeat is a dull roar in his ears.

Joshua’s voice surfaces in his memory.

If the real reason is ‘I want this so much it scares me and I’d rather sabotage myself than risk failing out loud,’ that’s another.

He swallows.

“I’m not…good at being seen,” he says quietly. “Not like you are.”

“I’m not good at half the things you do without thinking,” Mingyu counters. 

“Like reading three steps ahead and making sure nobody dies of my improvisation. That’s the point. We cover each other’s gaps. We’ve been doing it for months. Why does it suddenly not count when there’s a logo on the flyer?”

Seokmin doesn’t have a logical answer.

He only has fear.

He thinks of the form he filled out in his room.

He thinks of Joshua’s unimpressed face.

He looks at Mingyu now.

At the steadiness in his eyes. The hurt he’s not bothering to hide. The anger threaded through it, not at Seokmin, but at the way he talks about himself.

“Joshua said my request is still pending,” Seokmin hears himself say. “He gave me twenty‑four hours to decide if I…meant it.”

“And?” Mingyu asks.

“And I don’t know,” Seokmin admits.

The admission feels like stepping onto a too‑narrow ledge.

“I’m scared,” he says, because he promised himself he’d stop hiding that, at least. “I’m scared I’ll choke. That I’ll freeze. That I’ll be standing next to you at that pass and realize everyone was right, I’m out of my depth, and you’ll have to drag us both through it. I’m scared that if we fail, it’ll confirm every ugly thing my brain says about what I do to people’s chances.”

His hand curls unconsciously toward his chest, fingers digging into the fabric of his jacket.

“And I’m scared,” he adds, voice barely above the hum of the fridge, “that if we succeed, I’ll start thinking I deserve it. And then one day I’ll end up exactly like the chefs who made me feel like I didn’t.”

The words hang there, raw and shaking.

Mingyu doesn’t speak for a long moment.

He just breathes.

“Okay,” he says finally, very gently. 

“There it is.”

He steps closer, slow enough that Seokmin could back away if he wanted to.

Seokmin doesn’t move.

“Thank you,” Mingyu says. 

“For actually saying it this time, instead of letting it do the talking behind my back.”

“I’m still not sure I can…” Seokmin trails off.

“Then don’t be sure,” Mingyu says. “Be honest. Be scared. Be whatever you are. Just—be there. With me. If you want to be.”

He holds out a hand.

Not a dramatic, palm‑up gesture.

Just…a hand.

Simple.

Offered.

“It’s not ‘my’ competition,” he says. 

“Not the way I see it. It’s ours. If you walk away from it, I’ll live. I’ll do my best. I’ll probably win just to spite you.”

That earns a weak laugh.

“But it won’t feel the same,” he finishes. “It won’t feel like the kitchen we built together this year. And I’m allowed to say that matters to me.”

Seokmin looks at his hand.

At the small burn scar near his thumb from a caramel incident last semester. At the ink stain on his middle finger from scribbled menu notes.

His own hand lifts before he’s fully decided.

Their fingers curl together.

The contact is warm.

Steady.

“I haven’t told Joshua to process anything yet,” Seokmin says, the words tumbling out on the same exhale. “I can still…change it.”

“So change it,” Mingyu says.

“It’s not that easy.”

“It is,” Mingyu argues. “It’s literally an email. That’s two less steps than a soufflé. You’ve done worse under pressure.”

“That’s not what I—”

“I know,” Mingyu says, softer. “You meant in here.” He taps his free hand lightly against his own chest.

Seokmin nods, helpless.

“Then don’t decide tonight,” Mingyu says. “Or do. But whatever you do, decide it with me in the room. Not alone at your desk at midnight pretending your fear is my opinion.”

The phrasing is so painfully accurate that Seokmin actually winces.

“Too sharp?” Mingyu asks.

“Accurate,” Seokmin says. “Which is worse.”

Mingyu huffs a breath that might be a laugh.

“Come over after lab,” he says. “We’ll look at the brief together. Build a menu draft. See if, at any point, your brain explodes. If it does, we’ll reassess.”

“That’s not a scientific method,” Seokmin mutters.

“Good thing I didn’t major in science,” Mingyu replies.

Their hands are still joined.

Seokmin is acutely aware of every point of contact.

