Who Taught Me to Speak Again

At Kotone’s front door, I bowed slightly, maintaining a rigid pride. I bowed like a king descending from a throne to kneel, dangerous even in my grace. “You requested midnight service, and I remain yours to command.”

“Why are you– Why are you this hot? Where’d that suit come from?!”

“It is my duty to serve you exceptionally. Fujishiro-sama, you are trembling.”

“No, I’m–”

“If I am too perfect, you may command me to step back.” Please do. I was barely holding myself together.

She gripped my tie harder.

“No,” she demanded. “Come inside.”

“Then allow me to attend to you properly.”

“You’re doing this on purpose.”

“Thank you.”

I expressed gratitude to my underclassman Fujishiro Kotone last year, the first time I started working as a private chef at her estate.

I meant it.

At the time, I thought it was kindness that she’d shoved the house staff out of the kitchen and dining room so it’d be the two of us. It was only later that I found out that her workers were the silent-type, silent on their job and silent about the domestic violence happenings behind this high-rise apartment’s doors.

I was rinsing my hands when I expressed it, washing away my remaining nervousness as I got into my zone.

“I’m not good with big crowds.”

Fujishiro-san didn’t even look up from her phone. She was the kind of girl who could scroll with one hand while dismantling your personality with the other.

“Haa?” she said. “That’s so… sad-cute.”

“Friend groups aren’t a thing I’m familiar with. I prefer one-on-one every time. I don’t think of it as normal, but it’s how I function. Besides, what constitutes normal anyway?”

“Scary. Like, actually scary!” Kotone exclaimed. “What even is ‘normal,’ you say, that’s, like, totally not normal at all, Shinohara-senpai. You’re basically one step away from becoming a hermit uncle who falls in love with a one-on-one chatbot, you know?”

“I’m not that far gone. At least, I hope to keep my head above the water. I’m contributing to society in my own way… I think.”

“Intimate but lonely, huh…” Kotone’s nails clicked against the oak table, studying me like I was some new trend, appraising me the way she appraised outfits for her magazine shoots. “It’s the first time I’ve met such a person.”

“That’s the thing. I’m not intimate.”

“Oh, so you’re a full-on broken Senpai.”

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t label me like expired produce, Fujishiro-san.”

“Ew. Don’t hit me with ‘Fujishiro-san.’ That’s like… teacher vibes.”

“Sorry. Client rules.”

“Hmm. You barely even talk at school. Looking back, the last time you opened your mouth near me, it was for bullying. You were soooo serious about it. Talk about getting swept by emotions! How girly!”

“It should be ‘how manly.’”

I quibbled, as if reading off a recipe book for interactions. At the time, I was still re-adjusting to quick conversation.

If I had instead revealed that I had been deeply depressed by her comment, like the time when I mistook another student’s greeting only to find he had earphones in, I was sure that would have been the end of my time at her estate.

I was sure those vengeful feelings reached her in the first course, the one that unsettled her stomach.

You didn't get to redo anything in life. Even stupid, petty acts like this would be forgotten. So I wanted everything to have more flavour, like a dessert you tried once and remembered forever. And as we opened up to each other, it stopped feeling like I was reciting a scripted recipe and started feeling like I was finally speaking from my own emotions.

Kotone was my polar opposite. In terms of surface beauty, a natural in fashionista speech and a masterpiece of beauty. Her allure was undeniable; she occupied the front pages of magazines, possessing skin and features women across the globe lusted after.

In deeper terms, I was alluding to the beauty of this rotten Fujishiro estate.

Her mother hit where clothes could hide it. Always beneath the fabric, never on her face. The world saw a witty and well-bred girl from a respectable family, delicate features, soft hair, good grades. The bruises were a secret language written where only she and her bathroom mirror could read it.

Hidden beauty, hidden damage.

She had every right to hate the way she looked, because it invited scrutiny. But she didn’t. She was practical about it. Beauty didn’t save her from being hit by her mother. It didn’t stop her from once bullying my underclassmen. In the end, beauty was just another surface for the impact to land on.

And yet, when she sat at the counter and ate what I cooked, she looked more herself than at any other time. Stripped of her roles as victim or heiress, just as Kotone. For a moment, her outside, inside, and the taste in her mouth lined up.

Meanwhile, I walked around with untouched skin and a carefully managed expression, the picture of someone who was doing fine, whose life was at worst “busy.” No suspicious marks. No visible cracks. Just a smooth surface over a very uneven interior.

If she was beautiful even with bruises, I was the opposite: unbruised and unattractive where it counted.

Even as I thought all this, I knew I was rationalizing, building elaborate metaphors instead of fixing anything.

I knew I was lying to myself when I said, “It’s okay, because my food is honest.” It was a coping philosophy.

But right now, self-deception was the scaffolding holding me upright. If I admitted that my cooking didn’t matter, that these quiet dinners didn’t help, that feeding people with carefully balanced meals was another performance with no real weight, then my whole internal being collapsed.

So I clung to the idea that the meals were real, that the warmth in the bowl was real, that the look on Kotone’s face when she took that first bite was real. That even if my words failed and my presence disappointed, the food said something I actually meant.

Her bright, lighting-strike of a smile.

It was these expressions I received in return that saved me, that made my identity as the MidnightChef everything to me.