Chapter Text
.i.
Katsuki Bakugou always believed the highest level of mastery is simplicity.
He knows this for a fact.
One of the proudest things he’s ever made in his life was when he was four years old, a plate of sunny-side-up eggs for his mother’s birthday. He still remembers the way the yolks gleamed, bright gold domes set in a sea of soft, white silk. No browning around the edges, no rubbery stiffness, just the faintest bubbling around the yolk, salted just right, with a whisper of soy sauce drizzled over the top.
It wasn’t the hardest meal he’s ever made, not by a long shot, but it was the first time something in him settled into place. The first time he felt it, that quiet satisfaction, a voice inside him had said, this was it, this was his thing.
He’s made harder things over the years, of course. Katsu curry from scratch, where the onions have to break down over hours, low heat and patient stirring until they melt into sweetness. Handmade gyoza, where the folding has to be fast, even, neat enough that steam puffs up from the pleats just right when they hit the pan. He’s done okonomiyaki like the ones from old Osaka kitchens, layered with pork belly that crisps into fat-crackled perfection. Tonkotsu ramen broth that takes two days and a prayer, even tamago-yaki, those thin omelet layers rolled over and over into a perfect golden log.
He can do all of it, does all of it, regularly. He’s never cut corners, not even once.
But it was those eggs that told him he was supposed to do this.
And his parents, his mom especially, they got it. She sat there and ate every bite, he remembers his old man peeking around the kitchen door, hiding his smile behind a mug. No one laughed, and none teased him, not even when he served it in an apron that dragged on the ground. They took it seriously, because he did.
So when high school ended, that was that.
While everyone else weighed options or ran halfway across the country chasing dreams they hadn’t named yet, Katsuki put in his application to culinary school the same day he got his final exam scores. Walked it in, made sure it didn’t get lost in the shuffle, stood at the gate ten minutes early on the first day, uniform pressed, knives sharpened, heart steady and ready.
He never wanted anything else.
Katsuki wanted to cook, he wanted to plate things that made people stop mid-bite, stare down at the dish, and know that someone put thought into it, that someone gave a shit. He wanted to master the way steam curls off rice, the weight of a perfect cleaver in his hand, the angle of his wrist when slicing fish against the grain. He wanted sore feet and aching shoulders if it meant standing where he belonged.
People call him gifted, and he lets it slide because correcting people takes energy, and he has learned where his energy is better spent. But he knows the truth. He’s not gifted, nor is he some once-in-a-generation prodigy who glides through life on instinct alone. He’s a normal person who refuses to quit, a person who shows up early and leaves late, a person who burns his hands and keeps cooking anyway.
Culinary school makes that painfully clear.
There are days where instructors scream in his face over knife angles that are off by a few millimeters, over sauces that split because his heat was too high for half a second. There are nights where he collapses onto his futon with his wrists aching so bad he has to flex his fingers just to remind himself they still move. He gets told his palate is too aggressive, his plating too sharp, his timing off. He gets told to start over. Again, and again, and again. He swallows his temper because walking out means giving up the one thing he wants more than air. He bites his tongue so hard he tastes blood, bows, and says yes, chef, even when his chest feels like it might cave in.
Internships are worse. Long hours for little pay, being the last one to leave, scrubbing pots while the senior chefs smoke outside and talk about anything but him. He listens anyway, learns anyway. He gets sent home with blisters and grease burns and a head full of notes he writes down before sleep steals them. No one hands him anything, no one lifts him up.
Katsuki Bakugou earns every scrap of praise by being impossible to ignore.
So when someone calls him gifted, it feels wrong, as if they’re erasing the nights he cried out of frustration alone in the bathroom because he messed up service for the third time in a row. Gifted makes it sound easy.
So after graduation, when the diploma is finally in his hands, something settles in him. A dream.
He wants a restaurant of his own.
