Author Note & Special Shout Out!
✨⋆˙⟡࣪ ִֶָ☾. ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ⋆˙⟡࣪ ִֶָ☾.✨
-`♡´- ヽ(o＾▽＾o)ノ
⋆.˚✮ 𝕋𝕙𝕒𝕟𝕜 𝕪𝕠𝕦 ✮˚.⋆
✧｡٩(ˊᗜˋ )و✧*｡
Special THANK YOU shout out to my lovely phoenix-dragons:
superAyan, BossHog83, sans_8354, Glorious_7,
Ash_popcorn, latteectrie, Peekaboo_3, Rydiah,
Ladyflawsome96, DaoistsVfN1e, Kuroitsuki, sylviana,
Khay_Young, Flying3draGon & Sherri_Warner.
for all the Power Stones & continued support of my novel.
I humbly appologize for the delayed shoutout to most of you.
I will do better on the shoutouts from here on out.
(◕‿◕) <3
Now, back to reading, I hope you all enjoy it!
⋅˚₊‧ ୨🕮୧ ‧₊˚ ⋅
✨⋆˙⟡࣪ ִֶָ☾. ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ⋆˙⟡࣪ ִֶָ☾.✨
The Chef x The Celebrity
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✨─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───✨
~ Date: June 27th – Interstellar Year 2422 ~
~ Location: Fengxin Den, The Liangyi Spire ~
~ The Majestic Bonghwang Estates and Luxury Resort ~
~ The Starlight District, Terra Anka PXD2422 ~
~ The Golden Dragon Star Nexus Intergalactic Empire ~
✨─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───✨
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🐉 [ Choi Yongbok ☯ POV ] 🐉
The first rays of dawn broke through the wall of floor-to-ceiling windows as the automatic blinds rose and the curtains drew back. Choi Yongbok remained lying in bed, staring at the familiar ceiling with eyes that had not truly rested. Another night had passed. Another night of broken sleep, shallow breaths, and the same dream that had haunted him so long it felt less like a dream and more like a memory the universe refused to return properly.
It was always the same. A beautiful man with amethyst eyes and a heart-stopping smile framed by a single left dimple. A melodious voice calling to him from somewhere just out of reach. A hand extended toward him—not demanding, not grasping, only waiting, as if Yongbok had once known how to take it and had failed too many times to forgive himself.
Every time, his heart answered before his mind could. Anticipation, relief, joy so sharp it nearly became pain—then the dream would shatter. The man would be ripped away before Yongbok could reach him, and the warmth in his chest would collapse into cold so complete it left him waking with his fingers curled around empty sheets.
Last night had been worse. The smile had dimmed slowly, almost gently, before blood darkened the corner of those soft lips. Yongbok had reached out in the dream, desperate to wipe it away, but more blood followed—nose, eyes, too much, too fast. The helplessness had been the cruelest part. He could command studios, companies, security fleets, and entire hidden networks, yet in the dream he could not cross the small distance between his hand and the person he needed to save.
He had bolted upright before the vision could finish, drenched in cold sweat, his heart pounding as if he had been running through a battlefield. For several minutes afterward, he had sat in the dark with one hand pressed over his sternum, breathing through the ridiculous certainty that someone had died and left him behind again.
For one irrational second after waking, he reached across the bed as if someone should have been there. His fingers met only untouched silk, cool from the room's climate control and far too neat for the violence still shaking through his chest. He had slept alone for years. He preferred it that way, or so he had told himself often enough that most people believed him. But the dream made the wide bed feel less like luxury and more like evidence.
He had sat there until his breathing obeyed him again, staring into the dark while the city lights beyond the windows blurred into distant stars. Nightmare, he told himself. Stress. Old fatigue. An overworked mind turning loneliness into mythology. Yet the certainty would not leave him. The dream did not feel like invention. It felt like a warning delivered too late, or a memory returned without mercy.
After that, sleep was useless. Another attempt would only drag him back into some new variation of the same loss, so he showered, changed, and went downstairs to his private dojang.
In the dojang, he did not train for strength. Strength had never been the problem. He trained because repetition was cleaner than grief. Strike. Turn. Breathe. Step. The polished floor accepted each controlled motion without asking why his hands still remembered reaching for blood.
Three hours of training and two hours of meditation later, his expression had returned to its usual calm, even if the turmoil beneath it had only learned to stand quietly in a corner. Meditation should have helped. Instead, stillness left too much room for the amethyst eyes to return.