“You really want me there,” he says quietly. “Even with all of this.” He waves his free hand vaguely at his chest, his head, the air.

“Especially with all of this,” Mingyu says. “We’re not running a restaurant concept about perfect robots. We’re running one about real people who burn garlic sometimes and fix it before service sees.”

He squeezes Seokmin’s hand once, firm.

“I want you where you’ve always been,” he says. 

“Next to me at the pass. Not behind. Not gone.”

Something in Seokmin’s chest tilts.

He doesn’t say yes.

Not yet.

The fear is still there, thick and heavy.

But for the first time since he clicked submit on that form, he can imagine a version of the future where his name is on the roster and it doesn’t feel like a mistake.

“I’ll…think about it,” he says. “With you.”

Mingyu exhales, some tension he’d been holding finally bleeding out.

“That’s all I’m asking,” he says. “Well. That, and that you don’t ditch me for inventory duty more than once a week.”

“I make no promises,” Seokmin says.

Mingyu grins.

“Text me when you’re ready to look at the brief,” he says, finally letting go of his hand. “I’ll bring terrible coffee. You bring your terrifyingly detailed notes.”

“That’s redundant,” Seokmin says. “My notes already are terrible coffee.”

“Then we’re halfway there,” Mingyu says.

He turns toward the door, then glances back over his shoulder.

“Hey, Seok?”

“Yeah?”

“Whatever you decide,” Mingyu says, “don’t decide it because some imaginary investor in your head thinks you’re not worth the risk. Decide it because you know what you want.”

He holds Seokmin’s gaze for a beat.

“And if what you want is to be next to me when we plate that first course,” he adds, softer, “I’m not going to complain.”

The door swings shut behind him, leaving Seokmin alone with the hum of the fridges and the echo of those words.

He stares at the space where Mingyu was standing.

Next to me.

His heart is still racing.

His fear hasn’t vanished.

But somewhere under it, something steadier is starting to stir.

Want.

Subject: Restaurant Concept Showcase – Role Adjustment Request

Dear Chef Hong,

I hope you are well.

I am writing regarding the upcoming Restaurant Concept Showcase and my previously indicated interest in participating as a co‑lead alongside Kim Mingyu. After careful consideration, I would like to formally withdraw from any co‑lead or front‑facing competing role, and instead support the team in a non‑presenting, back‑of‑house capacity.

This decision is not a reflection of any lack of commitment to the project. On the contrary, I believe that the concept – and Mingyu’s leadership in particular – will be strongest if the judges and coordinators see a clear, singular representative at the pass. Given my status as a recent transfer and my shorter track record in the program, I am concerned that my inclusion as co‑lead may introduce questions or distractions at a moment when the focus should be entirely on the work and on the club’s established leadership.

If possible, I would be grateful to remain involved with menu testing, prep, mise en place, and service support, while not being listed on official showcase materials or evaluated in a leadership capacity. My priority is to contribute where I am most useful without compromising the clarity of what the committee is expecting to see.

I am sincerely appreciative of the trust and opportunities you have already extended to me since I joined the program, and I hope this adjustment can still align with what you feel is best for the showcase and for the club.

Please let me know if there are any additional steps I should take with the coordinator to formalize this change.

Sincerely, Lee Seokmin
Culinary Arts Program, Year 2 (Transfer)
Student ID: XXXXXXXX

The day of the showcase tastes like metal.

Mingyu wakes up with it on his tongue—cold, sharp, the ghost of a knife between his teeth. 

By the time he’s halfway across campus, it’s settled in the back of his throat, sitting under the burnt‑coffee bitterness of the to‑go cup in his hand.

The training restaurant looks different when it’s dressed for spectators.

The long glass wall that usually just reflects prep‑day chaos now frames rows of temporary bleachers, already filling with students, faculty, and the kind of alumni who wear crisp shirts and thin watches and appraise everything like it’s a stock portfolio.

Inside, the kitchen hums at a lower, tighter frequency than usual. 

Mingyu badged in at call time, signed his name where the coordinator pointed, and set up at station three like his hands had done it a hundred times.

Knives. Check. Towels. Check. Tasting spoons—

He pauses. Sets down a second cup beside the first, almost without thinking. 

