Chapter Text
If there was a Nobel prize for deciphering human handwriting, Chuuya would’ve got at least two by now.
“Excuse me!” He hears a woman exclaim behind his back. “You are holding up the line!”
Chuuya ignores her, using a different approach: instead of trying to understand what Kunikida, bent next to his stove and managing at least five processes at once, scribbled on a greasy piece of paper, he recalls the entire menu along with the ingredients used for each dish and locates what it is that Kunikida is going to cook that might need… watercress?
Bingo! He breathes out in relief and recites the list to the vendor, along with a bunch of other greens that they always run short of in the heat of the salad season. In less than a minute, he runs out of the farmer’s market with his eco-friendly tote where an entire garden blooms, hops on his bike, and makes it back to the restaurant in exactly four minutes (the traffic is light).
“You are my savior,” Kunikida would probably kiss him right now if he could, this is how relieved he looks, diving into the bag and taking everything out for the wash. “That meanie at your table is a real piece of work.”
Chuuya ties the strings of his apron behind his back. Listen, most of the time, Parthenon orders everything in advance. There are just rare cases like this one when someone’s misfire during the stock calculations leads to a client waiting for her salad for over twenty minutes just because the kitchen has run out of a herb. There is no way in the world she will notice if there’s some leaf missing from her bowl, just eighty-six her and be done with it, remarked Gin, passing by them earlier, holding her empty tray under her arm. Chuuya and Kunikida both snapped back at her like one, It can cost us a star.
It can cost us a star has been a silent motto of Parthenon for the last half a year. Although Kunikida’s views drastically differ from the ones of their manager, he woke up one morning before work in early January and decided that Parthenon was going to get a Michelin star. The project is still in the works but if a single dish is not polished up to perfection, it can cost them a star.
What’s in it for Chuuya? As a person who has been building his entire career around being a professional waiter, he could use a mention of working at a Michelin-star restaurant in his resume. The star means better service, richer clients (thus bigger tips), and more exquisite outfits (a blessing for someone who’s tired of wearing the same apron to work every single day).
Although he’s far from being a cooking prodigy, Chuuya has always been closer to the kitchen staff than his own fellow waiters. The kitchen staff being Kunikida, their chef, and Chuuya has grown rather fond of him because of his kind heart. It is fairly difficult to have a kind heart when you work in the fine dining sector: he can recall around five people among everyone he’s ever met on this job who were bringing something into the world out of love, helping others and caring about them without expecting anything in return. Chuuya doesn’t count himself in as his heart is far from being kind, and maybe he deserves a gold medal of sorts for admitting it fairly early on in his career. Chuuya’s motives are selfish and each one of his smiles thrown at customers is fake. Sometimes he gets so caught up in playing nice that by the time he’s home, he doesn’t recognize who he sees in the mirror anymore. Indeed, the waiter’s job is selfless, or else how would Chuuya explain slowly losing his own?
“Chuuya!” Speak of the devil. It’s the sound of Yosano’s thin high heels clacking against the floor that enters the kitchen first. As usual, she looks unmatched, with her perfect makeup and a designer suit, one silent look from her is enough for all waiters to stop fidgeting around and return to their work. There is only one person her methods never work with. “You got a new customer in your section, I served him for you. Where the hell have you been?”
“My bad, chef,” Kunikida straightens from the counter where he’s been assembling the ill-fated salad for the past five minutes. “I needed him for a small errand urgently.”
Yosano shortens the distance between them, arms crossed over her chest. “Don’t tell me you made my waiter leave his workplace in broad daylight again, chef.”
Kunikida sighs, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. He nods at the salad. “This bowl needed some watercress and fresh strawberries. The closest farmer’s market is just five minutes from here.”
“Are you out of your mind?” Yosano snaps, both of her hands on the counter now, dangerously close to the salad. “When the kitchen runs out of ingredients during the lunch shift, it’s not the dining room that must fix your fuckups.”
“If you want to keep your customer, I’m pretty sure you have to allow some room for compromise,” Kunikida hums, unbothered by her tone.
Chuuya’s eyes keep traveling between the two of them, separated by one single counter holding a big scandal at bay, as if he’s watching a tennis match.
“I am ready to compromise but not when you are blatantly stealing my waiter!” Several pairs of eyes from the farthest corners of the kitchen are now studying their little quarrel with a slight hint of interest. “If you do this again, I swear to god-”
“You will tell Fukuzawa, yeah, yeah, I know,” Kunikida rolls his eyes with a sigh. “You done? Can I finish my salad now?”
Yosano doesn’t say anything and turns to look at Chuuya instead: still without a word, she nods at the door, and Chuuya is compelled to give Kunikida one final apologetic look. The truth is, he was the one who volunteered to go for the ingredients, although Kukinida insisted he could do it himself; still, it is better to leave one customer disappointed than ruin the processes of the entire kitchen by the absence of their chef.
“I don’t recall ratting everyone out being on a manager’s qualifications list,” Kunikida mutters under his breath as he bends over his salad again but unfortunately, Yosano hears every single word.
Before he gets under fire for not obeying the orders, Chuuya conveniently slips out of the kitchen. The dining room is loud and full of life, with waiters roaming around their sections, taking orders and flashing fake smiles, and customers spending their lunchtime trying out every single position on Parthenon’s summer menu. Unlike some competitors, Parthenon has the tendency to change its menu every season: although it stirred a bunch of fights between Yosano and Kunikida back when they put the idea forward (expensive and unreasonable, can scare their regulars off), it has proven to be rather efficient with time. Chuuya’s section is in the middle part of the restaurant, which is considered the second most profitable after the row of tables next to the windows. Unfortunately, only the head waiter gets to serve the window tables; these seats are always reserved days in advance, and the customers sitting at them tend to leave the most generous tips.
Despite not being the best at everything like he’s used to, Chuuya likes his section: the most airy one, it lets him waltz around the tables freely, and he remembers the position of each even with his eyes closed. He perceives the dining room as his own dance floor, or a chess board, if you will. Every step he makes is clear, confident, and calculated. The middle section of a restaurant is often called a battlefield: as the statistics show, it holds the most risk of possible collisions, when waiters returning from the window seats can bump into you in a rush, and you both drop your food on the floor. Chuuya is the only one who can masterfully avoid this without much effort: besides, his relatively small size allows him to maneuver; crouch when it’s needed, or dodge someone’s elbow just by hanging his head low. As a result, in all three years he’s been working at Parthenon, he hasn’t dropped a single dish or a drink; no, not even back when he started.
