My Disciple Is Crazy! Chapter 6: This Is What Heaven Must Smell Like

The aroma curled through the air like smoke from a sacred fire, rich, savory, impossible to resist. It wrapped around Chen Xi's senses, pulling her forward before she even realized her feet were moving.

She stood frozen for a mont, captivated by the feast laid out before her. Steam rose from each dish in lazy spirals, carrying promises of flavors she could almost taste just by breathing them in.

Her throat tightened. Her mouth watered.

'This,' she thought, 'this is what heaven must sll like.'

She walked toward the table as if pulled by invisible strings. When she reached it, she sank onto the seat, her eyes wide and shining, like she'd stumbled upon the only beautiful thing life had ever bothered to offer her.

Chen Xi closed her eyes and inhaled deeply.

The scent flooded her lungs, rich and warm, and she felt her cheeks flush. Her mind went blissfully blank for a mont, no thoughts, no worries, just the pure, simple pleasure of wanting.

When she opened her eyes again, she smiled.

Her hand moved toward the chopsticks, fingers trembling with anticipation. She could wait no longer. The food sat there, waiting, and she—

She reached out—

"CHEN XI!"

Her eyes flew open.

White. Nothing but white stretched above her. The ceiling, or what passed for one in their ho. Their ho, which was really just a tent. An abnormal tent, sure, but still. A tent.

She blinked once. Twice.

The dream evaporated like morning mist, leaving behind nothing but the cold, dull gray of reality.

Chen Xi let her gaze drift across her room. The sa walls. The sa mattress beneath her. The sa everything she'd looked at a thousand tis before, each object so familiar it had beco invisible.

Her eyes finally settled back on the ceiling.

"So it was all a dream," she whispered.

The words hung in the air, flat and hollow.

For a long mont, she didn't move. Didn't breathe. She just lay there, feeling the phantom taste of that imagined food still clinging to her tongue, and the absence of it settling like a stone in her chest.

Then, very quietly, she felt the urge to commit murder.

She turned her head toward the door, her glare sharp enough to cut through it if she'd had the ability. Her master stood sowhere beyond it, she could sense him there, the cause of her waking, the thief who had stolen her feast.

'Why,' she thought, her jaw tightening, 'why is Master here?'

It wasn't as though this was the first ti. He'd woken her before. Sotis she was the one waking him when he overslept. That was how things worked between them, an unspoken balance, give and take.

But this ti? This ti was different.

She lay still, replaying the dream in her mind. The steam. The scent. The way her heart had raced with such simple, pure anticipation. She'd been right there, chopsticks in hand, about to taste—

Her fingers curled into fists against the blanket.

She had never, never, ruined one of his beautiful sleeps the way he had just ruined hers.

Never.

Chen Xi wiped the drool from her mouth with her sleeve, her frown deepening.

"This is absurd!" she grumbled, her voice still thick with sleep. "It should be illegal."

She sat up slowly, her movents stiff with resentnt. She pushed the blanket aside and swung her legs over the edge of the bed, her bare feet touching the cold floor.

Sowhere beyond her room, she heard the faint sounds of movent, her master, probably, waiting for her to erge. Oblivious. Innocent. Alive.

She glared at the door.

If looks could kill, her master would have dropped dead three tis over by now.

She could hear her own heartbeat now, slow and steady, but beneath it simred sothing hotter. Sothing that made her want to march out there and demand to know why. Why this morning. Why this dream. Why now.

But she already knew the answer, didn't she?

There was no reason. Just bad timing. Just her master's voice cutting through her sleep at the worst possible mont, with no way for him to know what he was stealing.

'It was just a dream,' she reminded herself.

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But the ache in her chest didn't care what was real and what wasn't.

She pushed off the bed, her legs unsteady beneath her, and stalked toward the door. Each step felt heavier than the last, weighted by the dream still clinging to her bones, by the phantom taste of a feast she'd never get to eat.

"Chen—!"

She yanked the door open before he could finish.

There he stood, hand raised, mouth half-open, ready to call her na again. Her master. The thief of dreams. Looking entirely too casual for soone who had committed such a cri.

"Master." Her voice ca out flat. Forced. "Good morning."

She tucked her hands behind her back, fingers interlacing tight enough to turn her knuckles white.

"Is there anything you want to do?"

"No." Xu Kai shrugged, the word dropping from his lips like it ant nothing.

Chen Xi's eye twitched.

"No?" she repeated, the syllable climbing higher than she intended. "You an, you woke up just for nothing?"

"Sothing like that."

Her jaw went slack.

She stared at him, this man who had ripped her from a dream so beautiful it hurt, who had stolen the closest thing to happiness she'd had in weeks, all for nothing.

Sothing like that, she mimicked in her head. Sothing like that.

Her fingers curled into claws behind her back.

She wanted to pounce. She wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake him until he understood what he'd done. She wanted, absurdly, irrationally, to bite his hair off.

She controlled herself.

Barely.

But Xu Kai must have seen sothing in her face, the twitch of her eye, the set of her jaw, the way her breath ca a little too fast, because his brow lifted.

"Did I do sothing wrong?"

"No." She turned her face away sharply, her hair swinging with the motion.

"Then what?"

"Nothing."

