Of course, he could learn more from June. However, he already learned almost all he could from her. If there was anything he could learn from her, he could do it even if he was in a different place, not necessarily in New York. He could learn more things when he was not around with her. Obviously, as a head chef, he would find a wholly different new world from now.

  “Given your abilities and prestige, you can enjoy a stable life, right? Why do you want to lead a stressful life while moving from one place to another?” asked Jesse, grumbling. It seemed that she was reluctant to see him leave again when he came back after a long time.

  Min-joon replied, “Well, it’s because you can’t climb to the top position if you are complacent.”


  “Why is climbing to the top so important?”


  Min-joon couldn’t answer right away because everybody had a different opinion on that.

  Actually, he also wanted to ask June the same question. He wanted to ask which was more important, climbing to the top or just moving on.

  Probably she would come up with an unexpected answer.

  ***

  “Live logically,” June said.

  “Logically?” Min-joon asked.

  “What I mean is if you’re hungry, you eat, and if you’re not, you don’t eat. If you want to visit a faraway place, you get on the plane, and you put on your swimsuit when you want to swim. If you need to do something, you should do it. If you don’t, you are escaping from it, and you are lazy.”


  “Do you know what you just said?”


  “Come on, do you think I may have dementia already?”


  She crossed her arms with a smile. Since she became the head of Rose Island, she seemed to be more skinny than before. When he looked at the shade under her cheekbones, she opened her mouth.

  “You’ve been good to me until now. You’ve given me a lot, and you’ve taken a lot from me. It’s not that there is nothing I can get from you. Maybe I need it more now because I need a sous chef I can rely on even when I am away from this place.”


  “I can keep staying here.”


  “I know, but you shouldn’t. If you stay here because I need you, it’s a waste of time for you and others. I hate people who waste their lives. How can I watch you wasting your life because of me? I would rather marry Dave than seeing you get stuck here.”


  “I think that’s a good idea.”


  “Shut up!”


  Judging by the way she used to speak to Min-joon, her words were rather harsh.

  Her heavy workload made her more hysterical than usual. Of course, half of her stress was brought on by herself.

  “I’m ready, Min-joon. Who in the world would think of you as a sous chef? There is no sous chef in the world who can cook better than you. Do you know what that means? It means you have to be a head chef. Unfortunately, I have no intention of handing my restaurant over to you yet.”


  She then said in a calm voice, “Go back to Los Angeles. I’m not telling you to go right away because you and I need some time to wrap up our stuff here nicely. So be ready in the meantime. Let me start looking for your replacement. Just prepare to show your cuisine in Los Angeles in the meantime, Min-joon.”


  “I don’t know if I’m ready.”


  “You don’t start running until you are fully ready. When you come to your senses, the referee has already blown the whistle. That’s why you just run anyway.”


  He looked at her. She was calm. He even felt sorry for the fact that she didn’t feel sad about him leaving her New York restaurant.

  She opened her mouth.

  “The whistle has already been blown. So just run.”


  “Well, I have wanted to tell you this for a long time.”


  “What do you mean?”


  “I feel you are like my sister.”


  She frowned at his words. Sister? Did he feel he was so close to her that both were brother and sister?

  “It sounds like you want to kill me.”


  He burst into laughter at her response. But he didn’t bother to explain why because he knew better than anyone that she really didn’t think so.

  He felt it was a strange turn of events. In fact, their bond was not that long, but the two understood and accepted each other as if they had known each other for a long time.

  Maybe it was because they were pretty much alike in some way. The two were very similar in that they were sick and tired of just looking for the top.

  ‘Come to think of it, it’s really strange.’


  Whenever she felt he understood her feelings wholly, she felt strange. He had always enjoyed being in the limelight until now. In some respects, she enjoyed as much limelight as he, but she was nothing, compared to him. Looking back, she was far behind him when she was the same as him.

  But he cheered for her struggle more than anyone else. When she was having a hard time, sometimes he looked more stressed out. Perhaps people might now know how much somebody’s sharing one’s distress would comfort one when one was going through hard times.

  She looked at him for a moment. She then said drily, “I didn’t expect I would have a younger brother like you at my age.”


  “Well, I never thought that I would have a sister like you,” he said with a smile.

  As if she felt it was a cheap titillation, she avoided his glance and said, “You might want to prepare for marriage, right?”


  “Pardon?”


  “You said the moment you opened your restaurant, you were going to marry Kaya, right? Nope? Did you say that to avoid your difficult moment? If so, I’m a bit disappointed.”


  “Ah, that’s not true. To be honest, I didn’t think as far as that……”


  She let out a sigh as if she expected he would come up with that answer. This was the problem with anybody consumed by his dream. When there was something as precious as his dream, he couldn’t devote himself to it. Of course, it was natural for a ship with multiple destinations to find it difficult to find the right navigation route. Even ordinary men find it hard to pursue the goal of leading a happy life with their loved ones. How could it be easy for them to have the cake and eat it? A person with a dream must be more greedy. They should be greedy enough to grab everything they want. And they had to be more diligent to keep holding their greed just like June. But such a life was not a happy one, to be honest.

  “Min-joon.”


  She placed her hand on his shoulder. Her white fingers were thin at first glance, but her grip was not weak. Was it because she was trained as a chef for a long time? Or was it because she felt heavy at that moment?

  “If you want to run away, you can.”


  “I can’t believe what you have just said.”


  “I’m telling you this as someone who has never run away. I didn’t even think about running away because I decided I wouldn’t do anything I would regret later. But as time passed, I felt different. I regret I didn’t run away.”


  She slowly lowered her hand. Then she turned around slowly. In her office, as usual, the clean scenery of New York, which couldn’t be more beautiful, came into her view. She was now in a place where everyone in the city could dream of something. But she could not satisfy her hunger in her place.

  “I don’t think my life is wonderful. Every day I feel my life is neither wonderful nor happy. So, if you are conscious of me and decide your path, I hope you won’t do it. As your senior, I am not the type of person that you can take a cue from.”


  “What you want to say, after all, is to hold on to Kaya tightly, right?”


  “You are smart!”


  “Don’t worry. I won’t lose her.”


  He was not hesitating to get married to her. If he got married someday, the one who would stand by his side would definitely be Kaya. He was quite sure of that.

  But he was scared about something. Even if marriage was an evolution of love, it was certain that marriage would change their relationship in some way. Even if the change was positive, he thought it was regrettable to lose his current feelings and relationship with her.

  “I like Kaya, and she also likes me as much as I do. So there won’t be anything wrong with us unless we fall out of love with each other. If our hearts grow cold, it won’t be a problem if things don’t go well as we intended. At that point, we won’t have to feel hurt even if we don’t get connected with each other.”


  “Even if you like each other, it doesn’t always protect your relationship,” she said with a bitter smile. He didn’t rebuke her because that’s the case with her relationship with Dave.