Sweet Sour Paradox Logic - 1. Chapter 1

“It didn’t explode.”

Caden peered into the glass opening of the oven. “That’s a good sign at least.”

He opened the door and pulled the sheet tray out with a cautious curiosity. He quickly set it on the counter and studied the results carefully.

He had managed to make the wings look amazing. They were the perfect golden brown beneath a glossy honey glaze. Under the bright lights of the kitchen, it could be photographed for any restaurant advertisement.

He leaned over the tray and inhaled deeply. “This just might be the one.”

He excitedly checked his notes. Vinegar, soy sauce, honey, ketchup, and a touch of cayenne pepper for the heat. He took another whiff and rubbed his nose. The spice tickled his nose and he did a triumphant fist pump. “I fucking did it.”

This was his first real step on his journey of creating a food empire that would rival even the best chefs in the world. His notebook was filled with sketches of his first food truck, recipes he dreamed of creating, and content ideas he could film to promote his brand.

The truck would be black, with a bright yellow logo. He hadn’t settled on the design of the logo yet. But it would be something iconic. Like the Batman logo. Something so epic that just from seeing the logo, you would immediately know only one chef could be responsible.

So what if the one design currently was a draft pinned to the fridge by a tomato shaped magnet. As he stared blankly at the wall, he could imagine the line that stretched around the block, arguing over the last portion of Caden’s Fire Wings.

And no matter what Kevin, his best friend and roommate, said, the first batch hadn’t exploded. That would have been easier to explain. Explosions were dramatic and would make a great story. You see that blackened wall, that was Version 1.1.

But he had learned so much since then. This was Version 1.9, and it was time to put it to the taste. He chuckled at his own stupid joke as he pulled a spatula from the drawer.

He slid it under the first perfectly cooked wing, and nothing happened. He frowned, “What the hell?”

He tried again, this time the spatula actually bent as the wing clung stubbornly to the sheet tray. “That’s not a good sign.”

He moved to the second wing, but that produced the same results. By the time he tried the third wing, he put all his power behind it, and the tray skidded across the counter. He frowned as the reality set in. He had forgotten to coat the pan with oil.

He dropped the spatula in defeat. Maybe the lack of oil mixed with honey and made an as yet undiscovered adhesive he might be able to sell to NASA. Why did they have to smell so incredible?

Caden placed both hands on the counter, one on either side of the tray. He glared at the tray, as if it were somehow its fault. “You smug asshole.”

He grabbed the spatula again and went to the final one. His eyes widened as the wing tore itself loose, only to fly over the edge and land on the floor with a wet splat.

He leaned over and stared at the wing. “The ghost of the chicken is strong in that one.”

He left it lying, that piece was a fallen soldier, the first casualty of his burgeoning empire. He turned his head when he heard a floorboard creak.

Kevin stood in the doorway. His eyes drifted down, then back to Caden’s face. They shared an awkward glance as he realized what must have happened. He stood there emotionless, his face unreadable.

“This isn’t what it looks like.”

Kevin took a step back. He had already survived too many experimental dinners. He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

Caden opened his mouth to explain, but Kevin covered his ears. Caden pointed at him, but the boy shook his head.

Kevin was the type of friend you could have an entire conversation with without saying a single word. They had known one another long enough to know exactly what the other would say.

Caden pointed at him with the spatula and Kevin smirked. “Don’t you say it.”

“I haven’t said anything,” Kevin replied as he turned around.

“Oh, I know you,” Caden accused him. “You were about to.”

“Probably not,” Kevin replied with an innocent expression.

“You’ve got that look on your face.”

“What look?”

“The dumb one you get when you’re about to dash all my hopes and dreams,” Caden replied with a slight smirk.

Kevin looked at the tray, then to the wing on the floor, then back up to his friend’s eyes. “Don’t think so.”

“Don’t think so, what?”

“That I have that kind of face,” Kevin said with a chuckle. “I have tasted nine other versions of your famous sauce.”

“Eight.”

Kevin raised an eyebrow as Caden thought about it.

“Okay, nine, but that’s beside the point.”

