It was the night before the contest.
Of the twelve days, eleven had passed.
Every night, once the cleanup at Ichotei was done, she had come back to the kitchen at home and taken out ten eggs.
For the first three nights, she didn't crack any eggs.
On the desk in the study, Ken was drawing maps of the three judges.
The list of judges that the magazine's editorial office had sent ahead held three names. Two were the magazine's fixed seats: the editor-in-chief and a food critic. The remaining one was a general reader the editorial office had chosen by lottery. For the two fixed seats, their past writing in the magazine was on record: reviews, short essays, retrospectives, dozens of pieces under each name. For the general reader, there was only what the application had asked for: age, gender, occupation, hometown, and one favorite restaurant. That was all.
From those three, Ken made rough estimates of the three evaluation functions.
For two of them, I can be fairly precise, from what they've written in the magazine. —For the remaining one, it's about as coarse as the average for that age and gender.
"Mm."
I narrowed down the bottom of each of the three valleys separately. —But there's no recipe that hits all three at once. Average the three evaluation functions and you get the lowest-common-denominator valley, the bottom of a safe dish that all three like well enough. If we fight head-on there, we'll come up short against Kiryu's robot, which has been tuned against a hundred thousand mouths a day. That thing is designed for exactly that job: descending into the valley of the average.
From Roti Smart's store data, I estimated what kind of dish Kiryu's robot will put out tomorrow. —Ground beef and pork and onion mixed into the egg, and a single streak of ketchup run across the plate. A dining-out median dish, auto-tuned on reviews from a hundred thousand chain-store customers. Not the bottom of the home-breakfast valley. The bottom of the eating-out valley.
"With fillings."
With fillings. —Optimize on a hundred thousand people's chew counts, time spent at the table, and amounts left uneaten, and it will always come down there. Plain egg alone doesn't reach the median of people who eat out.
"A different direction from mine."
A different direction. —But the mechanism of descent is the same. In the sense that it descends to the median of the data.
Ken fell silent there for a while.
So we change how we fight. —We take only the two whose backgrounds we know, the editor-in-chief and the food critic, add their two evaluation functions together, and rebuild them into a single composite evaluation function. The vote of the general reader, whose background we hardly know, we cede to Kiryu's robot.
"Just the two of them."
Even with the same averaging, the number of functions you add together is different, so the valley sits somewhere else. —Put out a dish that reaches that valley, and both of them swing our way. There are three judges, so two votes wins it.
"...Mm."
To descend into that composite valley, we need a few starting points. —Wherever I start descending from on the recipe database I have, I can't get there. We have to descend from somewhere else.
"Starting points."
That somewhere else isn't inside me. —It's in your tongue.
From the fourth night on, she cracked eggs.
It was always Ken who spoke first.
Let's choose tonight's starting point.
The food critic is around sixty and keeps citing, in the magazine, the heavy plates of old-fashioned Western-style restaurants. A generation nostalgic for butter and salt that stand out, and scorch marks that run long. —The editor-in-chief is in their forties, the generation on the border between Japanese and Western. Reads the memory of dashi in a home-cooked rolled egg even into a Western-style omelet. Light on salt, inclined to write about scorch as flavor.
The long-term memory of the food critic's palate runs close to Gruyère. —Can you borrow the block from Ichotei, just for the nights?
"I can."
No numbers came out. Ken, too, kept to words, laying out only the outlines of taste he could read in the phrasing of the two judges' past writing.
Mitsuki took it in.
On her tongue, one plate at a time, lay the outlines of a few dozen irregular omelets, the distinctive ones her tongue especially remembered out of the countless plates her father had made in the twelve years from when she was five until she was seventeen. The thin, salt-only plate on a winter morning when she had a fever. The thick one on her tenth birthday, the ketchup bleeding red. —Her father had probably cooked without a thought, with nothing but the habits his hands had on each of those mornings. He surely hadn't set out to feed his daughter a few dozen different plates.
Still, as it turned out, those plates remained now in Mitsuki's tongue.
They were plates that did not exist in the recipe database Ken had.
From among those few dozen, Mitsuki searched with her tongue for the one closest to the direction Ken had handed her. She found one.
—The spring she started middle school, the morning after the third-year memorial for her mother. That morning her father cracked eggs in the kitchen without a word. The sound of the eggs dropping into the bowl was oddly hard, that day only. Along the far rim of the pan, the scorch stretched long, all the way to the end. The salt stood out more than usual. Mitsuki couldn't finish even half. That night, her father washed the half-eaten plate himself. —Her tongue still remembered the outline of that morning's plate.
"—The one from the morning after the memorial, with the long scorch. That's the closest."
