For the next contest, Si Jin was in an earlier time slot so he didn’t have to wait for too long. When he stepped up to his cooking station and saw the things that had been arranged there, he wasn’t quite sure what to make of it though.

He looked back up at the jury, waiting for the instructions.

The one to explain was the man sitting in the middle. “Well, welcome back to the last round of our casual contest. This time, we have something a bit different for you. So far, our contest was all about the different ways of preparing and processing ingredients but now, let’s get to working on what is pretty much the finished dish already.

“As you can see, you all have a plate with snacks in front of you. They are all quite plain though so you’ve been given some utensils to make them look more appetizing. In short, this contest is on decorating your dishes.

“As a fun addition, for this last part, you will not only get points from the jury members but also from two people chosen from the audience. So give it your best shot! Now, let’s once again start at three. Are you ready? Let’s go! One, two, three!”

The other contestants looked at the snacks on the plate in front of them and then at everything they had been given and started the process of decorating immediately.

On the other hand, Si Jin wasn’t sure what to do. Decorating a dish … that should be like plating? Plated in an aesthetically pleasing way?

But the snacks seemed to have no rhyme or reason to them. He actually recognized quite a few from Xiao Ming’s stream. There were buns, pudding, pieces of jelly, a tart, but also a small noodle dish and some puffs. How was he supposed to do something with this?

Usually, when it came to plating, the first thing he would do would be choosing the plate. Then, he would think about how to arrange all the pieces of the dish on that plate.

Now though, not only was the plate provided, the dishes were also finished, and already in a certain sequence on the plate. Was he supposed to change the sequence? Or was he even allowed to? He wasn’t sure.

Si Jin looked back up at the jury, wondering if he could ask a question to clarify.

The three people were staring back at him. In the last two contests, Si Jin had started to move as soon as the number three had been called out. He would arrange everything he needed in the sequence that he wanted to use it in so that he had easy access to everything and could work efficiently and then immediately start to work. Now though, he was standing there, staring at the plate as if in a daze.

Si Jin definitely wasn’t the only person who wanted to clarify. They also couldn’t help but want to ask just what had happened to the very self-assured contestant from the last two rounds.

In the end, the woman couldn’t help but speak up. “Mister Si, was the content of the contest not clear to you?”

Si Jin looked at her and then back at his workstation before he glanced at the other contestants and then his gaze returned to her. “What do you mean by ‘decorating’?”

The woman’s brows shot up, surprised that this was really the reason. Even though she had asked, she had felt that this couldn’t be the case. But now, he really had trouble understanding what he was supposed to do. Well, clarifying shouldn’t be a problem.

“Well, you see that on the plate before you, there are several finished dishes. It is just that because they are looking quite plain so they might seem unappetizing to some people. Your task is to use the things given to you to make them look more appetizing.”

Si Jin finally turned to the other things on his workstation, that he had only given a cursory glance before. There were herbs, different kinds of sauces, even some flowers, and an assortment of rather weird things that he didn’t think had any reason to be in a kitchen.

The jury members continued to stare at him, feeling that this was too curious. Why was he looking at his workstation with this empty look? Then again, he had always had that blank look so this part shouldn’t surprise them. It was rather the fact that he still didn’t move that made them wonder.

Among the other contestants, one of them actually finished and turned to look at the jury only to realize that there was something strange going on. Looking over to Si Jin, he realized that this guy hadn’t even started yet!

The man sitting on the right side among the judges realized that somebody else had finished and cleared his throat. “Well, it seems the first contestant is already done. While the other contestants finish up, we will choose our lucky audience members that will get to judge their creations. Are there volunteers?”

Needless to say, there were quite a few. The first among them being some of the bloggers that had interviewed Si Yi before.

One of them couldn’t help but call out. “Are we allowed to take a photo of it?”

The judge in the middle smiled wryly, but then again, most of the people taking part in these contests and coming to spectate were the small-time bloggers who were on their breaks and just wanted something to spice up their articles. So really, them asking for a photo wasn’t that much of a surprise. “Well, you will have to ask the contestant in question. If they don’t have a problem with it, please go ahead. Otherwise, please be mindful that these aren’t professional chefs. It would be nice to not treat them as such.”

“Of course!”

Seeing that the blogger was being respectful, the female judge spoke up. “Well, since you’ve already asked, why don’t you take the first spot as our guest judge? Then, we only need one more person. Maybe another woman? I don’t want to be the only one!”

Immediately, one of the female bloggers dashed to the front, giving a wide smile. “Can I?”

The judge laughed and then waved for her to step forward. “Well, I think with that, we already have enough people. Anyway, how does it look with our other contestants? Have you finished yet?”

They all turned back to the workstations and realized that save for two people, everyone had indeed finished. One of them was finishing up while the other … still hadn’t started.

The jury members looked at Si Jin questioningly. “Mister Si, is the contest content still not clear?”

Needless to say, that was precisely the problem that Si Jin had. Or rather, while he did understand the general task he had, he just didn’t know how to accomplish it well.

