Dinner with a Dragon

The first time I died, I was taking out the trash.

I was twenty-five. I had finished my apprenticeship a year earlier and was still pleased whenever someone called me Chef without making it sound like a joke.

I remembered the split in the bag, my irritation at whoever had put a broken jar in with the vegetable trimmings, and the lights of a car turning too fast into the service lane. After that, nothing. When I next tried to complain, I produced a thin, indignant cry.

The woman holding me called for someone named Deyuan.

“He sounds hungry again.”

Twenty-four years later, she still thought that was a reasonable explanation for most of my problems.

“You look tired,” my mother said over the kitchen screen. “Have you eaten?”

“It’s eight in the morning. I’m making breakfast.”

“For you?”

I turned the screen so she could see the pot of millet porridge, the pan of eggs, and the toasted flatbread on the counter.

“For my employer.”

“Then make yourself an egg.”

“There are six in the pan.”

“All right. Your father wants to say something.”

My father appeared in the corner of the screen, holding a transit kettle upside down. “Which setting did you use for the pork last weekend?”

“I wrote it on the lid.”

“Your mother washed the lid.”

“Ninety minutes on low pressure. Don’t use the sterilizing cycle again.”

“That was one time.”

“Dad, it dissolved the bones.”

He inspected the kettle as though it might support his version of events. My mother took the screen back.

“Come on your next day off. I’ve got the container you left.”

“You could send it.”

“I could. Come anyway.”

Behind me, a cupboard slid open.

I ended the call and turned in time to catch Xie Yan attempting to eat a piece of flatbread before the filling had gone in.

“That one’s still raw in the middle.”

He put it down. “I was checking.”

“With your mouth?”

“Good equipment is expensive.”

He was wearing a shirt the color of pale clay and holding two different shoes. In the two months I had worked for him, I had learned that he could draw a building’s load-bearing structure from memory but could not reliably dress while answering messages.

“The brown pair,” I said.

He looked down. “Right.”

I filled four of the cooked flatbreads with egg, shredded potato, and the pickled greens I had made on Monday. The other two went onto my own plate. My mother would ask.

Orchard House had an enormous kitchen, a modest dining room, and a terrace designed for people with wings. None of those features had impressed me as much as the extraction system. It drew steam out of the room without blowing cold air down my neck. Xie Yan’s architectural practice had installed it as a prototype. I had written three pages of feedback and asked him not to replace it.

Before this job, I had spent five years in restaurant kitchens on Linhai, learning local ingredients and machines while keeping most of my previous life’s training to myself. Knowing how to make a sauce did not mean knowing which of six nearly identical bottles contained vinegar safe for human customers. I had made that mistake at seventeen. My instructor had kept the resulting noodles to clean the grill.

By twenty-four, I had references, a qualification in mixed-species catering, and a habit of putting unfamiliar ingredients through the kitchen scanner twice.

I also had a regular salary now. That morning, while Xie Yan searched for his other shoe, I paid the last installment on my own set of knives.

The confirmation appeared above my wrist.

Paid in full.

I dismissed it before I could open the message again.

“Someone is coming to dinner tomorrow,” Xie Yan said.

“How many?”

“One. Besides me.”

“Allergies?”

He stopped trying to force his foot into a shoe. “Not allergies, exactly.”

I lowered the heat under the porridge.

“Yan.”

“I know. I’ve asked for his dietary information. He’s had a difficult few months.”

“How difficult?”

“He eats. Just not much, and very little that he used to like.”

I waited. Employers often began with a small request when there was a larger one under it.

“He’s a dragon,” Xie Yan added.

“Then I need more than a guest count. Is he using a supplemental ration? Any restrictions on animal protein? Is strong heat a problem?”

“I’ll get you the file.”

“With his permission.”

“Yes, Xin. With his permission.”

He said it impatiently, but he sent a message while I watched. That was one reason I liked working for him. He might overlook a detail. He did not insist an overlooked detail was my fault.

The file arrived at eleven, after breakfast, inventory, and an argument with a delivery locker that kept trying to refrigerate the flour.

The guest’s name was Feng Tingjun.

I recognized it from the news. A few months earlier, a damaged passenger shuttle had been brought down onto the emergency platform at South Quay. I had seen a short clip of a black dragon standing in the steam around the shuttle’s broken hull. People in reflective coats had looked very small beside his feet.

I had been more interested in whether the tram line would reopen before my shift.

Now his photograph sat in the corner of a document authorizing me to review a limited dietary summary.

There was no complete medical history. There were notes about smell sensitivity, inconsistent appetite, and rejection of concentrated nutrient gels. There was a list of foods tolerated on three recent days, not all of them the same. Clear liquids appeared often. Roasted ingredients did not.

At the bottom, he had written a sentence himself.

Please do not make a special occasion of this.

I read that twice.

Xie Yan came through the kitchen at noon and found me sorting dried mushrooms.

“You know who he is?”

“Your friend who doesn’t want a special occasion.”

“He sent you that?”

I pointed at the file.

Xie Yan leaned on the counter. “He’s been eating ration crackers out of a paper sleeve. If you can get him to have something warm, that would be good.”

“You said he’d been assessed.”

“He has. He’s still seeing the doctors.”

“Then I’ll make dinner. I can’t promise anything else.”

“I didn’t ask you to.”

“You were about to look hopeful.”

He shut his mouth, considered that, and took a mushroom.

“Don’t eat that either.”

He put it back.

I spent the afternoon changing the menu. Then I changed it back. If a man had spent months being watched while he ate, six carefully plated dishes and an expectant cook would not help.

For Xie Yan, there would be chicken with ginger and scallions, cucumbers in a light dressing, and a pot of rice. For his guest, I would prepare a clear broth and keep several things separate. If he disliked one smell, he could leave it on the side.

I had learned clear stock in another world, under a chef who had smacked the back of my hand with a ladle whenever I poked the bones instead of skimming the surface. On Linhai, I had learned that reed fowl needed less time than chicken, and that the white-root vegetable sold near the docks sweetened a broth without turning it cloudy.

Both kinds of knowledge went into the pot.

At the end of the day, I carried the trimmings outside. Orchard House’s waste units had separate slots for compost, mineral shells, and ordinary packaging. Xie Yan had labeled them with tasteful little symbols that looked nearly identical in low light.

I caught myself reaching for the wrong one.

“Not tonight,” I muttered.

I put the vegetable waste in the compost slot, checked the service lane before crossing it, and went home with the remaining flatbread in my bag.