“That is the point,” Kevin said with an amused twinkle in his eye. “The last one tasted like candle wax and nearly dissolved the coating on my tongue.”

“It did not,” Caden said indignantly. “That was just your imagination.”

“Imagination or not, I couldn’t taste anything for weeks.”

Caden winced. “It wasn’t that bad.”

“It tasted like someone marinated chicken in a scented Christmas candle. What the hell did you use in that sauce anyway?”

Caden looked away guiltily. When he had let Kevin taste it, he hadn’t realized the candle had fallen into his sauce pot. He sure as hell wasn’t going to admit it now.

Kevin nodded, satisfied that the matter had been settled, and resumed his retreat.

A moment later, Caden heard a door close.

“Coward,” Caden mumbled as he headed back into the kitchen. The surviving wings waited on the tray. They weren’t perfect, he admitted to himself. But they did smell delicious.

The glaze leaned too heavily on the caramelized sugar. The vinegar wasn’t quite pulling its weight. The sweetness hit the tongue first but stayed too long so it dulled the heat. The balance was still all wrong. But underneath all that was something promising.

He could almost taste the corrected version that existed in his head. With a few adjustments, people would be lined up as if it were some kind of new I-Phone release. Strangers would post selfies on Instagram and TikTok.

One day, that version could very well be handed through the window of a black food truck beneath a bright yellow sign that bore his logo.

His problem was, he had reached the point where he could no longer trust his own tongue. Every failed batch carried too many hours, too much hope, too many adjustments, and a few of his taste buds as a sacrifice.

He needed to find someone who could be honest, brave, and crazy enough to try new things. After his last few sauces, they would have to be reckless and adventurous to explore his world of sauces.

He scraped the wings into the trash and grabbed another sauce pot. He needed to give it another try. He quickly prepared the wings and threw them in the oven as he started making the new version of his sauce.

Thirty minutes later, he packed two wings into a plastic container, grabbed his coat, and headed outside. Somewhere in the City by the Bay, there had to be a human crazy enough to sacrifice their taste buds in the name of culinary progress. And he was determined to find him.

He opened maps on his phone and zoomed in on possible places he might be able to find a willing victim. He shifted his backpack, the heat from the wings urged him to decide quickly before they cooled. Wherever he went, it couldn’t be far.

A name jumped out almost immediately, the de Young Museum. He liked art; his notebook was filled with sketches of his first restaurant. Crazy and interesting people were drawn to art, and maybe he could find someone willing to try another kind of art, his culinary art.

He quickly mapped out the route, jumped on his bike, and headed to the next step towards fulfilling his dream. But he hadn’t gotten far before he lost his cell signal. That’s what happened when you had to get used to the cheapest carrier; he lost signal often amongst the rolling hills of San Francisco.

He checked the phone again and looked up at the sun. The museum was over that way, he could find his way. He'd just have to trust his natural tracking instincts. Just because he was a city kid and often got lost on his way, he felt confident he could figure it out.

But after half an hour of going up and down the hills, he had to admit he was hopelessly lost. As lost as one could get in Golden Gate Park in the middle of the city. He looked for a sign or something that would point him in the right direction.

It was still early enough that there weren’t any joggers in the park, and for once, it was a rather hot day. He wished he had brought some water; his mouth was dry, and he decided it was time for a break and to come up with a new plan.

He hadn’t even bothered to check what time the museum opened. And maybe his decision to cut through the park wasn’t the smartest. He looked around. This part of the park was far off most of the other attractions, and he hadn’t even seen one of those yoga pants-wearing-stay-at-home moms with the two-thousand dollar stroller about.

He was thoroughly discouraged and was on the verge of giving up and blaming the shitty cell company, the empty park, and the idea of shortcuts in general for his failure.

Then he saw it, a pair of shoes just sticking out from behind a tree. They were sticking out from behind the roots of a large oak tree that was probably older than the city itself. The shoes looked worn in, pink-purple canvas sneakers that spoke of having been involved in a bunch of adventures. One of them was untied and looked dirty gray against the vibrant green of the grass.

