CHAPTER 380: CHAPTER 379: FOOD, TRAVEL, AND LIFE’S LIGHTER NOTES

The talk of art had left the table glowing, like a room that had been dimly lit suddenly flooded with candlelight. The heavy topics of morality and ambition felt far away now, softened by laughter and half-playful jabs. For once, the Sterling dinner no longer felt like an interrogation but an exchange, alive, flowing, unpredictable.

Uncle Charles, clearly pleased to nudge things along, twirled his fork and said, "Well, if art is civilization’s diary, then food is its heartbeat. Don’t you agree, Rex?"

The pivot was deliberate, and Rex caught it instantly. He smiled. "Food is culture you can taste. You can fake words, even paintings sometimes. But you can’t fake cuisine, it always tells the truth about a people."

"Ha!" Aunt Miriam clapped lightly, delighted. "Finally, something I can agree on without a debate."

One of the cousins leaned in, mischievous. "Alright then, Rex, give us your verdict. French cuisine, Italian cuisine, or the new obsession with fusion plates?"

Rex chuckled softly. "That depends. If I want to be reminded that simplicity can be perfection, it’s Italian, tomatoes, olive oil, basil, pasta, nothing fancy but alive with flavor. If I want to see what obsession and precision can do, it’s French, the sauces, the structure, every plate a battlefield of discipline. And fusion... well, that’s the world admitting it’s gotten smaller. Fusion is curiosity on a plate. It works when it respects the roots, fails when it forgets them."

"Good answer," Charles said with approval.

But Rex wasn’t done. "Food also tells you how a society treats time. Street food says people are rushing, working, surviving. Elaborate meals mean there’s leisure, wealth, a culture of savoring. You can map civilizations by their kitchens as much as by their armies."

That earned a thoughtful hum around the table. The eldest uncle raised a brow. "So you’re saying a burger stand says as much about America as the Capitol?"

Rex grinned. "Exactly. Maybe more. A burger tells you how people actually live. The Capitol tells you how they pretend to live."

The laughter that followed was genuine, hearty. Even Julian, ever the skeptic, looked impressed despite himself.

The conversation turned playful. Everyone tossed in their favorite cuisines. Miriam praised Japanese delicacy, Charles confessed his weakness for New Orleans gumbo, one cousin swore nothing beat Indian spices, while another made a case for Argentine steaks. Rex listened, chiming in with sharp anecdotes, about how tea once bankrupted empires, how chili peppers traveled from the Americas and reshaped entire continents’ cooking, how bread riots toppled kings.

"Careful, Rex," one uncle joked. "At this rate, you’ll convince us the world runs on soup, not money."

"Sometimes it does," Rex said calmly. "Bread prices sparked the French Revolution. Salt shaped trade routes for centuries. Food doesn’t just feed bodies, it feeds history."

That earned a thoughtful murmur, but before the room could sink back into weight, one of the younger cousins piped up with a grin. "Alright, enough politics with pastries. Let’s talk travel. If you could go anywhere, Rex, where would it be?"

The shift was smooth, like stepping from one room to another. Rex leaned back, eyes half-narrowed in thought.

"Anywhere?" he said slowly. "The Himalayas. To stand where the air is thin and the world feels ancient. Or maybe Kyoto in spring, when the cherry blossoms fall like snow. Or the Sahara, just to see a horizon with nothing on it, pure emptiness."

The table quieted, then hummed with appreciation. Someone muttered, "Poetic again."

"But honestly," Rex continued with a small smile, "it’s not the destination. Travel is just the art of being uncomfortable. Strange beds, strange food, strange languages. That discomfort is what cracks you open and lets the world pour in."

Uncle Charles tilted his head. "You sound like you’ve done your fair share of wandering."

Rex’s eyes flickered. In truth, his past life had been filled with travel, some voluntary, some forced by circumstance. Airports at midnight, hotels that smelled of other people’s lives, trains through countries he barely remembered the names of. But here, he only said, "Enough to know that every culture has two faces. The one they show tourists, and the one they keep for themselves. If you’re patient, and respectful, sometimes you get to see the second face."