Two neat rows of spoons instead of one.

Old habit, he tells himself. 

The scholarship dinner drilled it into him—his cup, Seokmin’s cup, side by side at the pass.

He lines them up, edge to edge, and moves on.

Someone clears their throat behind him.

“Chef Kim?”

He looks up.

The event coordinator stands at the end of his station with a clipboard, her badge swinging gently from a lanyard. She’s dressed in that neutral, black‑and‑white way that makes her look like she could just as easily be running a wedding or a funeral.

“Just confirming,” she says, scanning her sheet. “Kim Mingyu, Culinary Arts Society. Entry: ‘Between Courses.’ You’re our first slot.”

“Right,” he says. His voice comes out steadier than he feels. “That’s me.”

“And your team?” she prompts. “You registered with one co‑lead, correct?”

The metal in his mouth goes sharp.

“Yeah,” he says, automatically. “He’s—”

Late, is what he means to say.

On his way.

He glances up, past the swinging kitchen doors, instinct pulling his eyes toward the lobby, expecting to see a familiar head of hair threaded somewhere in the small knot of people getting wristbands checked.

No Seokmin.

The coordinator follows his gaze. Her brows tick together, just slightly.

“We’ll need both competitors present for the briefing,” she says. “Do you know how far out he is?”

Mingyu swallows.

“He’s coming,” he says. “He wouldn’t—”

Leave.

He cuts the word off before it can land, heat pricking the back of his neck.

The coordinator offers him a thin, professional smile. “I’ll circle back in a few minutes,” she says. “We start briefing at ten sharp.”

He nods. “Got it.”

She walks away, heels surprisingly quiet on the tile.

Behind him, someone whistles low.

“Your second ghosting you already?” Jun murmurs from the next bay, hands buried up to the wrists in a bowl of ice‑cold water as he shocks blanched herbs.

“Shut up and finish that ice bath,” Mingyu says. The words come out with more bite than usual.

Jun raises both brows, but he does shut up.

Mingyu turns back to his mise.

Chicken, portioned and trussed, laid out in tight rows. Sea bass fillets, skin side up, patted dry. Tiny containers of prepped fennel, citrus segments glistening like stained glass, microgreens bright in their little plastic coffins.

Everything is where it should be.

Except the person he built all of this around.

He checks his watch.

9:46.

He pulls his phone from his pocket, thumb already hitting Seokmin’s name at the top of his messages before his brain catches up.

No new notifications.

Last text from last night: a screenshot of a particularly cursed typo in the competition packet, followed by Seokmin’s dry,

Seokmin: if we lose because of a missing comma I’m changing majors

Mingyu had replied with three knife emojis and a photo of his own messy notes.

Mingyu: see you tomorrow. don’t be late, transfer

No read receipt.

He stares at the thread for a beat too long.

“Chef Kim.”

The voice makes him jump.

Joshua stands in the doorway that separates the main kitchen from the smaller prep room, sleeves already rolled, coat immaculate. He looks like he hasn’t slept much, but then again, he always looks like that.

“You good?” Joshua asks.

“Fine,” Mingyu says. Reflex.

Joshua’s gaze flicks over the station—two spoon cups, two folded jackets laid out on a nearby stool, one untouched.

“Where’s Lee?” he asks, more pointedly.

“He’ll be here,” Mingyu says, too fast.

Joshua’s mouth does that almost‑smile, the one that says he hears every note in your voice even when you think you’re speaking in monotone.

“He talked to you?” Joshua asks. “After our little chat?”

“Yeah,” Mingyu says. “We…talked.”

That’s one word for it.

Joshua studies him for another second, then nods toward the far wall of glass.

“They’re opening the doors,” he says. 

“Front‑of‑house wants teams in place before the audience settles. Get your head in the kitchen, Kim. If he’s not here at briefing, you’ll still have plates to send.”

It’s not harsh.

That makes it worse.

“Yes, chef,” Mingyu says.

Joshua claps him once on the shoulder—solid, grounding—and moves on to harass another team about their cold holding.

The noise outside swells.

Chairs scrape. Voices rise and fall. The coordinator’s voice floats through the open doorway.

“Welcome to the Culinary Institute Annual Restaurant Concept Showcase…”

Mingyu looks down at his station one more time.

