The Shinkansen to Osaka was an exercise in quiet desperation. Kenji sat bolt upright, his new, ridiculously white uniform folded in his luggage, feeling like a man being transported to his own execution. He was surrounded by actual eighteen-year-olds, their faces alight with the pure, uncut optimism of youth. They chattered excitedly about their dreams, about working for Michelin-starred chefs, about mastering the art of sous-vide. Kenji's only culinary dream was to one day successfully operate a microwave without the interior looking like a modern art installation gone wrong.
He hunched his shoulders, trying to project an aura of youthful angst. He even tried slouching, but his lower back immediately protested with a sharp, stabbing pain, forcing him upright again. The crow's feet around his eyes felt like deep-set canyons of world-weariness. He was less a young prodigy and more a cautionary tale about the importance of a good 401(k).
His phone buzzed. A text from Agent Sato.
Sato: "Good luck on your first day! Don't burn the school down. Here's a picture of my new uniform! "
Attached was a selfie of Sato in a drab, grey janitor's outfit, giving a cheerful thumbs-up. She looked more like a plucky anime protagonist embarking on a new adventure than an undercover agent about to sift through garbage for clues about mind-altering chemicals. Kenji, meanwhile, felt like he was about to be the garbage.
The Osaka Culinary Academy was an imposing, monolithic structure of glass and steel that looked like it had been designed by a very wealthy, very angry architect. It loomed over the street, gleaming with an intimidating sheen. Students in pristine white uniforms, their toques perched at jaunty, confident angles, streamed through the automatic glass doors. Kenji took a deep breath, which did nothing to calm his hammering heart, adjusted the toque on his own head—which felt less like a chef's hat and more like a fluffy white dunce cap—and joined the flow.
His first class was "Introduction to Culinary Fundamentals." The classroom was a state-of-the-art kitchen that made the briefing room look cozy. Gleaming stainless-steel workstations were arranged in perfect rows. Induction cooktops hummed with latent power. On the wall was a rack of knives that seemed to contain more sharpened steel than a medieval armory. Kenji felt a bead of sweat trickle down his temple. He was a butter knife in a world of samurai swords.
The instructor, a formidable woman named Chef Morimoto, strode into the room. She had a gaze that could curdle milk from fifty paces and a posture that could have been used to set girders.
"Welcome," she announced, her voice echoing off the steel surfaces, "to the most important class of your lives. Here, you will learn the discipline, the precision, and the passion required to call yourselves chefs. Forget everything you think you know. Your journey to zero begins now."
She paused for dramatic effect.
"Today's lesson is simple, yet it will reveal everything about your character. We will make the perfect French omelet. It is a test of technique, speed, and finesse. You have thirty minutes. Your ingredients are before you. Begin."
Panic, cold and absolute, seized Kenji. An omelet. That was basically scrambled eggs, right? Just… flatter. And folded. He could do this. Probably.
He watched the student next to him, a girl with bright pink hair and an expression of intense focus, crack her eggs with a single, elegant, one-handed motion. Kenji picked up his own eggs. His hands, usually steady enough to disarm a bomb, felt clumsy and foreign. He fumbled the first egg, crushing it in his fist. Shell fragments and slimy yolk dripped onto his pristine workstation. The girl glanced over, her eyes widening slightly.
"Wow, senpai," she whispered, her voice full of awe. "Such a bold deconstruction of the egg's structural integrity. Are you already challenging the conventional form before the cooking has even begun?"
"I… yes," Kenji stammered, frantically wiping his hand with a towel.
"The egg must be understood… from the inside out. One must break the form to know the form."
"So deep," she breathed, turning back to her own perfectly whisked, vibrant yellow eggs.
Kenji managed to get two more eggs into a bowl, splashing a good amount onto the counter in the process. He added a splash of milk, a sprinkle of salt, and began to whisk. He'd seen chefs do it on TV; it was all in the wrist. His wrist, however, seemed to belong to another person, someone with a deep-seated grudge against emulsification. Instead of a smooth, homogenous mixture, he produced a frothy, uneven liquid with pale streaks of unmixed white. It looked vaguely toxic.
