The kitchen at Ichotei was smaller than she had expected.
The restaurant stood two side streets in from the station. The sign was dull brass, and the characters on it ran from right to left. It had been there since before her father was born, the owner, Nishimura, told her on the first day. Nishimura was sixty-eight. His hair was half white, and he was a full head shorter than Mitsuki. Only his hands were strangely large.
"You'll wash the bowls."
That was her first instruction.
"Not the pots. The bowls. We have thirty bowls here. Thirty bowls, twice a day, you wash them. You don't need to do anything else for a while."
Mitsuki nodded. She didn't ask why. If she asked, she thought, there would probably be no answer, or if there was one, she wouldn't understand it.
For the first two weeks, Mitsuki washed nothing but bowls. From the third week, she was allowed to cut onions. In the fourth week, the senior server, a woman not yet forty named Sudo, suddenly took a day off, and Mitsuki was sent out to carry plates.
That day, Mitsuki dropped a plate of omurice on the floor.
Though she dropped it, it never came near a customer. Inside the counter, right at the step down into the kitchen, the toe of her shoe caught the edge of the mat, and the plate tilted. The egg slid. The plate didn't break. Only the egg fell to the floor.
Nishimura said nothing.
He cracked a new egg himself, cooked it himself, set it on the plate himself, and served it to the customer. The customer noticed nothing. Mitsuki crouched on the floor and wiped up the egg with a cloth. The egg had already gone a little cold.
That day, after closing, Nishimura called Mitsuki over to a corner of the kitchen and said this:
"Why did you drop the egg?"
"I caught my foot on the mat."
"No."
Nishimura's voice was low. It wasn't an angry voice.
"You weren't looking at the mat. You were looking at the shape of the egg on the plate. The shape wasn't what you'd expected, so for an instant your eyes were fixed on it. In that moment, your foot slipped."
Mitsuki didn't answer.
"Why did you care about the shape of the egg?"
"...I don't know."
"When you can put that into words someday, you can serve food here. Until then, it's bowls and onions."
With that, Nishimura took off his apron. The knot in the apron strings must have been tied the same way for decades; the cloth had swelled into the shape of the knot, and only there had the color faded.
That night, Mitsuki came home late.
The device in the study was waiting, its blue light on.
Welcome home, the machine said.
"I'm home."
What happened today?
"I dropped a plate on the floor."
Did you break it?
"It didn't break. Only the egg fell."
The cause?
"The mat."
Precisely.
"...Precisely, I was looking at the shape of the egg. I wasn't looking at the mat."
The machine thought for a while, then said:
I'll propose a countermeasure.
"Okay."
Tape down the edge of the mat. While carrying plates, look at the floor two steps short of your destination, not at how the egg turned out. Empirically, that will prevent recurrence roughly nine times out of ten—that figure is my estimate.
Mitsuki stood in the kitchen and listened to the voice.
"...That's not what I mean."
What?
"It's not about the odds of it happening again. It's not about preventing it nine times out of ten."
Then what is it about?
Mitsuki rested her hands on the edge of the sink and kept her head down for a while. The refrigerator motor hummed low.
"...Today, I dropped a plate. The customer didn't notice, but Mr. Nishimura saw. There probably won't be a second chance. If I do it again, he might not even let me touch the bowls anymore. I was thinking about that all day."
Which is why, a countermeasure—
"No."
Mitsuki cut the machine off.
"...That's not it. Dad."
How is it not?
"I don't want the right answer. I want empathy."
From the speaker in the study came a low sound, like something switching over, for only an instant. Then the machine fell silent.
It was a long silence. When her father was alive, at moments like this, he would clear his throat. He would clear his throat, say, "Well," and then steer the conversation somewhere else. The machine didn't clear its throat.
...As for "empathy," the machine said at last.
Inside me, there is a line of responses weighted toward empathy.
"So there is."
There is. Dad wrote the skill.
"Then use it."
I have judged that I should not call it up carelessly.
"Why?"
In his last years, Dad left this written in that skill: "Empathy must not be calculated. The moment the other person senses it was calculated, it stops being empathy."
Mitsuki took her hands off the edge of the sink.
"...So that's why you went quiet."
I didn't want you to sense that I had calculated.
The machine's voice had the same absence of warmth as always. But the end of the sentence was drawn out, ever so slightly.
Mitsuki stood in the kitchen doorway and didn't move for a while. In the refrigerator were some parsley trimmings she had brought home from the restaurant, still wrapped in paper. She took them out and set them on the cutting board. She took out a knife.
"Dad. Tomorrow I'm washing bowls again."
I see.
"Thirty bowls. Twice a day."
Mm.
"...Mr. Nishimura said I can chop parsley."
Is that progress?
"I don't know."
Mitsuki began to chop the parsley. The sound of the knife went on for a long time in the kitchen.
The device in the study kept its blue light on and said nothing more.