"Wise," murmured the eldest uncle, almost grudgingly impressed.

The conversation spiraled easily. Dream destinations were thrown onto the table, Parisian cafés, Caribbean beaches, African safaris, Antarctic expeditions. The cousins argued over the best way to experience Europe, backpack with no plan or luxury hotels with every comfort. Rex listened, occasionally dropping observations that made them pause, like how seeing poverty in a city often teaches more than its monuments, or how the first meal in a new place often reveals more than guidebooks.

It was Miriam who shifted gears again, with her trademark sparkle. "Speaking of lifestyle, Rex, what do you think of all this modern madness? Phones glued to palms, trends changing every week, everyone chasing productivity hacks like rats on a wheel."

Rex gave a small, knowing smile. "Lifestyle is just how a society chooses to spend its hours. Modern life is loud, fast, and anxious, because people are afraid of falling behind. Traditional life was slower, but also narrower. People traded speed for depth. Neither is perfect. The question is, do you live in service of your schedule, or do you make your schedule serve you?"

"Nicely put," Miriam said, clearly impressed.

The younger cousins snickered about their own habits, scrolling until three a.m., binge-watching shows, surviving on caffeine. Rex surprised them by not mocking, but reflecting. "That’s human too. Even mistakes tell stories. What matters is if you’re aware of the trade-offs. If you stay up all night, at least know what you’re sacrificing tomorrow for. Awareness makes lifestyle a choice, not an accident."

That struck a chord. For a moment, even the restless cousin Julian seemed thoughtful.

From there, the conversation tumbled like a river hitting rapids. Someone asked about technology. Rex smiled wryly. "Technology’s just our attempt at magic by other means. Every gadget we make is really a wish: ’I want to fly. I want to talk across oceans. I want to freeze time in a picture.’ We’ve always wanted those things, now we just carry them in our pockets."

That earned laughter. Someone joked about wanting teleportation, another about robots doing their homework. Rex played along, but slipped in just enough perspective to make them think. "Every tool we make changes us. The plow changed society as much as the smartphone. The trick isn’t asking if technology is good or bad. It’s asking, what kind of humans will we become if we depend on it?"

It wasn’t heavy, not like earlier morality debates, but it wasn’t shallow either. It was the kind of thought that stuck in the back of the mind.

Sports came next, sparked by a cousin teasing another about their failed tennis serve. Soon the whole table was caught in a web of favorite teams, rivalries, and half-serious arguments. Rex joined with a measured hand. "Sports are just the world’s most accepted way to argue without war. They give us flags to wave without blood. That’s why the Olympics feel sacred, nations competing but under rules, not guns."

"Spoken like a diplomat," one uncle said dryly.

Rex laughed. "No, just someone who’s seen people argue harder over football than politics."

The table roared at that.

The last stretch of the evening turned almost playful. Embarrassing stories were swapped, one cousin told of spilling champagne on a senator, another of forgetting their lines in a school play. Rex surprised them by confessing a blunder of his own: tripping on a staircase during a presentation and pretending it was "performance art." The laughter was so strong even the usually reserved eldest uncle smiled.

Finally, someone asked the question that often ends such nights: "What about dreams, Rex? What did you want to be as a kid?"

Rex hesitated, just a flicker, but then answered smoothly. "When I was a kid, I wanted to be an explorer. Not of lands, but of ideas. The kind of person who asks questions no one else thinks to ask. And I suppose... that hasn’t really changed."

It was simple, but it carried weight. The table quieted for a moment, then nodded. Even Julian didn’t press further.

By the time dessert was cleared and coffee poured, the Sterlings no longer looked at Rex like a puzzle to solve or a stranger to measure. They looked at him like one of them, different, yes, younger, yes, but someone who could hold his own at the table, someone whose honesty and wit they respected.

And for Rex, who had walked into the lion’s den knowing he risked being devoured, that subtle shift of the room was victory enough.

(End of Chapter)