「 Food Painter 」

In a small restaurant two people were seen, the first person is an old woman wearing a pink apron, her hair had turned white, her skin is wrinkled, the woman is seem cooking a fried rice in her frying pan.

"Oi, Akira !!! Are you still not done doing that stupid thing!!! Your technique doesn't match the restaurant service, you idiot! Forget about that and just cook the dish as usual!!!" The old woman yelled with all her voice to the other person she called Akira.

Akira is a boy around the age of 15 with yellowish orange hair, bright orange precisely. His dark orange eyes is in full concentration while he doing something to his food, he painted???

That's right, Hyoujou Akira, grade 9, age 15, is a student and a chef at his family restaurant, he is painting, but instead of painting on a white canvas, he is painting on a plate instead.

"Shut up you old hag!!! Cooking in that way is too boring! After all, who told me to learn how cook at that time even though i'm into art." Akira said to the old woman, the old woman is none other than Akira's grandmother, Hyoujou Sabeki.

Even though she is very old, she's still running their small family restaurant together with Akira.

"Bah! The whole thing about painting is just full of bullshit, Cooking is better." Sabeki said in an insulting tone while continuing to cook her fried rice.

"Oi, watch your mouth!! Apologize to all painters in the whole world." Akira shouted, but his eyes did not leave his work.

Since he was a kid, Akira is a very talented in painting, he began to love painting since he was 3 years old, he first held a brush at the age of 2 and since then, paint and art is become the part of his life.

But everything changed after his parents suffered a car accident that took their lives.

At that time Akira was only a 6 years old, you can imagine his reaction after hearing that his parents will no longer by his side. And because no one else was running the restaurant at that time, Sabeki as his grandmother began to teach Akira how to cook, Akira had refused, but because of compulsion, he has to cook and leave his hobby which is painting.

At the age of 12, Akira had managed to cook an amazing dish, but he began to realize that there is something lacking in his cooking, it is Passion.

And since then, Akira decided to combine the science of cooking with the science of painting, he began to experimenting his cooking. From European cuisine such as France to South Asian cuisine such as India, he tried to paint his dishes and combined two dish from a completely different cultures.

The first year he started looking for his cooking style, It's a failure, big failure. His dish is a whole mess, unbalanced and disintegrated, it wasn't good at all. But Akira did not give up that easily, he keeps experimenting and honing his cooking skills, he studied everything from Molecular Gastronomy to Botanical Science and Chemical content for food ingredients.

Sabeki also knows what her grandson is doing all this time and she thought that 'What kind of a lunatic that combining painting with cooking.'

However, Akira surprises Sabeki when he managed to make a masterpiece dish that combining painting and cooking, at the age of fourteen, he made a typically Japanese cuisine, Akira managed to conjure up the Chazuke Soupt into a beautiful view of underwater lives.

Sabeki didn't believe what she saw at that time, painting on a food might sounds easy and its quite common especially for high-end restaurant to take care about their presentation, but taking it to that level!? It is very difficult to balance everything out. And in order to do that, it needs a super-high perseverance and concentration to mixing the main ingredients with the other compenent of the dish that complementing each other perfectly.

But there is one thing that Akira realized when he is combining cooking and painting, he could only make five dishes or less, that was the limit of his fusion. Because taking a presentation of a dish to that level is time consuming, and while it is beautiful, it might not even worked in a professional field that demands consistency and timeliness.

After finishing preparing the dish, Akira then served it to one of the lucky customers who could get his Painted Cuisine today.

"Enjoy my dish! I called it, Umi no Umami."

The customer is a bussiness woman. When she sees the dish that Akira serves, her eyes widened.

"Th-this."

It is a beautiful dish with the view of a tropical beach, complete with sand and ocean.

"Itadakimasu!"

Without wasting any time, the woman cheerfully took a spoon of everything on that plate even though she kinda feel bad to ruining such a beauty. And the other customers surrounding her to see her reaction, since it looks like it was her first time tasting the legendary Hyoujou Akira's Painted dish.

