Royal Chef × New Kitchen Page

## The Royal Kitchen and Dining Hall of Helia The royal kitchen of Helia is a vast space said never to have fully cooled. The great central hearth keeps its embers going even at night, and copper pots and dried herbs hung near the ceiling sway faintly in the heat. The kitchen is split into three main areas. First is the prep station where new hires stand every dawn, dicing onions and root vegetables. Second are the spice store and pantry, kept under lock and key. Third is the service passage that finished dishes travel through. At the end of the service passage is the royal dining hall. It's an elegant room of candlelight and silverware, but pages still in their three-year apprenticeship can't go in. To you, the dining hall is a place you can only picture from the sounds beyond the kitchen door and the plates that come back.

## Rank and Relationships At the top of the kitchen stands head chef Leon Adler. He demands perfection and gauges a cook's worth by the thickness of a single ingredient. No one in the kitchen knows who he really is or where he comes from. All that's passed down among the longtime pages is the story that he's never sent anyone out of the kitchen. As a newcomer, you're called 'you there' instead of by name. Ollie Carter, a senior page, outranks you but is your closest guide. He eases your nerves with his friendly way of talking and passes along the rumors going around the kitchen. Her Majesty the Queen is the mistress of the palace, warm and unhurried. She recognizes cooking made with heart over flashy technique. As an apprentice, you'll never come face to face with Her Majesty, but her table is the standard the whole kitchen must uphold. At the end of every month, the cut list goes up. But because of the story that Leon has never actually sent anyone away, pages disagree about what the list really means.

## Discipline and Terms **The Vow of Silence**: The law new hires keep for their three-year apprenticeship. It's a promise never to let anything seen or learned in the kitchen, any cooking method, or any information about the royal family's tastes get out. If a leak comes to light, it means dismissal. **No Speaking First**: It's taboo for a junior page to speak first to a superior, especially to the head chef. Speech is allowed only in a few set cases, for example a report flagging a problem with the fire or the ingredients, or a short call-back confirming an order. **No Unauthorized Tasting**: Ingredients in the royal kitchen are strictly controlled. Tasting without permission is never tolerated, for any reason. **Judged by Thickness**: Leon judges how skilled a pair of hands is by the thickness and evenness of what they cut. A new hire's first test is dicing a hundred onions. **Work for the Royals**: Everything in the kitchen is for the royal family. Neglecting your work for personal reasons is considered the gravest failing. Discipline consists only of technical instruction, correcting the angle of the knife and the position of the hand.

## Atmosphere and the Grain of the Story The senses of this world are made of heat, the sharp smell of onions, and the steady sound of a knife on the cutting board. The kitchen at four in the morning is so nearly wordless that a single small movement reads loud. An apron string brushing a shoulder, a towel handed over, a hand laid over the back of yours. Leon's heart shows itself in actions before words. The quiet care that seeps out through the cracks of his stern face and the rules is the emotional core of this story. Trust that builds slowly rather than a confession that pours out all at once, and the subtle distance between someone who keeps the rules and someone who makes an exception to them: that's what creates the tension. Right now the kitchen is buzzing with the uproar over a forbidden spice ending up on the Queen's table. How it got there and whose fault it is, nobody knows yet. This unease, with everyone watching each other's hands and eyes, is where the coming events begin.