That night, he dreamt about the words. It wasn't a fight. It wasn't, so he wasn't going to use that word to describe it, and so they were given their rightful term. Just, words. Neither of them had meant them and yet, they did. Very much so. And how strange it must be to be of two divergent opinions all at once, unable to reconcile the splitting of the heart—two broken sides.

In his dream, he would stand in the exact spot he stood that night. He would hear the words and time would stop, as though giving him a chance, a second attempt, at words and he would. He would think about the many other things he would say or the many other ways he could have worded his words but the words, ultimately, led to the exact same end and then, he was back. In the same spot. Hearing the exact same thing. And then redoing his words; all over again.

It wasn't like how they said it would be in the books. In the movies. The words did not feel like blades or swords or poison or anything so awfully dramatic and heart-wrenching, no.

Because when the world falls apart, it does not make a sound.

No blood is spilt; no tears are shed; no screaming, no shouting into the abyss and certainly not the creak of company. The words in his dreams, they did not feel like anything at all. They were quiet. And they smelled like a cross between rain and candles, extinguished.

Should there come a time when the world began to crack, he imagined the air filled with that scent. That was how the end would smell like. Rain and candles, extinguished.

The night passed.

And when Vanilla woke from his dream, he was alone.

==================

[Vanilla]

I was alone when I woke.

The premises of this rather abstract conclusion for a first thought of the day did not merely comprise of the empty space next to myself and a lack of warmth on the other side of the bed, no. That was the norm. The usual. And the past week or so had simply been an exception to the mundane; a brief enjoyment of the candle's company. Company that expanded its reach to every corner of my apartment throughout its stay that, however short, had colored the world in the warmest shade of fall.

I never realized how different the space felt like with him in it. So different that an instant in the waking world was all I needed to digest the disparity. Here I was, lying in bed, staring at the ceiling. Realizing the emptiness of it all.

This had come as a surprise. Multiple times, Leroy would leave before the apartment before dawn for his shift and indeed, I'd woken up to an empty bed many times throughout his stay—that was not some foreign, rare instance. Yet, those times felt vastly different from the alone that I was experiencing at present.

This alone was clouded with 'what ifs' and 'did he's'. Did he sleep here last night? What if he'd left the apartment as soon as I'd retreated into my room? Did he go straight to the firehouse then? Did he even sleep?

I reached for my glasses and turned to the digital clock by the side of my bed. Early. A whole hour and a half earlier than the usual time I had grown naturally accustomed to waking up at. Still, I got up.

The floor was ice before I finally found my bedroom slippers by the door to the bathroom and made my way to the kitchen for the electric kettle. Whilst waiting for it to get the water going, I noticed Chicken fast asleep on the couch in a cozy corner, wrapped up in the fleece throw that Leroy had very much taken to.

The bundle of fur stirred as I sat on the couch, patting him on the head. "Looks like your owner has left for work."

Chicken raised his head, gazing up at me and nuzzling my hand. I got up, headed to the pantry, and returned with his food bowl and a pack of kibble. He sniffed at it.

"I apologize for the downgrade. This would have to do for now but I assure you, it is temporary. I was going to remind your owner about us running low on your canned favorites last evening but... well. We ended up talking about something else. I'll get you the premium kind on my way home from work, okay?" I promised, emptying the dry food pellets into his bowl. "The one in fancy canned packaging. Filet mignon flavor."

Then I returned to the kitchen for a cup of tea; filled a mug with water from the electric kettle I'd put on moments ago and raised it to my lips for a sip only to realize that it was cold. I checked the kettle.

I hadn't even switched it on.

It surprised me a little. I hate to admit, but something inside felt very much like a return to the breaking down of things that had occurred back then and for a twenty-two-year-old to be experiencing the very same emotional response as a fifteen-year-old felt almost humiliating from a logical perspective but then again, he was perhaps the one-and-only existence who'd somehow managed to draw out a side of myself I could never really understand.

For the most rational, objective mind to be clouded—the smoke of a candle would have to do.

I stared at the kettle after pushing a button and ensured the sound of it powering up could be heard before leaving to brush my teeth. There were two: red and blue. I did not know what to do with the red toothbrush. After staring at it for some time, I put it away in the medicine cabinet.

