There was something so blissful about that first day of spring when you could leave your home without a jacket. You put on your usual trousers and shirt, brushed your hair (or at least I did), put on your coat, closed the light blue and glossy front door to your tiny apartment, its heaviness causing the hinges to creak, locked it and went downstairs and out, only to realise the coat you'd put on was not a necessity; on the contrary, it was unnecessary, so you opened the front door to the complex building back up, climbed up all of the rickety stairs you'd just walked down, opened the light blue door again, this time from the outside, and dumped the coat inside.

Today was that day. My second time experiencing the first day of no coat of the year in Paris.

There was something exceptional about the first day of no coat of the year in Paris. It was nice in my home country as well, but here, I thought there was a different type of brightness in people's faces, an openness that was usually not there, matching the green leaf buds starting to open up on the trees. People smiled at me as I walked down the streets in my shirt, my hair free in the summer breeze, no coat (as it was the first day of no coat of the year), and I smiled right back.

I turned from the main shopping streets to the beautiful little cobble street where the cafe I worked in was situated. 

As so many who had finished their five years at culinary school, I had moved to Paris. But as opposed to most, I'd had no plan on starting to work in a kitchen. No Michelin star restaurant where I would be an apprentice. No world renown Parisian chef who would take me under their wing. I was, in fact, completely planless, and delighted to be so.

As long as I ignored the reason why.

I'd found a tiny apartment to rent, and as soon as I got there, I had packed up my few belongings, gone to bed, slept nine hours, woken up, gone out, bought a French newspaper (I didn't read or speak French), gone to a cafe, ordered black coffee and a black currant bun and started applying for jobs.

And I'd found the dreamiest job a man could have in Paris, at least according to me.

I loved working in the cafe. Luckily the owner, an amicable, thin old man with the most cartoonish moustache you had ever seen and eyebrows that were so thick they almost hid his eyes entirely, was from England, so he did the interview in English.

"And how do you suppose you'll manage to be a barista when you don't speak a word of French?" he had asked, albeit not unkindly.

I had shrugged and said the name of the culinary school I'd attended, asked him if he knew it.

He did.

"I went there without knowing how to cook. I graduated top of my class. I can probably learn a new language."

He hired me.

Within a year, I was fluent in French, and I had such a huge clientele of regulars who came in daily, sometimes even twice a day, to order from me as they liked me so much that the owner never regretted his choice, as I knew he wouldn't. The cafe's beautiful brown-and-cream checked stone floors, the huge glass windows, the soft pink walls, its expertly made pastries and coffees and, of course, me, being a handsome man in the peak of my life, made it hugely popular especially among rich people who came there to take photos for their already insufferable Instagrams or trying to get me to marry their daughters. Or themselves.

I loved it.

I absolutely loved it.

I smiled as I walked up to the cafe that first day of no coat of the year, the early hour not bothering me in the slightest, even if I was still slightly sleepy, but that was nothing a Red Bull couldn't fix. I opened the door to the cafe and went in, locked the door and went to the small kitchen in the back to start on the pastries for when the cafe opened at seven.

I was very happy there. So happy, in fact, that I could have worked there for the rest of my life, and it wouldn't even bother me that I hadn't used my expensively acquired culinary knowledge for anyone but myself and my family. I knew it wouldn't have been hard for me to find a job in a Parisian restaurant with my merits. I wouldn't even have to climb the ranks but could probably start working as a sous chef immediately. But I couldn't. Not yet. I was not ready to share my talents with the world. Because...

During the almost two years I'd been in Paris, I'd taken the owners pastries and perfected them, adding a little powdered sugar here, exchanging gelatine for pectin there, switched the berry tart to be a tart made with fruits in season in France, seeing as they were always sweeter than imported berries. I opened the fridge and took out the puff pastry I'd made yesterday before closing for the evening and put it on the sterile bench that I'd sprinkled with flour. I rolled up my sleeves and gave the pastry dough a good knead; I'd done most of the kneading yesterday but I needed to warm the dough up to be able to work it. When the temperature of the dough reached my complete satisfaction, I cut it up in perfect rectangles. I filled them with homemade preserved clementines I'd made during Christmas and put them in the oven for twenty minutes while I went and made the other chores of morning. When the twenty minutes were up, I took the hand pies out of the oven and flash-cooled them in the fridge to ensure their crispiness remained during the day (not that they would last; they would sell out before ten), then garnished them with powdered sugar and a mix of cinnamon and nutmeg, just a hint to avoid making it too wintry. I cleaned the floors, and when I was done, I saw my first morning customers were already lined up outside.