When Yongbok returned upstairs, the residence had fully awakened around him. Pale morning light spilled across the living room in bands of gold. Beyond the glass, the Starlight District glittered beneath the early sky, all suspended walkways, private landing platforms, and mirrored towers catching the sun before the city below properly stirred.
He paused barefoot on the heated stone floor. His home was beautiful, precise, and impossibly expensive: dark wood, low furniture, hidden lighting, ink-wash screens, and a wall of living plants beside a narrow indoor watercourse that whispered over smooth black stones.
Peaceful by design. Not always peaceful in truth.
He prepared tea himself. It was one of the few morning rituals he refused to surrender to staff automation. The leaves came from a private cultivation dome maintained at absurd expense, one of the rare luxuries he allowed himself without guilt. He measured them carefully, warmed the cup, and rinsed the leaves once before pouring again. Steam curled upward in pale ribbons, carrying a clean, grassy bitterness that settled his breathing more gently than meditation had managed.
The steps mattered. Heat the cup. Rinse the leaves. Wait. Pour. Hold. Drink. The same motions, in the same order, gave his hands something safe to remember after a night spent reaching for someone he could not save.
Most people in this era reached for nutri-shakes, nutri-loaf, or calibrated nutrient gels before they were fully awake. Efficient. Balanced. Flavorless in all the ways that mattered. Yongbok had never understood how society could cross galaxies and still convince itself that swallowing survival counted as living.
In the kitchen, he ignored the row of perfectly balanced nutrition supplements waiting in the chilled wall unit and reached instead for real ingredients: pearl-rice, lunar barley, star-marrow broth, sea-mineral greens, moon-garlic oil, and a small dish of fermented bean-salt paste. Beside them, a single solar-yolk egg rested in a temperature-controlled cradle, its shell faintly gold beneath the cabinet light. Most people would have called the meal excessive for breakfast. Yongbok called it proof that he was still alive enough to want more than efficiency.
He cooked quietly, sleeves rolled to his forearms, movements precise and unhurried. The pearl-rice softened in the broth until it turned creamy, while the lunar barley added a gentle bite beneath the silkiness. He sliced the sea-mineral greens thin, warmed them with moon-garlic oil, and folded them in only at the end so they kept their color. The egg went on top last, barely set, its rich yolk breaking into the rice like sunrise.
The scent filled the room slowly: broth deepening, garlic warming, rice softening into something gentle. No cameras. No stylists. No public appetite dressed up as admiration. Just breakfast, quiet, and the small relief of making something with his own hands.
Yongbok sat by the window with his tea and ate in silence. Steam curled between his hands, rice and broth warming the cold place the dream had left behind. Cooking for himself remained one of the few private pieces of his life that fame had not yet claimed, and for a few minutes, that small quiet was enough.
He ate slowly, because rushing would turn the meal into function, and he had enough function in his life already. The first spoonful warmed his mouth, then his throat, then the locked place beneath his ribs where the dream had left frost behind. It did not heal anything. But warmth was still warmth, and his body accepted it with a gratitude that felt almost embarrassing.
Even that comfort felt borrowed. Somewhere below him, staff were preparing halls, cameras were calibrating, contestants were arriving, and production schedules were tightening around the day like invisible thread. Soon there would be no quiet kitchen, no private cup of tea, no space to be only Yongbok.
Sometimes he wondered whether this was why the dream hurt so much. In it, the amethyst-eyed man always reached for him as if Yongbok was not a title, not a brand, not a weapon disguised as a beloved actor, but simply someone worth finding. Someone worth coming home to.
Fame had given Yongbok influence, wealth, access, protection, and the kind of name that opened doors before he reached for them. It had also taken things quietly, one by one, until privacy became less a right and more a luxury he defended with contracts, security protocols, and silence.
The empire thought it knew him because it had watched him smile beneath studio lights, argue policy in clipped interviews, kiss co-stars on command, and bleed beautifully on screen. It knew the angles of his face, the cadence of his public voice, the suits he wore, the roles he refused, and the rumors he never answered. It did not know the man who woke from dreams with his hands clenched in the sheets, brewed his own tea to steady himself, and cooked breakfast in silence because that small act still belonged only to him.
Every public figure learned eventually that admiration could become hunger. The more the empire loved him, the more it wanted to consume: his time, his expressions, his preferences, his absences, his mistakes, and his loneliness.
Yongbok had chosen this life with open eyes. He knew the price. That did not make paying it painless.
