River didn't sleep that night. Instead, he sat on his apartment balcony watching Seoul wake up below him. The city never truly slept, but there were quiet hours between 4 and 6 AM when even the traffic lights seemed to blink more slowly.
He made himself coffee using beans that cost more per kilogram than most people's weekly salary, but it tasted like ash in his mouth. Everything expensive had started tasting like ash lately.
His phone buzzed constantly. Text messages from Jung-ho asking if he was coming in early. Missed calls from his publicist about the magazine interview he was supposed to do today. An email from his business partner marked "URGENT" in all caps.
River turned his phone face down and watched a street vendor set up his cart seven floors below. Even from this distance, he could see the man's careful ritual - arranging ingredients, lighting his small stove, preparing for a day of serving simple, honest food to people who were actually hungry.
When was the last time River had cooked for someone who was genuinely hungry? Not hungry for status or Instagram photos, but truly, simply hungry?
At 7 AM, River made a decision that would have seemed impossible just 24 hours earlier.
He called Jung-ho.
"Chef! Thank god. Are you sick? You never miss the morning prep."
"Jung-ho," River said slowly, "I need you to handle service today. And probably tomorrow. Maybe longer."
Silence on the other end. Then: "Chef, are you alright? You're scaring me."
"I'm going away for a while. I need to figure some things out."
"Going away? But the restaurant—"
"Will be fine. You know every recipe, every standard. You've been ready to run your own kitchen for two years."
"But I'm not you. The customers expect—"
"The customers expect good food. You can give them that." River paused. "Better than I can right now."
After he hung up, River looked around his apartment. Designer furniture, expensive art, a wine collection worth more than most people's cars. All of it felt like it belonged to someone else.
He packed a single bag with the simplest clothes he owned - jeans, t-shirts, a warm jacket. At the bottom of his closet, he found something he hadn't seen in years: a small wooden box his grandmother had given him when he moved to Seoul.
Inside the box was a single knife - not one of his professional blades worth thousands of dollars, but a simple, well-worn kitchen knife with a wooden handle smoothed by decades of use. His grandmother's knife. The first knife she had ever taught him to use.
River held it in his hands and remembered being eight years old, standing on a wooden stool in his grandmother's kitchen, learning to chop vegetables while she hummed old songs.
"A knife is not just a tool," she had told him. "It carries the love of everyone who has used it to feed their family."
River wrapped the knife carefully in a kitchen towel and placed it in his bag.
Before leaving, he wrote three letters.
The first was to his staff - explaining that he was taking a sabbatical and that Jung-ho would be head chef in his absence. He told them they were all talented cooks who had forgotten their own creativity while following his rigid rules.
The second was to his business partner - a formal notice that he was stepping back from day-to-day operations indefinitely.
The third was the hardest to write. It was to himself - or rather, to the person he had become. An apology for losing his way. A promise to find his way back to who he used to be.
River left the letters on his kitchen counter, picked up his bag, and walked out of his apartment without looking back.
Instead of calling his usual driver, River took the subway. He hadn't been on public transportation in years, and the sensation of being surrounded by ordinary people living ordinary lives felt both foreign and comforting.
He bought a ticket to Jeongseon - a small mountain town three hours from Seoul where his mother lived, where he had grown up, where his grandmother's house still stood empty since her death five years ago.
As the train pulled away from Seoul Station, River watched the city skyline shrink in the window. Somewhere in those glass towers was his restaurant, probably in chaos without him. His staff wondering where their perfectionist chef had gone. His investors already calculating how much money his absence would cost them.
But for the first time in years, River felt like he could breathe.
The train carried him through suburbs, then smaller towns, then countryside that grew more mountainous with each passing mile. Green fields replaced concrete. Small farmhouses replaced apartment buildings. The air coming through the window began to smell like earth and growing things instead of exhaust and ambition.
River closed his eyes and let himself remember what it felt like to be a child coming home from school to the smell of his grandmother's cooking. The way she would save him the crispy rice from the bottom of the pot because she knew it was his favorite. The way she would let him taste everything with a wooden spoon, teaching him to adjust seasoning by instinct rather than measurement.
"Cook with your heart," she used to say. "The hands follow, but the heart leads."
River had spent the last decade cooking with his ego instead of his heart. Cooking to impress critics and investors and customers who treated his food like performance art instead of nourishment.
The train began to slow as it approached Jeongseon Station. Through the window, River could see mountains rolling away into the distance, covered in forests that were just beginning to show their autumn colors.
Somewhere in those mountains was his past. His grandmother's empty house. His childhood memories. Maybe even his lost soul.
As the train stopped and River stepped onto the platform, he felt nervous for the first time in years. Not the sick nervousness of performance anxiety or business pressure, but the good nervousness of not knowing what came next.
The late afternoon sun felt different here - softer, warmer, more forgiving than Seoul's harsh urban light.
River Park, celebrated chef, had left the building.
River the lost boy was finally coming home.