The Chef Who Owns the Midnight

There were people who fell in love with pictures.

Idols on screens, actors on posters, perfectly lit faces on tiny glass rectangles. They zoomed in on pixels, memorized every mole and eyelash. Then their mind did the rest, filling the empty space with a voice, a personality, a way of talking that fit the way the light hit their cheek in that one perfect shot. It was ridiculous, but strangely efficient. You saw a beautiful image, and your brain rushed to build a matching script so the inside didn’t clash with the outside.

Even in those fantasies, sinful ones, pure ones, everything in between, there was always an exchange of words. Spoken, messaged, written. The idol answered the admirer in exactly the way the admirer wanted, in exactly the tone that preserved that initial lighting strike of the idol’s beauty. The whole illusion depended on consistency. If the fantasy’s personality didn’t fit the picture, the illusion broke.

Now turn that into student life.

There were two scenarios that played out when reality didn’t match the fantasy. When someone, for whatever reason, decided to walk up to me instead of admiring from a safe distance. When they took the trouble of translating my existence from “background character” to “possible person to talk to.”

Scenario one: disappointment directed at me.

They tried to chat, expecting that the guy who looked vaguely composed and responsible, the one who was always helping in the classroom, would have a personality that was similarly palatable. They asked a question, they made a joke, they offered a topic. And I, faithful to my own personal brand of failure, responded with the shortest, safest, most nutritionally empty answer possible.

“It was okay.” “I wouldn’t know.” “No.” “Yes.”

I watched the light in their eyes dim as they realized they were, in fact, talking to a gorgeous and polite Moai Head.

“Why did I want to talk to him in the first place, so gross!”

They didn’t say it aloud, but the distance returned. The fantasy quietly collapsed on itself. That was the first pattern.

Scenario two: disappointment directed at themselves.

Same initial approach. Same attempt to connect. Same collapse on my side; a flat reply, an awkward silence, an escape route pursued at top speed. Only this time, instead of thinking “he’s boring,” they turned the knife inward.

“Why didn’t he want to talk with me, I’m so gross!”

They assumed my lack of response was a personal rejection. As if my social failures were deliberate and not just friendly fire.

Either way, it was despair-inducing.

My image didn’t match my conversation. Whatever vague “handsome man” impression my bearing gave, it had nothing to do with the way I actually expressed myself, or failed to.

The only thing that ever matched the fantasy was my food. It looked fantastic, and, most of the time, it tasted extraordinary. The outside and inside lined up. That was why my channel worked. The dish in the thumbnail and the dish in the video were the same. There was no betrayal between first glance and first bite, and that consistency was comforting.

Every other category, I was a mismatch.

In a world where people like Kotone were already getting hurt by blows they couldn’t see coming, the last thing anyone needed was another pretty lie with nothing nourishing underneath.

From the depths of me, I felt a desire to surpass myself. My family’s chocolaterie was struggling when I entered the Academy, and my older brother was away finishing his college degree, so I dove into studying hospitality.

Abroad, cynicism sold well in food videos. Here, harmony did. So, I chose to merge them into constructive criticism.

Neither our chocolaterie nor our home kitchen was impressive, but our partner restaurants had better ones. I borrowed their kitchens after-hours, and that affirmed the origin of my name, MidnightChef.

I never showed my face. I tore into a dish, offered improvements, presented the upgraded version, and wished the restaurant well.

And I talked, more than I had in a long while. The videos gave me something normal conversation never did: time. Time to shape a thought before offering it. Time to find the words hiding behind the “yes” and “no” that usually escaped my mouth.

It felt like a way out of the cage I’d locked myself in years ago. MidnightChef was the key. I wasn’t going to lose it.

I needed a dinnertime length to connect with someone, a dinnertime to have my answers from behind these bars locking my heart.

Ultra wealthy clients wanted meals at any time, anywhere, and by making myself available at night, most requests became dinner and dessert, my specialty.

So by the time I evolved the channel into private chef work, my habit of pushing people away had shifted into something gentler: inviting them to a table and offering a meal.

However, this was only the case for my growing base of clients, which could be counted on one hand at the time.