He should be double‑checking that the induction burners are drawing properly, that the sauce pans aren’t warped, that the backup herbs are within reach.

Instead, his eyes catch on the second jacket again.

White, crisp, folded with the same care as his own.

He’d picked that one up from the laundry himself yesterday. Held it a second longer than he needed to before hanging it on the hook by the practicum kitchen door.

“Just grab it on your way out,” he’d told Seokmin the night before, casual. “No point borrowing one when you’ve finally got your own.”

Seokmin had rolled his eyes and said something caustic about Mingyu acting like a wardrobe department, but he’d smiled when he’d run his fingers over his own name.

Mingyu pulls his phone out again.

No new messages.

9:54.

The coordinator appears at the pass once more.

“Competitors,” she calls, voice pitched to carry. “Briefing in the main kitchen in two minutes. Please move to your assigned stations.”

Other teams start to converge near the center—pairs and trios in matching jackets, some with carefully designed logos on their sleeves. 

They look nervous in different ways: one girl won’t stop wringing her towel, another guy keeps checking the height of his quenelles on an empty plate.

“Chef Kim?” the coordinator says, checking her list. “Your co‑lead?”

Mingyu swallows.

He could lie.

Say traffic. Say bathroom. Say anything that buys him another five minutes to pretend the room is the same shape he thought it would be.

Instead, he hears himself say, very calmly, “He’s not here.”

The coordinator’s pen pauses. “So you’ll be running solo today?”

Solo.

The word tastes like the metal that’s been sitting under everything else since dawn.

Mingyu’s chest tightens.

He thinks of the email subject line Joshua had shown him days ago.

He thinks of Joshua’s flat voice in the office door frame.

They’d talked.

Seokmin had said, I haven’t told Joshua to process anything yet. I can still change it.

Mingyu had believed him.

He makes his mouth move.

“Yes,” he says. “Solo.”

The coordinator nods briskly and scribbles something down. “Understood. Step in with the others for briefing, please.”

He follows the small knot of jackets toward the central island where the head judge is already standing, flanked by two alumni in tailored suits. The air smells like polish and nerves.

“…each team will have forty‑five minutes to execute their concept,” the judge is saying. “We will be evaluating flavour, coherence, originality, feasibility, and leadership in planning and execution.”

Leadership.

Mingyu feels the word land like another tiny weight on the stack already balanced in his chest.

He shouldn’t look up.

He does anyway.

Through the glass, the bleachers come into focus—rows of students, some in partial whites, some in hoodies, clutching programs and paper cups. 

A few faculty members, more composed. A cluster of alumni, easy to spot by their posture and their too‑polite laughter.

Faces blur together.

Until one doesn’t.

Third row from the front. Slightly off‑center.

Plain clothes, not a jacket. Hands tight around a folded program. A familiar line between his brows, like he’s trying to memorize the entire room all at once and hates himself for it.

Lee Seokmin.

Mingyu’s stomach drops so fast he actually sways.

As if he’s felt it, Seokmin’s head turns.

Their eyes catch.

Everything else—judge’s voice, rustle of paper, the soft cough from an alum at the end of the row—fades to static.

For a breath, it’s just that line of sight.

Seokmin’s expression isn’t neutral.

He looks…small. Too small for someone Mingyu knows can command a station with a word. Shoulders drawn in under a plain button‑down. Lips pressed together like he’s holding back an apology or a scream.

He doesn’t move.

Doesn’t stand. Doesn’t gesture to the stairs. Just sits there, clutching his program so hard the edge has crumpled.

Mingyu’s chest goes tight and hot all at once.

There’s a flash of something like betrayal under everything else—quick and nasty, gone before he can grab it. Under that, a deeper, duller hurt he doesn’t have a name for yet.

He’d told Seokmin he didn’t want to win because he gave up.

He hadn’t let himself imagine what it would feel like to walk into the future he’d been planning and see Seokmin already seated in the audience.

“…Chef Kim?”

The judge’s voice cuts back through the fog.

Mingyu jerks his gaze down.

“Your station is closest to the far pass,” the judge says, oblivious to the entire silent conversation that just happened through eight meters of air and glass. “You’ll be leading the first service. Understood?”

Mingyu’s tongue feels too big for his mouth.