Chuuya doesn’t admit it out loud but he can see that Yosano places him just a tiny bit higher than other waiters on her team, which is understandable for many reasons apart from Chuuya being the one who’s worked here the longest after their headwaiter, Adam. If their dining room is a battlefield, then the main battle is constantly fought by the three of them: Yosano, Adam, and Chuuya.
Yosano is the manager, which de facto means that she is allowed to juggle with waiters like her own puppets: one day you are in her good graces, and another, she throws you away for one mistake or a dissatisfied customer. Despite her harshness, she is a good leader and always acts in the best interests of the restaurant; perhaps because she knows that if they fuck something up, she will be the first one to report back to Fukuzawa, their owner. Chuuya is rather lucky as, despite not showing overt favoritism, Yosano is convinced that the place will start falling apart as soon as they lose him. Such a stance of your boss towards you can’t be anything else but a good sign; this is one of the main reasons why Chuuya is not scared of losing his job in the near time.
Adam, their head waiter, is loved by almost everyone equally. He used to be at odds with Yosano for a long time right after he got promoted but sooner or later they found common grounds under Fukuzawa’s influence. Adam always waits the best reservations and gets the most tips; he’s the only waiter who never fakes smiles. He’s also the only waiter with a wife and a child. He carries around an old-school music player with wired headphones and listens to Depeche Mode during his smoke breaks. In these moments, standing next to him with a cigarette hanging off his mouth, Chuuya sneakily studies his face and tries to read its emotionless expression: Adam always seems to be deep in his thoughts whenever he’s not communicating with customers; sometimes, his face gets so serious it looks like he’s about to cry. However, the second his break is over (he keeps a timer on him at all times), he puts on his normal waiter face and steps back to the dining room, no trace of his melancholy left.
As for his stance towards Chuuya, he never tries to disrupt the normal order of events. While it is common for waiters to fight for the best tables or fuck around with each other’s tips, nothing of sorts ever happens on Adam’s watch. Everyone knows, and it’s an unspoken truth, that Chuuya is aiming at the position of a head waiter. It is reconsidered by Fukuzawa every year but for the past three years that Chuuya has been working at Parthenon, Adam has held it in a steel grip. Although it is evident that Yosano would support Chuuya’s candidacy due to her past differences with Adam, she always silently accepts the boss’s orders and never speaks up. Chuuya is convinced that this year is going to be his. He has this gut feeling that his life is going to change soon, and there is no better fate planned for him than the desired promotion.
There is a reason, apart from his work ethic, why Adam is not scared of losing the position of a head waiter. Before he came to Japan, he waited tables in several prestigious restaurants across Europe. Since Parthenon is a primarily European restaurant in the heart of Yokohama, Fukuzawa believes Adam’s experience in fine dining, as well as his nationality, will do their reputation good. Chuuya thinks that it’s no more than a stupid prejudice. The only thing that comprises a good waiter is how they wait tables — not their origin, or race, or how genuine their smiles are. He fakes his own perfectly as he approaches a deuce in the middle of his section, a young couple clearly having a date, and recites their specials of the day.
He still has to smoothen the situation with the woman waiting for her salad. One of the universal skills of a good waiter, apart from their trained smile, is how fast and accurate they notice when a customer is looking at them. Chuuya has been schooling this habit for years and now, even without turning his head, he can feel a burning glare on his back. He leaves the couple with their menus and rushes back to the table, where the blonde is already eating through his flesh with her stare. Kunikida was right when he called her a meanie. She might not be rude but she’s arrogant, that’s for sure. Once Chuuya approaches her, putting on the most guilty expression he’s capable of, she disregards him with a slow sigh and looks down at her hands placed on the table instead. “I want to speak to your manager.”
Well, of course.
“One moment, please,” he nods, hands hidden behind his back, and waltzes to where Yosano is instructing their hostess, Higuchi, on tomorrow’s big wedding banquet with a full house reservation. Chuuya takes a deep breath, knowing that he won’t like anything that’s going to happen. “The salad lady wants to talk to you.”
Yosano slowly turns to him, her face changing from reserved to blatantly outraged. Perhaps, the consequences of their earlier quarrel with Kunikida are still wearing off, and now there’s this. Chuuya doesn’t fancy being the intermediary in their fight; as a waiter, he did everything he could on his part, and the kitchen lacking watercress and strawberries wasn’t on his fuckup list.
Without saying a word, Yosano nods at Higuchi to wait and passes by them, fixing her jacket as she walks to the table. Chuuya watches the scene carefully, trying to read the lips and scan how the expressions on Yosano’s and the customer’s face change as they are talking. At last, Yosano lets out a reserved smile and nods, walking away to the bar and fetching a glass of their most expensive white wine before returning it to the table. Drinking alcohol at mid-day in a thirty-degree heat? God, that salad being late must have pissed the blonde off more than Chuuya’s imagined. When Yosano passes by him as he walks back to take orders from the couple, she flashes him a sharp look. “I’ll put it on your tab at the end of the month.”
Chuuya salutes her with an apologetic look. “As you say, boss.”
The rest of the day goes on in relative serenity, as serene as one of the most popular restaurants in town can get anyway. The couple Chuuya has been serving orders a whole feast of a dinner, multiple drinks, and even a cake for dessert. By the end of their meal, as Chuuya cleans the empty plates from their table, the woman announces that today’s the tenth anniversary of their marriage. Chuuya has to cover his surprise; the couple genuinely looks not older than himself to him, he could never think of them as married.
“My congratulations,” he smiles. “Would you like two glasses of champagne on the house?”
The woman’s eyes spark. “That would be lovely.”
Sometimes waiters fail at reading customers, which is no surprise at all. Chuuya sees so many different people at work every single day that it’s gradually becoming more and more difficult to guess who’s who at the first encounter. All kinds of people visit Parthenon on a regular basis: office clerks, well-respected CEOs and their husbands or wives, actors and actresses, musicians, bands, supermodels… rich or poor, nice or rude, beautiful or average-looking, a good waiter must treat everyone equally. This is what Chuuya always does, even though he likes some customer types way less than others.