He poured the concoction into a heated, buttered pan. It sizzled aggressively, as if in protest. He remembered something about shaking the pan, moving the eggs around with a spatula. He shook. He stirred. He scraped with the desperation of a man trying to erase a terrible mistake. The result was not a smooth, delicate, folded omelet. The result was, unmistakably, a pile of slightly browned, rubbery, sad-looking scrambled eggs.
He stared at his creation in abject horror. It was his curse. It was his destiny. No matter the intention, the ingredients, or the recipe, he was a man doomed to make only one dish for the rest of his life.
"Five minutes remaining!" Chef Morimoto called out, her voice a whip crack.
Defeated, Kenji scooped the scrambled eggs onto a plate. He hadn't even tried to fold them. It would have been a lie. He had failed the very first task of his new mission. His cover was blown. He was a fraud. He began mentally drafting his after-action report, citing the fundamental absurdity of the mission parameters.
Chef Morimoto began her inspection, moving down the line of workstations with the critical eye of a hawk spotting a field mouse. She stopped at the pink-haired girl's station.
"Impeccable, Tanaka-san. A classic, baveuse omelet. Excellent technique. You have a future."
She moved to Kenji's station and froze. She stared at the plate of scrambled eggs for a long, silent, terrifying moment. Kenji braced himself for the inevitable explosion, the public humiliation, the expulsion.
"Takahashi-kun," she said slowly, her voice unreadable.
"Yes, Chef," he mumbled, his eyes fixed on a fascinating scuff mark on the floor.
"What is this?"
"It's… an omelet," he lied weakly. "A… rustic omelet."
She picked up the plate, examining it from all angles as if it were an alien artifact. She took a fork, tasted a small piece, and chewed thoughtfully, her jaw working with analytical precision. The entire class was holding its breath.
"This…" she began, and Kenji prepared to be vaporized by her sheer disappointment. "…is the most audacious, thought-provoking, and revolutionary take on a classic omelet I have ever witnessed in my thirty years of teaching."
The room erupted in whispers. Kenji's brain short-circuited, emitting a faint, high-pitched whine that only he could hear.
"What?" he managed to say, the word coming out as a strangled squeak.
"Look at this!" Chef Morimoto announced to the class, holding up his plate like it was the Holy Grail.
"He has completely abandoned the traditional form! He has rejected the smooth, homogenous texture that lesser chefs strive for! He has broken the omelet down to its conceptual core, presenting us with the egg in its most honest, most vulnerable state! He is not making an omelet; he is commenting on the very idea of an omelet! This is not a failure of technique; this is a work of postmodern culinary art!"
"He's so confident!" someone whispered from the back.
"Look at that plating! So rustic and unapologetic!"
"A true prodigy doesn't follow the rules; he rewrites them!" another student declared with the certainty of a convert.
Kenji stared at the mess on his plate, then at the awe-struck faces of his classmates, then at the stern, approving face of his instructor. They couldn't be serious. This had to be a prank. A very elaborate, very cruel prank.
"Takahashi-kun," Chef Morimoto said, her eyes gleaming with a terrifying, newfound respect.
"You have shown more creativity and courage in your first thirty minutes than most chefs show in a lifetime. I see a brilliant, if chaotic, future for you."
As she moved on to terrorize the next student, the pink-haired girl, Tanaka, leaned over.
"That was amazing, Takahashi-senpai! You've completely redefined my understanding of egg-based cuisine. Would you… would you be willing to join our study group? We meet after class to discuss culinary theory and practice advanced techniques."
"Our… gang?" Kenji asked, a bizarre, overwhelming sense of déjà vu washing over him.
"Our study group! We're pretty hardcore," she said, her eyes shining with earnest devotion. "Sometimes we share snacks."
Kenji looked from his plate of scrambled eggs to the adoring face of his new disciple. Either he was having a stress-induced hallucination, or culinary school students were even weirder than high schoolers. This mission, he realized with a sinking heart, was going to be a long, long, and very, very strange ride.