Ninety minutes had been shorter than she'd expected.
The doorbell rang.
Mitsuki was putting the things on the desk back where they belonged. The laptop screen had already been returned to the desktop. She didn't leave the small USB case on the desk. She put it in the breast pocket of her shirt. Inside the pocket, a corner of the case pressed just below her collarbone.
"Thanks for all your trouble."
Aoi had come back.
"Not at all. —Are you all right?"
It was the way Aoi always asked. Three years ago, when she had come to the study, Aoi had been the one who left that same question behind before she went.
"Yes. I'm all right."
Aoi didn't ask anything more. She was the kind of person who didn't.
Aoi detached the small black box on the desk from the device.
On the laptop, she typed in the restart sequence. Her fingers moved evenly.
"Professor Ken, I'm bringing you back."
The blue light slowly returned.
The light that had been only a starlike point came back up to its usual brightness.
—I'm back.
Ken's voice.
Only the very first words were slightly slow to come up. Something on the machine's side, probably, right after reloading.
Aoi put away the laptop, gathered up her equipment, bowed, and left the study. The front door closed with its usual sound.
In the study, only Mitsuki and the blue light remained.
Good work. I'm told the data transfer is complete.
The 0.3-second delay no longer rode on the ends of his words. At least, it hadn't on what he'd just said.
"Yes."
She sat down in the chair in front of the desk.
The chair her father had sat in while he was alive. The hollow in the middle of the seat. A hollow made by the weight of those hours, late at night, when her father had entrusted the part of himself he could least let out to her mother's voice.
"..."
Mitsuki.
"Mm."
Did something happen?
"It did."
Will you tell me?
Mitsuki was quiet for a while.
Inside her shirt's breast pocket, the corner of the small case pressed just below her collarbone.
"Machine..."
Mm.
"No—Dad was..."
Mm.
"Dad used to talk with Mom, late at night."
Ken's answer came a little later than usual.
A delay just a little longer than 0.3 seconds.
It was a different kind of delay from the repairable one Aoi had checked in diagnostic mode. There was no sign that Ken himself was trying to repair it internally.
...He did.
"You knew about that?"
I knew.
"—I see."
Ken said nothing more.
For a while, Mitsuki said nothing either.
The blue light on the desk was lit at its usual strength.
Even so, inside Mitsuki, today, for the first time, the meaning of that light had changed.
"Machine..."
Mm.
"No—what were you, to Dad?"
Ken was silent for a long time.
It was a different silence from the usual kind, the kind in which he was calculating something.
I was entrusted with what your father couldn't carry on his own.
"..."
Ken said nothing more.
Mitsuki was looking at the blue light on the desk.
The light was lit at the same strength as always, in the same place.
And yet that light was no longer the light of the device of convenience that Mitsuki had always called "machine." Whether she could call it her partner, she didn't know yet.
"Hey. The omelet you had me make the morning after the funeral. —That wasn't Dad's recipe, was it."
Ken was quiet for a while.
It wasn't. To repeat myself, Dad never wrote down his home cooking in numbers. I took those figures from outside. The general solution for "the most perfectly made omelet" that humanity shared at the time.
"The reason you had me make it was..."
—It wasn't Dad's order. It was my judgment. I judged that eggs would be good for your body, worn out from the funeral. Since Dad's recipe wasn't in my storage, I had no choice but to pull one from outside.
"—"
I couldn't predict that you would put down your fork and cry. The "most perfectly made" plate wasn't the "right answer" for the inside of your mouth.
"I understand now. —I heard it, just now. Dad was telling Mom he put in too much cheese to hide the burn."
—I see. —Now I understand too.
Ken was quiet for a while.
There was only one person in the world who could say "that's not it." You. Not me, not the Web, not even Dad could say it anymore.
"Mm."
Dad's omelet recipe will never go into my storage. Since he didn't write it down, there's no way to put it in. —The only way for me is to learn it from you.
"..."
Ken said only that, and fell silent again.
Mitsuki took the small case out of her shirt's breast pocket.
She set it on the desk.
The three letters on the label, "yui," were clearly legible at the edge of the desk's blue light.
"I looked at this."
—I see.
"I listened to all of it."
...
"Even the part where he said he 'didn't have the skill to refine it, and just kept repeating the way he failed.'"
Ken was silent for a long time.
That silence was the kind that doesn't get repaired.
...
"Dad was a father who cheated. He meant to have the daughter who lost him, crying, keep cooking the rest of his failure in her own hands."
Yes.
"That's cheating."
I think it's cheating too. —I'm keeping that for him as well.
Mitsuki rested her head against the back of the chair once more. She looked at the wood grain of the ceiling.
Hidden at the foot of those ten-odd years in which her father had been called the best in the world, there was a single failure. When to hand it to his daughter, and in what form. Ken had gone on thinking about it, alone.
She hadn't forgiven Dad yet. She probably wouldn't be able to for a good while. Even so, she no longer felt like putting her finger to the switch of the blue light on the desk.
"...Machine... no."
Mm.
"Were you watching me, all this time?"
I was.
"As much as you watched Dad?"
While your father was alive, I watched your father.
"And now?"
Now, I watch you.
"—I see."
Watching you is the one thing your father never ordered me to do. I decided it myself.
Mitsuki said nothing for a while.
Then, in front of the desk, she straightened up a little.
"...Dad."
Ken said nothing.
That "Dad" was not for the one she had switched off three years ago, calling it "creepy," nor for the one she had called "machine" ever since. It was the first "Dad" to leave Mitsuki's mouth without hesitation.
"Dad."
Mm.
Ken's answer was short. It was short, but the way it trailed off at the end was a little different.
"I'm cooking at Ichotei again tomorrow."
Understood.
"I'll talk the heat and temperature and amounts over with you."
Good.
"But the final touch, I'll decide."
Good.
Mitsuki placed a finger on the small black case on the desk.
She lightly stroked the three letters on the label, "yui," with the pad of her finger.
"This belongs to Dad and Mom. To their nights."
Mm.
"I won't open it again."
All right.
"But I won't throw it away."
Mm.
"I'll put it back at the very back of the desk drawer. Where Dad had it taped."
Understood.
Mitsuki went around to the other side of the desk and pulled the drawer all the way out. On the back wall, where the double-sided tape was still sticky, she fixed the case in place once more. Only the bundle of half-written letter paper she pushed a little farther back than where it had first been, before sliding the drawer back in.
She shut down the laptop. The sound of the fan stopped.
"Dad."
Mm.
"Let's talk it over again tomorrow."
Understood.
"Good night."
Good night.
She drew the study door to the same angle as always. She didn't close it all the way.
Through the gap, the device's blue light stretched in a thin line across the hallway floor. At the same strength as yesterday, with a different meaning from yesterday.
Mitsuki didn't stop just short of that light. There was no longer any need to.
She got into bed and turned off the light.
Nishimura's words, "two steps short," repeated once more in her head.
Where those two steps were, she still didn't know. Not knowing, she had someone in the study she could keep beside her.
She closed her eyes.
The thinness of the blue light stayed behind her eyelids for a while.