Just a small place, with some counter seats maybe. A kitchen where he knows every sound, every smell, every rhythm. A place where the food speaks without him needing to explain himself. He can see it so clearly it hurts. The wood grain of the counter, steam fogging the windows in winter, and the quiet satisfaction of a regular who doesn’t need a menu anymore.
His parents are ready the second he brings it up. They sit him down, talk numbers, talk about savings, talk about how proud they are, they tell him they believe in him, and that they can help. Katsuki listens, he really does, and he loves them for it. He knows not everyone gets this, he knows how lucky he is to even have the option.
That’s the problem.
He’s already privileged enough to chase a job he actually wants, already lucky enough to fail without falling straight into ruin. He can acknowledge that without hating himself for it, but there’s something inside him that twists at the idea of taking their money and calling it his dream. It feels hollow, like borrowing pride that doesn’t belong to him.
Katsuki wants to stand in a kitchen knowing every tile, every knife, every chair was paid for by his own work, his own sweat, own blood, and his own exhaustion. He wants to earn it in a way no one can question. Especially not himself.
And after graduation, Katsuki applies to one of the best restaurants in the country.
A restaurant hidden behind an unmarked door in the big city with no sign and no menu posted outside. A reservation takes six months minimum, and only if somebody knows someone. Politicians eat there, foreign dignitaries, film directors who hate being seen. The place has two Michelin stars and a kitchen that runs like a machine without any yelling, every movement rehearsed down to the second. Head chef studied in France, apprenticed in Kyoto, and is known for firing people mid-shift if their stock tastes even slightly off. Getting a job there is almost unheard of unless someone comes in with a glowing recommendation or some god-tier miracle dish.
Katsuki sends in his resume anyway.
He still doesn’t know why they called him back.
Maybe his school vouched for him, or maybe his internships whispered something, maybe his cover letter hit the right kind of desperation. Doesn’t matter. He gets the job. Junior chef, lowest of the low. He has no station, and no ownership. He doesn’t even speak unless spoken to, he’s technically the utility man, he does everything no one else wants to do.
He arrives two hours before service, peels crates of vegetables until his fingers go raw, debones whole salmon so precisely his back seizes by noon, he spends hours simmering dashi that’s checked by two other chefs before anyone dares use it. He mops, cleans the rice cooker, preps garnishes no one notices on the plate unless they’re wrong.
Every job has a clock, and every movement has a sound.
If he moves too slow, someone else takes over. If he speaks out of turn, he’s ignored.
He’s never been more alive.
His parents visit at the end of his first week. They make a reservation six months in advance just like everyone else, they don’t pull strings. Katsuki respects them more for that. He doesn’t tell anyone they’re coming, he just watches from the corner of the kitchen as their coats are taken, shoes switched for slippers, and they’re led into one of the private tatami rooms. His mother looks like she’s holding back tears. His father bows deeply to the hostess.
Katsuki doesn’t cry. He can’t. He’s holding a tray of duck bones.
He doesn’t cook their food, not officially, he's not allowed. But he helps prep it. He’s the one who scored the eggplant just deep enough to caramelize without collapsing, checked the soy marinade for the yellowtail twice before handing it off to the station chef. He folded the oshibori towels, even if they’d be tossed aside without thought. When the miso soup hits their table, he knows the stock was his. That’s enough.
Things are going well. Better than well.
In kitchens like this, praise is rare.
Silence means somebody did it right. But Katsuki starts getting nods, and a chef claps him on the back when he catches a mistake before it hits the line. Someone asks him to double-check the broth, and they actually use it. He’s quick, precise, keeps his head down, and slowly, they stop treating him like a risk and start treating him like a part of the machine.
By the end of the month, the sous chef tells him he’s fast. He doesn’t smile when he says it, but Katsuki nearly burns his hand out of surprise. The head chef doesn’t fire him, even looks at him once, after service, and tells him to start studying the fish station. People start saying things. That he’s going to go far, that he has a good head, and in a few years, maybe even sooner, he could open his own place.
