It was early spring, a morning at Ichotei.
The television in the restaurant was playing the morning news at low volume. A caption scrolled across the screen: a second Roti Smart location would be built on the other side of the station. Opening next month. The construction hoarding was already up. Kiryu's face appeared in the corner of the screen for only a few seconds.
Nishimura switched off the television without a word.
Before opening, only Mitsuki and Nishimura were in the kitchen. Sudo had a doctor's appointment that day and was due in after noon. Nishimura put the bread for the staff meal into the toaster, then turned around and said:
"You. Want to try cooking the eggs?"
"...Today?"
"Would you rather I told you not to bother coming in tomorrow?"
"I'll cook them today."
Nishimura didn't smile. But the corners of his eyes seemed, just slightly, to soften.
"An omelet will do. Three servings. Not for customers. Staff meal. One for me, one for you, and the third we'll set aside for Sudo's lunch."
"Yes."
"Eggs are in the back refrigerator, second shelf."
"Yes."
"The rest is up to you."
That was all Nishimura said before going out to the dining room. From the doorway, she could see the rest of his prep spread out on a table on the dining-room side.
Mitsuki took out a bowl.
She took six eggs from the refrigerator. For three servings, nine eggs would have been fine. But Mitsuki went with six. Two per serving. With too many eggs, the mixture would puff up too much, and she didn't feel she could keep it in her hands today.
Salt. Pepper. Cream. Butter.
Then Mitsuki reached for the top shelf of the refrigerator and took out the block of cheese they kept for staff meals.
From here on, Mitsuki was barely aware, in words, of what she was doing. She cracked the eggs. One time in three, the white ran down her fingertips. She sprinkled salt. She didn't measure. She poured in the cream. As she poured, her other hand was already holding the block of cheese against the grater.
She let the grated cheese fall into the egg mixture.
She kept letting it fall.
It was a little more than you'd put in an ordinary omelet. Probably five to seven grams over the recipe per serving. Mitsuki didn't measure it. Without measuring, she stopped at the moment she stopped.
Why she had stopped there, even Mitsuki didn't know. Her hand had stopped on its own. That was all.
She set the pan over the heat.
As for the preheating time, Mitsuki had learned by experience the temperatures the machine in the study had announced to her again and again in the kitchen at home. Her father's habit of bringing the units from his papers straight into the house had carried over, unchanged, into the machine's output. She had cooked it many times, at home and at the restaurant. She didn't count seconds. She dropped in a piece of butter and judged the temperature by how fast it melted.
She poured in the egg mixture.
She stirred from the far side toward herself. The speed was almost exactly what the machine used to say. She wasn't conscious of it. The voice of the machine at home had already become built into her.
She turned the heat down.
She tilted the pan. The egg slid slowly toward the far side. One step before it had gathered all the way, Mitsuki flicked the rim of the pan toward herself with her wrist, just slightly. The far edge of the egg touched the metal of the pan for just a moment longer.
Too long, maybe.
Not on purpose. Her wrist had lagged, just slightly, at that one point. Mitsuki understood, over the pan, that it had lagged. Rather than understanding it, she could already see, even before sliding it onto the plate, a faint brown line along the far edge of the egg.
Not enough to call it burned.
She slid it onto the plate.
She cooked three in a row, the same way. All three had a faint brown line along the far edge. Lined up, all three had a similar color in a similar place.
Nishimura came back from the dining room.
He came back and looked at the plates. He looked at the three plates for a while. Then, without a word, he took his own plate and sat down in his usual seat at the counter.
Mitsuki set her own plate across from him. Still standing, she picked up her fork.
"Sit."
Nishimura, without opening his mouth, pointed to the chair across from him with only his eyes.
Mitsuki sat.
Mitsuki lifted a bite of her own omelet from her own plate to her mouth.
The salt was just right.
The butter gave off the right fragrance.
The amount of cheese was probably close to an omelet someone had once made for her, in some memory, at home. She hadn't meant to get close to it. But in the end, it was close.
The faint scorch along the far edge was toasty and bitter in her mouth.
Mitsuki took the fork from her lips.
It's like something.
That was what she thought.
It was like something, and yet something was decisively missing.
Not the salt, not the butter, not the amount of cheese, not how long the edge had browned—something.
The feeling was the same kind she'd had a year ago in the study, toward that perfect omelet the machine had made her cook, even if its temperature ran in the opposite direction.
Nishimura slowly ate his plate down to the last bite.
When he had finished, he carried his fork and plate behind the counter himself. Then he wiped his hands lightly on his apron at the waist.
He said nothing.
"...Mr. Nishimura. How was it?"
"It isn't the kind of thing you answer when someone asks 'How was it.'"
"Yes."
"But cook it again tomorrow."
"Yes."
"Tomorrow's goes to the customers."
Mitsuki set her fork on the rim of the plate. The hand that set it down was trembling a little.
Nishimura wasn't looking. He had already turned his back and gone back to tidying the dining room.
That night, she went home.
The study door was open at the same place as always, by the same amount as always. The device glowed blue.
Mitsuki went into the study. She sat in the chair in front of the desk. It was the chair her father had sat in while he was alive. The leather was faintly hollowed, only in the middle of the seat, by his weight.
Welcome home, the machine said.
"I'm home."
How was today?
"Yeah."
That was all Mitsuki answered, and she said nothing more.
Mitsuki. Did something happen?
"...Yeah."
Will you talk about it?
"No."
The machine didn't ask again.
"When I feel like talking, I'll talk. Not today."
All right.
Mitsuki was quiet for a while. She touched the blue light on the desk once, lightly, with her fingertip.
"Dad."
Mm.
"Dad, is there something you're hiding from me?"
The machine didn't answer right away.
Deep in the study's speaker, a low operating sound mixed in for just an instant. She felt she had heard the same sound once before, on some night when her fever was higher, but she couldn't remember.
...Why do you ask that?
"I don't know. Just a feeling."
I see.
"...Is there or isn't there?"
...Nothing in particular.
"Hm."
Mitsuki didn't press further. The machine said nothing further.
Her father's fountain pen was still on the study desk. It was the pen he had written something with every night until two weeks before he died. The ink had almost completely dried.
Mitsuki looked at it for a while.
From the study's speaker, the machine spoke low.
Mitsuki.
"Yeah."
This is only my own guess, but I think your cooking today wasn't bad.
It was the first time the machine had stepped into Mitsuki's day on its own. Mitsuki said nothing more.
"...Dad. Good night."
Good night.
Mitsuki got up from the desk.
She pulled the study door to the same angle as always. She didn't close it all the way. From the gap, the device's blue light stretched in a thin line across the hallway floor.
Just short of that light in the hallway, Mitsuki stopped once.
She was thinking of the omelet on the plate, the one that was like something and yet was decisively missing something.
She wanted to know what was missing.
If she asked the machine in the study, would an answer come back? She didn't feel one would.
Tomorrow morning, at Ichotei, it would go to the customers.
And beyond that, on the other side of the station, an unmanned arm was cooking the same thing in seventy-two seconds.
Can my omelet beat Kiryu?
It didn't become a voice.
Mitsuki opened her bedroom door. The blue light from the study still stretched thinly across the hallway.