He slowed his bike and curved to follow the shoes, then a pair of knees, a slender waist, to a boy who seemed to be completely lost in his own world. The boy was leaning against the tree, one knee pulled up and resting a thick paperback against it. His head was slightly tilted, his reddish-brown hair hung in his eyes, and seemed to shimmer in the sunlight like a fiery crown.

Caden guessed the boy to be around fifteen, maybe younger, as his face was still smooth, but from what he could see from the pants that rode up just enough to see a dusting of hair on the boy's legs.

When he stopped his bike, the boy didn’t acknowledge or even move as he read his book. Caden planted one foot on the ground and watched the boy for a few seconds. The boy’s eyes moved across the page with a focused intensity, and when he turned a page, the corner of his mouth tilted up just slightly.

He cleared his throat, but the boy still refused to register his presence. So he did it again, this time louder. The boy simply turned another page.

Caden looked around the empty park and figured this boy was his only chance at getting his mission back on track. “Hey.”

The boy’s finger paused on the page, which Caden took as a sign of at least making progress.

“Hey,” Caden repeated again, this time louder.

The boy looked up, brushed the hair from his eyes, and Caden’s breath caught in his throat. His eyes were a mixture of gray and blue, like a summer storm. They were inquisitive with a hint of annoyance.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” Caden said, for the third time. He almost felt embarrassed that he couldn’t come up with something better than hey.

The boy looked at him expectantly, and after a moment, tilted his head to the side and said, “That’s the third hey, is that all you wanted to say?”

This time Caden’s cheeks felt hot, and he shifted his weight on the bike. “I got lost.”

The boy’s eyes twinkled. “You’re a real Magellean.”

Caden ran his hand through his sweaty hair and gave a half shrug.

“How can you get lost in this park?” The boy asked as he gestured with his hand. “It’s pretty small and there are signs posted everywhere.”

“I lost my signal, and before that, I had a route planned and everything,” Caden said as he rested his arms on his handlebars.

“Where?”

“The de Young.”

“Not a good route,” the boy said with a smirk. “The de Young is all the way across town.”

Caden grinned. “I didn’t say it was a good plan.”

The boy seemed to look up and away as he mentally calculated the best route to reach the museum by bicycle. Then he nodded, as if satisfied by his imaginary calculation, then went back to his book.

“I’m Caden.”

The boy looked up again. “Is that short for something?”

He shrugged. “My parents almost went with Caydan with a Y, but switched it at the last moment to A. You can actually see the correction on my birthday certificate. I’m really happy they changed their minds.”

The corners of the boy’s mouth twitched, his eyes looked amused, and he said, “Kai.”

“Just Kai?”

“Yep,” Kai said as he went back to the book.

“What are you reading?” Caden asked. He really couldn’t explain why, but he didn’t want this strange conversation to end.

Kai held up the book. The cover showed a figure in black against an enormous white moon surrounded by characters Caden had never seen before. The title was also one he didn’t recognize.

“Bleach, volume twenty-one.”

“Bleach, like a cleaning product?” Caden asked with a grin.

Kai ignored that and added, “Ichigo has just entered his inner world for the first time to confront his inner hollow.”

Caden frowned. “His inner what?”

Kai closed the book, one finger keeping his place. He looked up with a determined look on his face. “His inner hollow. It’s a dark reflection of his Soul Reaper powers. A corrupted version of himself that exists in the landscape of his own mind.”

“Oh, that inner hollow.”

If that bothered Kai, he didn’t show it as he continued, “Ichigo has to fight it or it will consume him.”

“Fighting is good.”

“He loses the first time.”

“Heavy.”

“You have no idea,” Kai said with a thoughtful expression. “It gets heavier.”

Caden had no idea what the hell the boy was talking about, but for some reason, he kind of wanted to know more. “How much heavier?”

“Later on, there are arcs where the cosmology of the afterlife is systematically dismantled. The Soul Society, which the reader is led to believe is a form of justice, is actually built on a foundational atrocity that was erased from the historical record,” Kai said passionately.

Caden could tell the boy was really into the story. And if this were volume twenty-one, the story must be long and intricate. He opened his mouth, but Kai just kept going.