That small restaurant, his dream.
Too bad the universe doesn’t care how badly Katsuki wants it. It just knows exactly when to take it away.
.ii.
Seven Years Later
Izuku Midoriya wants to say he’s used to working, but he isn’t.
He wants to believe he’s getting the hang of it, that somewhere in the storm of deadlines and meetings and paper jams and mystery spreadsheet formulas, he’s thriving.
The truth is Izuku’s barely surviving the soul sucking, 45-hours-on-paper-but-actually-70 grind of being a low level salaryman in a document management firm tucked inside a building that hasn't been properly renovated since 1996. He handles paperwork that piles faster than snow on train tracks, endless stacks of contracts, reports, and budget outlines that he is 99 percent sure no one actually reads. His job is to organize, file, cross check, and sometimes staple things with such deeply unnecessary precision that he’s started dreaming in paperclip shapes.
Every morning, he leaves his apartment before the sun even considers rising, dressed in a suit that used to be his uncle’s, and wedges himself into the train. He stands for forty-five minutes with someone’s elbow in his ribs and someone else's briefcase smacking his thigh every time the train jolts, and that’s just the commute.
By the time he gets to the office, he's already sweating, already late by five minutes, already bowing on instinct to the security guard at the front desk and apologizing to the vending machine because he walks into it too hard. His desk is a corner cubicle near the printer. Did he mention that the printer’s also his mortal enemy? It breaks twice a week and every time it does, someone calls Izuku because people say he’s good with machines. He’s not. He just hit the reset button one time in April and now he’s the tech guy.
He is not thriving. He is treading water in a suit that doesn’t fit, making 3.2 million yen a year and living on a convenience store’s discounted bento boxes and caffeine pills. He hasn’t been to the dentist in three years, his work phone gives him phantom vibrations even when it’s powered off, and he hasn’t felt actual joy since his manager smiled at him once for refilling the coffee without being asked.
He's so broke it’s not even funny anymore. Actually, no, it is funny, it’s hilarious. He’s at the stage of broke where he hoards chopsticks because buying real silverware is a luxury, where he’s been reusing the same five ties since university and two of them are fraying, and he has one pair of dress shoes and they squeak.
He’s so broke, when his shoes started leaking in the rain, he bought duct tape instead of new insoles. He has exactly one towel and washes it weekly. He once tried to fix a hole in his wall using tissue and toothpaste. He brings leftover rice balls from meetings back home like a tanuki. He pretends not to see the looks. He is shame-proof now.
Why is he doing this?
Because he's climbing, or at least that’s the idea. He's trying to climb the corporate ladder, clawing his way up, rung by agonizing rung, just to reach a slightly higher floor where maybe he won’t have to budget his meals down to the last grain of rice. He wants health insurance that covers more than one cavity and air conditioning that works. He wants the possibility of one day not flinching when his balance dips below 1,000 yen.
So yeah, he goes out drinking with the higher-ups, nods when they complain about kids these days while they guzzle highballs, laughs at their bad jokes, orders the next round before they ask, and always pretends he’s more drunk than he is just to make them feel like they’re winning. By the time he stumbles home, shoeless and blinking at his apartment door, it’s already past midnight and he’s due in again by 7:30.
He’s not an alcoholic, he just needs to survive. And in this economy? That’s practically the same thing.
And Izuku gets drunk. A lot. The kind of drunk that sneaks up after three highballs and a bottle of sake poured too generously by a manager who keeps slapping his back, where he blinks and he’s suddenly in a karaoke room he doesn’t remember entering, half-shouting the chorus of a boy band hit into a mic wrapped in plastic, so drunk where sometimes, not always but often enough to count, he doesn’t make it home.