A huge part of a waiter’s profession is being observant. As observers of everything that is going on in their own little world called Parthenon, waiters are the witnesses of business dinners, first dates, breakups, proposals, weddings, divorces, birthdays, and funerals. So many stories pass by Chuuya daily that sometimes he feels like an almighty god, watching humans like little puppet dolls in the palms of his hands. Of course, all the secrets he ever hears he keeps to himself. The moment he walks out of the restaurant, hops on his bike and goes home, he’s another human being. More allowing, free, and loud. Still a waiter, though, as the second he takes a shower and eats his dinner, he buries himself into books and webinars on professional waiting. Sometimes, he gets as little as two hours of sleep on his road to excellence. If Chuuya doesn’t get the title of head waiter by the end of the year, he might as well quit Parthenon and keep pursuing his career elsewhere. The stars must align in his favor. He prays that very soon, not only Yosano but Fukuzawa will finally notice how hard he is trying for the job. And Adam? Well, he’s clearly grown tired of it, with how robotically he’s been moving and showing almost ho life even in the presence of his customers; Chuuya can’t be the only one to have noticed this. He’s seriously concerned about Adam’s performance. Should Adam leave Parthenon, there will be no better candidate for his position than Chuuya. They have no one else who could have possibly filled it as perfectly.
“Hey,” Gin, the waitress who always shares daytime shifts with him, calls for Chuuya from across the bar as he finishes putting his last lunch order into the POS computer.
“What’s up?” Chuuya throws a look at the room before approaching her.
Gin also looks around and, once she makes sure Yosano is nowhere near them, leans closer to him, covering her mouth with her hand. “Did you know we’re having a newbie tomorrow?”
Chuuya feels a cold shiver run down his spine. “What? Who?”
“No idea,” she shrugs. “Overheard Yosano talking on the phone earlier. Turns out, she interviewed a candidate last Saturday when both of us were off. Adam is aware.”
Chuuya runs a hand down his face. That motherfucker. “A guy or a girl?”
“A guy. Student, apparently, no older than twenty-two.”
New faces are always a disaster for a restaurant with a well-established routine. This is why it’s so difficult to get out of the business once you are in. Most managers at well-reputed places are extremely adamant about firing their waiters unless they fuck up really, really badly. They will cut their paychecks in half, take away their tips, or ban them from approaching the most well-paying tables as a form of punishment, but never fire. Firing a waiter means that you have to look for another, and hiring a new waiter means that you will have to teach them everything from scratch, and fast. Even if they have years of experience in the restaurant business, they have never worked at your restaurant. They don’t know about the placement of all the necessities, the names, faces, and personalities of their colleagues, how the POS computer works, how the sections are split, which customers are regulars, or how and when to approach the bar instead of letting the bartender do everything for you. The list can go on for eternity and conclude in one simple truth: you do not hire a new waiter unless a thousand-year curse has been cast upon you and the only way to get rid of it is to expand your waiting team. What is Yosano even thinking about?
As if the story with watercress and strawberries wasn’t enough, at the end of the day when they are all counting their tips, Yosano commands Chuuya to linger a bit and wait for her after work. He has such a bad feeling about this that he smokes two cigarettes in a row while Yosano is finishing up counting everything down and closing the POS system for the day. Once she’s done, she nods at Chuuya with an unreadable expression, and he approaches her with a feigned indifference. “Yes, boss?”
Yosano gestures at the seat in front of herself and Chuuya takes it, even though it means that the talk will probably take longer than he’s hoped. After a short silence, she speaks. “I’m sure you’ve been informed already but we have a new waiter on the team. Tomorrow’s his first day.”
Chuuya tries not to show how much he dreads what she’s going to say. “Yes, I’m aware.” Letting a newbie out on a wedding banquet day when the entire restaurant is reserved will be shortlisted for the stupidest managerial decisions Yosano has ever made. Chuuya still needs his head on his shoulders so he doesn’t say it out loud.
“Your shift tomorrow starts at ten,” oh, no. “I want you to be here at eight to train him.”
“Boss-”
“I know what you’re going to ask,” Yosano interrupts him before he gets to talk, leaning back in her seat and taking a deep breath. “Why me? Why not Adam?” In fact, what Chuuya wants to ask the most is, what the fuck, Yosano? “You seem pretty cool with Kunikida ordering you around so I want to see how well you can complete the task given to you by your own boss.”
Chuuya’s entire body stirs up in protest. “Kunikida wasn’t ordering me around. It was me who suggested help and I admit my mistake. I should have never left my workplace during the day, not even for the sake of saving someone’s order.”
“And yet, you did,” Yosano, who’s been studying her own nails the entire time, glances up at him. “Now I’m asking you for a favor.” Did it sound like a favor to you? Anyone? “And as my subordinate, you are compelled to accept it.” Exactly. Now that’s a blatant command.
Their talk in the kitchen from earlier suddenly pops up in Chuuya’s head. It can cost us a star. Every single misfire, be it in management or performance, can cost them the star they don’t even have yet. And if Chuuya allows his principles and prejudice toward hiring new faces to prevent him from fulfilling his duties, he will never be deserving of the head waiter’s position. Therefore, he gives in. “Sure. I’ll do whatever is needed from me.”
“Perfect,” Yosano nods in approval. “I’ll email you his resume once I’m home.”
The bike ride to his place is something that’s always helped Chuuya clear his head after a long and strenuous day at work. Most waiters prefer going on with the night at a bar nearby but Chuuya has never been too excited by the idea. If he can spend the night learning something new and perfecting his skills instead of drinking himself senseless and having his colleagues witness his embarrassment first-hand, he will devour another book before bed and not regret it. At just twenty-five, this behavior might seem senile to some. Chuuya is not scared of the word. He’s had his share of parties during his student years; now, he just wants peace and quiet. Is it too much to ask for?
At home, once he takes a long relaxing shower, changes into clean clothes, and brews himself a cup of coffee, he gets on the sofa with his old shabby MacBook in his lap, checking his email. The last letter is from Yosano, ten minutes ago, a blank subject, her automated professional signature (“Best Regards”), and an attached PDF file. Chuuya slides his finger over the touchpad, his hair combed in a neat ponytail, and clicks the download link.
Just in a second, a carefully curated resume appears on the screen. It doesn’t have a picture, which instantly makes Chuuya smile; he’s also watched those guidelines for making your resume look more professional on the Internet. However, later, as he reads on, the lack of a picture evokes rather conflicted feelings in him: he doesn’t want to admit that after reading the personal description and work experience, he’s grown rather curious about what their newbie can possibly look like. He sighs, skimming over the lines once again as he takes a sip of his coffee. What he extracts for himself is forming an amusing picture.