“The one behind it all was motivated because he believed the alternative was worse.”

“Sounds complicated.”

“He’s the most interesting antagonist in the whole series because his motivation is consistent even as he does horrific, monstrous things,” Kai said as he peered into Caden’s eyes. “It's basically about the consequences when the institution that was designed to protect people becomes the thing they need protection from.”

Caden stared at him with an open mouth. He understood all the words, but it was like he put them in order so that he couldn’t comprehend. So he said the first thing that came to his mind. “How old are you?”

The boy frowned just for a moment. Like he was disappointed Caden wasn’t as excited about Bleach volume twenty-one as he was. “Fifteen.”

"Right." Caden looked at the book again. "And you just read these hollow atrocities for fun."

"I read everything for fun," Kai said. He seemed genuinely puzzled by the implication that there was another reason to read things.

Caden swung off his bike and let it rest against the tree, because at this point the museum felt very far away, and this felt, in the inexplicable way that some things feel, like the right place to be. He dropped down to sit on the grass a few feet from Kai, who watched him carefully and skeptically.

"Okay," Caden said, "tell me about these long things. Are they swords?" He pointed to the strange drawings that occupied half of the page.

Kai blinked. "Yes, they are swords, but are you serious?"

"I've got time." He gestured at the park. "Clearly."

Kai looked at him for a moment. His eyes did that focusing thing, like a camera adjusting. Then he turned the book to the beginning and said, "The story starts with Ichigo Kurosaki, who is fifteen—"

"Like you." Caden just remembered that Kai was younger, not that much younger than his 19 years.

"—who has been able to see ghosts his entire life and considers this only mildly inconvenient, until a Soul Reaper comes through his bedroom window and everything changes." He paused. "Do you want me to go faster?"

"No," Caden said. "Go at whatever speed you want." Caden waved a hand.

So Kai went on and on, switching between a quick overview of the story and a very detailed mapping of the parts he found interesting, and the transitions between them were frictionless. He talked about Rukia, Byakuya, and the nature of Zanpakutō spirits. He talked about the difference between a Bankai and a Shikai with so much precision that Caden could not even remember even if he tried. If Caden was honest enough, he could hardly understand forty percent of what was said, and he found he did not mind, at least in the first half an hour.

There was something about the way Kai talked about things he cared about. It wasn't the performance of a storyteller but an honest attempt of a boy who was trying to give Caden a true account of something that genuinely mattered to him.

Caden leaned back on his hands, let the afternoon sun do what it was going to do, and listened.

At some point, Kai stopped mid-sentence about the Visored and looked at him with a slightly suspicious expression. "You don't actually know what a hollow is," he said. It was not a question. "I assume it's something bad because it is … hollow?" Caden offered.

"It's a human soul that has lost its heart," Kai said. "Literally. There's a hole in their chest where it used to be. They can't feel anything except hunger and they consume other souls trying to fill the space." He looked down at the page. "They're not evil. They're just empty."

Caden looked at him. "That's actually some kind of soul zombie."

"Yes." Kai's finger traced the edge of the page. "I think you can look at them like that, too."

Silence settled between them for a moment. A breeze moved through the patchy trees, and the pigeon finally found the perfect place to do its business. That’s when Caden smelled his almost cold wings and remembered his initial mission.

"Can I show you something?" Caden asked carefully.

Kai looked up from the page with a hollow in it and nodded. Caden reached back into his bag and pulled out the plastic container. He set it on the grass between them carefully presenting the content.

Kai looked at it suspiciously. "What is it?"

"Chicken wings." Caden reached into the container, pulled a chicken wing out, and held it in front of Kai.

"It was part of a hen which at some point stopped existing, right?" Kai kept on staring at the wing suspiciously.

"It is indeed. Wait a second, are you going to tell me you don’t eat meat because you are a vegetarian?" Caden frowned. They had been talking for the better part of an hour and he was absolutely certain he had found the right person who was willing enough to enjoy his culinary skills. "Did you mention that?"

