LOVE ME NOT || Bang Chan Soulmate au

22. If You Insist

     "I'm about 10 seconds away from having a breakdown and making it everyone's problem."

     I sighed, not even looking up from the cucumbers I was crushing. "What's wrong this time, Minho?"

     "Life."

     He let out a genuinely terrifying laugh, sounding like he was insane as I stopped chopping and looked to my side, adjusting the clear mask on my face. Minho stared with wide, blank eyes at the example plate on the table in front of us, the very reason why he was slowly loosing it.

     A consummé.

     Consummés are generally hard to make. The soup itself is clear, which is what makes it so difficult, as most the time when you boil down meats their fat makes the liquid cloudy. So, in other words, it was already awful. When our professor placed the dish down in front of us, we were already preparing to be working for a long time.

     And then she said to be creative.

     Which translates to 'if you use something easy, I'm counting off half of your points'.

     The 'awful' turned to 'I literally want to throw myself out of that window'.

     Especially when you add the fact that Minho and I are try-hards, and decided to create a consummé that reflected the Korean culture by using kimchi.

     That was the part Minho was struggling with.

     "It's not freaking clear!" Minho put a lid over the pot, letting out a sound of frustration as he made himself turn away. He stopped as he looked at his glove. "Wow. I broke my glove. Fantastic. I'm going to throw myself into an air fryer."

     "Calm down, it's not that bad," I said, trying to talk him down.

     Minho aggressively took off his gloves and threw them in the trash can, pulling his phone out of his pocket.

My eyes flitted over to the professor across the room helping another group and I sighed again, putting down my knife. I rolled my eyes at the brunet, walking over to look at his pot of kimchi consummé.

"You're such a child," I muttered, lifting the lid up so I could see. "It literally looks fine. It's not even foggy."

Minho leaned over my shoulder. "Can you not see the cloudiness there?"

"I swear that's your shadow."

"Are you blind?"

     I placed the lid back down, walking back over to my counter space and picking up the knife. "Minho, we already made a pork cutlet and I'm working on the smashed cucumbers. All we have left is the consummé."

     "It's not clear. I'm not serving it."

     I actually wanted to scream. The last time Minho got in one of these 'moods', he swore to never make the dish again. It's been almost three years since he banned crème brûlée.

     Looks like consummé is next.

     And I need my grade.

     So I could not care less what he wants. He is finishing our presentation.

     "We have to serve something, Minho," I started, sprinkling salt over the cucumbers. "What are you serving then?"

     Minho snapped on a new glove. "These hands."

     That's it.

     We're going to fail.

     I wasn't paying attention well enough to the knife in my hands, my only worry just the grade I might get. The blade sliced through the area of my palm that met my thumb and I hissed, placing the knife down on the counter as I moved my hand away from the food. Minho immediately was at my side as he carefully removed the glove and pressed a towel against my palm. The cut itself wasn't very big, but it was deep enough to draw blood so I couldn't continue my work until it was properly bandaged.