Kenji's next class was "The Art of the Blade," a session dedicated entirely to the disciplined, elegant world of knife skills. He walked into the classroom feeling a sliver of hope, a fragile, flickering thing that was probably destined to be extinguished. There were no eggs. There was no heat, no finicky emulsification. It was just him, a knife, and a pile of innocent vegetables. It seemed, for the first time since this madness began, blessedly foolproof. How badly could one truly mess up cutting a vegetable?
The answer, he would soon learn, was 'spectacularly.'
The instructor was a man named Chef Hayashi. He was a wiry old man, bent like a bonsai tree, who moved with the sharp, precise grace of a scalpel. He stood before the class, his ancient eyes sweeping over them, making each student feel as though their very soul was being julienned.
"The knife," Chef Hayashi declared, his voice a gravelly rasp that scraped against the silence, "is an extension of the chef's soul. It is not a tool; it is a partner. It is the first and most important voice in the culinary conversation. Today, we practice the fundamental vocabulary of that conversation: the julienne, the brunoise, the chiffonade. Your task is to prepare this daikon radish." He gestured to the large, white radishes at each station. "Do not merely cut it. Converse with it. Show me your soul."
Kenji stared at the daikon. It was large, white, and unforgivingly cylindrical. It looked less like a vegetable and more like a piece of plumbing equipment. He picked up the chef's knife. It felt heavy and alien in his hand, a dangerous implement for which he felt profoundly unqualified. He'd handled firearms with more confidence. He took a deep breath, recalling a blurry YouTube video he'd watched the night before. A rocking motion, the cheerful host had said, keeping the blade tip down. Simple!
He brought the knife down. Instead of a clean, satisfying slice, the blade skidded off the daikon's slick, curved surface with a terrifying screech. It slammed into the cutting board, the steely tip vibrating an inch from his thumb.
The girl with the pink hair, Tanaka—who had, for reasons Kenji couldn't fathom, chosen the workstation directly beside him again—gasped softly. He braced for her pity, for her concern. He received something far worse.
"Incredible, Takahashi-senpai!" she whispered, her eyes wide with analytical admiration.
"You treat the vegetable not as an object to be dominated, but as a respected opponent in a duel of equals! Your first move was not an attack, but a feint, a test of its defenses!"
"It's… a matter of respect," Kenji mumbled, prying the blade from the deep gash it had left in the cutting board. "One must understand the daikon's… evasive maneuvers."
He tried again, this time with more force and significantly less finesse. He abandoned the rocking motion entirely, deciding that blunt force trauma might be a more effective strategy. He began to chop. And chop. And chop. His twenty years of high-stress physical training took over, but the muscle memory was for disarming opponents and neutralizing threats, not for dicing root vegetables. He hacked and sliced, his movements becoming a blur of desperation and misplaced aggression. Bits of daikon flew across his station like shrapnel. A particularly large chunk ricocheted off a hanging pot and landed in the open notebook of a student two stations down, who circled it and made a thoughtful note.
When he was done, panting slightly, he looked down at his work. He had not produced elegant juliennes. He had not created the perfect, tiny cubes of a brunoise. He had produced a pulpy, shredded white mash, dotted with uneven, brutally misshapen chunks. It looked, to his mounting, existential horror, exactly like a pile of scrambled eggs. The color was wrong, but the texture, the chaotic formlessness, the very essence of it screamed 'scrambled.'
He felt a wave of existential dread wash over him. It was a curse. A culinary hex of unimaginable power. He was King Midas, but everything he touched turned to scrambled eggs. He imagined his future: a Michelin-starred restaurant where patrons would weep with joy over his "deconstructed" scrambled lobster thermidor, his "conceptual" scrambled Black Forest cake. It was a horrifying vision.
Chef Hayashi began his slow, deliberate inspection, gliding down the line. He nodded approvingly at Tanaka's station, where a pile of perfectly uniform, translucent, matchstick-thin daikon lay like a work of edible art. Then he arrived at Kenji's station. He stopped. His wizened eyes, which had seen decades of culinary triumphs and failures, fixed on the white pile of vegetable carnage. He was silent for a full, agonizing minute. Kenji contemplated faking a sudden, debilitating case of scurvy.
"Interesting," Chef Hayashi said finally, his voice a low, intrigued growl. He poked the daikon mash with the very tip of his own knife, as if testing a strange new life form.
"Everyone, look here!" he commanded, his voice sharp. The class, which had been pretending not to stare, now turned their full attention to Kenji's workstation of shame.
"Observe! Most students, when learning knife skills, focus only on the knife. They forget the ingredients. They see a vegetable, and they cut it into a predetermined shape. It is an act of tyranny. But Takahashi-kun… he has gone deeper."
Chef Hayashi gestured dramatically at the pulpy mess.
"He has not simply cut the daikon. He has transformed it. He has bypassed the conventional cuts—the julienne, the brunoise, mere waypoints on a journey—and gone straight to the final textural destination! He is showing us that the journey of the blade and the destination of the ingredient are two separate, distinct philosophies!"
Kenji just stared at him, his mouth slightly agape, a small chunk of daikon clinging stubbornly to his eyebrow.
"This is not a brunoise! This is not a julienne!" Chef Hayashi declared, as if christening a new star in the culinary firmament.
"This… is a Takahashi! A cut that signifies pure, unadulterated flavor potential, free from the oppressive prison of form! You have the soul of a revolutionary, young man. A true artist, unafraid of the chaos of creation!"
The whispers started again, a wave of awe rippling through the classroom.
"He invented a whole new knife cut on the first day!" "Did you see his focus? It was like he was in a trance! The spirit of the knife was moving through him!" "He's not just a chef; he's a philosopher! He's asking what a 'cut' even is!"
After class, Tanaka and two other acolytes cornered him by the lockers. They had apparently already given themselves a name: the "Takahashi-senpai Culinary Philosophy Study Group."
"Senpai, your work today was a revelation," Tanaka said, her eyes shining with the fervor of the truly converted.
"It has forced us to reconsider the very definition of a 'cut.' We were wondering if you would honor us by leading our first study session this evening. We've secured the private dining room. We will bring our own daikons."
"Leading?" Kenji squeaked, his voice cracking. "I don't know anything about leading. Or daikons."
"Nonsense!" said another student, a tall, serious boy with glasses.
"Your actions speak louder than words. Your deconstructed omelet, your conceptual daikon mash… you are teaching without speaking. You are the master of culinary Zen. We wish only to sit at your feet and absorb your wisdom."
"Please, senpai," Tanaka pleaded, clasping her hands together.
"We want to learn your ways. We want to understand the Takahashi."
Kenji felt his sanity fraying at the edges, the threads unraveling one by one. He was being worshipped for his own staggering incompetence. He had to talk to Sato. He had to tell her that the mission was already a catastrophic, farcical success and that he was on the verge of being anointed the reluctant god of a scrambled-egg cult.
"I… have to check my schedule," he stammered, shouldering his bag and making a hasty escape before they could ask him to revolutionize a carrot.