The city did not care that Titus was breaking.
It never did.
By the time he returned to the hotel kitchen the next day, nothing around him had changed. The world was still moving at the same speed. Orders were still being shouted. Steel was still clashing against steel. Life, in all its precision, continued as if nothing had happened to him at all.
But Titus had changed.
Not loudly.
Not visibly.
Just enough that silence no longer felt like comfort.
It felt like distance.
“Late again,” a junior chef muttered as he entered.
Titus said nothing.
He simply walked to his station and washed his hands.
Slow.
Mechanical.
Like someone trying to remember how to exist inside a place they were no longer emotionally connected to.
The head chef noticed him immediately—but didn’t speak.
Not yet.
Something about Titus had shifted.
And experienced chefs always noticed when something unseen changed.
The morning service began normally.
Orders flowed.
Pans heated.
The kitchen moved like a machine built on discipline.
Titus worked quietly at the edge again, doing what he was assigned, watching what he always watched.
But today, he wasn’t observing with curiosity.
He was observing with emptiness.
Then it happened.
A sudden shout from the pass section.
“VIP TABLE 7 IS HERE EARLY!”
The entire kitchen tightened instantly.
That wasn’t unusual.
But what followed was.
A second announcement came seconds later.
“WE HAVE A CRITICAL DELAY...