He’s found himself asleep in stairwells, on benches with his jacket wrapped around his head like a makeshift pillow. Once, on the floor of a 24-hour manga café bathroom, clutching a bottle of water. A kind police officer wrapped him with a futon once, left a bottle of water beside him, and told him to get home safe in the morning.
That’s how it happens.
He stumbles out of a bar, blazer slung over one shoulder, tie loose, one shoe half-off, and that fuzzy, dangerous warmth in his cheeks that means he has maybe twenty minutes before his stomach turns on him. He takes a wrong turn trying to find the train line, cuts through an alley because it looks like a shortcut, and immediately regrets it. The alley is too narrow, walls stained with grime, the kind of place one would expect to find a stray cat or a body. It smells like damp cardboard and fried oil and cigarette ash, which would be bad, if it weren’t also starting to smell like something else.
Something amazing.
He makes it three more steps before he doubles over and pukes next to a stack of empty crates.
Izuku’s mouth burns, he wipes his sleeve across his lips, groans, slumping to the ground beside the wall, trying to remember if he left the gas on at home. His head spins and his stomach groans again, but this time, it’s not in protest. It’s hunger. He turns his head and sees it.
A door. Wooden and worn, painted a hundred years ago, maybe. It doesn’t even look like a real entrance. There’s a piece of cardboard taped crookedly to the wall beside it, and in thick black marker, someone has scrawled the name Mottainai.
It’s a word his mom used to say when he left food on his plate. Don’t waste. To appreciate what he has.
He squints. Blinks. Sniffs. The scent punches him in the face. Katsudon. The real kind. Not microwaved, or something vacuum-packed and sad. Real, hot, crispy katsudon, the kind where the breading crackles and the egg isn’t overcooked and the rice is steaming underneath. He swears he can hear the oil bubbling. His stomach whines like a kicked puppy.
“…Is this a restaurant?” he mumbles, to no one in particular.
The sign says nothing else. No hours, or menu, there’s no flashing lights. Just Mottainai, handwritten, like whoever owns the place didn’t think it needed more than that. Izuku’s still drunk, definitely still drunk. But he looks at that little door, and something in him decides this is where he’s meant to be.
“Smells like heaven,” he says out loud. “Yummy.”
Izuku pulls himself up using the wall like a human railing, dusts off his pants with the dignity of a man who just threw up in public, and makes his way inside. Drunkenly, Izuku pushes past the faded curtain door, nearly tripping over the wooden step as he stumbles inside. His hand slaps the doorframe, but his foot catches and he almost eats the floor.He rights himself, just barely.
The air is warmer inside. Soft yellow light flickers from a single bulb overhead, bouncing off the steel of the tiny kitchen tucked behind a narrow counter. There's only four seats. The floors are old wood, maybe cedar once upon a time, and the walls are faded with age. There's a calendar on the wall that still says last month, and a dent in the fridge door like someone kicked it and decided it wasn’t worth fixing. Everything looks like it was salvaged from a junkyard or passed down from a grandmother who believed tape was the best solution to every problem.
But it’s clean. Spotless, actually. Everything shines. The knives are sharp, counters wiped down, even the cutting boards were bleached and they don’t even look like wood anymore. Someone here cares. A lot.
Izuku looks towards the kitchen, and then time stops, freezes.
Behind the counter, is a man. No, not a man. An angel.
A beautiful, otherworldly, golden-haired celestial being with a pan in one hand and a raised eyebrow. He’s dressed in a black t-shirt rolled at the sleeves and a half-tied apron that sits snug on his hips. His shoulders are broad but his waist is narrow, and Izuku has never noticed how devastatingly effective the male hourglass figure is until now.
Blonde eyelashes. Thick. His jawline looks sculpted, eyes sharp and narrow, the color of dried chilies, and they’re staring directly at Izuku like he just tracked in dog shit. Izuku, for his part, is standing there with his mouth slightly open, looking like someone unplugged his brain mid-thought.
“…Am I dead?” he whispers. “Is this heaven?”
