Cupid’s Kitchen was absurd. A rom-com where the male lead could taste the emotions of the cook. Literally. When he ate a dish, he saw colors—sadness was grey, anger was red, love was a soft, impossible gold. He was a curator of longing disguised as a chef. The female lead, a chaotic, clumsy food blogger named Xiao Yu, cooked with her heart bleeding into the wok. Her food tasted like thunderstorms and apologies.

"How to leave someone without a recipe."

Her fiancé, Samir, had left three hours ago after another silent dinner. He didn't yell. He didn't cheat. He simply existed in her apartment like a piece of furniture she’d grown tired of rearranging. "I don't feel hungry around you anymore," he’d said, not cruelly, but as if stating a weather report.

Kunafa —not the neon-orange, syrup-drowned kind from the bakery, but the old way her grandmother taught her: shredded phyllo, unsalted butter, a heart of clotted cream so pale it looked like forgiveness. She layered it slowly, her hands remembering a rhythm her heart had forgotten. The cheese stretched when she lifted the spoon. The syrup hissed when she poured it over the hot pastry, still in the pan.

But Layla smiled. She would write that one herself.