Kai made that face that most people make when they are trying to compile their given data into something plausible. "No," he said slowly. "I don't think I did because I’m not. I just wanted to know if the hen died happily! I don’t want some vengeful hen spirit haunting me at night."

They looked at each other.

"Huh?" Caden asked.

Kai shrugged. A slightly different silence fell over them. Caden set the container down. "Okay, to be honest, I have no idea how happy the hen was when it died. I know the wings were happy in my oven but if you don’t want to try, I understand. Can you at least try the sauce and tell me if you like it?"

Kai looked at the container the way he had looked at the park, with the mild detachment of someone for whom the physical world was occasionally surprising. Then he leaned forward slightly, put a finger inside the container Caden was holding, brought his finger to his nose and smelled and closed his eyes as if he liked the smell.

Caden knew it smelled good, warm and sweet with the vinegar and the honey. It was almost right, almost the version that lived in his head, responsible for his eternal success, still, there was something missing, something he couldn't name, but kept searching for it.

Kai put his finger in his mouth, sucked on it, and suddenly went very still.

Caden watched him carefully. His stance was not one of thinking but of someone who had just heard something quiet and was trying to figure out what it was. He had tilted his head an inch to the left. His eyes had gone slightly unfocused, not glazed but distant, staring at the container as if seeing something entirely different than the motionless, probably partially happy wings.

"Kai?"

"I like it, but… something is wrong," Kai said. His voice dropped slightly, as he became quieter and more precise with his words. "The sweet component is too dominant, the acid proportion isn't right. But that's not—" He stopped. His brow furrowed. "There's something missing."

"Yeah," Caden said, trying to encourage Kai to keep talking. "That's the problem. I don't know what."

"It should have—" Kai's frown deepened. He brought his hands together and laced his fingers, looking like someone who was unconscious, trying to solve a partial differential problem in a math exam without knowing the boundaries. "A bit of Tamarind. A bit of black cardamom. And—" He hesitated. "Something bitter. Something that grows in darkness. Something…powerful"

Caden stared at him. "And do you know what your mysterious ingredient is?"

Kai looked up, rubbed his eyes, trying to focus on Caden’s face with the expression of someone trying to reach for a familiar object with the wrong shape.

"I don't know," he said.

"Ok. Can you try and be more specific with this dark ingredient?" Caden insisted that Kai had the answer to his problem.

"I...," Kai started quieter this time.

He looked down at his hands. He unlaced his fingers and looked at his palms like they might have written something there while he wasn't watching. Then he looked back at the container, and there was something in his expression that hadn't been there a minute ago, something underneath the careful blankness that was a lot closer to unease than Caden would have expected from someone who had been reading manga alone in a park about hollows and their missing hearts.

"guess—" Kai stopped. Started again. "I guess I know the shape but not the name. That's strange, right?" Kai almost sounded like he was talking to himself.

"A little bit, yeah," Caden agreed.

Kai picked up his book and put it in his backpack without saying anything for a moment. Then he added hesitantly: "I should go."

"Go?" Caden closed the container, determined that he had finally found the missing ingredients and was not ready to let his chance disappear in front of his eyes, because he had never in his life let the possibilities run away from him, " but you could come help me fix it."

Kai turned to look at him, surprised.

"You know what's wrong with it," Caden continued. "You just told me. I don't know why you know, you don't know why you know, but you know. And I've been trying to get this right for—" he counted internally, "—nine attempts. Kevin, my roommate, nearly lost his sense of taste. Well, there was a candle incident that I'd rather not discuss. And now you're standing here telling me it needs tamarind and cardamom and something that grows in the dark without telling me what it is, and I'm just supposed to let that go?"

Kai looked at him for a long moment with those gray-blue eyes that were not quite the right color for an afternoon in an ordinary park.

"I don't know what the third ingredient is," he said. "I only know it's missing." and shrugged his shoulders.

"Then we have to find it…together," Caden said, stood up, brushed the grass off his jeans, and put the container in his bag. He looked at Kai with the cheerful confidence of the chef of a five-star Michelin restaurant and offered Kai his hand. "I know a well-stocked supermarket, and I have a very open afternoon."

Kai looked up at him, holding his backpack like a life ring to his chest, and didn’t move.

