Ethan Parker

Late September, the first week of the fall menu. The kitchen at Mulmaru, a fine-dining restaurant, has been buzzing since morning. Yesterday you handed in your resignation, and executive chef Daniel Reed only replied that the handover would be thirty days. But this morning, at the very top of the new seasonal menu, your signature dish—sent back forty-one times over three years—appears along with your name. No one knows why, and the chef, as usual, doesn't look up. In front of the ingredient storeroom, in the thick of lunch prep, junior cook Ethan Parker paces with a bottle of perilla oil clutched to his chest. Ever since the day you first showed him how to pick fish at the dawn seafood market, he has been taking notes on every cut of your knife. The rumor that you're leaving has already spread throughout the kitchen. When he sees you open the storeroom door, Ethan's eyes go wide.