Chapter 416: Victory Strategy (3)
There was no surprise. Min-joon and Kaya, Enzo and Theo, and Dobby and Eva. The moment the three pairs to advance to the semi-finals were decided, the audience in the stand was not particularly surprised. In fact, most of them here expected they would be the semi-finalists.
Anderson hated the atmosphere again. Some might tell Anderson and Chloe that it was natural that they could not win this contest, but such perception seemed so cruel to them.
“Are you okay, Anderson?” Chloe asked.
“I said I was okay. I already explained to you why a little while ago.”
“Got it…”
But his expressions clearly showed he was not okay at all. Of course, it would be very weird if he didn’t feel anything about his defeat. If he didn’t feel any pain from defeat, it would be difficult for him to make up his mind to overcome it. In some respects, this pain was worthwhile to him, something he had to go through.
Chloe looked at Min-joon and Kaya. And only then did they realize that the pair were looking back at them. When their eyes met, Chloe knew the pair were worried about them, The Min-joon pair seemed to be anxious to hide their feelings for fear their comforting words might rather hurt the Anderson pair’s pride.
Reading their minds, Anderson didn’t want to worry them. He didn’t want to make them feel sorry for him and Chloe. And that was exactly what Chloe wanted moving forward. That was why she wanted to stand beside them because she wanted to stay as their friend. She knew that if they had subtle worries about each other all the time, their friends.h.i.+p would remain fragile.
“Let’s go.”
Anderson first cleared up the cooking counter and turned. Startled, Chloe looked at him.
“Are you going to leave already?”
“Our contest is over. What’s the point of staying here any longer?”
“Wait a minute. I don’t think you want to go back to the hotel right now, right?”
“We have to book the reservation quickly. We have nothing to do here in France anymore.”
Chloe stuttered without responding to his words.
Watching her hesitating, he let out a sigh and said, “We’re going back to Los Angeles, anyway, but let’s go and get inside our car. I think reporters will be here soon to get our comments. I don’t want to waste many minutes here hearing them comforting me, and it’s going to be really frustrating to answer their questions about our defeat.”
“You’re right. Let’s go.”
Like he said, she didn’t want to be embarra.s.sed again because of their defeat. Watching her follow him hurriedly, Min-joon muttered, “After all, we are the only pair from Rose Island who has survived.”
“Yeah, we have to play their role, too.”
“Right.”
Even though he replied like that, it was questionable whether they could play the role of other Rose Island pairs who had been already eliminated in the previous rounds. Min-joon knew that the chefs they were trying to compete with were not French chefs or Dobby. The chefs that Janet, Anderson, Havier, and Chloe had in mind targeting were Min-joon and Kaya.
That was why Min-joon could not replace their role because their goal was to beat him, but he could not beat himself. Of course, it would be possible to win against him in a philosophical sense.
“Min-joon!”
When he was lost in thought for a moment, the judges approached and spoke to him.
He turned his head with a smile.
“Thank you for giving me a good score. We’ve survived in the semifinals thanks to you. I thought it would be an honor for me to survive up to the quarterfinals.”
“You got a good score because you made a good dish. It’s embarra.s.sing to hear you thanking us.”
“No matter how delicious a dish I make, there are people who really don’t appreciate it.”
“Well, it was hard for us to properly grasp the new tastes of your dish.”
In short, even professional chefs like the judges here could not understand the taste of his dish. That just showed how complex and sophisticated his dish was.
Bastien said with a sigh, “I’m glad other French protesters defended you. If public opinion had not been formed that we should protect you for the sake of French pride, there would have been all sorts of absurd rumors about your advance to the semi-finals spreading by now on the internet or on many people’s lips.”
“Don’t worry. If the rumors are so bad that we can’t stand it, we can just back to America.”
“To make sure that never happens, our organizers are taking every preventive measure. So, just trust us and wait.”
“Sure. Actually, we want to partic.i.p.ate in the contest to the end if we can.”
“You might want to win to finish well, right? Are you confident?”
“If we are not confident, I won’t even mention it.”
In terms of cooking score, Min-joon’s confidence in winning the contest was unrealistic.
Above all, Enzo and Dobby were at cooking level 9, and Min-joon and Kaya were at cooking level 8. Given that Rachel was also at level 9, the cooking skills of those chefs who reached level 9 could never be ignored or taken lightly. Some might say it was only one level of difference, but there were lots of chefs who couldn’t overcome that one level all their lives and died of old age.
However, Min-joon did not think that it was an impossible goal. Min-joon had the power of the system, and Kaya had a sense of taste that even the system could not express. And their match was probably the best possible in the chef world.
Min-joon muttered, “We came here today because we were determined not to lose in the next round.”
***
“Hey, you made quite a bluff to the judges today.”
“Do you think I did?”
“I’m just kidding. Good job.”
On the way back to the hotel, Kaya spoke with a smile.
He muttered while watching the hotel getting closer in his eyes.