Caden looked at the backpack with interest. It was covered in stickers and pin badges of what could be anime and manga characters. "I want it noted," Kai said nervously, "that I have no explanation for why I somehow know what is missing."

"Noted," Caden said. He held out his hand for the second time

Kai looked at it.

"It's a handshake," Caden said. "A gesture to seal a deal—"

"I know what a handshake is," Kai said. He shook it. His hand was cool, his skin soft. "I just wasn't expecting it."

"Fair," Caden said.

They walked out of the park toward the main road, Caden pushing his bike with Kai walking side by side, they passed the thoughtfully occupied pigeon and headed towards the exit. Neither of them looked back, so none of them noticed the shadows pointing slightly the wrong way as if they were trying to follow them.

* * *

Caden's apartment was on the twentieth floor of a building which probably looked awesome in an architecture magazine in the 1980s and since then nobody bothered to upgrade it. The elevator worked on Tuesdays and Thursdays and on lucky weeks, probably Saturdays too. The hallway smelled like someone had fun cooking for their dog every day, which Caden had decided to respect their cooking skills rather than resent. The stairwell light had been flickering for a while, and it had been on the “ repair list" since four weeks ago, when Caden voluntarily added it.

Kai looked at the list, the elevator, and the stairwell light in that order as they came up.

"Does it always flicker like that?" he said.

"Only when I have to ask Kevin to clean up the kitchen in chaos," Caden said, and pushed open the door. The apartment was partially a controlled disaster, partially organized as a museum archive, with the kitchen the best part of it, apparently the only part that received consistent attention. The counter was clear, the knives were actually sharp, and the spice rack was organized in groups and alphabetical letters. The only part that looked like a natural catastrophe was the coffee pot and the surrounding area of at least 2 feet in radius. So that should have been the part that Kevin was expected to clean. Caden led Kai to the living room, pointing to a corner next to the couch for Kai to put his backpack. The couch itself was nothing fancy except the silky rainbow throw blanket, and the three cats on it, staring at Kai, eyes narrowed as if daring him to take the next step. To the left of the couch, there was a whiteboard on the wall covered in sauce recipes with crossed-out numbers and one drawing of a food truck that had been revised so many times the original lines were ghosts underneath.

Kai stopped in front of the whiteboard.

He looked at it for a long moment, reading every number, every cross-out, every adjustment.

"You've been creating a nice collection," he said.

"Yeah." Caden answered in a proud voice.

Caden looked at the whiteboard. Then at Kai. "Have you ever cooked?" Caden looked curiously at the skinny boy in front of him.

"No. It doesn’t interest me to put so much effort into it.” Kai turned away from the whiteboard. "And yet I am here to help you," he continued with the tone of someone who found this just as strange as Caden did and had decided the only productive response was to keep moving, looking for somewhere to put down his bag.

Caden pointed at the empty corner next to the sofa, ”Ok. Put your bag there and let’s get started.” He didn’t wait for Kai and headed directly back to the kitchen, set the grocery bag on the counter and started unpacking.

He got a saucepan from the cabinet below the counter, then started looking for the ingredients, and putting them neatly on the kitchen table.

Kai had taken up a position two feet to Caden's left, watching every movement with his arms folded, but his stance still unsure, like someone who was in a mental discussion with himself whether to stay or to go. Caden simply ignored Kai and went on measuring the ingredients before adding them into the pan. The soy and vinegar hit the heat and the smell changed immediately. He stirred it once and turned expectantly at Kai.

"How much black cardamon do I need?"

Kai stepped forward to take a close look.

“Do you have a scale? You need 0.341 ounces.” Caden looked at him as if Kai had started to talk in a different language.”How about in tea or table spoons?”

"No, they are inaccurate. That’s why you failed….," Kai looked at the lines next to the latest entry on the whiteboard, "...nine times."

"How do you….", Caden tried to figure out Kai’s logic till he realized he had added a line every time he had tried a sauce.

"I’ll get you a scale." Caden left the kitchen, disappeared into a room, and came back again with a small kitchen scale.