A quiet breath left him before he could fully stop it. "Please," he murmured to the empty kitchen, voice nearly swallowed by the steam rising from his cup. "Whoever is listening—universe, deities, fate, anything—let today end well."
He almost laughed at himself for saying it aloud. There was no one there to hear him. At least, there should not have been. For one strange second, he thought he heard something answer—soft, distant, and too faint to trust. Yongbok checked the room, then the nearby devices. Everything was silent. Perhaps he had imagined it. Perhaps hope had finally learned to use his own voice against him.
He sent a brief message to his assistant, stored what he needed in his spatial watch, then picked up his drink and sunglasses. One last glance in the mirror confirmed what years of public life had taught him to build: flawless hair, flawless clothes, flawless composure. Only then did he draw a slow breath and step out.
Brindan Tayvin Redstar was already waiting outside the door.
As always, Brindan was immaculate. Not a wrinkle disturbed his suit, not a single strand of hair had dared to fall out of place, and his expression carried the polished blankness of a man who could make an A.I. butler look emotionally impulsive.
Yongbok looked him over and could not help the faint curve of amusement at his mouth. "You know, Brindan, one could very easily mistake you for an A.I. butler when you wear that expression. It would not destroy your professional reputation if you showed one emotion while on the clock. Perhaps even two, if you were feeling reckless."
Brindan looked him directly in the eyes without blinking. His face did not change. It did not need to. Years of friendship translated the silence perfectly: not amused.
Yongbok's amusement softened into something warmer. They had known each other since grade school. Brindan's professional mask might fool directors, ministers, investors, and half the imperial court, but it had never fully fooled him.
"All right," Yongbok conceded. "I will stop teasing you. Only because you are officially on the clock. But you know you can ease up when it is only the two of us."
Brindan had also seen the boy Yongbok used to be before the empire learned how profitable his face could become. He remembered school corridors, bruised knuckles hidden beneath uniform sleeves, shared study rooms, quiet lunches, and the first time Yongbok realized Brindan's family did not call because they missed him. They called because they wanted something to hurt.
Back then, Yongbok had not known what to do with the helpless rage of it. He could scare classmates, impress teachers, and command attention without trying, yet none of that helped against the quiet cruelty of a mother who treated her son like a failed investment. Brindan had never asked to be rescued, and that, somehow, had made Yongbok angrier. His friend had learned too early not to expect rescue at all.
Underneath the joke sat a truth Yongbok rarely touched directly: Brindan was one of the only people who had seen enough versions of him to know the difference between composure and peace. Actors saw the co-star. Investors saw the chairman. Reporters saw the Movie Emperor. Brindan saw the man who skipped sleep, rewrote schedules at three in the morning, and sometimes forgot that being capable did not mean being fine.
Brindan did not answer. That silence made Yongbok's humor fade. His friend's mother must have called again—last night, this morning, or both. Persef'ni Thalia Zorya Redstar had a gift for finding new ways to wound her own child while pretending it was discipline.
The silence stretched between them long enough to become familiar. It was the kind of silence they had built over years—not empty, not awkward, but shaped by everything neither of them could say while standing in hallways, studios, boardrooms, elevators, and private safe rooms where other people were always one bad decision away from needing to be managed.
He wanted to tell Brindan to take the morning off. To sleep. To ignore every call from his mother. To let someone else carry the machinery for once. But Brindan would refuse, and Yongbok knew better than to offer freedom in a way his friend would hear as pity.
Instead, Yongbok shifted his tone by a hair, letting the teasing fall away without making the moment too bare. "If she called," he said quietly, "you do not have to answer when you are with me."
Brindan's fingers paused against the edge of his tablet. It was the only crack in his composure, so small most people would never have seen it. "I know."
"Do you?" Yongbok asked.
Brindan looked at him then, and for once the professional blankness did not settle fast enough to hide the tiredness beneath it. "Knowing and behaving accordingly are not always the same skill."
Yongbok's chest tightened. It was such a Brindan answer: precise, dry, painfully honest, and offered only because he trusted Yongbok enough not to turn it into weakness.
For someone who supposedly resented Brindan for being born beta instead of alpha, his mother certainly contacted him often. Never to care for him. Only to criticize, blame, and remind him where she believed he belonged.
Brindan did not deserve to be anyone's favorite scapegoat. He was brilliant, loyal, terrifyingly competent, and far too practiced at turning pain into productivity. Yongbok respected his work ethic. He hated the reason behind it.
