Chapter 363: Only Looking Ahead (5)
Driving the van, Min-joon said to Kaya, “You’re all good, but sometimes you’re too aggressive.”
“Why, shouldn’t I be aggressive?”
“Do you want me to tell you frankly what I think?”
“Sure”
“I feel good if you are aggressive. Yeah, I like it very much.”
Kaya, who was determined to retort him quickly if he started nagging, looked at him with her eyes open wide at his unexpected response. He checked her expression then made a mysterious smile, looking ahead.
“What I want to say is you are being aggressive in a different sense than before. Even if you are harsh in talking to somebody, I just feel you look mellow rather than sharp. Your image these days is not that bad.”
“Why are you flattering me all of a sudden? Don’t make me feel scared.”
As if she had the gooseb.u.mps, she shuddered, touching her both arms. But she didn’t really dislike his praise because her expression was bright. Then, she brought up the topic about Anderson as if she was still upset about him.
“By the way, why is he so edgy? He doesn’t know how to appreciate my help.”
“Did you forget what I told you oftentimes? You are not qualified to blame him.”
“Do you think anybody who has a bad personality can’t blame others for the same reason?”
Kaya grunted.
Min-joon opened his mouth with a smile.
“Anyway, I like what you said to Anderson a little while ago. Remember you told him you would beat him completely? Yeah, I love your fighting spirit like that.”
“So, are you comfortable about it?”
“About what?”
“Well, normally, you would have blamed me for being harsh to him. I think you would have told me to speak to him nicely in such a situation…”
“I guess your way of speaking like that has rubbed off on me, and I think that’s natural,” he replied, shrugging. Given that he was now living with her at the same house, it was natural that they were bound to take after each other.
For a moment, Kaya imagined Min-joon cursing and acting tough like her. She then shook her head. She couldn’t imagine it, nor did she want to.
Kaya said in a quiet voice, “If you act tough like me, I’m going to really kill you.”
“It’s not my fault, isn’t it?”
“Anyway, I clearly gave you a warning. So, keep it in mind.”
Min-joon laughed as if he was dumbfounded by her warning.
When he pulled over to the parking lot, he ran into Anderson, who happened to get out of his car almost at the same time. Kaya and Anderson were exchanging a sharp glance with each other. At that moment, somebody drove a nice coupe into the parking lot carefully. Min-joon’s eyebrows wriggled at the moment he saw the car. It was familiar to him, namely Chloe’s car.
“Chloe is here.”
“Is that Chloe’s car?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s nice.”
While looking at the car blankly, Kaya nodded in admiration. Chloe parked the car very carefully, attentively, and slowly opened the door and got out. Obviously, she was sleeping when Anderson contacted her, but she was neatly dressed with her hair very carefully arranged.
“I’m here, guys!”
It seemed that Chloe was quite happy with Anderson’s proposal, given her bright smile. Her overjoy made Anderson feel less sorry for making such a sudden offer to her.
She tapped Anderson on the shoulder gently and chuckled.
“Thanks, Anderson. If you offered me to come with you, it means I’m good enough to be your cooking partner, right?”
“Well, I don’t think I am qualified to judge you, Chloe. I just know your cooking level as well as your personality.”
“Thanks anyway. If I had stayed idle a little longer, I might have bored out of my skull. You have saved my life.”
“You don’t have to say that much…”
It had been a while since Min-joon saw Chloe feeling so good. Did she begin to change right after the Grand Chef was over, or was it because she was rejected by Min-joon? Maybe it started right after she started broadcasting. She was kind and kind, as always, but he found her becoming less cheerful and vivacious than before.
But Chloe, whom Anderson saw today, was as cheerful and lively as before, so he could feel much more relaxed now. He felt if she could keep showing it, she could cook better than before.
A little later when they encountered Chloe in the kitchen, the other members of Rose Island felt the same as Anderson.
‘She looks completely different from the old Chloe that we used to know,’ Janet felt like that.
She wasn’t that close to Chloe. She just exchanged pleasantries with her or watched her chatting with somebody at a distance, but she knew roughly what kind of personality she had.
In her eyes, Chloe seemed to have been repressed by something or somebody as if she had been consumed with frustration.
But she wasn’t that type anymore today. They found that she was much freer than before. Rachel opened her mouth.
“So Min-joon and Kaya, Anderson and Chloe, Havier and Janet. You guys are making a pair like that, right?”
“Yes, we got messed up in a funny way like this.”