"Good," Kai said quietly. He wasn't looking at the pan. He was looking at the pile of ingredients on the table and grabbed two pods of tamarind.

"Here, you need these," Kai said.

He handed the pods to Caden, who pulled them apart and added the inside to the pan. The sauce was simmering slowly, the kind that meant real business with a taste. Kai disappeared into the living room and came back holding a glass in his hand. Caden looked skeptically at the glass and then at Kai. “What’s that?”

"Reishi," Kai didn't open the jar immediately. He held it at arm's length, label facing away, like someone keeping a letter they'd already decided not to read.

"Where did you even get this?" Caden asked, still stirring his sauce.

"The back of the shop, on a bottom shelf next to the exit door. The jar had dust on it, and the price tag was handwritten." Kai set it on the counter. "The man at the register didn't charge me for it."

"Why not? It looks ancient. Probably already expired.” Caden tried to read the label.

"He didn't look at it. He looked at me, and then he looked somewhere slightly to the left of the jar, and he waved his hand." Kai turned the jar in his hand to get a better look inside.

Caden stopped stirring and joined Kia to look at the jar. It was a dark, almost black glass, sealed with wax rather than a standard lid, and the contents were a reddish-brown, matte powder, somehow looking like old dried blood. The label was handwritten in two languages, none of which he recognized.

"Ganoderma lucidum," Kai said. "...or at least it is what is written on the glass. A mushroom that grows in complete darkness on the heartwood of dead trees somewhere in China. In the old times, it was used in some remedial medicine but it has never been used in a sauce." He paused. "There are recipes that use this to create magical potions,but nothing edible as far as I read."

Caden looked at him, his eyes got bigger and bigger with every explanation.

"Those sources also describe it as the closest living thing to a key," Kai said. "Depending on who's describing it, and what they were trying to open."

Caden opened his mouth, closed it, then considered one more time before he managed to say, "So basically this thing is probably definitely naturally poisonous."

"You said you needed something special to make your sauce exceptionally extraordinary." Kai stepped forward to grab a spoon.

"I meant something like pomegranate molasses or shells or I don’t know octopus tentacles… ." Caden blocked Kai’s way to his pan.

"This will work better." Kai broke the wax seal with his thumbnail. The sound it made was small and final, like a knuckle cracking in a quiet room. "This much." He moved smoothly to the right of Caden and tipped a small measure into a clean spoon and held it out. Caden had a feeling the powder molecules were laughing at him and his stupidity to trust a total stranger, bring him home and let him fix his wonderful recipe. At least Kai was very cute. "I know what I am doing. Don't panic when I add it to your sauce."

"How do you even know it’s going to work? You said you had never cooked." Caden was starting to panic as he stared at Kai’s hand holding the spoon like a religious sacrifice being brought to the fire."At least let me do it at my own pace." Kai stopped, considered his options, and decided it was wiser to let Caden take over the job. Caden took the spoon and turned it with a steady movement of 5 degrees per second.

The color shifted — not gradually, not the way color usually moved through different shades. It changed in a drastic explosion of an atomic bomb. Caden stood very still and watched it settle.

"That's not a normal color for a wing sauce," he stated as a matter of fact.

"No," Kai agreed. He watched the pan carefully, moving slowly away with the pace of someone realizing a sleeping monster at his feet and trying to get away as fast as possible.

"Fenugreek and the holy Jamie Oliver," Caden said as he stared at the smoke gathering around the pot and tried to cover his mouth and nose. The smell was unearthly. Caden felt soft, cold fingers on his arm, pulling him violently away before he realized Kai had almost reached the edge of the kitchen and was trying to get him out of the smoking sauce.

For a second, he felt lost, without a reference to hold him in space, and then suddenly he found the reference point, pulling him out of the serenity of something that had always existed and was only now bothering to be noticed. Caden turned his head towards Kai, who answered him in his own staring contest.The pale gray-blue eyes were begging him for something, asking for something complicated that Caden didn't even try to read.

The light in the kitchen flickered, bringing Caden back to where he was.