Dazai Osamu, twenty-two years old, a full-time acting student, with two years of previous experience waiting tables at a… sushi restaurant. See attached recommendation letters both from the manager and the chef; good qualifications in two languages; a bunch of positive reviews from customers remarking his excellent serving abilities and natural charm.
Chuuya scoffs. What a joke. He’ll have to interrogate Yosano later to find out her precise motives behind hiring an actor for a waiter’s position. They are not a rare sort, though, he has seen at least six come and go throughout his years on the job in different restaurants. Usually, actors do not last longer than a month. Judging from his sugarcoated self-descriptions, Chuuya gives this one a week.
He’s trained other waiters before. His most prominent student is Gin, who came to Parthenon just a year ago. Chuuya is no teacher but for some reason, Yosano thinks that if he’s constantly nailing his job, it won’t be too much of a disturbance for him to train others on how to do the same thing. Waiter training normally lasts from four to six shifts, depending on how experienced the newbie is. During the first few shifts, they do something called shadowing. That’s when the new waiter is following their trainer around, observing what they do, how they do it, what they say to customers, and where they fetch the stuff they need from. When you shadow someone, it’s important to take notes: Chuuya appreciates it when newbies have a pocket notebook and a pen on them, it makes them look more serious about the whole training thing. Apart from reciting the menu and opening wine bottles, the part of the job that annoys new servers the most is the POS system. Though all restaurants use it these days, people with zero experience, as skilled as they are with laptops and PCs, get staggered in front of a POS machine as if it’s some sort of a complicated NASA panel. Chuuya had several instances of working with the good-old ticketing system when their computer was offline due to some technical malfunctions, and it pissed the hell out of him. Putting in every single order by hand and bringing a ticket to the kitchen was beyond annoying; as much as he likes Kunikida, there are only so many times he can bear seeing his face in a day.
Starting to train a new server on the day of a wedding banquet should definitely be on the list of suicidal practices for successful restaurants. Chuuya closes his laptop and puts it aside, leaning back on the sofa and closing his eyes with a long sigh. Tomorrow, once again, he’ll have to be a jester — or a fool, depending on what the day holds for him.
Though they are summering through early June, it’s chilly in the morning. Chuuya is wrapped in a cardigan pulled over his usual clothes as he takes the first train of the day, the dizziness of his short sleep and a cold shower still wearing off of him. He tries reading a book but realizes, ten lines in, that the words are blurring before his eyes, and he can’t decipher the simplest sentences. He puts the book back in his bag and decides to nap instead. He only takes his bike to work on some days. Although everyone is used to seeing him leaving on it night after night, he doesn’t want to gain the reputation of some questionable gang member. The trains can be nice, too, especially the still-half-empty ones at 7 AM, passing through the city that is slowly waking up.
Parthenon is located in the Eastern part of Yokohama, closer to the shoreline, and quite often, on windy days, they can feel the salty smell of the sea coating the building from the outside. It’s a nice area, with many shops and little local cafeteria businesses, it’s best suited for the young. Still, when you see an elderly couple walking along these streets, they are most likely heading to Parthenon. The restaurant has been around for a little over ten years, it saw at least three chefs change, and when it first opened, it was way too far from where it is now. It is considered elite, somehow posh, to eat out at Parthenon. Although it might not be the best restaurant in Yokohama, it’s an affordable choice for the majority of locals who want to try some of the finest dishes without leaving the place with empty pockets. Parthenon always has the freshest fish and the best wines. Chuuya considers it a privilege, to work there, hence, he is conflicted: if Yosano hired someone almost at the snap of a finger, it means, they are deserving of this privilege.
He is the first server to make it to the restaurant. He greets busboys and girls setting up the tables and walks to the locker room to change. Kunikida’s already at work, which is not surprising: after all, he has an entire banquet to cook. Already changed into his work clothing, Chuuya finds him on the back with a cigarette, scrolling through his phone.
“Chef.”
Kunikida glances at him in surprise. “Morning. What happened? You shouldn’t be here before nine-thirty.”
“Yosano happened,” Chuuya cringes and reaches for his own cigarette pack. “She ordered me to train a newbie. I hope he’s not completely hopeless.”
Kunikida hums to himself. “That acting student?”
The cigarette almost falls out of Chuuya’s mouth. “Did everyone know but me?”
“No,” Kunikida shakes his head. Although rumors indeed fly in any restaurant, the staff is able to keep their mouths shut when they really have to. “Yosano only informed Adam and me. Apparently, the guy really impressed her during the interview. I saw him too. Was passing by one evening after work when Yosano was instructing him on the bar placements.”
Chuuya tries not to sound too curious. “How was he?”
Kunikida shrugs and looks away as he takes a drag of his cigarette. “Tall. Built like an English “T”. The capital one,” makes Chuuya giggle a little, amidst his ever-growing concerns. Tall waiters rarely make it; after all, they are not flight attendants — being tall can be (and most often is) inconvenient. Although you are easily noticeable by customers, you are equally easy to bump into. That’s why Chuuya is always so annoyed when he has to serve alongside Adam; there hasn’t been a single shift in which they haven’t elbowed each other in the walkways. Long story short, tall waiters are Chuuya’s personal professional nightmare. Still, Kunikida has a way with words. A capital English “T”. “He was making jokes, too. I think it was the first time in five years that I saw Yosano genuinely laugh at work.”
After Kunikida leaves to prepare the basics for the banquet, Chuuya glances at the time and sighs. In three more drags of his cigarette, he’s done. The newbie is still nowhere to be seen so he decides to brew himself a cappuccino. Tanizaki, their bartender, usually comes to work no earlier than eleven, so if there are any drinks being ordered in the morning, servers have to deal with them personally. Though he knows the ingredients and procedure behind every bar position by heart, Chuuya hates lingering behind the bar for too long. He remembers having to whip up fifteen cappuccinos in a row: on his sixth cup, he seriously considered pretending to faint just so someone else could finish the job instead of him.
While drinking his coffee, Chuuya launches the POS and fetches today’s banquet menu placed nearby, running through it quickly. There will be sixty guests, mostly seated in the front and middle sections, which means that he and Adam are going to be in the center of all the fuss. The first guests, including the newlyweds, will be arriving at noon. It is eight twenty-five now, and the second Chuuya takes the last sip of his coffee, he hears the front door crack open and instinctively turns to the sound.