“Understood,” he hears himself say.

Joshua catches his eye over the judge’s shoulder.

For once, the instructor’s face is bare of any amusement. His gaze flicks from Mingyu, to the empty space at his right, to the bleachers, where Seokmin is still rooted like someone stapled him to the bench.

Something like disappointment crosses Joshua’s expression—soft, not at Mingyu. 

Then he inclines his head, barely, in that way that means ‘later’.

Right now, the competition.

“Competitors to your stations,” the coordinator calls. “We begin in five minutes.”

The briefing breaks. Jackets fan back across the room to their posts.

Mingyu walks the length of his station on autopilot.

Burners. Check. Saucepan. Check. Chicken. Bass. Fennel. Citrus.

His hand brushes the edge of the second spoon cup. It rattles softly against the steel.

He stares at it for exactly one second.

Then he picks it up and sets it on a shelf under the pass.

Not because he doesn’t want it there.

Because he can’t look at it and still breathe.

He ties his apron tighter, like that might hold the rest of him together.

Through the glass, he feels rather than sees Seokmin reach up and press his fingers briefly to the line between his own brows, the way he always does when he’s thinking too hard.

They’re both exactly where they said they didn’t want to be.

Mingyu at the pass, alone.

Seokmin in the back, unseen.

A microphone crackles.

“First team,” the coordinator announces, “Culinary Arts Society: ‘Between Courses.’ Chef Kim Mingyu.”

There should have been another name there.

The absence rings louder than the applause.

Mingyu inhales.

The kitchen smells like hot metal and lemon and the faint, lingering sweetness of reduced tomatoes from their last late‑night test.

He sets a pan on the heat.

“Service,” he calls, voice cutting clean through the room.

By the time the last plate leaves the pass, Mingyu’s shirt is sticking to his spine.

The lights over the training restaurant hum softer now. The worst of the heat’s bled off the burners, but the air still feels thick—steam caught in the rafters, nerves sweating through his jacket.

He doesn’t remember the last ten minutes of service in clean order, just flashes.

Judge’s brows lifting at the first bite. A tiny nod from the alum with the watch. Joshua’s hand on the back rail, fingers tapping in time with ticket calls.

Somewhere above all that, always, the sense of a gaze he keeps refusing to meet head‑on.

“Timers,” the coordinator calls. “And… time. Service complete for ‘Between Courses.’”

Applause rolls over the glass like distant rain.

Mingyu exhales, shoulders suddenly too heavy for his frame.

“You did it,” someone says behind him—Jun, maybe, or one of the assistants drafted in last‑minute. Hands clap his back. 

Someone ruffles his hair. There’s talk of feedback debriefs, of photos, of write‑ups for the program newsletter.

“Chef Kim, if you could—” the coordinator starts.

“I need a minute,” Mingyu hears himself say.

He doesn’t wait for permission.

He unties his apron with fingers that feel half‑numb, drops it neatly on the counter, and slips through the staff door at the back of the kitchen before anyone can grab him again.

The hallway beyond is cooler but no less close. Fluorescent lights buzz overhead, casting the scuffed linoleum in flat, tired white. The hum of the competition fades with every step.

He turns the corner without thinking and pushes open the first door that gives—one of the side exits to the loading bay.

Humid air hits him like a wall.

Outside, the sky is half‑purple, half‑orange, the tail‑end of sunset smeared thin over the city. The concrete lot still radiates the day’s heat. Somewhere, a compressor kicks on with a groan.

Mingyu leans back against the cool metal of the propped‑open door and finally lets his head drop.

His hands are still shaking.

Not from the cooking.

From the empty space that sat to his right all service, as real and solid as any station.

Footsteps scuff, faint, at the edge of the bay.

He knows that gait before he looks.

Seokmin stops a few meters away, just out of reach of the light spilling from inside. The glow catches on his jaw, on the white imprint lines his mask left on his cheeks earlier, on the program still crumpled in one hand.

He looks like he did in the bleachers: smaller than Mingyu remembers and somehow taking up all the oxygen anyway.

For a second, neither of them speaks.

The night hums.

Finally, Seokmin swallows.

“What happened?” he asks.

His voice is rough at the edges, like he’s run it over sandpaper.

