Raya took back everything she said earlier.
Cooking was hard, unnervingly, humiliatingly hard.
And the kitchen was not a kitchen today.
It was a battlefield disguised with stainless-steel, fire, and far too many voices.
Flour drifted through the air like ghost-snow.
Something hissed angrily in a pan to her left.
Something boiled over behind her.
And twelve chefs, twelve grown men with the size and discipline of knights preparing for war, moved around her with the sharp, synchronized precision of a military unit.
They weren't gentle.
They weren't patient.
Their voices cracked through the kitchen like whips, each command snapping at her heels, drilling her as if she were a recruit thrown into a battlefield instead of a kitchen.
"Stir faster!"
"No... clockwise! CLOCKWISE, I said!"
"More fire! Not that much... are you trying to summon a demon?"
"Don't touch that with your bare hands unless you want to lose them!"
