"Boss, then I will show my shame." Shi Ke said.

"Wait a moment..." The boss raised his right hand.

"???"

"After I finish entertaining the guests, I will assess you after closing today."

"..., oh. Then let me be your assistant. Leave all the washing, chopping, dishes, etc. to me." Shi Ke also had no objection.

"Yeah. That's it. Yukihira, let's get to work."

"Dad, why did you agree so unclearly?" Xingping said softly when Shi Ke went to pick up the steel rod and returned to the kitchen.

"Haha... It's hard to find someone who looks like me. You have to figure it out, right?"

"Does it look like you?" Xingping stared with dead eyes.

"If I'm not mistaken, this guy is a homeless chef."

"What does that have to do with you?"

"A chef who always stays in one place and cooks his own food will never succeed. A wandering chef is a chef who has shown his skills all over the world. Do you understand? This is a gap in vision. Do you understand?"

"He is only fifteen years old. How many places has he been to?" Yukihira curled his lips disdainfully.

"You lost to me five hundred times, right?"

"It's 489 times!!! It's not even five hundred!" Xin Ping was very persistent.

"I'm afraid he has more than you. Victory is what a chef should have. However, the power that failure can bring to a chef is truly powerful. Every time you survive a failure, the chef's cooking skills will improve.

Your current strength is absolutely inseparable from your failures... Oh, why am I telling you this? Work hard and don't be lazy!"

"..." Xingping didn't say anything after listening, and he didn't know what he was thinking.

"Knock!" Shi Ke, who walked into the kitchen, leaned the steel rod against the wall and pointed at the ingredients that had been washed and set aside. "Boss, what do you want me to do? You seem to have already taken care of the ingredients.

Washing and chopping vegetables seems to be a dead end.”

"Well, just help us order the food. We both have our hands full."

"oh."

"Put that stick of yours in the warehouse at the back. It's not suitable for storage in the kitchen. Only kitchen utensils can be stored here." The boss pointed to the steel rod leaning against the corner.

"Uh...Boss, that's...a rolling pin." Shi Ke was so embarrassed.

"..." The boss and Yukihira looked at the steel rods, and then at the rolling pins in their shop, inexplicably feeling like a grandson meeting his grandpa.

"Then put it farther away. If it knocks over and hits something, you'll be in trouble."

"oh."

"I'll put it away. You go and order." Xin Ping said.

"I think it's better for me to do it."

"Don't worry, it won't be damaged."

"I'm not afraid of it being broken, I'm afraid of you being broken."

"What did you say?..." Xin Ping grabbed the steel rod and raised it, his face turned green.

"I'm afraid you'll show off your waist." Shi Ke's mouth twitched.

"How much does this... weigh?"

"Forty-three kilograms, maybe. Made of special steel, you probably can't lift it with your bare hands."

"Come on. You can't bear it. The gas tank isn't even that heavy!!"

"Hmm. You can take me to relax for a while."

"Dad, let me go there." Xingping said to the boss.

"Go and come back quickly. I'm a little busy."

Shi Ke followed Xingping to the back warehouse.

"Just put it here. Don't worry, no one will steal it. To be honest, I have never seen such a big rolling pin in my life. Is this... really a rolling pin? Tell the truth."

"Yes." Shi Ke played a stick trick with a steel rod, and the whistling wind suddenly picked up.

"Okay, stop playing around. Everything will be blown over by the wind." Soma Yukihira looked at the floating vegetable leaves and said, he was really calm.

"Oh. I'm sorry." Shi Ke wrapped the steel rod in a cloth and put it under the table in the corner.

"If you let it go, will it be okay?"

"That's better than hitting someone."

"Well, safety first. Hey..., I suddenly discovered that you are really easy to talk to."

"Oh... I'm Chinese and I'm easy to talk to, except at certain times of course."

"..., hello. Are you strong?"

"Yeah. I'm very strong. When it comes to fighting, I'll fight twenty or thirty, no problem at all."

"I'll go...who wants to fight with you?!"

"Then what do you want to compete with? I have nothing better than fighting."

"What about cooking skills? Aren't you a chef?"

"This is it. It's just entry level."

"..., holy shit! Are you here to destroy my brand?"

"No. Don't worry. If you're not satisfied, you can fire me."

"You said you are entry-level."

"Yeah. Entry level, that's what I think. Besides, there's no place to test my level."

"..., can I think you are pretending?"

"Whatever you think, my current cooking skills are still far from the delicious food I pursue."

"You... forget it, I'll know everything after I try your cooking tonight."

"Yeah. Stay tuned. Let's go back. After chatting for so long, your dad won't beat you, right?"

"..., eh? I forgot about it. Let's go quickly. Why don't you put down your knife? Such a big man will hit someone."

"..., that's not possible. If I lose a handful of them, all my plans will be ruined."

"That's true. Stop carrying the sword later and put it aside."

"I know, I'll find a place to hang the whole set. People will look at it, so I can't throw it away."

"Chuangzhen!! Are you taking such a long time to put something out? No one is ordering anymore." The boss called from the kitchen.

"Oh, here we come." The two of them returned to the restaurant together and started their formal work.

Time flies and one day passes.

"Please go slowly. Thank you for your patronage." The boss was sending the last customer away.

"Thank you for your hospitality~!" the guest responded sincerely.

"It's almost time to put out the charcoal stove... Soma?" The boss looked at Yukihira Soma who was in a daze while collecting the plates, and shook his head helplessly.

"Today's fried rice should be cooked three times more. I will graduate from junior high school in a few months, and then I can devote more energy to practicing cooking... I want to... surpass my dad as soon as possible...

, become the backbone of this restaurant!" Yukihira's expression became brighter and brighter as he thought about it.

"Boss, I've packed up everything from now on. Is it time for the exam?" Shi Ke washed his hands and left the kitchen.

"Uh! Okay." Xingping was woken up. Looking at his eager expression, he must have been thinking about it all day.

"Haha... You can use the ingredients in the kitchen as you like. The theme is home cooking. You can start." The boss said.

"Home-cooked food. Okay, no problem." Shi Ke rolled up his sleeves and picked up a bag of leftover flour from today.

"Pasta? You have the guts." The boss smiled.

"Are you going to make cakes?" Xingping suddenly appeared next to Shi Ke who was adding water to the flour in the basin.

"Hand-pulled noodles. Do you want to learn? I'll teach you." Shi Ke twisted his hand, and a small vortex appeared in the puddle in the middle of the flour pile.

"Handmade ramen. I've never seen it before. Japanese ramen is basically made directly. Is it different in China?"

"Of course." Shi Ke raised his hand, and a medium-sized piece of dough appeared in his hand. Looking at the basin again, the pile of flour was gone. The entire basin was as clean as new.

"..., is it kneaded? So fast?!"

"No. It's just a bunch. Why don't you go out and wait? Kneading dough and stuff like that is quite boring."

"Well. I'm out."

Shi Ke put the dough back into the basin and kneaded it vigorously. The entire dough deformed dizzyingly under his palms, from round to flat, and from flat to round. This process that should have been so boring actually happened.

An inexplicable sense of beauty.
To be continued...