God of Cooking

“Are you still working?”

“Pardon? Ah… Yes. Sometimes I take a break, sometimes I go to the bakery. But I usually go there when I’m feeling well.”​

“Are you going there today? You don’t seem to be in a bad condition.”

“Nope. Why are you asking that?”

The doctor looked at Lisa for a moment. It was hard to judge by looking at her complexion. That was the case with any patient. Even if a patient was in good condition, his or her complexion didn’t look healthy. So even now the doctor was not sure if he could mention something.

Basically, he was the type of man who tried to get a read on the patient before saying something.

“I know a good restaurant around here. If you have time in the evening, I’d love to dine with you.”

“With me?”

Lisa opened her eyes wide. She had never imagined she would hear such a nice doctor like him inviting her out for dinner.

He nodded, “Yes.”

“Are you now asking for a date?”

“Well, I’m not an indecisive guy who has asked you out for dinner, then denies it.”

“Thank you, but I’m sorry. I promised to stay with my daughter tonight.”

“Oh, I see…”

She refused it without hesitation. His face stiffened a bit, but he clenched his fists.

He turned his head toward the monitor and said, “Then I’ll see you next time. Forget my invitation to dinner today. I made a mistake.”

“My daughter really likes to meet a guest,” she said, catching her breath. “She is scared about a doctor because of injections, but I don’t think he will hate you if you come to my house…”

He looked at her again. She was smiling at him with an expression that was hard to describe.

“Can you play a hospital game with my daughter?”

“Well, I hate playing, and I am tired of hospitals. But I think I can play a hospital game with your daughter.”

“Okay. My house won’t be as nice as the restaurant you mentioned, but my home cooking won’t be bad,” she said with a smile. “I have a lot of chef friends.”

***

“Wow, you have lots of chef friends,” the doctor said.

When he got to Lisa’s house in the evening, Paul seemed embarrassed.

No wonder he was embarrassed because not only Min-joon and Kaya, but also Anderson, Janet, Chloe, and Marco were all there. Except for Paul, all of them were chefs.

He said, “I think I’ve seen you three chefs somewhere.”

“You’ve probably seen them on TV or in Star Book because they are pretty famous.”

Surprisingly, he knew very little about things like the Grand Chef competition. Even if he was busy as a doctor, he had free time, but when asked what he did in his free time, Paul answered that he usually read books, listened to music, or did exercise. Basically, he was a boring man.

“How did you two meet?” Chloe asked.

“I met her in an examining room,” Paul said.

Lisa was diagnosed with lung cancer by Paul. In many ways, their meeting could not be worse. Chloe asked again, twinkling her eyes, “How did you have a crush on her?”

“Pardon?”

“I mean you must have a reason why you fell in love with her.”

“Well, it’s hard to answer. I’ve never fallen in love with her.”

The mood turned awkward at his reply. After he realized they could misunderstand what he said, he added, a bit embarrassed, “Well, if you look at the definition of ‘falling in love,’ maybe it’s true I have good feelings toward her, but I don’t like her because of her looks, but because of her determination to fight her illness…”

“That’s enough, Paul. I think you had better stop here.”

She whispered to Anderson that he was dumber than Min-joon as far as love was concerned. Anderson smiled bitterly. Come to think of it, there was something weird in the guys around him without any exception.

While they were getting to know Paul by chatting like that, one of them could not approach Paul easily. It was Ella. She even noticed from Lisa’s attitude why Paul was here. And she didn’t hate him for that reason. But she felt uncomfortable, so did Paul.

He often glanced at Ella sneakily and gave her a stiff smile when their eyes met, but she quickly turned away from him.

“You said you seemed to have become weak, and your senses became duller than before… Have you felt any back pain?”

“Hmm… it seems like I did, but I don’t know.”

“It seems that you might have a slipped disc. Why don’t you come and see me later?”

“Do I need a herniated disc surgery?”

“It will depend on the condition of your disc. It’s not a definite diagnosis, so don’t worry.”

They already began to treat Paul as a doctor on a house call. Of course, this kind of thing was not strange to him after he became a doctor. In a country like America, where many people could not even think of going to the hospital because of enormous medical expenses, lots of people sought Paul and consulted with him about their symptoms when they heard he was a doctor.

After he talked with Paul about his symptoms, Kaya was nagging him about the need to work out. Paul felt she had a rough personality because of the smokey makeup around her eyes, but he felt the couple was cuter than he thought.

“By the way, Kaya’s ring is really pretty. I didn’t know you had such a good sense about rings.”

“No, I don’t. So I asked Janet to help me buy a ring for Kaya.”

Min-joon answered, shrugging, while Chloe was admiring Kaya’s ring. Her ring drew their attention for a moment. At that moment, Lisa had no choice but to touch her finger, which had no ring. She glanced at Paul quickly.

‘Ella needs…’

She thought Ella might need a father. It might sound ridiculous for her to regard Paul as Ella’s prospective father when she was asked out on a date only once, but as someone who had to be conscious of death, she needed to think about it seriously. She was conscious of death. She wasn’t trying to avoid hope because she had dim hope for survival. She was too weak to bear it.

At that moment, Paul turned his head and saw her eyes. But she turned her head as if she was shy and embarrassed. She was calculating lots of things in her mind when he tried to approach her with a pure heart. Even if she did it for her daughter, she didn’t feel comfortable.

“Chloe, are you dating anyone these days?”

“Hey, I told you to stop asking me that question, right?”

Chloe replied with a sullen expression at Kaya’s question.

Paul was still looking at Lisa, though, while the two were chatting.

The party was almost over. While Paul was having a staring match with Ella, who didn’t turn her eyes from him anymore, he looked at Lisa.

Lisa was looking at him with mixed feelings.

“Thank you for coming today. Everyone seems to have had a good time thanks to you, Paul.”

“Really?’

“I’ll see you at the next treatment.”

“Yes, it’s two weeks from now.”

“Yes. I know.”

“…”

Lisa nodded, but Paul was still looking at her as if he had something to say.

She looked at him with a slightly puzzled expression.

Paul said quietly, “Two weeks is a long time. Can I see you before that?”

“Before that?”

“Yes.”

Paul couldn’t take his eyes off her. She even wondered how he could not approach her until now. Of course, she didn’t know he had been thinking about her for a long time.

“Sure, call me later.”

“Thank you.”

“You don’t have to thank me…”

Paul smiled at her for the first time. Of course, his smile was not wide to reveal his teeth. He glanced at Ella, and after a moment’s hesitation, he placed his hand on her head. Ella flinched for a moment, but she did not avoid his hand, which made him smile again.

“Good night.”

Paul left.

Ella glanced at her mother and asked, “Mom, who is that man?”

Lisa said with a sign, “I don’t even know well.”

Lisa was the type of woman who dreamed a lot.

If she was called romantic and emotional because she was a sleepyhead, it was quite a great reason.

But her reason was far from great. Basically, she didn’t have a sound sleep. Of course, she hadn’t had much sleep since she was born. It was around when she gave birth to Ella that she began to have difficulties having a good sleep.

Of course, Ella was something like an ordeal in her life. Actually, she gave Lisa happiness.

She was her last hope in Pandora’s box from which all her misfortunes came out.

However, even hope could not give her a sound sleep. The deeper her hope was, the lighter her sleep was, for hope gave her lots of distractions, which, in turn, ran sleep out of her eyes.