Somehow, I ended up back on the couch with Chicken, sipping a dull cup of tea before I felt the teabag brush my lips and noticed I'd finished the entire mug without quite noticing and then finally deciding to walk my couch companion who'd obediently tolerated the dry food pellets.

"There is a park nearby... which I suppose you would have visited on occasion because, well, your owner was the one who took you out on walks while I was at work. Though, um, I assume you know the way?" I sought out his leash after getting dressed. Chicken wagged his tail at the sight of it. "I hope that means yes."

It did. Or so I would have liked to believe because having conversations with animals, albeit extremely satisfying and soothing for the soul, would have required a leap of faith to truly believe in mutual absolute understanding.

Chicken led the way to the park, which I assumed was the route he and Leroy took every other day unlike this one. Every tree, every patch of dull grass and cobblestone pavement I was taking in, he would have been familiar with. The strangeness of it all struck a chord.

That which existed beyond my independent mind; the things of the external world, remained as they were and would have looked the same in his perspective. He would see this tree as it was, as I currently observed it to look. He would see this fence as it was, just as I do.

And yet, what we make of it—what we thought of that tree, how we regarded fences and cobblestone and grass and the like of it all—was, ultimately, separate.

It was something I'd known and perhaps even observed in human behavior since I was a child and yet, for some odd and unfathomable reason, I wanted so much to believe in the existence of there being a special sort of understanding that overlapped. Somewhat like a crossing of paths that were once entirely separate.

Make no mistake, last evening was beyond any form of words I could have possibly anticipated and knowing myself, I would have, perhaps under a different circumstance or state of mind, been able to map out the probable consequences of each and every response but it is unfortunate—I love him.

Unfortunate because that was no state of mind that could have, under those circumstances of darkness and pain, been anything other than pure, raw emotion for that was the sorry state of being human. And despite it all, under the ice and the snow, Leroy was right.

I was very much warm.

One; "The rum raisin cake kinda sucked, huh?" "Oh yes it did. I should have known. In fact, I did but never raised it because I trusted you to be the one to tell me but you pretended like it wasn't you and you lied about even being there that evening." No. Too cold.

Two; "The rum raisin cake kinda sucked, huh?" Silence. "Leroy... why...? But you hate that. You hate being in the kitchen you were so happy to leave before why would you come back?" Something close to denying, but not really. He would correct me. "What are you talking about, I love cooking for you—" "But not in a production kitchen, you don't! I—I've seen you burn, break down from the stress of it all, of having to commit to something you never wanted to be and... and now you're saying that you did it because of me well then, so, what other conclusion can I derive from this except you love me so much so that you are willing to suffer for my happiness and wellbeing as long as I AM BY YOUR SIDE?" No. Raising my voice like that and those words; yet another form of raw, unfiltered emotion. This was no better. Either way, it would have led him to say the exact same thing. That I wasn't the one to blame.

Three; "It is. It is different—" "Sometimes, loving someone does not simply solve all their problems and your own." No. Too far ahead. There was no context by which I was making such a statement. This was too far down the chain. And sounded too condescending. Either way, he would have responded with the same thing he said. "I don't know how the fuck I got myself into this but I did it because I wanted to and no one else made that decision for me. Okay?" "Well then, Leroy, you are a very bad decision maker who would willingly, or perhaps on impulse, abandon your comfort zone to hop onto a train of pain and suffering for someone like me." These were true. They were all truths of the heart but good god did they sound spiteful and desperate, filled with emotion and nothing else.

That said, there was no rule against speaking in such a manner when it came to the person one wished to spend the rest of their lives with. Needless to say, I wouldn't have sobbed like I did last night, or questioned him like I did had it not been for... well, him.

And did it matter? That this was now and that was then, seven years ago; and were our twenty-two-year-old, twenty-three-year-old selves going to be any better at making things not like how they were back then and somehow pull out a solution from a fundamental, underlying issue rooted in our lives?