For a moment, he thinks that he sees a customer, but then, all the dominoes in his head start falling into place. A capital English “T”. Chuuya chuckles quietly to himself but only to mask how awkward he suddenly feels. So, this must be Dazai Osamu. He walks into the restaurant as if he owns the place — confidently but without the arrogance that’s often inherent in good-looking guys like himself. He’s wearing a plain white shirt, short-sleeved and buttoned to the collar, and simple black pants; he has wired headphones in his ears and a puffy sports bag hanging off his shoulder. His dark hair is a bit curly at the ends and his arms are wrapped in bandages — a drastic contrast to the entire picture which makes Chuuya slightly uneasy the moment he notices them. Dazai walks past the window row of tables, studying each one with a playful expression, until he stops in front of one of the busgirls who’s just finished arranging the silverware on the table.
With a frown, Dazai takes his headphones out of his ears and reaches for one of the spoons, holding it in front of the girl’s face. “Is this a salad spoon?”
Chuuya watches the entire encounter silently, trying not to signal his presence in any way. The POS computer is conveniently hidden behind a column so that the one standing next to it is poorly visible from some parts of the restaurant. They are commonly called blind spots. Chuuya is well-hidden there but also just close enough to still overhear the conversation.
In the meantime, the girl looks up from her trolley and gives Dazai a confused look. “Well, yes.”
Dazai studies the spoon for a second and then looks back at the girl. “Why do we have a salad spoon on the table if we don’t even know for sure that the customer is going to order a salad? It’s more clutter and more dishes to wash later,” Chuuya has to hold back a scoff so no one notices him. In the meantime, the girl keeps staring at Dazai, completely abashed.
“We are currently serving the summer menu. It’s all salads,” the next words, they pronounce in unison with Chuuya, who just mutters them under his breath in a mocking manner. “If you are about to work here, you should know this.”
However, Dazai doesn’t seem like the type to step back from an argument. “What if they just order a cup of coffee and leave? Then, this salad spoon over here will look blatantly stupid. If something is already on the table, it must serve a certain purpose,” oh god, an actor in his finest shape.
The girl seems to be growing tired of his shit. Unfortunately, Chuuya doesn’t even remember her name since he’s almost never sharing shifts with the same bussers more than twice a week; needless to say, these shifts are so hectic they rarely get the chance to exchange a word apart from “Table fifteen needs a refill”, “Table six dropped a spoon, fetch a clean one for me, will you”, or “Find a blanket for thirteen, their child is getting cold from the AC”. “Listen here. I don’t know who you think you are but I’ve worked here for almost a year. I know better what to put on the table and what not. Now move and let me do my job.”
Dazai looks completely unfazed, putting the spoon back where he got it and humming to himself. “Then, you must be really bad at your job.”
When he thinks the girl is going to reach for a knife, Chuuya finally leaves his temporary shelter and decides to intervene. The second he steps forward, both Dazai and the girl turn to him, watching him approach with equally confused expressions.
“You’ve been standing there the entire time?” The girl asks once he stops next to them and reaches for the spoon Dazai held in his hand just a minute ago.
“Relax,” Chuuya says to her dismissively and turns to Dazai instead. He must admit, it’s quite difficult to talk to someone as their superior when you have to raise your head to look them in the eye. He clears his throat and brings the spoon to Dazai’s face, just like he did with the girl not so long ago. “This,” he says. “Is part of the table layout we’ve had at Parthenon since the dawn of time. And let it be your first lesson today: once something is laid on a table by a busser, it shouldn’t be touched by anyone but the next client who’s seated there,” having said that, he throws the spoon in a separate section on the girl’s trolley, signaling that this one is going to the dishwashers.
Dazai stares at him for a long minute without saying a word until finally, he lets out a short smile and nods, signaling his resignation. “Understood, chef.”
Something in the way he says it almost makes Chuuya flinch: his smile and voice are far from being genuine. He’s a real piece of work, that’s for sure, but Chuuya has never been a quitter, as much as he sometimes hated the job. He takes a hold of himself. “No need for extensive niceties. Follow me. I’ll show you around,” as he already turns to leave to the back of the restaurant.
Mentally, Chuuya is preparing himself for the inevitable: at some point, he will have to demonstrate a warmer attitude towards Dazai. Whatever the reason is, Yosano needs a new server, and even though it means more competition, Chuuya is not foolish enough to scare him away; at least, not on purpose. As they walk into the locker room, Chuuya turns to Dazai and gives him the key card he grabbed earlier. “Pick whichever one’s not taken and change. You got your badge already?”
Dazai drops his bag on a bench, takes the card from his hand, and starts unbuttoning his shirt. They all have their own sets of waiter’s fits: nothing extremely fancy, with fabrics and textures changing with the season; an apron with a name badge on it must be put over the rest of the clothes by default. Chuuya hopes that Dazai is reasonable enough to put on a long-sleeved shirt so that less sensible customers don’t ask questions about the bandages on his arms — something that Chuuya himself is very eager to ask about, using all the effort he has to keep his mouth shut. It’s none of his business anyway.
“Meet me next to the POS,” he instructs at last, leaving the locker room and fetching his phone out of his front pocket and checking the unread messages from Yosano.
I’ll be there in 15 to get the flower delivery
Take care of the vases
Chuuya is not in the position to take care of the vases for wedding bouquets so he instructs one of the busboys instead, reminding him that there must be fresh roses on every table for the banquet. Weddings are always a fuss: as a person who’s never had one, Chuuya can’t understand why people are making such a big deal of their marriage if most of these happy couples divorce and start vehemently hating each other within the first year (sometimes less) of their matrimony. For waiters, a wedding banquet is like the lowest circle of hell: every guest thinks that they are more important than dozens of others, inevitably causing a scene whenever their drink or salad refill is taking a minute longer than it’s supposed to. Yosano has truly chosen the worst possible day for Dazai to start his work; and if it’s a test for him, then it’s a punishment for Chuuya because he’s certainly not in favor of the idea of training a newbie when his workday is about to go downhill.
On a side note, Dazai does look like he belongs here once his waiter fit is on, and it annoys Chuuya way more than he thought it would. His only hope now is that Dazai is a complete failure with the customers. Look at him, Chuuya: there is no way he’s not clumsy.