Salt?
"Strong. Dad put in too much salt that morning."
Cheese?
"There wasn't any."
Heat?
"High. Along the far rim of the pan, the scorch stretched long, all the way to the end."
Ken took that in.
We'll make that plate the starting point. —From there, we descend across the two judges' composite evaluation function.
In the blue light of the study, Ken optimized the neighborhood of the plate from the morning after the memorial on the evaluation function that added the two together. Once he had optimized it, he returned, as numbers, the few that lay farthest from the trajectory into the three-judge-average valley of Kiryu's robot.
Option one: salt 0.8 grams, cream half a tablespoon, cheese 18 grams, heat 175 degrees, stirring at three turns per second.
Option two: salt 1.0, cream two-thirds of a tablespoon, cheese 20, heat 170, 2.5 per second.
Option three: salt 0.6, cream a third of a tablespoon, cheese 16, heat 180, 3.5 per second.
—All three were nearby bottoms, each setting out from the plate of the morning after the memorial and descending in the direction of the two judges' composite valley.
But the bottom of the valley never once, to the very end, coincided with the very plate her father had made the morning after the memorial. It was the valley of an unfamiliar morning, one that rose only on the composite map.
"I'll make all three, in order."
Understood.
Beside the sink sat a small commercial scale, accurate down to 0.01 grams, which she had borrowed from Ichotei the night before.
Mitsuki cooked the candidates one at a time. She cooked them and compared them on her own tongue. She gave her impressions back to Ken, again in words. "Option one makes the tip of my tongue tingle. The salt is sharp, and the sweetness of the egg hides behind it." "With option two, the cheese lingers on the tongue a long time. The egg flavor sinks underneath and doesn't come back up." "With option three, the toastiness of the scorch is almost gone. The aftertaste is just sweet. No bitterness comes up."
Narrow, then cook; cook, then report back. Each time, Ken narrowed the candidates, and night by night he swapped the starting point. The thin plate from the morning of the fever, the thick one from her tenth birthday, the long-scorched plate from the morning after the memorial: calling up the few dozen plates in her tongue one per night, Ken descended across the composite evaluation function again from a different starting point.
Every night, ten eggs' worth of omelets lined up on plates.
Mitsuki herself put the plates away without photographing them. Instead, every time a plate was set on the table and Mitsuki looked down at it, the small camera inside her earpiece quietly took a picture from the height of her gaze. The length of the scorch, the thickness of the brown line, the scatter of white bits of cheese peeking from the cross-section of the egg: appearance, too, was information, and it built up on Ken's side as images. One day, two days, three days. As the nights piled up, Ken's local optimum sank ever more precisely and deeply, and the starting points Mitsuki's tongue pointed to drew closer, little by little, onto the outline of one or another of her father's twelve years of irregular plates. In the last few days, the same brown line had come to appear in almost the same place.
It was the last night.
Mitsuki washed her hands at the kitchen sink.
She retied her apron strings behind her. Not the one for Ichotei's white chef's coat, but the navy linen apron for the kitchen at home. It was the one she had used, for the past half year, only on nights of test cooking at home.
Ken on the study desk and Mitsuki's earpiece were connected over the house's LAN.
In the study, Mitsuki had opened the case beside the cylinder, hooked the earpiece over her ear, and come back to the kitchen. Deep in her right ear, the vibration that traveled through bone lit up in its usual place.
"Dad. Tonight's the last test. Tomorrow's the real thing. I'm getting out ten eggs now."
Understood. From eleven days of tests, I've narrowed it to three final candidates. —Tonight, cook those three in order, and at the end, choose one with your tongue.
"Okay."
I narrowed them by combining eleven days of how the plates looked, from what the earpiece camera took, with your spoken impressions and the numbers for temperature, amounts, and stirring. Each is one of three nearby bottoms, reached by resetting the starting point onto one of the few dozen plates in your tongue and descending into the valley of the two judges' composite evaluation function.
"Tell me."
Option one: 175 degrees Celsius, butter 9 grams, salt 0.8 grams, cream half a tablespoon, cheese 18 grams, stirring at three turns per second. —The neighborhood of the thick one from your tenth birthday.
Option two: 185 degrees Celsius, butter 10 grams, salt 1.0 grams, cream one tablespoon, cheese 20 grams, stirring at four turns per second. —The neighborhood of the long-scorched plate from the morning after the memorial.
Option three: 180 degrees Celsius, butter 10 grams, salt 0.6 grams, cream a third of a tablespoon, cheese 16 grams, stirring at three and a half turns per second. —The neighborhood of the thin plate from the winter morning you had a fever.
"I'll make all three, in order."
Understood.