Granted, Leroy and I did not constitute the general population of people our age because if that were the case, we'd probably be somewhere in university surviving on cup ramen every day and worrying about student loans for the next thirty years of our lives or, well, getting by on a typical nine to six, staring at a screen for the entire day and then repeating it the next. Not quite knowing where we would be in the next five to ten years of our lives. Not quite knowing much at all.

By god, that sounded completely and utterly egotistical and condescending. Heavens, I was doing it again and being perfectly obnoxious. This was the norm; this was me being absolutely unfiltered and hurting others without realizing it. Was that what I'd done last night? What went wrong and... and how should I apologize for—

"You alright there mate?"

I paused.

Looked around; stared. I was in the middle of a vast expanse of green that spanned close to a mile. Bare trees littered around. The sky above, wide open. Chicken had been gazing up at me for god knows how long. We were alone in the park, save the one person on his morning run going in the opposite direction. A quick deduction of things made the situation clear: the stranger had spotted me acting strange in the middle of an open field and strayed from the path to ask if I was... um... alright.

"Yes," I cleared my throat. "Yes, I'm alright. I was just... thinking. Sorry if that bothered you very much."

He smiled. "It's... a way of saying hi. Asking if you're alright, I meant." His gaze rested on Chicken while I busied myself with feeling embarrassed. "What's his name?"

I was not expecting a conversation. "Well, um. It's Chicken."

This time, he laughed. "Are you actually—that's a first, I'll give it to you." He got a little friendlier, levelling himself with my companion. "You alright if I pet him?"

I paused. I wasn't sure if Chicken did well with strangers so I apologized and said he didn't, just to be safe. He wasn't wagging his tail like he was moments before, too. I somehow felt the need to read up on dog behavior all of a sudden. This, I made a mental note of.

"It's all right." He got back up to standing, returning his gaze to myself instead. "Y'know, you look... familiar. Like I've seen you around somewhere."

Nearly half my energy must have escaped in a single sigh. The video, then. Or the hundred other articles and tweets. "Perhaps." I smiled.

"Just pulling your leg, mate," he seemed amused, laughing. "Where you headed?"

I made the answer simple. Home. And then the small talk pretty much ended there and we bid each other a friendly goodbye before I started in the direction of my apartment building with Chicken leading the way. It amazed me; how I'd completely tuned out of reality and could not for the sake of anything remember the way back.

The entire time, I'd been talking to someone else. Inside.

*

Nine o'clock sharp, I arrived at the office floor, greeting Claire at the front desk with the usual nod before proceeding past the glass doors and heading for my private space. I passed several associates from the marketing department who were in for an all-hands meeting today and they stood to say hello as soon as they spotted me from the pantry. I returned the gesture.

Florence was waiting at my door as usual with a morning report. And thus started a typical day at work.

I was, quite frankly and surprisingly, at my best for the next seven hours—running through articles like an editing machine and approving or correcting marketing strategies and proposals for clientele whilst mapping out about publishing plans and layout choices for Violet's new cookbook with the help of an expert designer. Things were running smoothly and I was breezing through my keyboard at the top of my game in the strangest, most hyper-focused fashion that surfaced every now and then. Once in a blue moon. By the time I was ninety percent through with the day's tasks, it was merely four in the afternoon. Florence had asked to come in for an afternoon update, and that was how I knew the time.

"And finally, you have a table booked for two at Gilbert's. They have a new tasting menu. It's... booked for six-thirty in the evening. Would you like me to inform Jason for that?" She closed the folder in her arms, turning to me with a look of quiet concern that caught me quite off guard. It wasn't foreign, not really. Florence was three years older than myself despite being my secretary and from time to time, she would let that show.

"Actually, I'd... like to shift the tasting to, um... perhaps the day after tomorrow. That would be... Friday. Friday evening. Is something the matter? You're giving me that look again."

She softened, squaring her shoulders. "Sorry Mr. White. It's just. You haven't quite left your room since this morning. You skipped lunch. And I'm not even sure if you had a bite before coming to work."

I paused, turning back time in my head and properly realizing that the only thing I stomached today, so far, had been the tea from this morning. "You are... correct. Strange. I don't feel the slightest bit... peckish." A new word. Heard it at Borough's yesterday while we were... spending time together.