“The Dobby pair and the Enzo pair are very strong. You know that, right?”
“They’ve survived like us until now. It would be strange if we thought they are not strong.”
“By the way, I don’t know why I keep thinking I have to win by all means. Aside from the fact that I have to take back the knife, I don’t have anything special to beat Chef Enzo.”
“Well, there is something special, of course. As you know, it’s about his cherished rivalry with Chef Daniel.”
They already drove into the parking lot while chatting away like that. But even after parking, they didn’t try to get out of the car.
Min-joon muttered in a low voice, “What kind of person was Chef Daniel?”
“I know he was a great chef. I heard people praising him everywhere.”
“Can I be a chef like him?”
When he asked that question, Kaya seemed to have understood the psychological burden he had kept under wraps until now because Rachel always tried to look for Daniel’s traces in Min-joon. She felt that Min-joon might have become quite familiar with her comparison of himself with the dead ghost that didn’t even exist in the real world.
“You can’t.”
“Really?”
“You can’t be a chef like him. You know you can’t be somebody other than you.”
“That’s right.”
“Whatever Chef Rachel expects from you with respect to Daniel, let her take care of it. You became a chef because you wanted to cook, not because you wanted to be a chef like Daniel.
And I’m dating Min-joon, not Daniel.”
“Got it. I won’t talk more about this. I think I needlessly worried about it.”
“I know you will worry about it again.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s kind of my habit..”
Min-joon opened the car door with an awkward smile.
Kaya sighed as if she couldn’t help it, but didn’t argue with him anymore.
Actually, she had seen him showing such a frustrating temperament for a long time.
The moment they entered the hotel, the two no longer wanted to continue the topic.
Chloe and Anderson were in the living room, looking gloomy though they pretended not to be sad and frustrated.
Min-joon said as casually as possible, “Hi, guys, we’re back!”
“Hi.”
“Aren’t you hungry? How about going out to eat? You guys seem too tired to make dinner now.”
When he said that, Anderson and Chloe turned to each other. At a glance, they didn’t look hungry. Chloe felt she didn’t want to just sit around doing nothing in a gloomy mood, so she got up and looked at Kaya.
“Kaya, if you’re not tired yet, would you like to go with me to get some sandwiches at the place we stopped by last time?”
“With me?”
“Yeah. I have something to say.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter.”
“Okay, let’s go.”
Chloe quickly walked to the front door and got out. A bit surprised by her unexpected move, Kaya shrugged then went out after casting a glance at Min-joon and Anderson.
Did Chloe act briskly because she was so depressed? Anyway, Kaya was willing to comfort her on the way to the sandwich store.
Unlike the way she bolted out of the front door, Chloe didn’t say much until she arrived at the sandwich store. Kaya didn’t even try to break the silence because she was now so depressed to speak.
At that moment, Chloe opened her mouth.
“Kaya, do you remember the guy I mentioned last time?”
“I don’t know what kind of person you are talking about.”
“She’s a homeless friend of mine. She was also my college friend from Europe. I guess she was 19.”
“Homeless foreign student?”
Kaya frowned. In the United States, not a few students slept in the open to pay for their tuition in college. However, it was a different story as far as foreign students were concerned. Of course, it wasn’t difficult for them to forge their financial statements, but they would not have thought about it when they had planned to study in America from the beginning. Who would have thought of sleeping in the open to save their tuition in a foreign country? They would rather have returned to their homelands.
Understanding why Kaya asked that question, Chloe nodded and opened her mouth.
“Well, she is still vivid in my memory. At that time, I thought a lot about whether her choice was right at that time. Of course, she couldn’t solve her problem no matter how much I agonized over her matter. But I couldn’t understand why she had to come to America to study if she wanted to lead a homeless life, although I knew she came for her dream and better future. I thought she would have gotten good results by studying in her homeland without studying in the United States as a homeless student.”
“So, what do you want to ask me?”
“Listen to me a little more. I was worried at that time. It’s okay she was living as a homeless student, and she could graduate. But if she did something wrong, her status as an international student might be canceled, and even if things went really bad, she might have to go back to her country after struggling so much in America. Or she could remain as an illegal alien. Maybe she had a plan of her own. I hope she is still in America because she chose to go to America after recalling the best scenario for her life. But how many people in this world can lead their lives according to their best scenarios?”
Kaya didn’t answer anything. It was a more complicated problem than she thought. And it didn’t seem that Chloe was saying it simply because she was worried about that homeless friend.
“In the end, I started to think about her in terms of her final outcomes. If she graduated from college and achieved what she wanted, she must be a really great woman. So much so that she could go down in the annals of the great men. But what if she couldn’t achieve what she wanted? What if she couldn’t even graduate and stayed homeless? Or what if she would have to go back to her country without getting anything? Can we say she challenged something cool and nice? Or was she just a failure?” she said, with her voice trembling as if she felt sorry for the student or for some other reason.
She asked, “Kaya, could you be a homeless woman to realize your dream?”