“Well, I don’t have anything else to say to you. Kaya, Chloe, now that you have decided to pair with your partner, I think I have to care about you, too. You can come to this place until you take part in the compet.i.tion. Of course, I’ll allow you to use the kitchen as well as the ingredients as much as you want.”
“Thank you.”
“Actually, today I was thinking of having you guys get more familiar with the recipe a little more before the opening, but let me change my original plan since you’re all here. Everybody, move as a pair. I am curious about what kind of dish you might want to cook from now on.”
At that moment, everyone looked at each other then began to think about it slowly.
Havier said as if he was surprised, “I didn’t think Anderson would bring Chloe here. Janet, did you expect it?”
“I thought he could because I knew all the chefs around him anyway.”
Having said that, Janet looked at Chloe. To be honest, she thought Anderson would be less likely to choose Chloe because she was a chef in name only, and she was almost like a broadcast celebrity. Because of that, Janet thought she might have lost a sense of taste. She was also worried that Chloe might not catch up with Anderson’s cooking level.
In fact, it was Min-joon and Kaya rather than Anderson and Chloe that Janet should pay more attention to. Janet had already seen them cooking as a pair, and how far they could enhance their cooking level as a pair.
‘I have to do better than them.’
She chose Havier as her partner because she was convinced that he would follow her instruction faithfully. That meant that she was responsible for all the matters related to her pairing with him.
‘It depends on how I do. So, let me show them the best of my cooking skills in the compet.i.tion.’
When Janet thought about it, she suddenly felt everybody was silent all at once. To put it precisely, there was silence except for one place. So, she slowly looked at the source of the sound. She looked at Kaya and Min-joon’s kitchen table.
As if they decided on ingredients and the recipe, the two were already starting to cook.
At first glance, it looked like they were making Ratatouille. Min-joon was seen holding a knife while Kaya was getting close to the kitchen oven. They looked just normal when they cooked, but there was always one thing that distinguished them from other chefs.
“They don’t really talk to each other while cooking.”
It might seem easy for a couple to do something well, but it was actually the most difficult. Even couples who have lived in the same house for decades often have a quarrel because they still didn’t know each other well. As far as cooking was concerned, Min-joon and Kaya fully understood each other, which was clearly seen in cooking.
Min-joon gave tomato juice to Kaya, who took it and boiled it in a pan with the chopped tomatoes. Even before she said something, he already chopped the onion into pieces again at the exact time and gave it to her. The way they cooked was so natural and perfect that she found herself unwittingly looking at them on and off while she was cooking with Havier.
And the one who was most surprised at that moment was Chloe. It had been a while since she watched Min-joon and Kaya cooking together. So, she could not help but admire the way they cooked in perfect harmony.
‘Oh my G.o.d, they are a match made in heaven!’
Which couple in the world could boast of a better chemistry than the two? Was it possible to be like them if they could stay together for ten years or 20 years? Chloe trembled her hand. What she was supposed to compete against now was this couple. Her pair had to beat them. She thought she and Anderson as a pair could easily beat them. She thought her pair could fill the gap between them to some extent if she really tried harder.
But she became pessimistic about that possibility.
“What the h.e.l.l should I do to catch up with them?”
Was she admiring them or murmuring to herself in self-mockery?
At that moment, Anderson said, “Don’t be bothered by them. They can go their way, and we can go our own way. So, just look ahead.”
Maybe he was talking to himself, not Chloe.
Then he added, “We won’t lag behind them.”
Hearing that, Chloe smiled bitterly when she suddenly realized that she began to worry about falling behind. She was not sure if Kaya and Min-joon were better than others. There were people who might say Chloe and Anderson led successful lives, but they just felt small before Kaya and Min-joon.
So, she got angrier. Or it might be more appropriate to say that she was full of pa.s.sion.
She wanted to win. She wanted to a.s.sert confidently that she would not lose all the time. She wanted to argue that there was n.o.body who won all the time. She wanted to announce that as a chef she had pa.s.sion and dreams and that she had sweat and toils to achieve her ambition.
It wasn’t just Chloe or Anderson who felt that way. In fact, it was Havier who felt so frustrated and dejected at that moment.
‘Janet chose me, not Anderson.’
Havier wasn’t happy about that because he was not a fool. The reason Janet chose him over Anderson was not because she judged that Anderson cooked better than him. Objectively and subjectively, his cooking skills were clearly not better than Anderson’s.
He felt it was okay for Janet to think of him as a pushover, but he was troubled by the fact that she came to look down on him like that.
‘Let me try to change her perception of me.’