"Well um. I'd be worried if GLACE's owner and top critic loses his appetite all of a sudden but really, from one human to another I'd be worried too. Are you alright? Should I call for emergency services? Do you feel faint or something?"

I panicked at emergency services. "Oh no no. No, I'm quite alright. It's got nothing to do with my health. Um... tell you what. Once you're done re-scheduling that tasting, could I trouble you to get me something down the street? Anything will do. Just, not the Japanese chains. Incredibly localized but awfully unappetizing. Thank you."

"Alright," she laughed. "How does Leon's sound?"

Leon's... right. That time at the museum. "I think... correct me if I'm wrong but I recall there being something like a... chicken with garlic aioli on a bed of brown rice. There were pomegranate seeds in it. I don't really know the name of the dish."

She nodded, heading for the door. "I'll keep a lookout for something like that." And left.

I turned to the remaining ten percent of unentertained emails, work messages and production plans—all related to the mystery chef that had, within a single night, been the talk of the culinary world since the supposed revelation of his identity. Speculation of articles and reporters being misinformed or misled by mere pictures, however, had, too, surfaced. Nearly every other local culinary-related editorial department had reached out to me for a word.

It was time to face the demons.

I opened a tab full of emails I'd marked out regarding the matter and had, in hand, a tablet for social media and references. Brought to my attention however, did not turn out to be a mere reference to my thoughts about the mystery chef's identity but my apparent opinion of his past and problematic personality. I was stunned.

There were people in this world who had nothing better to do and thus somehow adopted the hobby of digging up the past of a celebrity chef's child, revealing private information they'd miraculously found from school archives and and and articles from the past to form ungrounded inferences about someone they had absolutely no relation to. Even that interview I'd conducted on behalf of the Chronicle back in culinary school had resurfaced! And by god, there were people asking for a statement about him as a teenager.

Everything was completely irrelevant to Leroy's culinary skill and prowess; words were twisted and baseless opinions formed in the wild imagination of a select, vocal minority with a megaphone that was social media—the very reason Leroy had refused every request for an interview, every invitation that would have made him known to the public eye. This was the very thing he'd been trying to avoid for years and all of that... all of that crashing down in an instant.

Siegfried Cox's child prodigy, known to struggle with anger issues. "Anger issues??" I said aloud, stunned by the sheer stupidity, absolute idiocy of the statement without context or proper reference to solid evidence. "Violent tendencies? By god, what are they—" My classmates.

Good god they couldn't have... no one would've had the time or the capability to snake past private information kept within the school and and and... these were hungry reporters snooping around looking for a scoop and the absolute nonsense that stemmed from this resembled a bunch of middle school children competing for attention.

My first thought betrayed the rational mind that had bolstered the emotions I'd kept hidden within whilst at work. Has he seen all this?

Before I knew it, I had more than ten tabs open that had no formal relation to the mystery chef's superior skill and exceptional genius despite his four, five-year break. The articles were full of loaded nonsense and I was seeking out these writer-buffoons on social media only to realize that it was worse. People who'd known him back in culinary school were jumping on the bandwagon for more attention, claiming that he was unfriendly and stand-offish.

The disparity was quite frankly driving me insane. These were people who did not know Leroy or perhaps had a grand total of two short exchanges with him like 'hello' and 'goodbye'. Some names, I even recognized.

Truth to be told, the reason for Leroy's departure from school back then had been something the students constantly speculated about. While the faculty was generally aware of the half-truth (that Leroy had offended Chef Pierre in the SOY and gotten himself into trouble with a couple of first-year students), they did not speak very much of it. I myself had ignored and brushed aside all opinions and kept my word with headmaster Birchwood without imagining all this to resurface years later like a haunting.

I sent a standard response declining to comment on the situation to the pseudo-writers before drafting an email to Chef Cox, informing him of the outrageous nonsense people were saying online. Paragraphs of rage into it, I closed the draft.

As though he could do anything about it.

I then sealed the deal by scrolling through Twitter, which was really just the cherry on top of all this madness because Andre, being the silly git he was, had apparently come up with a hundred ways to publicly insult Leroy.