I smiled and opened the door.

"Bonjour", I said with a huge grin, holding my hair tie between my teeth as I collected my hair up in a high ponytail, making the middle-aged ladies in the front of the line swoon as it showed up my biceps nicely. 

The first few weeks at culinary school had, as one could guess, been awful.

I had no idea what I was doing, or what I was doing there. I was just supposed to know things I had no clue about. Like how to make a gravy after having fried vegetables in olive oil (add flour). Or how to make cookies the consistency of crispy air (deer antler salt which consisted of exactly 0% deer antlers). I was supposed to know the right temperature to fry fresh fish, or exactly how long to boil an egg to make it a very specific consistency.

I didn't know any of those things. I didn't know anything at all.

Not knowing what I was expected to know caused me a great deal of frustration, a feeling I was not at all used to, having been quite easy-going. But the worst part was the other students. I was used to making friends wherever I went or, at the very least, having everyone like me. But the others ignored me. They didn't want to help me. They didn't want to associate with me. The other students in my corridor cooked together every evening, practicing and laughing, but as soon as I came in, their conversation died down. I didn't ask them whether I could join or not; I already knew the answer.

The turning point came with one particular teacher that had us the second month. He was young, twenty-three which made him five years older than me. It wasn't anything in particular about him, really, other than his great success at his incredibly young age. The difference was that he happened to be the teacher on the day I finally cracked. As the other students left the practice kitchen after one Wednesday session, I stood behind, thinking nobody would notice anyway. I hid my face in my hands, slid down to the floor along the stainless steel oven at my station, my white chef's robe stretching over my body as it was buttoned all the way down to my knees.

I didn't cry, but I just sat there, empty. My first time displaying defeat. I had just decided I would give up and go home, when...

"Hi."

I looked up.

His hair was longish short and blonde like a surfer's, and he was tall and thin, making even my lean frame seem heavy. He had eyes that were both icy and warm at the same time, long eyelashes and a five-day stubble covering his narrow jawline.

"Thought I might find you here", he said warmly.

"Sorry", I said in a low voice. "I thought I was alone."

He sat down opposite me, took a bottle of something orange, opened it and drank directly from the flask. He handed it to me and I took a sip. It tasted of a heavily sweet orange that was perfectly balanced out with sour. It was heavenly.

"What is that?" I asked.

"Sparkling orangeade", he answered.

He told me his name was Merlin, and that I may call him by his first name. I told him he may call me Chef Senju, which made him laugh.

"Why are you here?" he asked.

"I'm resigning."

"You're doing no such thing", he said calmly. "Tell me. Why are you here."

I swept some more orangade. I had not offered the flask back to Merlin.

"I wanted to learn how to cook."

"Look, Senju." I looked at him. "I see you in the kitchen. I have watched you. You have something these people lack." I frowned. "They're so focussed on impressing. Whereas you... You want to make a good meal. You want to make something tasty and beautiful and delicious. These other kids... They're brilliant, I won't deny that. But it's not about the food anymore. It's about status." I hadn't considered that, but I saw his point. "I won't lie to you. You won't learn how to cook here. But you will learn how to cook."

He stood up and left me.

And from there on out, I learned.

I woke up one hour earlier than usual and learned to actually cook my breakfasts; poached eggs, grilled salmon, cream cheese muffins. On the bus to school, I watched video after video about the basics of cooking on YouTube on double speed. I came home from school and spent the remaining time before bed cooking.

And that's when I noticed something I hadn't noticed before.

Talent.

I had a talent for cooking.

After only a week I could start implementing what we'd been taught so far into my cooking. After half a year, I had caught up. I was not only a decent cooker; I had caught up to these people, these youngsters who'd spent their entire lives cooking. In half a year.

A year after that, the other students begged me to invite them for dinner every weekend. And I gladly did, seeing they apologised sincerely for how they had treated me in the beginning.

Merlin was a rock. He was our teacher again after half a year when I'd caught up. He sneaked up behind me, put his chin on my shoulder.

"Told you", he whispered.

The rest of the day, shiver after shiver had coursed through my body from the point where his chin had touched my shoulder. He stayed with me in the kitchen afterwards the week during which he taught, teaching me even more, praising me.

"Don't try to impress", he said sternly. "Don't lose that. Just try to make a good meal."

