A/N: Hewo my Beans!!! I thought about releasing a longer version but that would've included a pretty hefty cliffhanger so I spared you guys the pain and decided to shift that into next week's chapter instead so that you could get a longer one next week. My apologies for the short one. I just wanted to kick off the next location with a much longer chapter and I didn't want it split in this and the next.
I really do like Indonesia and I've been to Jakarta and Bali on separate occasions and enjoyed both very very much. Hehe.
For now, I'm focusing all my energy on driving the story first before I break it up with a special AU that should be coming around early September. I took some days off for my birthday that week so I should definitely have more time to write ;v; hehe.
Enjoy.
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[Leroy]
Sixty minutes was a luxury. That's a lot of time for kitchen professionals, just in case you start thinking I'm cocky and have nothing under my belt to back things up. The first ten to twenty minutes saw most of us prepping countertop mise en place—peeling potatoes; dicing onions; that sort of thing. The weird thing about being a head chef was that you never really touch prep. You leave it to your assistants. Or station boys. Or anyone else but yourself.
The people on mise chopping up green onions and all that... that used to be me. Back in Andre's kitchen after dropping out of culinary school, that was me. Not saying everyone else in the room was shit at prepping their own mise; just that I seemed a little ahead when it came down to speed and precision.
I could see him taking all the credit. The homeschooling; the videos; the lessons; the stopwatch. Siegfried would've liked to see it all pay off. And for now, the plan was to let him have it.
It was moving from mise to getting herbs and spices into the food processor for a blitz that got me thinking about something else. One station down was Du Bellay with what looked like chicken Parmigiana on her mind. The ingredients laid out on her counter were the standard, and because the dish wasn't exactly the most complex Italian dish to ever exist, she looked pretty lax about making the cut.
On the complete opposite end of that was Andre with his fresh lobster up front—the station just several feet away from the judges and the one additional station for a special snowstorm. Even from afar, I could tell the cameras struggled to get a decent shot of him looking like he knew what he was doing, dealing with that lobster.
Sad.
The lobster, I mean.
"Forty-five minutes remaining, chefs." I heard Amelia call out from the front of the room and my attention snapped right back to the pesto for a final blitz, pulsing it for a couple more seconds before checking the consistency. Tasting once.
It got my hunger going for a little; made me think about Chicken waiting for me outside the gallery room, maybe with an extra tiny cat friend on his back. The thought reminded me of dinner. That we'd come into the challenge on an empty stomach and not much energy to spare.
I gave the ingredients on my counter a scan. Hm. Might work.
It's easy to take for granted the idea of having someone to share dinner with. I used to think it wasn't that big of a deal because eating alone was the norm back when I was away from Annie, living in New York with Siegfried under his care. Having people around while I was eating felt like a chore; having to accommodate to whatever they choose to have or want me to eat. It was easier doing it alone.
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Wax
Romance[Sequel to Vanilla] Seven years later, childhood sweethearts Vanilla Julian White and Leroy Cox reunite in the City of London for an unlikely reason. The latter-once a burning flame unfazed by the wind-had, since a couple of years ago, left the heat...
