Except it’s not so easy, when he walks into the kitchen at 8am two days later and finds Tao quiet and sad, Baekhyun patting him on the back sympathetically. Amber is frowning a little as she sharpens her knife, and even Sehun, even more silent than usual, is stoically whisking together what looks like the base for omija hwachae shaved ice. The others are either on the line setting up their stations or haven’t come in yet, but Jongdae can tell that maybe not even Chanyeol can cheer up the kitchen this morning. Yixing takes one look into the quiet prep kitchen and hesitates in his step, tapping his knife kit a little anxiously. Jongdae can relate—at best, being in this gloomy environment drained your soul, and at worst, someone got distracted in the middle of cutting something or handing off a hot pan, and—

I took morning shift so I wouldn’t have to deal with drama, he thinks on a sigh, and strides into the kitchen.

“Goooooood morning,” he calls out, forcing merriment into his voice. Jongdae gives Johnny, their youngest dishwasher, a fist bump and grins so widely at everyone he thinks his jaw might crack. “Come on, not even any music? Why is it so quiet in here?” Behind him, he hears Yixing cover a snort and knows the expediter is rolling his eyes as he heads towards pastry station to greet Sehun, who looks up with a low ‘hey, hyung’ and a flicker of a smile.

For such a reticent person, Sehun warmed up to Yixing almost instantly. If Tao or Jongin has the day off, Jongdae usually sees Sehun tagging after Yixing on the way to family meal, blonde hair sticking up where he’s dragged his hat off. It never usually seems as if Sehun does any talking while they eat together, but Yixing fills the silence with animated chatter, talking about anything that comes to mind.

“Kris is being a jerk,” Baekhyun complains, now hugging Tao protectively. Jongdae eyes the diminutive garde manger, and Tao who is easily a half head taller, if not more. Jongdae swears the kid’s grown at least an inch since he started here. “How can you make this cute baby panda sad?” Baekhyun continues, reaching up to pet Tao’s cheek, and Tao flushes in embarrassment and tries halfheartedly to get out of Baekhyun's grip.

Baekhyun babying Tao aside, of the externs, Jongdae knows Kris is hardest on Tao for some reason. But Tao is the kind of person who blames himself for everything that goes wrong, and Kris is harsh, at times—Jongdae remembers being extremely intimidated by those eyebrows until he’d become a sous chef and discovered the stash of sample-size skincare products Kris had on his desk. Still, Baekhyun is right—Tao’s been doing an excellent job so far, and as far as he knows, there's nothing Tao's done that merits a scolding, especially compared with his performance so far.

“What happened?” Jongdae asks. Thinking fast, he pulls Tao out of Baekhyun's death grip and his head. “Here, let’s go have a talk, okay?” At the sudden look of panic in the tall extern’s eyes, he gives a reassuring smile. “Nothing bad, I promise. I promise!” He frowns at his roommate, who is still clinging onto Tao’s arm a protective look. “I won’t hurt him, Byunbaek.”

“He’s fragile,” Baekhyun informs him tartly. "Don't hurt him because I refuse to train a new apprentice." Not that Tao is Baekhyun's apprentice, even-- Jongdae knows Chanyeol plans to steal Tao in a week or two to try the kid on saute station. Tao looks even more embarrassed and tries to detach the shorter man.

“I’m fine, Baekhyung,” he mumbles. 

Jongdae smiles at Baekhyun triumphantly and leads Tao down the hall to their office, where Lu Han is loudly singingly along to DBSK ballads while sorting through paperwork. He flinches when Jongdae taps him on the shoulder and lowers the volume guiltily, scrambling to put headphones in.

Jongdae plops into a chair and gestures for Tao to do the same.

“Look, Tao,” he begins kindly. The poor thing looks so scared when he has no reason to be. “You’ve done amazingly so far. Honestly. You’re fast, and your knife cuts are completely on point. You got full three pints of batonets yesterday, didn't you? That’s a really good yield, so you also definitely have more finesse now. When you first got here, you were overseasoning things a little-- the salmon, mostly, but honestly it's also improved a lot since then. I don’t know what Chef Kris said, but from what I’ve seen, you’re doing extremely well.”

Tao smiles a little down at his apron. “It’s just—I feel like I can’t do well enough to suit Chef,” he confesses. “He’s also frowning so harshly when he checks my cuts or my mise and never actually says anything unless it’s to tell me that something should be smaller or needs more sauce or something. It’s… kind of….. I don't know, I just feel like I need to get so much better.”