Stop it, Yongbok, he told himself. You are spiraling before the day has even begun. Still, the warning did little to settle him. Something about today felt different, and difference made hope dangerous.
He locked the feeling away behind the smile the empire knew best. Brindan might read most people with terrifying accuracy, but even he could not see past Yongbok's mask when Yongbok chose to hold it in place. There was a reason the entire Golden Dragon Star Nexus Intergalactic Empire called him the Movie Emperor.
"Good morning, sir," Brindan said in the calm, no-nonsense tone he used whenever work had fully claimed him. "I trust you have eaten. I will review today's schedule as we head downstairs."
Before Brindan could continue, Yongbok asked about the venue preparations instead. He knew the schedule, but stillness felt impossible. He needed confirmation, even if Brindan did not yet know why.
Brindan answered without question as they entered the private elevator. The ride down was smooth and silent, uninterrupted by other passengers or unnecessary stops. Only Yongbok and Brindan had access to this particular lift, and it ran directly from the top residence floors to the private sublevels.
By the time the doors opened, Brindan had completed the morning briefing. They proceeded toward The Elegant Dancing Phoenix Banquet Hall, where contestants for The Chef and The Celebrity would cycle through contract review, individual interviews, promotional photos, and the first round of production formalities.
Separate rooms had been prepared for legal review, private consultations, styling, and individual introduction shoots. It would be a long day, but Yongbok trusted the arrangements because Brindan had overseen most of them personally.
That was why Yongbok trusted him with the parts of his life no one else was allowed to touch: emergency exits, private routes, family avoidance protocols, and the quiet disasters that never reached the public. Brindan made safety look effortless, which was exactly why too many people forgot how much he carried.
Yongbok slowed and looked at him. "Brin," he said quietly, "I do not say this often enough, but thank you. For all of it. Not only professionally. You are my right hand, my best friend, and the closest thing to a brother this life has ever given me. I know I lean on you too much. I know you make impossible things look easy because people have spent too long expecting you to. But I see it. I see you."
The words had been waiting longer than he cared to admit. Authority, salary, protection, access, and trust were things a chairman could give. They were not the same as saying: I know you are tired. I know you have stood beside me for years. I know I am not the only one surviving behind a mask.
The sudden sincerity caught Brindan off guard. His perfect mask slipped for less than a heartbeat, but Yongbok saw it. That tiny fracture said more than any speech could have: gratitude, exhaustion, loyalty, and the quiet disbelief of someone unused to being thanked before he broke.
It made Yongbok both glad and ashamed. Glad that the words had reached him. Ashamed that he had not said them sooner. Brindan deserved to hear appreciation before exhaustion forced it out of someone else.
"Hyung..." Brindan stopped, coughed once, and recovered with painful professionalism. "I mean, sir. Thank you. Sincerely." He bowed deeply enough that the gratitude could not be dismissed as formality.
That single word—hyung—landed softer and heavier than Yongbok expected. Brindan almost never let it slip anymore. Hearing it now felt like finding a younger version of them both in the hallway: two boys pretending not to be lonely, one too proud to ask for help, the other too loyal to walk away.
Yongbok did not tease him for the slip. Not this time. Some moments deserved to survive without being turned into jokes.
So Yongbok only nodded, accepting the correction without acknowledging it. The mercy was small, but Brindan's shoulders eased by an almost invisible fraction, and that was enough.
Brindan straightened, adjusted his jacket and cuffs, and restored his expression with almost insulting speed. Still, something softer remained around his eyes.
Yongbok set a hand briefly on his shoulder. "We should have dinner and drinks soon. Properly. It has been too long."
"No schedules," Yongbok added, keeping his voice low. "No investors, no family calls, no emergency documents placed beside the wine. Just dinner. You and me. Like before."
Brindan's mouth moved as if he might refuse out of habit. Then he stopped himself. That, more than agreement, told Yongbok the invitation had reached the right place.
Brindan considered him for a moment. "I may take you up on that offer, sir. However, now is not the time to discuss it. Everyone should be awaiting our entrance."
Yongbok let his hand fall from Brindan's shoulder and drew the Movie Emperor's mask back into place piece by careful piece. The dream still clung to him. The quiet prayer in the kitchen still echoed beneath his ribs. But the doors ahead belonged to cameras, contestants, and the empire's expectations, and Choi Yongbok knew how to walk into a room as if nothing inside him had ever trembled.
He gave Brindan one small nod.
"Open the doors," he said.
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~ ✨~🐉~ ☯ ~🐦🔥~✨~
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