It was the next morning at Ichotei.
In the kitchen before opening, Mitsuki took out six eggs. It wasn't a staff meal for three. Today it would go to the customers. Nishimura had said so last night.
She took out a bowl. Salt. Pepper. Cream. Butter.
From the top shelf of the refrigerator she took out a block of cheese. It wasn't the one for staff meals but a somewhat better one, meant for customers. She set it against the grater.
Her hands stopped at the same point as last night.
The instant they stopped, she stopped herself. Today, too, she didn't let the word "correct" become a word inside her.
She heated the pan, dropped in the butter, and poured in the egg. In her head, the voice of the machine at home counted the stirring speed on its own. She herself wasn't listening.
She lowered the heat and tilted the pan. Just before the egg had gathered all the way to the edge, the motion of her wrist lagged ever so slightly, at the same place as yesterday.
She hadn't intended it. But Mitsuki already knew that it happened without her intending it.
A brown line formed along the far edge.
She slid it onto a plate.
Nishimura came back from the dining room. He looked at the plate.
Then, without a word, he carried it out to the dining room.
There were three customers that day.
In the last party, a group of four, an older man emptied his plate, set down his fork, and looked at the empty plate for a while.
"Dad, what's wrong?"
The woman with him leaned in to look at his face. The man laid his fork neatly on the plate.
"—When I was a child, my mother used to make one like this for me."
The woman said nothing.
They paid and left. From the back of the kitchen, Mitsuki watched him go.
In the evening, at the staff meal, Nishimura said nothing, as usual.
He brought the last bite to his mouth, then set his fork on the rim of the plate.
"Tomorrow, it goes out again."
"Yes."
"Cook it the same. Whether cooking it the same makes it come out the same is another matter."
"...Yes."
Nishimura wrapped both hands around his teacup.
"Your omelet, as it is now, is two steps short."
"...Two steps?"
"I can't tell you what's missing. If it were something to be found inside this restaurant, I would have taught you already. What isn't inside my restaurant, you'll have to go and find somewhere else."
Mitsuki's fork stopped.
"—But the plate that goes to tomorrow's customers, you cook tomorrow."
"Yes."
While she was wheeling her bicycle out the back door, her phone buzzed twice in her apron pocket. It was Riko. "U free this weekend" "also saw kiryu's reel. that pissed me off." Tomorrow was fine for a reply, she thought. She typed only a short "will reply tmrw" and turned the screen face down. Voices her own age always reached her from about this distance. At a different temperature from the weight of the way her hands had stopped tonight.
She went home.
The study door was open at the same place as always, by the same amount as always. The device glowed blue.
Welcome home.
"I'm home."
Did you cook today?
"I did."
Did it go to the customers?
"It did."
—
The machine asked nothing more.
Mitsuki didn't sit in the chair in front of the desk. She stayed standing in the study doorway and looked at the blue light for a while.
"...Dad. I'm going to bed now."
Understood. Good night.
"Good night."
She went to her bedroom. She turned off the light.
The "two steps" Nishimura had spoken of kept repeating in her head. One step, she felt, she would find someday in her own hands. The other, she felt, was across the hallway, in the place where her father, while he was alive, seemed to have been hiding something.
She closed her eyes.