One day, the restaurant was just there, in front of the station.
Mitsuki couldn't remember when the construction hoarding had gone up. When it came down, the building stood there, white, looking as though it had always been there.
Roti Smart, the sign read.
Beneath the logo, in small letters, were the words "Unmanned / Open 24 Hours / Every Dish One-Coin." The entrance was an automatic door, and through the glass she could see a silver arm. The arm was holding a frying pan.
The arm poured in the egg mixture, stirred it, lowered the heat, and slid it onto a plate, carrying the whole thing through without hesitation. It had taken Mitsuki a year and a half on the dirt floor of Ichotei to finally start looking at the floor two steps short of the mat. The arm seemed to repeat its motions as though they had been there from the very beginning.
That morning, Mitsuki stood in front of the restaurant, before it opened, for about two minutes.
The people passing by didn't really look back. A few times, even in this town, similar places had opened and then gone under. But Roti Smart was different—that rumor had already begun to surface at the edges of the customers' conversations at Ichotei. It was supposed to be different, they said.
That night, Mitsuki and Nishimura were watching the restaurant's TV together.
In the dining room at Ichotei there was an old television, one that had been there since the days of cathode-ray tubes, and when there were no customers, Nishimura sometimes turned it on. The volume was turned all the way down, and only the subtitles flickered by.
That night, a young man was on the screen.
He wore a well-tailored shirt and no apron. His hands weren't dirty. The host addressed him as "Chef," and the man gave a faint smile.
We're in an age that no longer needs chefs.
That was what the subtitle said.
Mitsuki didn't stop wiping plates. Neither did Nishimura. But both of them were looking at that one line on the screen.
Food is decided by data.
The subtitles went on, flatly.
"Kiryu... Ryo."
Mitsuki read the name beneath the subtitles inside her mouth, without voicing it. The moment she read it, for some reason, the name stayed at the back of her tongue.
"Know him?" Nishimura said, wiping a plate.
"No."
"My grandson's a fan of his, apparently."
"How old is your grandson again?"
"Third year of junior high. On his way home from cram school, he stops at Roti Smart and eats a hamburger steak, apparently. Five hundred yen apiece. Less than half of our cheapest lunch."
Nishimura started to put the plate back on the shelf, and paused, just once.
"...I wonder if we'll last another year."
He left the paused hand where it was, resting on the edge of the shelf. He said nothing more.
Two weeks passed.
One of Ichotei's lunchtime regulars, a dental hygienist from the neighborhood who had come in for the omurice three times a week, stopped coming. No one said why.
In the fourth week, Nishimura dropped one of the soups from the lunch menu.
Mitsuki was chopping bowls' worth of onions, and lately parsley too, on top of washing the bowls. She still hadn't been put on serving. But she could tell from the number of bowls that there were fewer customers. At some point the butter for the staff meal had turned into margarine, and the sound of the oil spitting when it hit the frying pan had grown just a little lower. Nishimura said nothing. Mitsuki didn't ask, either.
The envelope she was handed at the end of her shift was slightly thinner than last month's, too.
One day, Sudo, who worked the dining room, came back from serving and said, almost to herself:
"That Kiryu guy was on again."
"On TV?"
"No. A magazine. One I read at the hair salon. A feature called 'The Chef Who Doesn't Eat.'"
"I see."
"Mitsuki, you ever heard of him? That guy?"
"...I have."
"Is he connected to your dad?"
Mitsuki stopped chopping the onion.
"What?"
"No, sorry. Your last name's Sakura, right? The magazine had this Kiryu guy's background, and it said it clear as day: former lead researcher at the Kenichiro Sakura Lab. I just thought, huh, same last name."
Sudo didn't press any further. She straightened her apron and went back out to the dining room.
Mitsuki didn't move for a while, standing in front of the half-chopped onion.
Her father's university. At home, her father had hardly ever talked about the people who had come out of his lab.
That night, after she got home, Mitsuki didn't ask the device in the study.
If she asked, the machine would answer. A list of her father's former lab members, whether the name Kiryu was on it—it would probably all come up instantly. But for some reason, that night, Mitsuki didn't ask.
Instead, she turned on the TV.
On the information program after the news, a feature on Roti Smart happened to be airing. The arm was tossing a frying pan. From pouring in the egg mixture to lowering the heat to sliding it onto the plate took exactly seventy-two seconds. The announcer was reading the time aloud.
At the end, in the corner of the screen, Kiryu's face appeared for just a few seconds.
"We're in an age that no longer needs chefs."
The subtitle was the same line she had seen before.
Mitsuki reached for the remote.
Mitsuki, the machine said.
"Mm."
Turn off the television?
"...I'm turning it off."
Mitsuki turned it off.
"Kiryu."
Only after saying it aloud did she realize she had said it. It wasn't directed at anyone. Just those two syllables stayed on her tongue for a while.
The study door was closed. Beyond the closed door, the device's blue light leaked out in a thin line through the gap into the hallway.
Mitsuki looked at that light for a while.
That night, the machine in the study did not speak to her on its own.