Xiao Ming had done one stream that covered a few ideas on plating and had also mentioned a few ideas for decorations but he hadn’t gone into detail regarding the latter part. Instead, the stream had been mostly about the interplay of the dish and plate, the arrangements you could create on the plate, and how to link different parts of the dish and not so much on how to decorate a specific dish itself.

Si Shi Wu also hadn’t put that much thought into this problem since he probably figured that it wasn’t as important at the beginning. Instead, he had mostly shown him how to make a few sauces that he would then be able to use. He had also gone over ways to arrange the dishes so that they would stay in form and not cave in while looking good from all sides.

Now, Si Jin had actually found something that he had no idea how to do. It was good that he had discovered this shortcoming before he was on the show but there were quite a few people around that were eager to write about this event. If it got back to Xiao Ming that he couldn’t do this at all … He wasn’t sure what to think of that. He didn’t want Xiao Ming to think that he was unable to do this after he had talked about the topic, even if it was just in passing.

Surveying the dishes once again, Si Jin finally decided that he’d do what he had learned and took all of them down from the plate.

The jury members, the other participants, as well as the audience, all look on in confusion, feeling that this guy really hadn’t understood what the task was.

Si Jin didn’t bother about that though. He rearranged the order of the dishes, trying to make this into a journey of taste. If you ate it from one side to the other, you would go from the sweetest of dishes to the less sweet and finally the sweet-and-sour one. At the end of the journey stood a salty dish.

This seemed to be a better way to arrange the snacks even though it still wasn’t perfect. If he had been given the task to create appetizing dishes of this number, he would have chosen different ones to make it more balanced. And he also might have chosen a different plate. This one was long and thin, only able to hold a bit of each dish. You couldn’t arrange two next to each other which would’ve worked quite well with the sweet dishes as well. But since there was no other plate provided, things would have to work this way.

Having done this, Si Jin picked up one of the sauces and used it to connect the dishes. With the first one, he went straight down from the one at the top, through the other sweet snacks, and then around the sweet-and-sour one in a circle, connecting these as a part of the journey while at the same time separating them from the other ones that were of a different taste group.

After that, Si Jin changed to another sauce, trying to divide the other dishes as well. There weren’t as many of these so it was more difficult to do something that made sense. Finally, he put them in a circle of their own, covering one of them with a spiral of sauce, while he just partitioned off the last one.

Staring at his creation, he turned the plate around so it faced the other direction, and then looked up. This … was the best he could do. It wasn’t perfect by far but it was better than doing nothing.

The female judge raised her brows, not quite sure what she had just witnessed. “Are you done, Mister Si?”

Si Jin nodded. Anyway, he wouldn’t be able to do something else even if he took more time. He wouldn’t know how. He generally knew that there were other ways to decorate but he hadn’t learned about them and he didn’t want to do it wrong.

If there was one thing that he wasn’t too sure of it was his sense of aesthetics. That was probably something else that he should try to learn. Making the elements look good was usually a question of having clear shapes and trying to combine similar ones or those that were opposites. But for this, when it was merely decorating, he didn’t have any idea at all. He had to make up for that before they actually covered that on the show.

Seeing as he seemed to be done indeed, the woman got up and came over, taking the plate. “Well, we will have a look then.” She carried the plate over to where the others stood and the judges gathered along with the two audience members and took a look at every single plate, noting down their points.

This time around, Si Jin’s good luck had run out. Or maybe it was more accurate to say that instead of his luck, this round really had been ended by him not having the necessary skills.

Even though, in the end, he had still tried to make something out of it, the audience members had been thoroughly confused and while the judges were able to see what he had tried, it also wasn’t that convincing compared to what the other contestants had done who had indeed decorated every dish as they had been supposed to.

The prize went to a young girl that looked as if she was barely out of school and happily rushed away with it. The bloggers and journalists didn’t even get the time to ask a single question.

Meanwhile, the contest continued into the second round for this contest.

Si Jin returned to his seat and started to watch closely what the other contestants were doing in the hope of getting a clearer picture. Finally, the whole event ended forty minutes later.

As soon as the points were announced, Si Jin got up and walked out, not waiting for the judges to make their closing speech and wrap up their event for today.

Si Shi Er and his boyfriend hurriedly rushed after him.

“Do you think he’s angry about losing before?”

Si Shi Er frowned. “Angry?” After a moment, he shook his head. “I don’t think so. He isn’t the type to get angry. He’ll probably just go straight home and then give it another try there, trying to figure out what he could have done better. That’s the kind of guy he is.”

“I see.”

The two of them didn’t say anything else and just followed him over to the car.

Si Yi had been waiting there as Si Jin hadn’t messaged him to return and immediately opened the car door for his master, waiting for him to get in before he went back to the driver’s seat.

Si Shi Er and his boyfriend rushed to squeeze onto the backseat as well, and then, the ninjas already drove off, finishing the first day of trying to give themselves the image of not being a whole be group.

To be honest, it seemed that this goal hadn’t been achieved as well as it should have. But at the very least, Si Jin felt that he had learned a great deal that day and that was something to be happy about. As for the rest, he didn’t care all that much. They would find other ways to deal with that.