“Well, I’m telling you now, okay?” Jongdae reaches over and ruffles Tao’s hair. It’s the same bright blonde colour as Sehun’s. He wonders if they dyed it at the same time—the two are close even though they’re from different academies. “As far as I’m concerned, and you can ask Chanyeol to make sure, just keep doing what you’re doing, because you’re doing good.” He holds out a fist.

After a moment, Tao nods and bumps his fist against Jongdae’s. Jongdae grins at him, but makes a mental note to talk to Chanyeol later about Kris and Tao.

“Now let’s get back to work.”

--

In the few weeks after that, everyone’s mood seems to improve. Sehun is almost warm towards Jongdae. Tao seems to be in a better mood too, though he still skips family meal to keep working at least a few times a week. Jongdae’s honestly never seen such a workaholic extern before. Sehun begins bringing him a quart container of whatever dinner is that day and standing at his station, demanding that the older boy eat.

When the newest extern-- Han Sanghyuk, from the Culinary Institute of America-- has a full month of experience at Saranghaja, Kris announces a contest.

This is usually friendly competition between externs, both a test of their potential and to show off what they’ve learned so far. Much like in cooking shows, selected ingredients are selected to be used in a dish. This time, the prize is a book written by an SM Group sunbaenim-- Kenzie, a respected chef working directly for corporate, rather than being attached to any one restaurant. 

Jongdae is standing by pastry station, stealing bits of freeze-dried raspberry and candied citron peel while explaining this to Sehun, when Sehun interrupts him.

“Can I join too?”

Jongdae blinks at him in surprise.

“...This is a culinary contest,” he says slowly, perplexed. The patissiers-- Kyungsoo, mostly-- are stringent about keeping to themselves, preferring to remain a peacefully floating island among the organised chaos of the rest of the kitchen. A request like this is... startling, to say the least.

Sehun shrugs as he bats Jongdae’s hand away from his citron peel and scatters a large pinch of fresh ginger powder on top. Jongdae eyes it and nicks an unharmed piece before Sehun can mix it in. “Yeah, but there’s no rule that I can’t do it too, right?”

They stare at each other. Jongdae hasn’t any idea what Sehun is thinking, but there’s no fear in the pastry extern’s face. He nicks another large pinch of candy before Sehun can stop him and shrugs. “I’ll talk to Kris.”

Kris is initially hesitant with the idea for the same reason Jongdae is-- and according to the Institute of Royal Korean Cuisine’s curriculum, pastry students don’t even get their basic grounding in the culinary arts until their second year of school, after their first-year externship. The playing field isn't level enough; it doesn't seem exactly fair to play Iron Chef when one contestant doesn't have around the same training as the others.

Chanyeol, however, shows no such reserve.

“If he wants to, why not?” he opines, spinning around on his office chair, long limbs folded up like an overly big, teeth-rich spider. Glaring, Luhan moves a few inches over to avoid being hit by flying apron strings and screws an earbud back in. “He’s smart, it’d be a good experience for him even if he doesn’t win. Sehun isn’t the sort to take losses that badly, and he wouldn’t throw himself into this if didn’t know what he was doing. Let the kid do it." Then he pauses. "If Kyungsoo agrees." After all, Kyungsoo would have a fit if he knew that they'd drafted his precious subordinate into a contest that wasn't even related to his department, and Jongdae has a very healthy respect for Do Kyungsoo's temper.

There’s really nothing anyone can say to that-- even Jongdae knows that Sehun is talented, could probably excel in any field he chose, with enough training. In fact, it seems he's taught himself half of garde mange's dishes just by being on the station next to Tao's. It still doesn’t sit well with him, that not everyone’s starting out at around the same skill level, but Chanyeol is right. Participating is Sehun's own choice.

Sometimes, Jongdae wishes he could see things as Chanyeol does. Everything always seems so much more simple when Chanyeol summarises it.

Kris stops Chanyeol’s spinning chair with a halfhearted kick and ignores his sous chef’s indignant splutter. “Well, when you put it like that... alright, so I'll talk to Kyungsoo when he comes in, but let’s plan this for next Thursday. The ingredients we’ll give them are...”

Quail. Panko, wild mushrooms, candied ginger, red leaf lettuce, and cactus pear.

(“...Cactus pear?” Jongdae had asked, looking up from the list. Kris had shrugged. “I found some in the walk-in fridge. It’ll be interesting to see how they utilise something they haven’t worked with before.”