“Alright,” Chuuya tries to cover his surprise when he sees that Dazai is holding a small notebook and a pen in his hands, ready to write down everything he’s going to say. “My name is Chuuya and I’m going to-”
“I know who you are,” Dazai interrupts him but does it so gently that Chuuya doesn’t even think of getting pissed. Instead, he looks at him with a slight frown. “Yosano already instructed me on all the names and positions. I read and memorized the entire menu as well, including the bar and the wine rack from the most aged one we have to the latest and the cheapest one. I know that you change your menu every season and, should I be in the position to judge, I consider it completely unreasonable. I know that you pool your tips, which is also completely unreasonable because I’m opposed to the idea of sharing my tips with someone who was slacking off at work the entire day. I also know you dance.”
Chuuya has to breathe for a second, his hand frozen mid-way to the POS’s screen. “What?”
Dazai smiles with a certain grace to it. “You dance,” he says again, this time a bit louder. “You have the patterns on the floor that you follow when you wait tables and you only break them when there is a risk of collision or failing to fulfill a customer’s request. So, you dance.”
Something is ringing at the back of Chuuya’s mind, an unpleasant premonition that might cost him his sanity. He ignores it and clears his throat instead. “Right,” when he turns back to the POS, the symbols and letters on the screen suddenly look like he sees them for the first time. “Where was I?”
The primary training, the theoretical one, is eased by the fact that Dazai already knows the menu by heart: Chuuya takes fifteen minutes to test him on it as they sit at one of the tables, with Chuuya naming random ingredients and Dazai saying which dish they belong to; then, he tests him on allergies, allowed substitutions, and what to do in case the dish that a customer wants cannot be cooked according to their specific preferences. At last and to his total devastation, Chuuya realizes that there is nothing wrong he could catch him on. Dazai didn’t lie about taking his sweet time to learn the menu: up to the most basic details, there is not a single element he’s unaware of.
“Very well,” Chuuya says as he notices Yosano walk inside, holding her phone with her shoulder and rummaging for something inside her bag. The sound of her high hills echoes in the walls of a still half-empty restaurant. The guests will start crowding the place in a little less than three hours, and it will be a completely different world from the one they exist in now. Chuuya doesn’t want to say goodbye to it: as much as he likes serving clients, he likes Parthenon even more when it’s quiet and filled with sunshine in its morning glory. “Have you already been assigned a section?”
Dazai shakes his head. “No. Yosano said I would shadow you for the first six shifts or so, which probably means that we’re going to share a section.”
Chuuya tries not to visibly cringe at the mention of it. The problem is not Dazai sharing a section with him, the problem is any other server being in his vicinity when he works. Chuuya has his own, well-established and polished routine; he knows which table to serve first and which table to serve last, how to move from table to table so that everyone gets an equal share of his attention, and how to get the most tips out of his customers even when he’s in the weeds. Chuuya hates to admit this but to some extent, Dazai was right: he dances, and his performance must be strictly solo at all times.
Later, they linger at the POS counter, with Chuuya showing Dazai all the sections he has to remember and use and all the buttons he needs to press whenever he puts in an order. He’s done it before but he still hates it like the first time. No matter how experienced a waiter is, for some reason, they always suck at handling the POS they are not familiar with. To Chuuya’s surprise, Dazai seems to be getting everything on the spot, watching closely as his fingers move over the screen and jotting something down in his notebook.
“Are you sure you got everything?” Chuuya asks, his eyes traveling across Dazai’s face, trying to find something to hang onto. There is no trace of that pretentious jerk who was instructing a poor busgirl on the irrelevance of a salad spoon on the table. If he is indeed an actor and a good one, then Chuuya’s in trouble: from Dazai’s face, he will never be able to read what he really thinks.
“Yeah,” with a deep sigh, Dazai leans back from the POS and straightens his shoulders. Chuuya has to look up to see his face properly again. Annoying. “I’ve already worked with a similar thing at my previous restaurant. This one doesn’t seem very different.”
Chuuya tries to battle the question but it’s already too late when it escapes his mouth. “Why are you even waiting tables?” He doesn’t want it to sound like a reproach and yet it does; he has to bite the tip of his tongue.
Dazai looks him in the eye with a bit of surprise at first but quickly schools his expression back into that stoic, cold, professional one that Chuuya is trying embarrassingly hard to crack open. “Do you want an honest answer or a templated response?”
“The honest one.”
Dazai smiles for a second and closes his notebook, hiding it in his front pocket. “As a student, I need a job so I can pay for my studies. As an acting student, I need to meet more people.”
As self-satisfied as he sounds, his words make sense. This is what Chuuya would probably do if he were a beginning actor looking for a job: wait tables. The part about meeting new people is not quite clear to him yet: sure, they meet hundreds of strangers at work every day but they can only imagine who all of them really are. Sometimes, Chuuya likes making doodles in his notebook after a strenuous workday: he draws little sketches of the most memorable customers; the prettiest ones; the clumsiest ones; even the rudest ones. He often distorts their features so as to not resemble their real appearance and makes up short stories about the people he doesn’t know and never will. He wonders if any of his colleagues have ever done the same thing. He also wonders what his customers think of him when they first meet him.
He doesn’t want to tell Dazai that some time will have to pass before he’s able to earn more than the minimum — perhaps, a week, a month, or even a year if he’s too bad at this job; perhaps, he will leave even before he starts earning enough to cover his bills, but some feeling in Chuuya’s gut is telling him it will never happen. Dazai looks smart. He’ll figure everything out and leave before the unfairness of this job can hurt him. “Cool. Right,” for some reason, Chuuya has been more awkward than before since his remark about the dancing; no one has ever perceived his approach this way before. He constantly looks around the restaurant, pretending he’s studying the table layouts he knows by heart, just so he doesn’t have to meet Dazai’s gaze. “You can take a little break now. The first guests for the banquet will start arriving at twelve. Have you seen the kitchen already?”
Ten minutes later, having left Dazai to Kunikida’s discretion in the kitchen, he’s smoking in the back. Several busboys are nearby, having their espressos, but they religiously pretend that Chuuya is not around. Other staff, except the waiters with whom he takes shifts the most often, has always been rather cold to him: perhaps, due to his snobbish nature. No partying, no getting batshit drunk at a bar after work, no alcohol at work, and no drugs, even the lightest ones. All waiters seem to have a problem with substance abuse in one form or another; for Chuuya, it’s nicotine and caffeine, which is not the worst combination of them all. When workdays get particularly harsh, he tends to abuse it, though, sometimes running to the back for a cigarette after every hysterical customer and then eating half a pack of a menthol chewing gum to cover the smell. All waiters smoke. Chuuya has never met a single one who doesn’t. Although Yosano doesn’t encourage their smoking at work, she’d rather put up with the smell of nicotine coming off their clothes than the constant fighting because someone didn’t get their regular dose. Smoking is fucked up, and Chuuya knows it; but if he weren’t smoking, with the job he has, he would be doing drugs.