At the Christmas party where students and teachers were invited, he caught my eyes and didn't let go. He came to me later when all were dancing, pressed his forehead to mine.

"Now you may try to impress me", he had murmured into my mouth and kissed me.

We had made out for the rest of the evening, my hands in his blonde surfer's hair, his in my shoulder-length chestnut. We couldn't get enough of each other. He took me home. He was the first person I had sex with. He became my boyfriend. For two years, into my third year in culinary school, he stood by my side.

Until one day, he didn't.

Because I had surpassed him.

I noticed his attitude change towards me. He became more silent, more reserved. Since I'd never had a boyfriend before, I believed this was the natural course of things; that it was the honeymoon phase dying down.

But then I noticed our relationship wasn't slowly dying down. It was dying down one distinctive step at a time. For each time something went well for me, Merlin's coldness towards me increased. An award. A summer placement. A request. With each of those things, he grew slightly more distant. I tried talking to him about it, but I couldn't reach him. My family, my friends, even his friends, had begged me to leave him, but I had refused. I loved him. Or, I thought I loved him; nowadays I realised I loved who he had been and our old memories together. In the end, I left him because I found out he'd blackmailed me, telling our Dean I used drugs before coming to lessons. The Dean, knowing me quite well by now, took me in for an interrogation and I was even asked to leave a urine sample. I was shocked, but I was cleared, and Merlin lost his job.

We had a massive fight. I had cried, heartbroken, asked him why, over and over again. He responded with anger and I had finally been able to leave him. I was angry with him, not for trying to take away my career but for taking away the love of my life, which was himself.

It had taken its toll on me, but I got over it with time, as you do. I graduated at the age of twenty-three with the best recommendations anyone had ever gotten.

But even if I had gotten over Merlin, the man, I had not gotten over what he'd done to me.

I was terrified to get myself a job in a kitchen. I was terrified I would be hated for being so good, and that I would be blackmailed again. I had been lucky that Merlin had tried blackmailing me to a person who knew me so well.

Next time, I might not be so lucky.

Deciding to rent my apartment had been a high risk. I had not been able to come look at it, of course, as I had still lived in my home country, so had to trust the pictures and the recensions about the landlord alone. The rent was so sky-high, I wondered if it was situated at the very top of the Eiffel Tower. But no. It was a simple apartment in a loft in a Parisian apartment complex, quite central but not very.

It was an open room with yellow walls, a red couch and a good bed with a wooden bed frame, a kitchen with an orange gas stove and a green fridge. The bathroom was so small it had room for a tiny bathtub, a toilet, a sink and me standing to brush my teeth. But I had agreed to it as anything larger would've been too expensive, the landlord had good recensions for renting out clean rooms, and it came with pots and pans and whatnot so I didn't need to bring that myself or buy anything new. And if I couldn't have induction, I wanted gas to cook.

It was home. It had immediately felt like home.

And thank God for that because right now, I was devastated.

I closed the blue door behind me, hid my face in my hands, slid down the door.

"Hashirama, I am so sorry."

The cafe owner had come to me, said he wanted to talk. The snow had begun to fall outside; it was just after Christmas.

"Just a sec!" I had said happily, putting that day's final batch of chocolate and orange muffins with a core of salted caramel into the oven, but inside, I immediately cracked; somethings was wrong.

Something was terribly, terribly wrong.

The owner had told me he had sold the cafe to a small fashion chain that wanted to open up a store there. He said he couldn't help it, that they had offered him an incredible sum that would enable him to retire immediately and never worry about money again.

The cafe would close in a week.

I thought of all the early mornings experimenting with pastries. I thought of all the evening walks home with the smell of molten sugar still in my nostrils. I thought of my customers. The flirting. The amicable bantering. The compliments for that day's treat. It was one of the best things I'd ever created for myself. I would miss it. I would miss it terribly. 

But most of all, I would miss the safety of that job. Of not having to worry about someone doing to me what Merlin did to me.

I leaned my head back to my familiar door, let it comfort me.

I sighed. 

I spent the coming couple of days applying for jobs during breaks and after work. It was almost impossible. I was getting slightly stressed which was very out of character for me, but Saturday was the last day the cafe was open, and I would need to start working very soon if I wanted to maintain my apartment.

There was only one job I found that was remotely close to something I could do.

I tapped my fingers on the cafe table; the last guest left two hours ago. My laptop screen was staring foreboding at me.

It's fine, I tried to convince myself. It's going to be fine.

And I made a decision.

I took my phone out of my pocket and dialled the number.