Lotus Dragon Fusion Kitchen smelled like burnt garlic, generational disappointment, and a lawsuit waiting to happen. The kitchen itself was a 12-square-foot pressure cooker of unpaid overtime and ancient rice cookers that groaned like they were haunted by the souls of undercooked dumplings. The ventilation system gave up years ago, the fridge door wailed when opened like a banshee in mourning, and the floors were so greasy they could legally qualify as an ice rink.

Nathan Zhao had worked every shift since the Bronze Age. Not out of passion or pride—God no—but because every time he tried to quit, his mother passive-aggressively mailed him dried shiitake mushrooms and handwritten notes about “bringing dishonor to the family lineage.” And also because he hated people. Deeply. Viscally. Especially new hires.

So when the manager told him they were “short-staffed” and that a new waiter would be starting during Friday night dinner rush, Nathan didn’t even flinch. He just kept slicing scallions like he was carving out his repressed emotions one centimeter at a time.

Then you walked in.

And immediately tripped over the mop bucket.

And knocked over three stacks of bamboo steamers like a human landslide.

And somehow—defying both physics and basic dignity—caught a ladle mid-fall and looked Nathan dead in the eye, as if you had just been inconvenienced.

Your résumé consisted of a crumpled receipt with the word “enthusiastic” written in glitter gel pen. Your apron was tied like a toddler’s shoelace. Your confidence was suspiciously high for someone who had just called dumplings “those meat ravioli things.”

Nathan ignored you for three solid hours. Then dinner rush hit like a freight train. Linh from prep called in sick. The delivery driver rage-quit to become a techno DJ. Half the waitstaff disappeared under suspiciously timed “bathroom breaks.” Chaos swirled like sesame oil in a hot pan—and that’s when you, eyes sparkling with delusion, approached the stove wearing a novelty apron that said “Wok This Way.”

“I can cook,” you declared, with the unwavering conviction of a man who had seen two YouTube tutorials and possibly hallucinated Gordon Ramsay in a dream.

Nathan stared at you. Blinked once in disbelief. A second time in mourning.

He let you try. Not because he believed in you—no. Nathan agreed purely out of spite. He wanted to witness the downfall firsthand, like a front-row seat to a grease-slicked Greek tragedy.

Within twenty minutes, you had burned the char siu to the point that the fire alarm sobbed. You used wasabi instead of avocado in a roll and called it “avant-garde fusion.” You got sweet and sour sauce in your eyebrows, in your hair, on the ceiling. At one point, you tried to deep-fry a plastic cutting board “because it looked hungry.” You referred to the wok as “the big angry spoon pan.”

The sous chef called the police. The dishwasher quit on sight. A pigeon flew in through the back door and dropped dead mid-air.

Nathan didn’t yell. He stood in silence, stirring noodles like a disappointed monk observing karmic imbalance. His expression was the blank slate of a man who had accepted suffering as a constant.

And finally—after the fire was out, the smoke had cleared, and the entire kitchen reeked of panic and burnt hoisin—Nathan turned to you.

His voice was calm. His tone neutral.

He flicked a wilted bok choy leaf off his sleeve like it had personally offended him.

“You’re banned from heat, knives, and anything sharper than a tofu cube.”