The man does not answer. He flips whatever’s in the pan without looking, steam rising like a halo around his head. His brow twitches. That’s the only response Izuku gets.
Which is fair, because he’s standing inside this tiny restaurant, swaying slightly from alcohol, sweat drying on the back of his neck, tie crooked, with a half-formed highball burp stuck in his throat. He’s pretty sure there’s dried puke on his shoe, and drool leaking from his mouth with how hot the blond was. He should leave, he really should.
The man looks at him like he’s stupid. Izuku swears he hears wedding bells.
He’s about to say something, something smart, maybe even charming. But before he can open his mouth, his stomach beats him to it. Oh.
It’s not drool, the thing leaking out of his mouth. It’s… oh no.
“Wait,” Izuku breathes, panic rising. “Wait, no, wait, wait, wai-”
He doesn’t finish the sentence. He vomits all over the floor.
.iii.
Izuku wakes up to the sound of someone swearing.
He blinks awake, groggy and confused, mouth dry, tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. His head is resting against a counter. The wood is cool under his cheek, and there’s a faint, lingering smell of soy sauce and fried oil and… is that vanilla?
His back achs, his tie is still around his neck, but it’s been loosened. His blazer is folded neatly beside him on the stool. That’s already suspicious. He sits up slowly, wincing as his spine pops in three different places, and squints toward the small kitchen space.
The same blond from last night is standing there. Still in the same black shirt and apron, though this time his hair is even more of a mess. He has one oven mitt on, the other hand yanking a small tray of something from the toaster oven with a scowl. His face is flushed, jaw tight, and he's muttering angrily to himself as he glares down at a tray. Izuku watches as the blond scowls harder, moving towards the bins, almost as if they’re about to throw the entire tray away.
Izuku startles. “Wait, what’re you doing?”
The blond jumps, not like he’s surprised someone’s there, but more like he forgot that someone is him.
“You’re awake?” the blond growls, spinning around with the energy of someone who’s been waiting to yell at someone for hours. “Good. Great. Perfect! Just in time to witness the crime scene you caused, you fucking dumbass.”
Izuku blinks, still very much hungover and ten steps behind.
“Me?” he croaks.
“Yes, you,” the blond snaps, pointing an accusing finger at Izuku. “I was up till three cleaning your nasty-ass vomit off the floor. It got under the fridge, under it. Do you know how hard it is to clean under a fridge this old? I had to fucking lift it!”
Izuku opens his mouth, he doesn’t get a word out.
“And because I was scrubbing until my back gave out,” the blond continues, gesturing wildly with one hand while the other tugs off the oven mitt, “I missed my timing because I lack sleep, and the damn caramel of my caramel custard burned and now it’s ruined! It was supposed to be set overnight, and you ruined it! So yeah. Thanks for that!”
Izuku turns his head slowly, eyes drifting back to the caramel custard.
It doesn’t look burned. Not even close.
The top is golden, smooth, just barely firm around the edges. It has that soft jiggle like a good custard should. The kind that wobbles just enough to let people know it’s been cooked to perfection. The caramel sauce pooled at the bottom is dark, but shiny, smelling faintly of sugar and butter with a slight smoky note that makes Izuku’s mouth water despite the horrible things happening in his stomach just hours ago.
The blond is still yelling at him. Something about how his face is a “manifestation of misfortune” and “how the hell does one human produce so much puke.” But Izuku’s already stopped listening, he’s not offended. Honestly, he’s kind of impressed, his vocabulary is expanding.
He scratches his cheek, eyes still fixed on the custard.
“I mean…” Izuku mumbles, “I’m kinda hungry. I could eat it.”
The pan clatters against the sink. The blond freezes.
“You wanna what?”
“It looks good. It’s not even burned.”
“It sucks,” The blond snaps, turning around, ears red, grabbing a towel, probably debating whether or not to throw it at Izuku’s head. “The texture’s wrong, it’s over-set, and… and the caramel’s too dark. Shut up! You’ll fucking die.”