He studied her for a long mont. She could feel his gaze on her profile, patient and curious, and she refused to et it. Refused to give him the satisfaction of knowing how deeply his thoughtlessness had cut.

Then he sighed.

"Alright." He started to turn. "If that's true, then co and eat—"

"Really? You just call out to—" She stopped. Blinked. Her brain scrambled to catch up with her ears. "Huh? Master, did you just say eat?"

Xu Kai paused mid-turn, one brow arched.

"Were you saying sothing before?"

"No." Chen Xi waved her hand so fast it was almost a blur. "No, I wasn't saying anything. Nothing at all." She swallowed. "But, eat? You an food? You cooked?"

He nodded.

Chen Xi leaned closer, her earlier fury forgotten, replaced by sothing far more complicated. She studied his face, the casual set of his features, the easy way he held himself. Like cooking was normal. Like he'd been doing it his whole life.

"But..." Her voice dropped, almost a whisper. "How did you still know how to do that?"

Xu Kai tilted his head.

"Should I not know?"

"Yes." Chen Xi frowned. "I an, you lost your mories, right? It would be weird if you still rembered how to cook."

He went still.

It was subtle, a flicker, no more than a heartbeat, but she caught it. His eyes widened slightly. His breath hitched. For just a mont, sothing passed across his face that looked almost like panic.

Then it was gone.

A smug smile slid into place, quick and practiced.

"I'm kidding." He waved a hand dismissively. "Of course I don't rember how to cook. I just picked out a random recipe from a cooking book I found in my room."

He shrugged, the motion easy, casual.

"You know, even though I said I was going to rest yesterday, I actually didn't. I used that ti to move around my room, get familiar with everything." His smile widened. "And in the end, my effort proved useful."

Chen Xi blinked.

'As expected of Master.'

The explanation made sense. Of course it did. He'd always been like this, resourceful, adaptable, turning idle ti into sothing productive while she was busy sleeping and dreaming of food she'd never taste.

"Ah." She nodded slowly. "So that's how you cooked." A pause. "Makes sense."

But even as she said it, sothing niggled at the back of her mind. Sothing about the way he'd frozen. The way his eyes had gone wide for just a fraction of a second before the smile slid into place.

She pushed the thought away.

She was probably imagining things. Still half-asleep. Still hungry. Still mourning the feast that would never be.

Xu Kai tilted his head, a curious gleam in his eye.

"So," he asked, "do you know how to cook?"

Chen Xi's posture faltered. Just for a mont. Just long enough for her to glance away, her hand coming up to scratch the back of her head.

"Kind of."

"aning?"

She shifted her weight from one foot to the other.

"I've studied lots of cooking books. I know various dishes. I just... haven't tried cooking them myself."

"Why not?"

Chen Xi's hand froze mid-scratch. She could feel the heat creeping up her neck, settling into her cheeks.

"Well... Uh." She laughed, a small, nervous sound. "You see, Master, you actually... banned from cooking."

Xu Kai's head turned slowly. His eyes widened just a fraction, then narrowed into sothing sharp. Sothing knowing. His gaze swept over her, from her guilty expression to her fidgeting hands to the way she suddenly found the tent floor absolutely fascinating.

She could almost hear the thoughts forming behind his eyes.

'She exploded the house. Definitely. Burned everything she ever touched. Probably tried sothing insane, sothing no sane person has ever attempted in a kitchen.'

Chen Xi opened her mouth to refute him.

Nothing ca out.

Because he wasn't wrong. Not entirely. The explosion had happened, once. The burned dishes had happened, more tis than she cared to count. The insane attempts? Well...

She narrowed her eyes and looked away.

The reasons were far worse than he could imagine. The scale of the disasters? Much, much larger.

Xu Kai's questioning gaze bore into her, patient and rciless.

She needed to escape. Now.

Chen Xi clapped her hands together, a sharp, sudden sound that cut through the silence.

"Okay then, Master!" Her voice ca out too bright, too loud. "Please lead the way to the food."

Xu Kai rolled his eyes so hard his whole head moved with it.

But he turned.

He walked.

And Chen Xi followed, her shoulders relaxing as she put distance between herself and that line of questioning.

Her gaze drifted to her master's back. To his shoulders, broad and steady. To the easy rhythm of his steps.

'Would it be good?'

She didn't know.

Before the mory loss, her master had always been the one cooking. She'd never had to think about it, never had to wonder. The food would appear, and it would be perfect, and she would eat until she couldn't move.

Now he had no experience. No mory of the hundreds of als he'd made before. Just a book. A random recipe. A gamble.

Would she enjoy it?

She honestly didn't know.

She'd have to taste it to find out.

But she was wrong.

She didn't need to taste anything.

The scent hit her like a wave, rich, savory, impossibly familiar. It wrapped around her, sank into her lungs, and pulled her back to a place she'd visited just monts ago.

Her pace slowed.

Her feet stopped moving entirely.

Her gaze locked onto the table, onto the plates arranged there with care, onto the steam rising in lazy spirals from dishes she recognized.

'No,' Her breath caught. 'No, that's not possible.'

"T-This—!" The words tore from her throat in a stamr, unfinished, incomplete.

She couldn't finish.

She couldn't find the words.

Because there were no words for what she was seeing.

The food right in front of her, every dish, every garnish, every curl of steam, was exactly the sa.

The sa food from her dream.