It’s probably Kris-speak for ‘I accidentally ordered half a case of cactus pears because I thought they looked cool and wanted to eat one, but now we have too many to casually eat and too few to stick into family meal and to be honest I don’t know if I’m going to do anything with it”, but Jongdae nods anyway.)

Kyungsoo gives his reluctant consent after calling Sehun into the office where he and Kris are having their discussion and questioning him thoroughly about his decision. "If you insist on doing this thing and you fail miserably," he says flatly in the end, fixing his extern with a flat stare, "I'm going to disown you and you can finish your externship with someone else." Sehun just shrugs at him, uncowed in the least.

"Okay," he says placidly. "Can I get back to my compote now?"

--

Jongdae assembles four identical half-sheet trays of all the required ingredients. Behind him, Sehun, Tao, Sanghyuk and Jongin are lined up, looking curiously over his shoulder.

“Did you get us dinosaur eggs?” Sanghyuk asks after a moment, reaching past to poke a cactus pear curiously. Chanyeol slices one open to show them the dark reddish purple flesh inside. The juice on his knife is a vivid, bright shade of purple that seems more fitting in a crayon box, or maybe as a highlighter colour.

“This is a cactus pear!” Chanyeol explains cheerfully, slicing the halves into three slices each, motioning to the young men curiously crowded around to try some. Jongdae takes one too, savouring the mildly sweet and very slightly tart flavour. "It's a North American fruit that comes in different colours. Just remember when you're using these that you have to peel it carefully because of the spines, but they'll stand up to being cooked lightly. You can see they can be sliced well, too, if you want to show off any knife cuts." The latter is directed with a smile to Tao, who smiles a little bashfully and looks down. While the externs are busily paying attention to Chanyeol, Jongdae steals the last slice, wondering if his teeth will turn purple from eating it. It's a pity he's never seen these commonly for sale in Korea, although he supposes there wouldn't really be a market for it.

“Hyung, there’s a bit on your lip,” someone mumbles close by, and he looks up just in time for Sehun to poke the corner of his mouth. Jongdae flinches.

“Yah, pay attention,” he scolds, retreating a step to the corner of his mouth. For a moment, he thinks Sehun watches him, but when he looks back up the pastry extern is intently listening to Chanyeol explain the rules of the contest. As always when Sehun is concentrating, the tip of his tongue is caught between his teeth, dark brows furrowed. For all that he's definitely paying attention, though, he doesn't look particularly worried, while Tao is drumming his fingers against his thigh in nervous anticipation. 

“Use all ingredients; we’ll penalize you if you don’t," Chanyeol continues, pushing a tray in front of each extern. "You have access to all ingredients except the uni, and the lobster, if it's the naju pear you want to use, I'd prefer if you limited yourself to only one. You may also use any equipment. No consulting recipes. We’d like to see two dishes from each of you, but you’re not limited to that. You have an hour and a half, and your time starts...... Now!”

The last word is unexpectedly loud, and Tao and Jongin flinch before they scatter. Tao grabs one of every required ingredient and sets them on his counter before disappearing into the produce walk-in refrigerator, while Jongin heads straight for the dry storage. Sanghyuk hesitates for a moment before following Tao into the walk-in. They reacted quickly despite the difficulty level, Jongdae notes with approval. Beside him, Chanyeol marks off notes on his clipboard. "Can you run the line?" he asks in an undertone to Jongdae, who nods.

Before Jongdae leaves the prep kitchen, he casts a final look back. The other externs are all missing, busily gathering ingredients, but Sehun is still standing there, looking at his ingredients consideringly. After a moment, he walks into the meat walk-in fridge. As the pastry extern, it’s unlikely that he’s been in there more than once, which would have been on his initial tour of Saranghaja’s back of house, during his trial over a month ago. 

One hour and twenty-five minutes left. 

Jongdae wonders whether he'll be alright. 

---

A/N:Cactus pears are very good in sorbet form, although it's also commonly used in southwest United States and Mexico in savoury dishes. I've never had to come up with four vastly different dishes featuring similar ingredients, but I hope you'll look forward to what they come up with! If you were given this challenge, what would you make? If you've any ideas, please comment them below!

Also, have you seen the teaser images for Lucky One? They look so good, I'm really excited for this comeback! *happy dance* Hwaiting EXO!!

As always, thank you for reading! Comments are appreciated, as always.