She took ten eggs from the refrigerator.
The first three plates were trial plates, one serving each.
The first plate, option one. She stirred from back to front at three turns per second, lowered the heat, and tilted the pan. A pale brown line formed along the far rim.
The second plate, option two. Four turns per second. Keeping the heat on the high side, she left the rim to the flame until half a second past the point where the egg fully gathered. The brown line came in thicker and longer than on the first plate.
The third plate, option three. Three and a half turns per second. The salt was the most restrained. The brown line came in thinner than option two's, closer to the inside.
She set the three plates side by side.
Looking down at them, Mitsuki noticed something small. —On all three, which she should have cooked exactly to Ken's numbers, the scorch had shifted, just slightly, toward the angle she put in every day at Ichotei. Half a year of habit remained in her hands.
Mitsuki put her fork into each in turn.
The first plate. "There's thickness, but the scorch is weak. The toastiness doesn't reach the back of my tongue, so the aftertaste fades fast."
The second plate. "The salt has settled. The toastiness of the scorch reaches the back of my tongue. The sweetness of the egg gets pulled up by the scorch and rises."
The third plate. "The salt is light, so only the egg rises straight up. It's clean, but I think it's the farthest from the two judges' valley."
Which do you choose?
"Option two. That one reaches the farthest."
Ken paused for a while.
My narrowing came out at option two as well. —On eleven days of numbers, option two's valley is the deepest.
"We matched."
We matched.
From the fourth plate, we'll do a final check with option two as the baseline.
Mitsuki cracked a fourth egg into the bowl.
As she cracked it, she spoke to Ken.
"Dad."
Mm.
"From the fourth plate on, option two is fine for the temperature, the amounts, and the heat. But I'll make the final move."
All right.
Ken read out option two's numbers once more, one at a time. One hundred eighty-five degrees Celsius. Butter, ten grams. Salt, one point zero grams. Cream, one tablespoon. Gruyère, twenty grams. Three eggs. Stirring, four turns per second. —Mitsuki answered each one with a short nod.
Tilt the pan half a second after the far rim of the egg has gathered to the spot where it always lands at Ichotei. —From there on, it's your judgment.
Mitsuki nodded.
Having nodded, she laid her own hands over the numbers Ken had given her.
The salt, she did as Ken said. The omelets her father made in the mornings had always been just a little too salty. She began to recall that saltiness, and pushed the memory back, for now, to the back of her tongue. Today's judges were an elderly food critic and an editor-in-chief. Her father's morning salt would probably reach their tongues as sharp. Today, she would trust Ken.
The cheese, too, she did as Ken said, weighing out twenty grams from the block of Gruyère and grating it. It was a different amount from the one at which her hand had stopped on its own in the Ichotei kitchen, on that staff-meal night half a year ago. Today, she would lean, modestly, toward her mother's home cooking. She asked the habit of her hands to stay quiet at the back of her tongue.
She set the pan on the heat.
Inside her head, Ken's voice was watching the temperature.
She dropped in the butter. Exactly ten grams.
She poured in the beaten egg.
She stirred from back to front. She matched Ken's four turns per second. What matched it was her own hand. It was less that she had matched it deliberately than that it had already come to match.
She lowered the heat.
She tilted the pan.
She brought the far rim to the spot where it always came to at Ichotei.
Up to here, it was all on Ken's optimization.
From here on was her own move.
Half a second after it gathered.
Mitsuki left the far rim of the pan to the flame just a little longer.
By Ken's evaluation function, this was where it should come off the heat.
She didn't take it off.
The brown line came in just a little thicker than usual.
Not so much that you could call it a long scorch.
But it was a line half a shade deeper than the one she had put in every day at Ichotei.
She slid it onto a plate.
The fourth plate was set on the table.
"Dad. I made the scorch half a shade deeper than usual."
I'm watching.
"Any comment?"
Ken paused for a while.
—Yes.
"Tell me."
On the three-judge average evaluation function, this loses 0.8 points. On the evaluation function of Kiryu's robot, it probably loses about the same.
"Mm."
But in the valley of the composite evaluation function that adds up only the two whose backgrounds we know, it gains points.
"...It gains points."
The food critic is of the generation that still writes nostalgically in the magazine about the heavy lunch plates of postwar Western-style restaurants. A scorch half a shade deeper is a line that has stayed long in that palate's long-term memory. —The editor-in-chief, too, leans toward writing about scorch as flavor. That half shade, which gets shaved off in the three-judge average, pulls us toward the bottom instead in the two judges' composite valley.
Mitsuki picked up her fork.
She brought the fourth omelet to her mouth.
Salt. Butter. Cream. Cheese.