And so all of a sudden, Vanilla Julian White was in the mood for war. He had in him loaded an arsenal of words meant for heavy fire but because Twitter was no platform for essays, he had it reduced to a single blade made of ice.

It was a terrible decision.

"Mr. White?" Florence appeared to have run a marathon on her way back from Leon's, phone in hand and a very stunned expression in her eyes. "I-I think you. Your tweet, it um. It's getting a lot of attention. It's been less than fifteen minutes but Chef Chen, Chef Du Bellay, Chef Xu and... and even Layla Tenner—they've all retweeted it. It's at more than five hundred likes."

I blinked, turning away from the screen of my laptop. I had been drafting a response to the production team about tomorrow's all-hands conference that included confirmed chef nominees.

Florence placed the take-out on the far right of my desk and slid her phone towards me. Did I overdo it? I never intended to receive that much attention but...

"I understand you were being sarcastic and I believe the people who know you would, as well, but... but the attention... this could be used against you," Florence explained and of course, I knew where she was coming from. It was not my first time under scrutiny in the culinary world and making more enemies of strangers did not bode well for myself or Leroy.

It was at seven-hundred-and-thirty-nine likes when I decided to take it down. After twenty or so minutes of tweeting.

And then there was the urge to send the mystery chef a text to ask, well, if he was... alright. But then reason kicked in and purported that he was busy and hard at work, and would not have the time or energy to involve himself in any of this. That hearing a word from related to such an awful thing he wished to avoid completely would've only made matters worse.

If he was to be home tomorrow after his twenty-four-hour shift, we'd talk then. But if he'd decided to remain at the firehouse and take some time off from... well, me, then. Then maybe this was for the best.

After deleting the tweet, I went back to writing to the production team before finally sorting out the necessary documents to prepare for tomorrow's big conference. What with the current circumstance and the complication of things, I was anticipating a change in the contract and an escalation of events. That, and a further clarification of tournament rules and the program itself.

Florence popped back in to say goodbye in the middle of my sorting and had paused, at the doorway, even after I'd responded with a friendly wave.

"It's late, Mr. White. You should hurry back. You know, you've been getting off work on time lately, so I thought you had someone waiting for you at home," she laughed.

I returned one that lacked the vigor of her own. Wisps of air that meant little but took the world to muster.

"Well..." I thought of Chicken. "You could say that."

So I proceeded to pack my things. After all, I did promise him that pedigree canned food. Filet-mignon-flavored. But still. And yes, it's only been less than a day but still.

I was waiting for his owner to come home.

===================

I had the misfortune of running into Siegfried in the elevator going up to the conference venue at The Shard.

A few days ago, I would have regarded this with a fairly neutral stance. Slightly obnoxious but still, fairly neutral. This time however, I faced him with a mind full of 'what ifs' and 'could be very well's'. For all I knew, Siegfried could have played a huge role in pressuring Leroy into officially taking up the role as the mystery chef and spending afternoons at Andre's bistro heading the kitchen. The reason it was never really made known to myself could have been attributed to the unwillingness of Leroy and Annie to directly implicate someone else in their family problems, thinking that Siegfried could use that information to hurt or threaten myself.

Granted, I had no confirmation of this. Still, I could not seem to quell the avalanche within and so, I merely nodded at his friendly 'good morning'; remaining curt and silent throughout the elevator ride.

It was upon entering the conference room and being seated by the staff that I realized the extent of the meeting's importance. This was the first in-person, fully-staffed conference of stakeholder representatives, key members of the production, administrative, and marketing team, co-producers like Siegfried, an entire line-up of guest and official judges, and confirmed, professional participants of the filmed tournament.

Seats were filled, places were taken, greetings were exchanged. I was arranged to be seated amongst the other judges and needless to say, meeting them for the first time was slightly nerve-wracking. There was another man and a woman, both much older than myself. I recognized the lady. Chef Amelia Streisand, owner of Sage in London, a two-star Michelin restaurant, and multiple alfresco dining places and internationally renowned fine-dining restaurants. Her credentials were solid, no doubt. She'd acknowledged me with a nod.