One of the postulates of serving tables at a high-end restaurant is that you always have to keep a certain degree of distance between yourself and the customer. For Chuuya, this distance is sufficient as long as the customer can’t tell he’s recently smoked; if they can’t hear you, you raise your voice; if you pass something to them, or in any other circumstance unless your customer is dying, you do not touch them. This is the golden rule that Chuuya and all other waiters at Parthenon live by. This is the basis of any server’s professional ethic.
On his way back to the kitchen, Yosano catches up with him, her phone still in her hand, she’s waiting for a text back from someone. “How is he?” She asks in a whisper.
Chuuya shrugs. “Can’t say until I see him in action.”
“One of the bridesmaids just called me,” Yosano says. “They are already on their way. The wedding was on a beach outside the city so the morning traffic might slow them down a bit.”
“It’s not morning anymore,” Chuuya remarks, glancing at the time on her phone. “They’re probably gonna be here soon. I’m going to check on Kunikida.”
As Yosano leaves to instruct one of the busgirls on something, he pushes the kitchen door. The picture he sees makes something in his stomach drop.
“This is the first variant of the placement,” Kunikida is slowly spinning a small dessert plate on the counter, holding it with just the tip of his finger. Dazai is right next to him, watching his every gesture with an amused smile; Kunikida is smiling, too. “I also thought of putting the cake piece at the side of the plate and decorating the other side with flowers, but then Yosano told me that the guests requested flowers on the tables so I thought that would be an overkill.”
“I mean, overkill’s not always bad,” Dazai says in response, acting like he and Kunikida have been best friends for years; hand gestures and all. “At least, this is what they teach us at uni. The most important thing is for every element to fulfill a certain purpose.”
Chuuya has to cough quietly to draw attention to himself. Dazai turns to look at him first. “Is it time?” He asks.
“Yes,” he decides to lie and nods at the door. “Go fetch bottles of champagne for every table. We have the name on the banquet menu.”
A momentary smile passes by on Dazai’s face when he leaves but Chuuya pretends not to see it. When there’s no one else in the vicinity but the bunch of other cooks sweating over their processes, he walks up to Kunikida. “Since when do you take cooking advice from waiters?”
“That kid knows what he’s talking about,” Kunikida hums, still not looking away from his dessert. Come on now, don’t call him “kid”, he’s just six years younger than you. “Walked into the kitchen as if he owned the place and recited every banquet dish by heart on my demand. He even enumerated all the allergies mentioned by the guests. He’s astonishing. I’m sure Adam will want to rub his face against the asphalt a couple times once he opens his mouth in his presence.”
The day hasn’t even properly begun yet but Chuuya is already having too much of it. When he walks back to the dining room, Dazai is next to the POS, reading something from the phone screen and not noticing anyone or anything around. He jumps slightly when Chuuya approaches him. “What’s that?”
“My play,” he says, blocking the screen and hiding the phone in his pocket. “I need to learn my lines so we can stage it by the end of the term. For finals.”
“You’re going to be learning them whenever there’s a free minute at work?” Chuuya frowns and he doesn’t need to hear Dazai answer to know that he’s right. His bright future at Parthenon is getting more and more tainted with every little fact Chuuya learns about him. “I don’t mean to discourage you but with how rushed this place gets every single day, you will never excel at your play, Romeo.”
He drops the nickname as the first word that comes to his mouth but something shifts in Dazai once he hears it, staring at Chuuya in utter confusion. He wants to say something but doesn’t get to because the door finally flies open and their hostess, Higuchi, rushes to meet the first banquet guests. The cacophony of voices and noises is gradually filling the place that seemed to be the quietest on Earth just a minute ago. Chuuya takes out his notebook and the pen and clears his throat before stepping forward. “Let’s go.”
It’s weird, feeling Dazai shadow him around. For starters, he could never think he would be shadowed by someone way taller than him; therefore, it feels like a big joke. Wherever Chuuya goes, there is a moving wall right behind him, and he fears that if he backtracks, they will collide and wipe out everything around them like two stars. It’s annoying. It’s always in the back of Chuuya’s mind; quite literally. He wants to tell Dazai to fuck off and mind his own business but his business is Chuuya. God, training someone has never felt this wrong. It’s almost like walking around in shoes with sticky soles and not being able to take them off.
One of the guests seems to be allergic to every single dish on the banquet menu. While Chuuya is doing the interrogation, Dazai is putting down the list of possible substitutions. Once they step back, he shoves his notebook to Chuuya’s face. “I calculated everything. We exclude lactose and serve caramelized fruit instead of the wedding cake. No milk, no almonds, two birds with one stone.”
“What about gluten?” Chuuya studies the list with a frown; he must admit, Dazai’s handwriting is way easier to read than Kunikida’s. On a side note: he must be the best student in his every class and it annoys the hell out of everyone else. Besides — and Chuuya would rather die than say it out loud — he has calculated every single substitution better than he himself ever would. For someone who’s only worked at a sushi restaurant before, Dazai seems to be exceptionally good at waiting tables. So far. “Everything has gluten.”
Dazai scratches his chin, looking away and thinking something over. “I’m sure Kunikida can suggest something I haven’t thought about.”
Chuuya returns the notebook to him, slightly slamming it against his chest. “Then why are you still here?”
While Dazai is rummaging in the kitchen, he takes some time studying the place: everyone is enjoying themselves, talking, laughing, and cheering to the newlyweds who are seated at the best table, their lucky one because it always attracts the best tippers, and kiss each other after every toast. With time, Chuuya has learned to be indifferent to his guests’ happiness. Back when he just started, he took every enamored couple in his section way too personally: sometimes, when he turned away from the table, he mocked their sweet facial expressions just to mask how hurt and offended he felt. Then, Adam gave him advice that quite literally saved Chuuya’s life: perceive everything like it’s a movie but don’t lose heart; empathize with the characters but keep reminding yourself that their life does not concern you — therefore, you can interpret anything they do as nothing else but an act.