And, on the far side, the scorch half a shade deeper.
In her mouth, the scorch was a little more fragrant than usual. It sat right on the border between toasty and bitter.
It was just slightly outside the taste of that staff-meal night.
"...Dad. I got outside. Outside half a year of my hands at Ichotei."
...
"This isn't the line I put out every day at Ichotei. Tomorrow, I'm serving this."
Understood.
Mitsuki set down her fork.
She sat down on a chair. The round wooden kitchen chair.
The blue light of the study did not reach the kitchen. Instead, the white light of the fluorescent tube on the kitchen ceiling lit the plate on the table.
Under that white light, the fourth omelet lay on the table, just slightly misshapen.
Ken's voice went on.
At root, Kiryu's robot and I descend to the bottom of a valley by the same mechanism. —Remember the morning after the funeral, the median home-breakfast dish I had you cook. I went down to the bottom of the median in the home valley, and Kiryu's robot to the bottom of the median in the eating-out valley. They don't look alike. But the way of descending is the same.
For a while, Mitsuki couldn't say anything.
"Dad. The dish I should put out tomorrow is—"
What we have is a rough composite valley that adds together the two whose backgrounds we know. Against the three-judge average valley of Kiryu's robot on a day when everything lines up perfectly, it's no contest, even in shape. —But the smells of the kitchen up to when you were five, which are in your hands, the cheese that hid the scorch in that night's log, and your father's sly talking to himself on that one night are starting points that aren't on the recipe database I have. Tomorrow, you'll mix them into the eggs. If it hits, two votes win it.
"And if it doesn't?"
We lose. Even so, I think that's fine.
"..."
When tomorrow's contest is over, let's go back to our usual valley.
"Mm."
Mitsuki turned her fork toward the plate again.
More than half of the fourth omelet was already gone.
"Dad. From the fifth plate, one more time. Same temperature, same amounts, same stirring."
Understood.
"Just the length of the scorch, I'll decide."
Understood.
From the fifth plate to the tenth, she cooked them one after another. The seven plates in a row wore the same face. A brown line half a shade deeper ran along the far rim, and white bits of Gruyère peeked faintly from the cross-section of the egg.
The white light on the table did not waver over the seven plates.
"Dad. Tomorrow, I'm serving this."
Understood.
"I might fail."
You might.
"If I fail—"
Failing is fine.
"..."
Go and enjoy it.
"...Okay."
Of the seven plates, Mitsuki put her fork into the last one, the tenth omelet.
She brought it to her mouth.
The salt was just as Ken had said.
The cheese, too, was just as Ken had said. The faintly fragrant bits of Gruyère spread thinly across her tongue.
Only the scorch on the far side was half a shade deeper than usual, toasty and bitter.
—Her tongue stood just slightly outside the taste of the plate from that night, the night her father had confessed his clumsy failure to her mother's voice. On a restrained plate, with both the salt and the cheese held back, only the half-shade-deeper scorch faintly called back the outline of her father's hands in the mornings.
It was the bottom of a different valley, unlike either the valley of her half year of hands at Ichotei or the valley of Kiryu's robot.
"Dad. I think it reached."
Where?
"The bottom of your valley, Dad."
Ken was silent for a while.
...I suppose it did.
Mitsuki set down her fork.
She cleared away all seven plates. One plate only, as a reference for tomorrow, she wrapped in plastic and put in the refrigerator.
She took off her apron.
She untied the linen strings and hung it on the hook beside the sink.
She went back to the study.
She sat in the chair at the desk.
"Dad. Tomorrow morning I leave the house at nine. Call time at the venue, the photo studio, is ten."
Understood.
"I'm going in Ichotei's whites. I can't take you to the venue."
I know.
Ken was silent for a while.
At the moment your hands crack the eggs, I won't be there anymore. I won't be, but in your half year of hands remain the temperature of the kitchen on eleven nights, the turns per second of the stirring, and the way I place the ends of my sentences. That's enough.
"They're still there."
Mitsuki leaned her head back against the chair.
She looked at the wood grain of the ceiling.
Over that grain, faintly, lay the outline of the surface of the white commercial frying pan at tomorrow's photo studio.
"Dad. Let's win tomorrow."
Mm.
She drew the study door to the usual angle.
The blue light in the hallway stretched out as thin as always.
In her bedroom, she closed her eyes.
The surface of the commercial frying pan at tomorrow's photo studio stood on the backs of her eyelids.
On that surface, her half year of hands, her hands of the eleven nights, and the smell of her mother's kitchen up to when she was five swayed together in the shape of a single pool of beaten egg.
In the last half second of that swaying, her hand would leave the pan on the flame half a second longer than usual.