Side Story 52. Conflict (1)

People have something called a first memory.
Ma Bi-hong’s first memory was from around the age of seven.
The word ‘around’ was added because he didn’t know his exact age.

Ma Bi-hong had been abandoned in the sewers of a bustling city called Nanjing as soon as he was born.
The one who saved the dying newborn was none other than an old beggar.
One could not call that good fortune.
The old beggar was not a member of the Beggars’ Union. It would have been somewhat better if he had been, but that beggar merely intended to use Ma Bi-hong for begging.
Since begging went well when he held an infant, he held Ma Bi-hong and received alms.
There was no way he would have properly cared for Ma Bi-hong.
He didn’t even change his diapers, so Ma Bi-hong’s bottom would be soaked in his own urine and feces and fester every day.
Even when he was around five years old, Ma Bi-hong couldn’t speak well.
The only words he had been taught were things like “I’m so hungry,” “My body hurts,” and “Please help me.”
He was not even properly fed, because looking scrawny and gaunt made him seem more pitiful.

Ma Bi-hong was freed from being the old beggar’s tool only because that old beggar was beaten to death by an underling of the unorthodox faction.
The hoodlums who managed one section of Nanjing’s back alleys at the time took Ma Bi-hong in.
From then on, Ma Bi-hong had to earn his own keep.
Naturally, he couldn’t earn his keep, so Ma Bi-hong did everything he could to fill his starving stomach.
Among those things was rummaging through the trash thrown out behind the back door of a pleasure house.

A large pleasure house produced a great deal of trash every day.
Bits left over after ingredients were trimmed.
Leftovers from dishes someone had only taken a single bite of.
Rotten, ragged rags.
Blankets bearing traces of lovemaking.
All kinds of filthy trash like that were gathered there.

But the starving do not care about filth.
Even so, there was a separate reason beggars did not swarm the back doors of inns for things like half-rotten cabbage.
It was because innkeepers sometimes sprinkled rat poison there.
Because of that, at least once a month, a beggar who had picked up and eaten an inn’s leftovers would die with his face turned blue.

Ma Bi-hong picked up and ate food despite the risk of death.
He didn’t care about taste at all.
He shoved into his mouth whatever smelled the least rotten and had no mold.
As quietly as possible so he wouldn’t be caught.
If he was caught, he would surely be beaten black and blue.

“You beggar brat!”

Ma Bi-hong flinched in surprise.
He had feared it might happen, and he had truly been caught.
The one who appeared was a burly man in a cook’s uniform.
A knife was tied at his waist, his beard was like a chestnut burr, and his fierce eyes gave him a frightening impression.
Ma Bi-hong instinctively curled up.
Because the kicking would soon begin.

“P-please spare me.”
“You brat, who said I was going to kill you?”
“……”

But there was no pain and no beating.
Ma Bi-hong cautiously opened his eyes a slit and was greatly surprised.
What the fierce-looking chef was holding was soup with rice mixed into it. Inside were pieces of meat and vegetables.

“Did you think I didn’t know you came here every day like a rat and rummaged through the trash? Eat.”
“……”
“I said eat.”

Naturally, he was wary.
Who knew whether rat poison had been mixed into it?
But Ma Bi-hong could not shake off the temptation of that steaming soup.
By the time he came to his senses, he was already devouring it as if drinking the soup.
It was a taste that warmed his body.

“Come at this hour every day.”
“……?”
“You little brat, you look like one of those Black Robe Gang lackeys. If you keep staying in a place like that, you’ll ruin your life. They don’t seem to feed you properly either… Don’t bring the others. Come alone.”

Why in the world had he made such an offer?
At the time, Ma Bi-hong did not believe in people’s goodwill.
But that man.
That cook truly fed Ma Bi-hong every day.

It was eight years.
Over the eight years Ma Bi-hong ate the meals he gave him, the cook became his father.
The cook accepted Ma Bi-hong as family, and Ma Bi-hong truly came to follow him.
He received meals and learned about the world. He also learned cooking.
Ma Bi-hong couldn’t escape the Black Robe Gang, but even so, the bond between the two deepened.

It was eight years later that Ma Bi-hong came to kill his father.
Yes, it was not that Ma Bi-hong himself had thrust a knife into his father’s chest.
But the culprit was a member of the Black Robe Gang, and the man had been trying to kill Ma Bi-hong.
His father had stepped forward to save Ma Bi-hong and had been stabbed.
Covered in blood, Ma Bi-hong embraced his father, who was likewise covered in blood.

“Don’t cry… d-don’t cry, you brat…”
“Fuck! Don’t talk! I called a physician.”
“I’m d-dying. Already. So.”

Even as he spoke, blood kept surging from his mouth. Anyone could tell that his life was hanging by a thread.

“Stop. Stop it. Stop all of it. And.”
“Uheuheuk.”
“Just cook. You’re g-good at it.”

Rather than becoming an executive of the Black Robe Gang and roaming the night streets, he had liked learning cooking from his father.
Knowing that, why had he not washed his hands of it and left sooner?
Who could have known everything would collapse because of internal strife?

“Promise me. No, s-swear it.”

His father demanded that Ma Bi-hong wash his hands of that life and become a cook.
And Ma Bi-hong swore to his father.

“I’ll do it. Fuck, I just have to become some damn cook, right?”
“Hehe, does it look e-easy? If you’re going to do it, b-become the greatest cook under heaven. Understand?”
“Yeah, I get it. I get it, so please shut your mouth!”

He said that because his father was coughing up mouthfuls of blood as he spoke.
Indeed, his father closed his mouth.
But he never opened it again.