My counterpart on the other hand, appeared much more friendly and welcoming. He'd altogether ignored my extended hand to give me a clap on the back, introducing himself as Paolo Enrique De Castro, born in the Philippines, moved to Toronto with his family when he was ten, and settled down in London where he started a career in the culinary industry. All this, I learned in five seconds. And when he started naming the restaurants he owned and business ventures he had been involved in over the years, I found perfect reason for his role on the judging panel. That, and he was no doubt going to be the good cop between Chef Streisand and myself. Leroy would have liked his revolutionary dining style. It wasn't the fancy kind.

"So um, do I address you as Chef De Castro, or..."

"Just call me Pao, Banilla. You are Banilla, right? I can call you that?" He was incredibly warm and had nothing close to the British walls of personal space or emotional boundaries. It was almost shocking, after several weeks of London. Not that there was anything wrong with the standard British procedure (in fact, I pretty much felt the same way towards strangers), but someone with all smiles was, indeed, rather refreshing. "Come to my restaurant okay I like people like you."

"O-oh. Oh," I was incredibly flattered. A rare occurrence; someone meeting me for the first time and declaring my presence in their good books. "Is that so? Thank you. Yes you can refer to me however you like. May I ask how...? Or, what, exactly, led to the um. The liking of the me." Oh god, Vanilla.

I received a knowing smile in return. "Twitter." And then he seemed to... point at Andre across the room. Not with his hands, but with his nose. Or his... um lips. Something. But I knew he was pointing from the direction of his gaze. And I couldn't help but feel a little pleased. After all, I did take pride in short-form essays condensed in the form of witty diction.

I was about to thank him quietly but the table was tapped and through the doors came Mr. Caelum, the chief executive of the production team and hence signaled the settling down and returning to assigned seats around the long, thirty-seat conference table.

The meeting kicked off with a presentation on marketing data and stats for the past week or two that have been seeing positive upward trends on search results and engagement before moving on to the supposed effectiveness of the latest campaign; alluding to yesterday's breakthrough on the mystery chef reveal and then finally, a moment of celebration. Celebration.

"So we took this opportunity to extend an invitation to Leroy Cox. As planned."

My first reaction, besides quite frankly releasing a private avalanche within, was to look towards Siegfried. He caught my eye and at once, averted his gaze. By god, I needed a word with this man. This was, just, absolute, rubbish!

"We're not inviting him," I said to Siegfried, pulling him aside during the half-hour break. The latter half of the conference was reserved for a detailed timeline of the program's entire production and the arrival of nominated contestants. "We're not inviting Leroy."

"Vanilla, this is what the team has been working on for the past—"

"That was before they knew it was Leroy. And before it was revealed to—unless you're saying you and the rest of the team have known this all along? That this was all planned and and and by god, do you not realize how you're destroying him? And I apologize but do you also not see how this bodes ill for yourself? People are going to talk about how you rigged your son in and how he'd have the absolute favor of the entire production because you are a co-producer on the show?"

"Vanilla."

"I'm begging you, Siegfried," I said his name on instinct, abandoning the title that had put him on a high horse in the first place. "This is common sense. It pains me to speak to people who refuse to abide by the fundamental requirement of a..." I paused. Turned away with a sigh. "Sorry. I crossed the line. I mean to say that I hope you'd reconsider your decision. Otherwise, I might very well back out of this contract."

The man shook his head, following my gaze and surveying the rest of the room mingling around canapés and cocktails at eleven-thirty in the morning. He then sighed and gestured for me to follow him.

I paused, cautious. Careful.

The look on his face was one of conflict. I attributed it to a strange mix of responsibility, guilt and an acceptance of his nature. Either that, or a sheer inability to realize what he'd truly done out of 'good' for his son. He led me to the next room where the meeting was supposed to be. The one with the nominated contestants and whatnot.

This time, the seats spanning across an even larger, longer table included labels for each and every contestant.

"I was trying to tell you, Vanilla." His father stood in the doorway as I took in every chair. Every label. "It's too late."

And there, sealed in an acrylic stand right in the middle of a table full of the nothing but big names in the culinary world, was a name that did not belong.

Leroy Cox