Chương 197: The Next Kitchen

After the baked potato that changed his mind, nothing much changed in Chris's life. He went on living almost like a hermit, on a regular schedule — walking, reading, occasionally cooking himself something simple. The tempting proposals from Dave sat squared up in the corner of his desk and did not get opened again. He knew what he wanted, which meant he no longer had to be troubled by the things he didn't. That afternoon he was clearing his inbox as usual.

Most of it was old congratulatory mail from the championship, plus the usual push from food sites. He deleted them patiently, one at a time, his finger moving in a rhythm on the trackpad. Then he stopped. A new message, only just arrived, sat at the top of the inbox. It was strange. The sender's address was a meaningless string of characters, and the subject line confused him more. There was one character in it — a Japanese one, and one he happened to know. 「門」 Gate. A prank? Some new kind of malware?

Chris frowned and instinctively went to drag it to the trash. And a second before he pressed delete, some instinct he couldn't name stopped him. It felt very like standing in a kitchen with two unfamiliar ingredients and having some part of you insist they will work together. He hesitated, and then opened it. The contents were unexpectedly brief, almost crude. A pure white background with no image, no logo, no ornament.

A few lines of black type, in a serif face, as though struck out on the oldest typewriter in the world. If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. Chris White-sama, We have heard of you. We wonder if you have heard of us. That was the end of it. No signature. No introduction. No follow-up. Not so much as a formal greeting. The whole thing gave off an odd confidence that came very close to arrogance. Chris looked at those three lines for a full minute.

We have heard of you. Not strange. He was the new world champion; most people who cared about food had heard of him. The second line was the one with something in it. We wonder if you have heard of us. Who were they? Why contact him like this? He tried to reply and found the address was set to refuse replies. He copied the garbled sender string into a search engine and, unsurprisingly, found nothing. The message was a bottle washed up from another dimension. Mysterious, and impossible to trace.

Chris leaned back in his chair and tapped the desk without thinking about it. His brain had started running the way it ran on an unfamiliar ingredient. We — so not one person. An organization, or a group. Heard of us — implying that in some particular circle they carried real weight. Possibly the weight of a legend. And choosing to make contact like this meant they had taken an interest in him — but an interest issued from above. The interest of an examiner.

Chris thought about things he'd heard years ago, talking to older European cooks. They said that beyond the world of cooking as it is defined by Michelin and the global restaurant lists there is a parallel world nobody hears about. There are restaurants there that never take part in any ranking, never speak to the press, and do not publish their addresses. They may be at the end of an unremarkable alley. They may have no sign at all. Some of them open for a few months a year.

They exist for neither fame nor money, only for the most extreme version of the art itself. Money will not get you a table. You have to be invited, through a particular channel. And the only people who can issue an invitation are the owner, or one of a very small number of recognized intermediaries. Had this come from a place like that? His heart went a little faster. He had only just decided he was standing on a summit and had seen the view.

And this message had lifted a corner of the cloud above him to show a higher, sharper, stranger peak. He shut the laptop and paced the room. Something he hadn't felt in a while began to rise in his chest — excitement, curiosity, the appetite for a challenge. He didn't know what stood behind the Gate. A whole new kitchen? Or an elaborately built confidence trick? But he knew he had been at peace for a while, and needed some new ripples.

That mysterious message out of Tokyo was a stone into still water, and it broke the comfortable silence he'd come home to.