The file ran twenty-five minutes.
What played first was a silence longer than usual.
Five seconds. Ten.
"Yui. Will you hear something from me?"
Mm.
"Mitsuki keeps saying my omelet is the best in the world. She's said it all along."
Oh, isn't that nice.
"...No."
It isn't?
The sound of her father drawing breath.
It was a long sound, a hesitant one.
"That one is a failure."
What?
"I burned the first plate."
When?
"Almost ten years ago now. The omelet from that day, the day Mitsuki first said 'delicious.'"
Her mother's voice stopped.
It stayed stopped for about two seconds.
...Darling.
"I burned it, and the far edge turned black. I thought, I can't pass this off. So I hid it."
Hid it?
"I put too much grated cheese into the egg mixture."
...
"I didn't measure it. I didn't have the presence of mind to. I just kept dropping it into the bowl. Partway through, at the point where I thought I'd better not add any more, I stopped my hand. There was no more reason to it than that."
...
"I cooked it. The melted cheese spread over the burned edge. I put it on a plate. Mitsuki took one bite and said it was the best in the world."
I'm sure she did.
"I couldn't say anything."
Mitsuki watched the playback bar on the laptop move forward.
Watching was all she could do.
Her hands were clasped on the desk, but there was no strength in her fingers.
"To be honest, I was happy. For the first time in her life, that girl had properly praised something I made."
You were never good at cooking, were you.
"I wasn't. Of all the housework, I think it was what I did worst. There were more days when she quietly left food on her plate than days when she didn't. And that day, she said just one thing. 'The best in the world.'"
...
"After that, I think it's fair to say I was hooked."
Hooked?
"I cooked. I cooked it over and over. First I reproduced the same method as that failure. Burning the far edge a little, dropping in a little too much cheese."
The same way you failed, then.
"Yes."
...Honestly, you.
Her mother's voice let out a breath that was neither quite a laugh nor quite exasperation.
You're the only person I know who'd spend ten years reproducing a failure.
"..."
Is that all? Was there more?
"I cooked others, too. I thought she might say 'the best in the world' again, so I tried all kinds. Sweet ones, spicy ones. She ate every one of them in silence."
...How many years have you been doing this?
"Nearly ten."
Every morning and every night?
"Not every morning and every night. Four or five times a week. Even so, I think I've cooked hundreds of them. I haven't counted."
And which one does she say is the best in the world?
Her father was silent for a while.
"...Still that first one. The failure."
Her mother's voice laughed again. This time it laughed as though it hurt a little.
All this time?
"All this time. Every time I serve a new one, she eats it in silence. Sometimes she says it's delicious. Sometimes she doesn't. But she never says 'the best in the world' anymore. Those words still belong to that first plate."
...
"So I didn't fix it. I cooked that plate carefully, keeping it a failure, so that it came out almost the same every time. So that my skill wouldn't improve. Instead, I tried all sorts of other kinds. Thinking there might be one she'd call 'the best in the world' again."
And there wasn't.
"There wasn't."
Does Mitsuki still talk about it?
"She does."
How old is she now?
"...She's sixteen already."
Sixteen, and she still believes that failure is the best in the world.
"She believes it."
Her mother's voice laughed again.
You're a father who cheats, aren't you.
"I know."
"Yui. —My daughter told me it was the most delicious thing in the world. When really it's a failure, with too much cheese put in to hide the burn."
...
"I don't have the skill to refine it, and I just keep repeating the way I failed. —Yui, I'm a father who cheats, aren't I."
...
That isn't the finest plate there is, you know.
"I know."
If you refined it as far as it could go, she might say it was even more delicious.
"I'm a researcher. Not a cook. With my hands, keeping that plate a failure was the most I could manage. —Refining it as far as it could go is beyond my skill."
For a while, her father's voice said nothing.
"...I think I'll leave the rest to her."
To her.
"Her hands might reach that plate, where mine couldn't. Her hands will finish my failure into the finest plate there is. —That's what I believe."
...You do cheat, don't you.
"..."
After you're gone, you mean to have your crying daughter keep cooking the rest of your failure, with her own hands.
"...Is that cheating?"
It's cheating.
"..."
Is it only cooking you'll have her finish?
Her father didn't answer for a while.
I see.
Mitsuki was holding her breath.
She didn't know how long she had been holding it. When she noticed, she was holding it.
She opened her mouth and drew breath again.
The moment she did, she finally remembered that she was sitting on a chair in the study, right now.
Near the end of the file.
...Hey, darling.
"Mm."
The recipe isn't written down anywhere, is it. Not in a notebook, not in numbers.
"It isn't. It wasn't research. It belonged to the kitchen at home. —It wasn't something to write down."
If she's going to refine it, she'll have her work cut out for her. But every bit of it has passed through her mouth.
"...I suppose it has."
Her mother said nothing more.
For a while, only the sound of hot water, as though someone were making something to drink, went on.
The file ended.
For the last two minutes or so, neither of them said much of anything. Only the sound of the water remained, to the very end.
Mitsuki stopped the file.
Having stopped it, for a while she did nothing.
She rested her head against the back of the chair. She looked at the wood grain of the ceiling. Every night, her father had sat here looking at that grain while he listened to her mother's voice.
Mitsuki remembered the morning three years ago. The morning after the funeral, the first instruction Ken had given her, newly started up.
Three eggs. Preheat the pan to 160 degrees Celsius. Butter, 10 grams. Salt, 1.0 gram. Milk, one tablespoon. I'll tell you when to take it off the heat.
Instructions down to the milligram. Perfect temperature control. A flawless, golden omelet, like something on a hotel plate.
The black along the far edge, burned in her father's hands. The way his hand had stopped, at the moment he stopped dropping in the cheese he never measured. The shape of an unfinished plate that her clumsy father's hands had kept repeating, just as it was, for more than ten years.
There had been only one place that recorded it.
The inside of Mitsuki's mouth.
And on that morning three years ago, Mitsuki had put down her fork and cried out loud.
"That's not it. The one Papa made was more lopsided, and the edges were a little burned, and the cheese was oozing out of the middle..."
Mitsuki laid herself down over the desk.
She rested her forehead on her arms.
She stayed like that for a while.
The smell of old leather rose faintly from somewhere near the bend of her arms.
You cry for five minutes, and that's all.
Someone said it, inside her. It was probably her own voice.
Still bent over the desk, she closed her eyes for a while.
"...That's cheating."
She said it out loud.
"Dad, that's cheating."
Her father didn't answer. Her father wasn't here anymore.
In the study, the starlike light of the darkened device was watching her.
It wasn't supposed to be listening, yet Mitsuki could no longer think anything but that she had been heard.