But they soon knew why Min-joon was overly kind to them.

  ‘Oh, he wanted to show them the royal road to cooking……’


  They could feel it whenever they heard him instructing them kindly. In other words, he checked out the cooking level of each participant and thought hard about what was best for them to do at the moment.

  At that moment, Ken had no choice but to smile bitterly. Most of them were confused because they couldn’t even decide what they were going to do next, but Min-joon was thinking of all the things they had to do while figuring out what kind of role each of them was playing.

  While he was helping them, he was making his own dish. So it was natural for Ken to feel as if they were now playing house.

  ‘Man, what a freak!’


  Ken suddenly felt sorry for Hugo and Peter, who were with them now because they once competed with a guy like Min-joon. If they hadn’t attended the Grand Chef Season 3, they would not have had to regard him as their competitor. But their choice to participate in Season 3 plunged them into a battle with him that they could not win for the rest of their lives.

  Ken glanced at Min-joon quickly. He was again concentrating on his own cooking. What he was making was fried dumplings made with tofu and shrimp meat. At first glance, it seemed that he was just kneading the ingredients with his hands, but instead of them doing it, he insisted on doing it with his hands. Ken wondered what kind of difference he could make through that process.

  Ken could find the answer after he was done cooking.

  “Man, this is so delicious.”


  Ken groaned after trying it. When he dipped Min-joon’s fried dumplings in a sauce made from a mixture of soy sauce, minced garlic, chives, and vinegar, he realized for the first time that tofu dishes could be so delicious like this. And only then did he realize why Min-joon didn’t let them take care of it. It looked like the tofu was crushed, but the texture of tofu and shrimp meat was still stimulating his tongue. If they had kneaded the dough with their clumsy dexterity, the tofu and shrimp would have been just crushed like a powder and stuck together like a pancake.

  ‘I can’t believe he was on par with us only a few years ago.’


  Before Min-joon participated in the Grand Chef competition, he was far from a chef. Basically, he enjoyed cooking as a hobby. At least that was what he knew about Min-joon.

  But Min-joon had kept growing since then, and now he had become a famous chef that they couldn’t even think of being compared to. It wasn’t just because of his fried dumplings. Grilled mackerel with soy sauce, cream sauce, grilled suji on top of a powdered wine sauce, and honey air served alongside edible petals, etc. All of them were dishes that Ken couldn’t even imagine normally.

  And Min-joon made them all of a sudden. Besides, his cooking was not only based on his own recipe but also on the ideas of the participants working for him here.

  That was why Min-joon was great. When they presented trifling and idle thoughts, which might have ended up being useless, to him, he applied them to his cooking successfully. And he even took it to a whole new level like an art. So the completed dish was now placed before them.

  And such a big difference thrilled them.

  After all, he was a chef that all the chefs around the world paid the most attention to, and a genius with more brilliant talent than anyone else. Besides, he had a perfect palate, the symbol of Rose Island, and the publisher of Choters Guide.

  At that moment, all sorts of nicknames that described Min-joon flashed through Ken’s mind.

  But in the end, there was only one thing that he remembered about him.

  ‘Yeah, he is a genuine chef.’


  In this world stained with fakes and lies, he was a genuine chef in every way.

  Suddenly, Gwen, one of the participants working for Min-joon now, thought that he was like the North Star, which guides lost travelers by just being there in the sky.

  That was exactly the case with him, who was like the North Star to junior chefs like her.

  After that brief cooking session was over, the participants of the Grand Chef competition changed their perceptions of Min-joon completely. In particular, the participants including Gwen and Ken, who cooked together with him, were immensely impressed.

  After the cooking was over, Ken sat down on a chair and was lost in thoughts blankly.

  Some of the other participants were still standing by his side to speak to him, but he could not afford to talk with them now.

  He felt like all the energy in his body had drained away. Actually, he didn’t cook for a long time. It took him almost two hours to prepare the ingredients and cook them. Of course, it was far from short, but it was nothing compared with the long hours he spent in the kitchen at June’s restaurant.

  But Ken didn’t feel like he was cooking for two hours now. He was different from the way he usually did. He wasn’t pressed for time, nor was he impatient with cooking. The way he cooked freely with his recipe was completely different from the way he cooked according to Min-joon’s direction. The funny thing was that he didn’t feel bad because of that.

  What Ken just cooked wasn’t his own cuisine. It was Min-joon’s cuisine. From A to Z, Ken was used only as Min-joon’s assistant, not as an independent chef. It was not that Ken didn’t take a break for the entire two hours. But Ken had to move his hands a lot when he had to use them because he had to carry out his assignment perfectly under Min-joon’s instruction.

  If Ken had been alone, he would have never imagined it because he needed to know first what the perfect dish was before he even attempted to make it.

  “Are all the world’s top chefs like him?”


  Ken thought about it for a while, but it didn’t take him long to realize that they weren’t.

  He had never worked at the best restaurant in the world, but he had seen a lot on TV shows how chefs were doing it when they were working with their junior chefs in the kitchen.

  In fact, most famous chefs had a hot-tempered personalities, who tended to scream at their junior chefs and cooks. Of course, there was a reason why they did so. If they didn’t shout right away, their junior chefs would often relax, which would naturally lead to their mistakes. And the reason that they had no choice but to make mistakes was because no matter how competent the head chefs were, it was virtually impossible for them to fully understand all the mistakes of their junior chefs.

  But Min-joon was different. Ken couldn’t figure out why and how he was different from other chefs. But what he knew clearly was that Min-joon’s capabilities and talent were far from common.

  Ken sighed slowly. He felt like even his soul got carried away with Min-joon’s fantastic cooking skills. So he felt exhausted and could not do anything. At that moment, he heard somebody letting out a sigh like him.

  Ken shook his head. Sitting next to him was the woman he cooked with a little while ago. She was not Gwen. She was a little girl who he was afraid to call a woman because she looked 15 at best. It was clear she was a minor.

  So he spoke to her first.

  “Oh, you said your name is Merlin?”


  “Oh, yes. You are Ken, right?”


  “Yes, that’s right. So, how do you feel? How did you feel about cooking with Min-joon?”


  She smiled feebly at his question. She then lifted her legs up and down hers. Her chair was so high that her toes didn’t even touch the floor.

  “I’m scared.”


  “Scared?”


  “I feel like I have too long a way to go.”


  He could understand her feelings. He nodded his head, thinking for a moment.

  She quietly looked down at her shoes, then opened her mouth.

  “Can I be a chef like him when I grow up?”


  “Your assumption is wrong. Even if you grow up, you can’t be the same as Min-joon. It will depend on how you spend your time.”