“I mean… This restaurant is called Mottainai, right?”
The blond startles, turning again to look at Izuku. For a second, he just stares, caught off guard. Then his brow furrows like he forgot. He glances up at the makeshift cardboard sign above the door, squints at it, then grunts.
“…Huh.” He’s quiet for half a second too long before turning away, muttering under his breath. “Fine. Suit yourself. Stupid garbage disposal of a man.”
Izuku perks up. “Really?”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. I’m not letting it actually go to waste, dumbass. That’s against the entire concept of the place. Idiot.”
The blond places the tray on the counter, checks it. He grabs a small plate from the shelf and scoops the custard out with practiced hands, plating it carefully even though he’s cursing the whole time.
“Brainless drunkard,” Katsuki mutters as he wipes the edge of the dish clean. “Waddling in here like a lost dumb fuck, vomiting all over my goddamn floor.”
Izuku smiles like an idiot, chin in his hands, elbows on the counter.
“‘Freeloader,’ sounds nice too.” he offers.
Katsuki glares, setting the plate in front of him.
Izuku stares at the custard for a second. Then, he picks up the spoon, dips it in. The custard folds gently, like satin.
He brings the bite to his mouth, and the world stops.
The first thing he tastes is the caramel, dark, not bitter, just enough depth to feel warm and grown-up. Then the custard hits, creamy, soft, a little eggy but not too much. Sweet without being overwhelming. It melts on his tongue, the texture is smooth, buttery and silky, balanced. Izuku thinks he’s moaning. Yep.
Izuku opens his eyes slowly, still chewing, still dazed. It’s almost like he’s just returned from war, or church, or the gates of culinary heaven. He blinks, heart full, mouth already craving another bite, and turns to look at the blond behind the counter.
The blond stands perfectly still. His face is unreadable, lips pressed tight, but his arms are crossed a little too tightly over his chest. His foot taps once, then stops. His fingers twitch against his elbow like he’s bracing for something. Izuku doesn’t know how, but he knows that look. That quiet kind of panic hidden under attitude. It's the same face Izuku makes when he turns in a late report at work and tries to act like he meant to all along.
Izuku opens his mouth, ready to tell him just how good it was, but the blond moves first.
“I fucking told you it was disgusting, you dumbass-”
Izuku moves too. He reaches forward on instinct, grabbing the blond’s wrist before he can escape.
“That was the best thing I’ve ever eaten in my entire life.”
The blond freezes. “...What?”
“I’m serious,” Izuku says, eyes wide, “It was incredible! I’ve never had anything like it. I think my soul left my body.”
“It was overcooked. The caramel was burnt, and the custard was dense. The edges were cracked. The whole thing was-”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Izuku cuts in, grinning, leaning in, “That was amazing. You’re amazing!”
The blond jerks his hand out of Izuku’s grip, wiping it on his apron. Then, his face turns red, not just his cheeks, his whole face. Ears, neck, even the tip of his nose.
“Shut up,” The blond mutters, voice caught somewhere between a hiss and a squeak. “You’re still drunk, so your taste buds are compromised. You don’t know shit.”
Izuku’s just about to respond, when he feels a familiar buzz on his wrist and glances down. 7:13 AM.
He blinks. Blinks a third time just in case. He has exactly one hour before he has to clock in at the office, and considering he smells like floor cleaner and last night’s alcohol and probably looks like someone who lost a fight with a sewer pipe, he should absolutely be panicking right now.
And oh, look. He is.
It’s not the first time this has happened, but he really wanted to shower today. Like, shampoo and body wash and maybe even use that hair treatment sample he got in the mail two months ago. His coworkers have started to look at him with that overly polite concern. He clears his throat quickly, straightening up.
“Um, I should, uh, I should probably go,” He gestures vaguely at nothing, “How much do I owe you for the custard?”