“He said he can do it,” Chuuya jumps from the sudden voice over his right shoulder.
“Fuck!” He turns to Dazai with a hiss. “Can you stop doing that?”
Dazai blinks twice. “Doing what?”
“Scaring the shit out of me.”
Chuuya notices empty plates on one of the tables and rushes to clean them up. At the periphery, he sees Yosano constantly storming around the place; she isn’t this active on ordinary days but whenever there is a big reservation or a party going on, she lingers around the most important guests, constantly asking how they are enjoying everything and whether they would like anything else. Hypocrisy is a very inherent trait of any restaurant manager; you can’t just learn it, you have to be born with it.
Caught in the whirlwind of questions, requests, and small talk with some of the guests, Chuuya doesn’t notice when Dazai is not next to him anymore. He looks around frantically, trying to spot the familiar figure nearby until his heart makes a ten-story drop in his chest when he sees Dazai serve a customer… on his own.
“Fuck,” Chuuya mutters to himself as he backs away from the tables and to the bar, trying not to lose Dazai from his field of vision. If he approaches too closely without a particular reason, it will look strange, so he remains ten steps away, not being able to decipher anything of what he’s talking about with the guests, a group of girls about the same age as Dazai, with one of them pointing something out on the banquet menu and smiling with her entire face. Oh god, she is flirting with him. Chuuya rolls his eyes. Right on the fucking time.
“Hey,” he calls for one of the busgirls passing by in a rush. She turns to him with a frown. “Can you somehow drag Dazai back here? I’m afraid he’ll embarrass himself.”
The girl looks at him for a second and Chuuya swears he can see the loading bar over her head come to a halt. “Who’s Dazai?”
Right, not everyone knows him yet. Chuuya sighs. “The tall brunette guy?” He points out. “See him? Tell him to get his ass back here.”
The girl shakes his head. “Why don’t you do it yourself? I need to bring this glass of Chardonnay to that table over there, the client’s been burning me with his glare for a refill for the past ten minutes. I’m torn apart here.”
Usually, in high-end restaurants like Parthenon, the waiters refill the glasses directly in the guest’s presence to demonstrate the highest level of service but during banquets and big celebrations, preparing the wine at the bar is not uncommon and saves bussers a lot of time and trouble.
Chuuya lets the poor girl go but the second he does, another catastrophic thought strikes his mind. He follows the girl with his eyes and spots a clear glass of wine on her tray. It is white and from this distance, it can be easily confused with a Chardonnay; however, when he was looking at it closer just a moment ago, he was more than sure that it was actually Sauvignon Blanc. While both relatively cheap and similar in taste, these wines can differ drastically in their shade: Sauvignon is much lighter than Chardonnay, which is known for its rich golden color. Their client might not be a sommelier but this is still a mistake and, most importantly, it can cost them a star. An open bottle of Sauvignon Blanc next to the glass on the girl’s tray confirms Chuuya’s fears. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. There is still time to fix this before it’s too late and the girl has to cry out in apologies: approximately, seven seconds.
Chuuya starts walking forward but the picture he sees next makes him freeze in his spot. The second the girl approaches the table, another busgirl passes by her, carrying something that undoubtedly looks like a glass of Chardonnay. Unfazed by anything that’s going on around, she keeps walking by with a relaxed smile on her face, unaware of the fact that she has confused her glass with someone else’s. Dazai, who’s still lingering next to his table, apologizes to the guests and backs away, promptly grabbing the Chardonnay glass from the girl’s tray. Then, he rushes to the bus girl with Sauvignon Blanc and swaps her glass for the right one just the moment before she can serve it to the guests. No one notices his little antic but Chuuya.
Apparently, Dazai doesn’t have enough time to be proud of himself. He comes back to his table as if nothing happened and keeps taking orders from the girls. Chuuya is so abashed he doesn’t notice a guest nearby trying to catch his attention for the past two minutes.
“I’m terribly sorry,” he says, running to the table and taking his notebook out. His thoughts are all over the place. More than anything right now he needs a cigarette. “What else can I get you?”
Not so long after, he catches Dazai by the sleeve as he passes by the POS. “Why are you roaming around?”
Dazai stops, closes his notebook, and takes a deep breath. “I heard the busboys talk earlier in the back of the restaurant. They were making bets.”
Chuuya pinches the bridge of his nose. Well, of-fucking-course. “What… what kind of bets?”
“Like,” Dazai scratches the back of his head. “How soon I’m going to get kicked out. One guy bet ten thousand yen that Yosano would fire me after today’s banquet.”
“And that’s why you are trying to show off on your first day?” Chuuya is being hypocritical — he would do exactly the same if he overheard someone betting on his inevitable failure.
Dazai sighs. “Listen. I need this job. This is my only chance to pay for my studies. And Yosano has been watching me very closely. I can’t afford to fuck up.”
Chuuya runs a hand down his face and takes a quick look at the room. The main fuss seems to have calmed down: now, everyone is just chatting quietly at their tables, slowly sipping on their alcohol and not bothering the servers with any bizarre requests. Also, most of the guests seem full, which is a good sign: Chuuya notices at least ten plates with long-forgotten leftovers on them. Finally, he makes a decision that might cost him his sanity.
“Okay,” he sighs. Something lights up slightly in Dazai’s eyes. “Sure. Do whatever feels right.”
Dazai smiles in relief. “Really?”
Chuuya nods. Oh, god, he’s going to regret it later, isn’t he?
Overjoyed, Dazai puts in a new order into the POS and rushes back to his tables, chatting up the guests and laughing with some of them like an old friend. The premonition from earlier returns with a sudden bitterness in Chuuya’s mouth; he tries to swallow it down but it doesn’t help. Whatever feels right.
Someone slightly taps him on the shoulder. It’s Adam.
“I see the newbie is trying to steal your job,” he always chooses the worst moment to gloat.
“Fuck off,” Chuuya shoves him out of the way and rushes to the back, fetching a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. There, as he smokes, he’s watching the stars. Yosano will most definitely lecture him later on giving Dazai free rein. Still, the picture of him masterfully swapping two wine glasses without anyone noticing seems to be permanently carved into Chuuya’s memory. Is he a fool for doing what he did? And if yes, how soon will it haunt him?
Do whatever feels right.
He wouldn’t give anyone the advice he didn’t follow himself.