"The building's wiring is terrible, but it's not usually—"

"Caden." Kai whispered. Caden looked at him and then at his eyes looking somewhere else…the pot was glowing with an unwelcome energy, the steam rising from the pan wasn't drifting toward the window — it was gathering, turning into slow, deliberate spirals, tightening and forming something that felt wrong and right.

"The recipe is ….." Kai's voice was still precise, but something beneath it shifted with urgency in it. "It couldn’t exist. I thought … I thought …." He swallowed his own words, unable to finish as he pressed and tried to cover his eyes, protecting them from the weird thing appearing in Caden’s kitchen.

It looked like a sky, but nothing like the one he knew. It was this deep purple-gray of something meteorologically unexplainable, and in its horizon, clear and impossible and absolutely real, hung twelve moons somehow organized in size.

Kai made a sound that couldn’t be a word. His face had gone the color of the snow. His eyes were fixed on the strange sky with the expression of someone who had found the door they'd been looking for all their life, and now that it was there, they were no longer certain they wanted it open.

"Kai," Caden said, low and steady, "Talk to me. What is happening in my kitchen?"

"That's home." The word came out more like a choke. "I know that sky. I know those moons." He swallowed. "I didn't know that I knew them until just now."

Caden considered calling that thing forming in front of them a portal, which was growing bigger every second.Now he could see silver grass moving in a wind Caden couldn't feel. In the distance, the lights of a city that had never been on any map burned cold and clear.

"Someone taught me this specific recipe. And then the knowledge was taken away — but apparently I remembered, because here it is." He looked at Caden. "Someone took my memories away. I don’t know why. I don’t remember.” Kai wrapped his arms around Caden and gave him a chaste kiss on his cheek. “ Thank you, thank you, thank you… I can go home now."

Caden felt a bit disoriented, Kai could repeat the kiss again and this time on his lips, but there were other things Kai said that Caden had to know.

"Who took your memories?" Caden needed to know. Something was weirdly wrong. Kai paused, looking unsure, holding his hands around his head as if trying to gather his thoughts.

"An organization…. They have rules about what can be known, what can exist." Kai's voice was very careful now, as if he was working out something terrible in real time and hoping not to alarm anyone while they did it. "They erased the recipes because the recipes were doors. They erased the memory of the recipes so no one could open the doors by accident." He turned to Caden. "We just opened a door by accident." Kai shrieked; he was totally freaking out now.

"And this organization—" Caden needed to know; somehow he knew it was important.

"They'll know,” Kai looked very pale. “The door broadcasts a signal the moment it's complete." He looked at the portal, then at Caden. Whatever usually lived at the surface of his pale eyes had moved aside for something older, something that had been there all along and only now had a reason to come up. "We need to go." Kai grabbed Caden’s hand again.

"Go," Caden repeated.

"Now. Before they—"

The portal shuddered and expanded from a window-sized to a door-sized one in one smooth, silent motion, and then they heard the footsteps.

"Run." Kai pulled Caden hard as he ran out of the kitchen.

* * *

Kevin was sleeping deeply before he heard a strange sound. He had totally earned the sleep after finishing his early shift, a nine o'clock lecture, and forty minutes of listening to Caden’s voice from the kitchen, discussing something with a stranger. He could even smell something extraordinary, and his policy regarding extraordinary smells from Caden's kitchen was identical to his policy regarding things that were probably fine: they never were. But he was hungry so he got up and headed to the kitchen.

There was some kind of sauce on the stove. Deep red-brown, still faintly steaming with a clean spoon on the counter beside it.

Caden was not there. Nor was the other one — the strange quiet boy he had heard in the background. Kevin noted the slightly disorganized kitchen and then the backpack next to the couch, then he noted what was happening in the air above the pot.Twelve moons hung in a sky that was absolutely not the sky outside his apartment building, and he could swear he almost saw a city in the distance. That’s when he first heard and then saw them.

Two tall figures in silver-black, faces hidden behind smooth masks, moved toward the opening, paused, and then stepped out.

“Caden, I’m so going to kill you and your new friend” Kevin sighed, took a deep breath, and smiled at the total strangers.

“Hi, I’m Kevin. How can I help you?”