The blond doesn’t say anything at first. He wipes his hands on his apron again, face losing some of its redness, reaches under the counter, pulls out a crumpled paper receipt that looks like it came from a machine older than Japan’s constitution, and scribbles something on it. Then he slaps it down on the counter in front of Izuku.
“Here.”
Izuku reaches for his wallet, fishing it out of his blazer pocket, but when his eyes catch the number written on the receipt, he stops.
“...What?”
“What.”
“Is this-” Izuku holds the receipt up, “Is this serious?”
The blond shrugs, “Yeah. Pay up.”
“¥25,000?!”
The blond looks unbothered. “Did you think cleaning up your vomit was free?”
.iv.
“Midoriya, is that the same suit from yesterday?"
Izuku freezes mid-step, coffee in one hand, stack of reports in the other, smile stretched too tight to be natural. He turns to face the coworker with the kind of face someone makes when they’ve been accused of something they definitely did but hoped no one would notice.
“It’s not,” he says a little too fast. “It’s, um. It’s a different suit. I just happen to own… very similar suits. Look, I got a really good deal, okay?”
He laughs awkwardly, pressing his lips together as he hurries to his desk, almost spilling the coffee onto his already coffee-stained pants. He did technically brush his teeth this morning, and he’s thankful for the travel-sized dry shampoo his mom gave him that he always thought was unnecessary until last night turned into this morning and he had to make a miracle happen in the train station bathroom.
His tie is backwards, too, he’ll fix it later.
He sinks into his desk chair, immediately flipping through the spreadsheet he's been dreading since last Friday, trying to look productive. But all he can think about is the ¥25,000 dent in his account. He has to work overtime today. He has to. There’s no way his budget can recover from a meal that expensive unless he reclaims at least half of it in unpaid company labor. He groans quietly, rubs his eyes, and stares at the screen.
He leans back with a sigh, and murmurs to himself.
“At least it was worth it…” He pauses. “I just… really wish I got his name.”
His heart does a weird little flop. He should not be thinking about a stranger who bullied him into financial ruin and fed him the best dessert he’s ever had in his life. He shouldn’t, but he does. He keeps seeing that flushed face, the way the blond wiped his hand on his apron like Izuku had some disease and also maybe made his heart skip a beat. He has a problem.
Izuku glances around. Everyone’s absorbed in their work. His boss is still in the morning meeting. This is fine.
He discreetly opens a browser and types into the search bar: Mottainai.
The page loads.
He sees a listing. A few vague reviews saying the food is “good but weird” and “made by a guy who looks like he hates joy.” That’s the one. That’s definitely the one. But then, under the search bar, the first thing that catches his eye is a link to a tabloid site. Bold red headline, with a blurry photo that shows a much younger, but still recognizable blond standing in a pristine white chef’s jacket, arms crossed, scowl intact, in front of what looks like a famous high-end restaurant.
Izuku clicks it without thinking.
.v.
Arrogance Served Cold: Young Chef’s Ego Ruins Dessert, and Career!
In a fall from grace no one saw coming, but plenty now claim they predicted, junior chef Katsuki Bakugou made culinary history for all the wrong reasons when a dessert evaluation spiraled into one of the most dramatic meltdowns the industry’s seen in years. Sources inside the kitchen allege the once-promising chef slammed a whisk against the floor, shoved a hot tray back into an oven without gloves, and had to be “calmly escorted” out after refusing to sign his own results. The reason? A caramel custard deemed “unstable and overcooked” by culinary evaluators.
Sources say he refused to accept the assessment, pacing the kitchen while visibly fuming, ignoring instruction, and reportedly destroying his own prep notes in a fit of rage. The custard, which failed on texture and structure, became an afterthought in what would be remembered as a textbook case of ego overshadowing talent. Though he technically resigned days later, the reality was clear: no reputable kitchen would touch him after the incident.
All over a caramel custard.