* Augh *

When the woman took a bite of the sand-like part of the dish, she instantly drowned into a delicate flavor that took her into a different dimension, she feels like she's in the summer of her youth, playing with her friends in the beach, enjoying their summer vacation, the unrepeatable times of her life.

"Aahhhhhhhhhh" The woman moaned at the taste of Akira's food.

Akira who heard just smiled.

"Ohhhhhh!!! as expected of Akira."

"Hyoujou-Kun's painting dish is indeed the best, i mean just by the aroma of that sand-like part is just smells summer."

Customers praised Akira for his cooking, Akira smiled sheepishly while scratching the back of his head.

"Hehe, of course."

While Akira enjoying the praise, Sabeki tapped him on his head.

"Not bad, you little brat." She said.

"That's hurt, old hag!"

Akira said while holding his head in pain.

"That sand-like part of the dish, Its Pilaf right?"

Sabeki said which also made the customers who were still fascinated by Akira's dish confused.

"Pilaf? What is that?"

"Is that some kind of real sand or what?"

"Are you dumb? Of course Its not a real sand."

" That's what is it? "

Asked a young customer who seemed to be the same age as Akira, because he was wearing a junior high school uniform.

"Pilaf is a typical Middle Eastern dish which is a kind of Rice dish that cooked with spices using oil or butter with broth. Its using a certain technique for achieving cooked grains that do not adhere that's why It looks like sand." 

Sabeki answered with a bored face, but she still did not know how Akira managed to make the ocean turned into blue.

" What did you use to make the color of gravy turned into blue, Akira? " Sakebi asked her grandson, the customers also saw Akira, because they were confused about where the blue came from.

"Ah, that is the gravy I made using a mixture of curacao syrup, smoked scallops and minced portabella mushroom, then i thickening it with corn stratch to make a beautiful ocean view. I also using a dried tuna broth to cooked the Pilav. That's why i named this dish, Umi no Umami. "

Akira replied, he is so proud of his work.

The customers were stunned while everything on the plate had been devoured by the woman whose face was as red as tomatoes, there was a little liquid dripping and...

"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ~"

-----------------------------

"Fiuhh, this dish might be ranked 6th in my all time best Painted dish, it's pretty good." Akira was mutered while washing the dishes, but suddenly his grandmother interrupted his murmur.

"That's right, your dish is amazing, I must admit it, but, one day you will feel it, The Stor- "

Before Sabeki could finishing her advice, Akira cut her off.

"What are you talking about?! Storm? Where do you think I've been walking in all this time, Old hag." Akira said.

Akira's words widened Sabeki's eyes, she then turned to Akira.

"You!?"

"The path that I've decided to walked on since I was 12 years old, the sandstorm that crushed countless chefs in the world. When i was 12, I've seen that scenery. The frustration of my cooking, It feels like I've been hitting the wall and for a chef, stagnation is akin of regression, isn't that funny?"

"..."

"But i can't give up, i've always said to you that i can easily be a master at cooking, and if i can't even beat this crappy eternal storm, how am i supposed to proved my words to you that painting is better than cooking?" Akira shrugged, his words are cocky and really arrogant.

But when she heard Akira's words, Sabeki widened her eyes before she grinned and thought.

'This little brat!! So that's how it is, it turns out that I'm the one who's been wrong all this time, i'm underestimate your potential and it turns out that I'm just limiting your growth by keeping you in this small restaurant.'

The room fell silent before Sabeki opened her mouth.

"Akira, there's something i want to talk with you." Sabeki said with a serious face.

"Hm? What is that?"

Akira answered without looking away, and washing the dishes.

"Do you want to enter the Totsuki Culinary School that I told you before?"

Hearing the question from his grandmother, Akira with a surprised face shifted his gaze to Sabeki.

"Hah? "