Ma Bi-hong abandoned his dead father’s body and fled.
He named himself Ma Bi-hong and left for Beijing.
His life as a cook began that way.

He had never forgotten the oath of that day, not for a single moment.
Whenever he remembered his father coughing blood, he devoted himself. Even after becoming a special-grade chef at a young age, the flame in his heart did not go out.

Even until the day he participated in the Number One Cooking Competition Under Heaven held in Hangzhou.

Ma Bi-hong looked at the dish he had made.
The theme of this match was a dish using ‘beef.’

What Ma Bi-hong had made was Hak Ziu Ngau Lau (Black Pepper Beef Tenderloin).

Hak Ziu referred to black pepper, and Ngau Lau referred to beef tenderloin.
Ma Bi-hong had prepared the finest pepper and the finest beef.
It was a dish made more perfect by adding Ma Bi-hong’s own thought to a cooking method born in the Guangdong region.

He sprinkled roasted nuts over it to add a nutty flavor.
The meat was cooked perfectly.
As the pepper, chopped to the proper size, was chewed, a bright fragrance filled the mouth. Then came the overflowing juices and their umami.
The Black Pepper Beef Tenderloin he had made was, without question, the finest dish.
Even Ma Bi-hong’s assistant was a chef famous in Hangzhou.

“It is an utterly perfect dish.”
“Was a foreign dish ever this excellent…!”

But among the judges, no one was admiring Ma Bi-hong’s food.
Everyone was simply gathered before Ahim’s dish.

“It is a curry made by slowly simmering beef.”

It was a dish called curry.
Ma Bi-hong knew most of the dishes under heaven, so he knew about curry as well.
He had even eaten that dish of Tianzhu before.
That was why he found it even more impossible to accept.

“Impossible.”

Ma Bi-hong spoke as if growling.
His voice was like a cornered beast.

“Your dish may be delicious. But even so, there cannot be this great a difference between it and my Black Pepper Beef Tenderloin.”

People are bound to feel some resistance toward foreign dishes.
Even if those honored guests had eaten all the precious dishes in the world, would curry be familiar to them?
There is a saying that the most delicious food in the world is the food one’s mother made in childhood.
That was how enormous the advantage of ‘familiarity’ was in gastronomy.
It was impossible for there to be such an overwhelming difference in attention.

“O doubtful one. O one who sees and still cannot believe.”

But Ahim merely smiled leisurely and spoke.

“If you are so curious, should you not taste it yourself?”

Ahim held out a plate.
A brownish curry was contained in a plate made of silver.
A sharp and savory aroma wafted from it.
Without realizing it, saliva gathered in his mouth, and he swallowed.

“Feel it for yourself. Or are you afraid even of that?”

Ma Bi-hong took the spoon Ahim handed him.
As Ahim said, all he had to do was taste it once.

Ma Bi-hong scooped up a little curry and carefully put it into his mouth.
And Ma Bi-hong froze in that posture.
As though time itself had stopped.

Clatter.

The spoon fell from his limp hand.
At the same time, tears rolled down from Ma Bi-hong’s eyes.
What arose in Ma Bi-hong’s heart was the most delicious food he remembered.
The warm soup his father had handed him at the back door of the pleasure house.

Ahim’s curry tasted the same as that soup.
Thud, Ma Bi-hong dropped to his knees.

“This is my defeat.”

A declaration of defeat without the slightest hesitation or pause.
A shadow fell over Ma Bi-hong, who knelt and bowed his head.

“Raise your head.”

When he raised his head, Ahim was smiling and kneeling on one knee before him.

“Will you become my disciple?”
“……”
“My name is Ahim. I see light within your eyes.”

To someone watching from the side, the flow of that conversation might have been hard to understand.
Because the development had been so fast.
But to Ma Bi-hong himself, it was nothing less than reality.

“I will.”

Complete submission. Admiration rising from the heart.
Ma Bi-hong answered that he would follow Ahim.

“W-white side, Ahim wins!”

Then the host declared the result.
Thunderous cheers erupted from the audience seats.
In their eyes, the sight of Ma Bi-hong kneeling before Ahim must have looked quite moving.
The applause and cheers continued until Ma Bi-hong and Ahim left.

And Cheongho, who was in the audience seats, neither cheered nor clapped.
He glared at Ahim and Ma Bi-hong with a cold gaze.
Ma Bi-hong, who was trudging along, suddenly met Cheongho’s eyes.
Their gazes met for a moment, but soon Ma Bi-hong turned his head first.
He left the venue like that.

“To think victory and defeat would be decided that overwhelmingly.”

Tsering muttered.
She had also watched the match with Cheongho.

“Is that curry thing that delicious?”

Baek Sang-ye asked cautiously.

“I don’t know. I haven’t eaten it either. But judging from their reactions, it must be delicious, right?”
“That chef Ma Bi-hong seemed to have tremendous pride too, yet he knelt.”
“But why did Ahim suddenly tell him to become his disciple, and why did that man accept it?”
“Maybe they read too many martial arts novels?”
“Haha, maybe so.”

Tsering and Baek Sang-ye, who had been talking, suddenly began watching Cheongho’s mood.
That incredible Ahim and Cheongho would compete.
Perhaps Cheongho, who had seen today’s match, was feeling pressured too.
Cheongho only looked calm.

In truth, the person feeling pressure was someone else.

“This won’t do.”

Jin Li-yeon spoke as though she had made up her mind.

“I don’t think I should be the assistant.”

Cheongho’s assistant was Jin Li-yeon.
What were they supposed to do if Jin Li-yeon declared that she could not be the assistant?

“Sang-ye.”
“Yes…?”
“You help Cheongho.”

Baek Sang-ye, who had been singled out, was startled.