Mingyu lets out a breath that’s half laugh, half something else.

“I should be asking you that,” he says.

He doesn’t try to hide the way his face twists; he’s too tired for that. Hurt and confusion and something close to resignation pull his features tight.

“I show up for call,” he goes on, words slow, measured, “I set two spoon cups. Two jackets. The coordinator says I’m registered solo. And when I look up—” he jerks his chin back toward the building, towards where the glass wall would be “—you’re already seated with the audience.”

He leaves a beat of silence, heavy as a stone.

“What happened, Seokmin‑ah?”

Seokmin’s fingers knot around the edge of the program until it creases.

“I thought you knew,” he says quietly. 

“The email. The form. Joshua said—” He cuts himself off, jaw clenching. 

“I asked to step back.”

“I know you asked,” Mingyu says. “I also know Joshua put ‘pending’ all over it and told you to decide with me in the room.”

His eyes flash, not bright with anger, but with something more tired.

“Did you change your mind,” he asks, “or did you just…hit send anyway?”

Guilt flares hot under Seokmin’s skin.

“I—” He looks down at his hands. “I confirmed it last night.”

Of course he did.

Mingyu laughs once, short and flat.

“Right,” he says. “Alone. At your desk. Midnight. Letting your fear pretend it was my opinion again.”

Seokmin flinches.

He deserves it.

“I was trying to protect you,” he says, the words ringing hollow in his own ears. “From questions you shouldn’t have to answer. From risk that isn’t yours. They saw ‘Kim Mingyu’ on the schedule and expected a solo success story. Me up there just makes people wonder why you’re sharing it.”

Mingyu stares at him like he’s reciting something in a language he doesn’t speak.

“You really think,” he says slowly, “that watching me run that line alone felt like protection.”

Seokmin’s breath catches.

“I thought—” he starts, then breaks off. Tries again. “You did it. You were…you. You didn’t need me in there messing with the picture.”

Mingyu’s mouth twists.

“I thought I had you,” he says. “That’s the picture I walked in with. You, me, that stupid name we picked, plates we built together. Instead I got a clipboard that said ‘solo’ and a view of you in the third row pretending you belonged anywhere but beside me.”

The words aren’t sharp.

They land like dull blows anyway.

Seokmin’s throat burns.

“I didn’t want to be the reason they doubted you,” he says. “If something went wrong—”

“If something went wrong,” Mingyu cuts in, “it would’ve been because we’re students pulling off something too big in a borrowed kitchen. Not because you exist next to me.”

He scrubs a hand over his face, letting it fall again with a quiet, helpless sound.

“You keep taking yourself out of the story,” he says. “Like that’s some kind of gift. Like I didn’t spend months making room for you in it on purpose.”

The humid air presses in around them.

Seokmin leans against the rail that borders the loading bay, metal warm under his palm. The night smells like wet concrete and faint exhaust and the ghost of lemon still clinging to his sleeves.

“I watched you,” he says, barely more than a whisper. “Up there. The whole time.”

“Yeah,” Mingyu says. “I noticed.”

There’s no triumph in it. Just exhaustion.

“You were good,” Seokmin forces out. “Better than good. You didn’t need…you didn’t need a co‑lead to prove any of that.”

Mingyu exhales slowly, like he’s counting to ten on the inside.

“You keep saying ‘need’ like this is about logistics,” he says. 

“Like the only reason I wanted you there was because I couldn’t flip a piece of fish without you holding my hand.”

He takes a step closer, not enough to crowd, just enough that Seokmin can see the fine lines of fatigue at the corners of his eyes.

“I wanted you there,” Mingyu says, each word deliberate. 

“Because this—” he jerks his head back toward the kitchen “—was our work. Our menu. Our stupid late nights and alum tongue trauma and arguments over how much lemon counts as abuse. Because I like the way my dream looks when you’re in the frame.”

He lets that sit. The heat between them thickens.

“But you decided,” he adds, softer now, “that the best way to love me was to disappear from it.”

The word love hangs there, heavy, unclaimed.

Seokmin’s heart stutters.

“I—” He grips the rail harder. His knuckles go white. “It wasn’t about disappearing.”

“What was it about, then?” Mingyu asks. There’s no accusation in his tone now, just a tired kind of curiosity. 

“Because from where I was standing, it looked a lot like you choosing to believe the worst thing about yourself over anything I’ve ever said.”

He looks away, out at the dim lot.

“My whole life, I’ve been the guy who adjusts when things go wrong,” he says quietly. 

“Burnt batch? Adjust. Late order? Adjust. Team short‑staffed? Adjust. Today was the first time I walked into a kitchen thinking, ‘We planned this. We’re ready. I’m not alone at this station.’”

He huffs a laugh that has no humour in it.

“And then I wasn’t.”

The simplicity of it hurts more than any shout.

Seokmin’s chest feels too tight.

“I thought you’d be relieved,” he admits, words scraping his throat raw. 

“Free of having to drag me along. Free to be the version of yourself everyone expects. No messy transfer story attached.”

Mingyu’s jaw flexes.

“If you think being with you is ‘dragging you along,’ ” he says, voice low, “then you really haven’t been watching the same kitchen I have.”

He finally meets Seokmin’s eyes again.

“I’m not going to stand here and beg you to take credit for work you clearly think doesn’t belong to you,” he says. 

“If you want to stay in the back, if you want to spend the rest of your life thinking you’re only safe where nobody can see you, I can’t stop you.”

The resignation in his tone makes Seokmin’s stomach twist.

“But don’t,” Mingyu adds, “call it protection. Not for me. Don’t call it a favor and expect me to say thank you.”

Silence drops between them like a curtain.

Somewhere inside, a door bangs. 

Faint laughter filters out, muffled by concrete and distance.

Out here, it’s just the hum of the compressor and the sound of their breathing.

Seokmin stares at the ground until the uneven patches in the concrete blur.

His thoughts have been running in circles for weeks—risk, investors, stories, names on rosters. Reasons stacked like plates, tottering but familiar.

None of them feel big enough to stand on anymore.

“I didn’t come out here to be thanked,” he says finally, voice thin. “Or forgiven.”

Mingyu’s shoulders stiffen, like he’s bracing for another justification.

“I came out,” Seokmin continues, “because for the first time since I hit submit on that stupid form, I watched you in a kitchen and it didn’t feel like I was protecting you.”

He forces himself to look up.

“It felt like I’d cut myself out,” he says. “And left the hole for you to trip over.”

Mingyu’s expression flickers.

“Yeah,” he says quietly. “It did.”

The admission lands heavy.

Seokmin’s throat works.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

It’s the smallest thing he can offer. It still feels too big for his mouth.

“For not trusting you,” he adds, stumbling. 

“For not…trusting myself. For deciding what your dream should look like without asking you. For sitting up there and telling myself I was doing the right thing when it felt like…like watching someone else live a life I wanted.”

The last words come out almost soundless.

Mingyu doesn’t say anything.

He just stands there, breathing a little too shallowly, like one wrong move will snap something neither of them can fix.

Seokmin’s fingers uncurl from the crumpled program.

The paper flutters to the ground, forgotten.

“When we started this,” he says, “it was easy to call it rivalry. Easier. You were the guy with the perfect story—leader, track record, dream restaurant with a name since second year. I was the transfer who wouldn’t shut up about labels.”

A weak huff of breath escapes him that might be a laugh.

“Rivalry was safe,” he says. “It meant I could want to keep up without admitting I wanted anything else.”

Mingyu’s brows draw together, slow.

“Anything else,” he repeats.

“Like this,” Seokmin says.

He gestures vaguely between them—at the heavy air, at the stupid echo of the line between their stations that has followed them out here.

“Like you looking at me during service,” he says, voice shaking, “and me knowing exactly what that look meant. Like you saying ‘we’ and me not flinching. Like…like building a menu and a future where my name being next to yours didn’t feel like a mistake.”

He swallows hard.

“It stopped being just rivalry a long time ago,” he says.

The truth is a weight and a release all at once.

He could stop there.

Could let it hang, undefined, let Mingyu take from it what he will.

He doesn’t.

For once, he doesn’t leave the jar unlabelled.

“And somewhere between ‘I’ll fight you in front of the whole class’ and ‘we’ll make it work,’ ” Seokmin says, looking Mingyu straight in the eye.

A single tear droops down.

 “I fell in love.”