That day was a strange one. Come evening, all four of them started getting kind of restless.
They couldn't send "Heading home now" over LINE. So instead, they wrote on the chalkboard whether they needed dinner or not.
Tono: Need dinner
Nanase: Need it!
Yume: yes
Rui: Will probably eat if I'm still alive
If I'm still alive, probably, huh.
Looking at those words, I gave a small laugh.
Meanwhile, I took Komugi out to do some shopping in the neighborhood. The woman who ran the tofu shop on the shopping street called out to me, "Oh, are you the new manager at Nightlight?"
"Tomi took good care of me, you know. If you've taken over the house she left, you must be a good person too."
With that, she slipped an extra piece of fried tofu into my bag.
Connections between people are something to be thankful for. Even without a smartphone, we were properly connected, like this.
Then it was dinnertime. To my surprise, all four of them came straight home without stopping anywhere, as regular as clockwork. Ms. Tono, even on a day she'd usually have gone drinking with coworkers. Ms. Odagiri, even though she was at the age when all you want is to hang out with friends.
"...I just, kind of got hungry," Ms. Nanase said, making excuses, a little embarrassed.
"I was curious about dinner at home," Ms. Tono added, looking a bit sheepish.
"...I turned down drinks tonight. I wonder why. When I think there's dinner waiting at home..."
Pretending it was nothing, I lifted the lid of the clay pot. Steam billowed up.
Tonight was a hotpot loaded with ingredients. Pork, spinach, and napa cabbage. The smell of bubbling dashi spread through the whole living room.
"It's called nightly hotpot."
"Nightly, hotpot." Ms. Odagiri blinked at me through the steam. Then her cheeks relaxed into a smile. "...This house is Nightlight, right? So Nightlight and nightly hotpot. They match."
I'd heard nightly hotpot got its name because you could eat it every night and never get tired of it. But before I could explain where the name came from, I felt Ms. Odagiri had found it a better meaning.
No matter what happens out there, when you come back here, there's a warm meal. It seemed that just being able to believe that was enough to bring people straight home.
Watching the four of them around the table, I narrowed my eyes alone in the kitchen, looking at them through the steam. We hadn't even exchanged contact information. I didn't have a smartphone. And yet everyone came home in time for dinner, just like that.
So this kind of old-fashioned way of doing things still works.
At my feet, Komugi licked up a single grain of rice someone had dropped.
"What should we have tomorrow?"
When I murmured that, Ms. Tono looked up from her miso soup.
"...Nikujaga, maybe."
Just like that, out of nowhere. It was an ordinary dish, the very definition of a mother's home cooking.
"Sounds good."
I nodded.
Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that this one dish would turn the house upside down the next day. Back then, I had no way of knowing.
She showed up at Nightlight one evening, out of the blue. A business contact of Ms. Tono's, apparently. On the way back from a meeting, she'd said there was a house she simply had to stop by, and had come along.
"How do you do. My name is Nagumo."
A neat, elegant suit, and well-cared-for hands. Around fifty, perhaps. A woman with a gentle manner.
Ms. Tono, looking a little nervous, whispered in my ear.
"She's an amazing person. A famous food coordinator who's even on TV. In the food world, there's practically nobody who doesn't know her..."
"Huh. That's nerve-racking, then."
Without thinking much of it, I made tea. A big name in the food world, coming all the way to a place like this. There had to be plenty of fine restaurants, far better than an old house like this one serving home cooking like this.
Ms. Nagumo looked all around the living room. The solid-wood dining table with plenty of character. The fireplace. The creaking floor. Komugi, asleep belly-up in the corner.
"What a lovely home. It's somehow... comforting."
"You're too kind. Being old is its only virtue."
When I said that, Ms. Nagumo gave a small smile.
Dinner had just finished cooking. In the clay pot, nikujaga was simmering away. Beef, fluffy potatoes, onions sautéed until they turned the color of caramel. Soaked through with dashi, glossy and shining, just plain old nikujaga. The taste of home.
Sauté onions slowly, and their sugars come out and they turn sweet. The starch from the potatoes gives the broth a faint thickness, so the flavor lingers on the tongue.
It isn't as though I think about each of those things as I go. My hands just move on their own toward "the way that makes it taste good."
"Please, have some too, Ms. Nagumo, if you'd like. I don't know if it'll suit your taste."
Without really thinking about it, I served a plate for her, too. I hesitated a little, wondering whether it was all right to serve something so humble to a distinguished culinary expert.
"Oh my, are you sure?" Ms. Nagumo said, and picked up her chopsticks happily.
One piece of potato. Ms. Nagumo brought it to her mouth.
That was the moment. She went completely still. Chopsticks still in hand. Potato still in her mouth, mid-chew. Slowly, her eyes went wide.
"..."
The living room went silent. Ms. Tono, Ms. Nanase, Ms. Odagiri, Ms. Makabe. All of them stared at Ms. Nagumo, wondering what was going on.
With trembling fingers, Ms. Nagumo took another sip, of the broth this time. Then she looked up at me as if she were seeing something she couldn't believe.
"...The way this dashi was made."
Her voice was hoarse.
"The way the sweetness was drawn out of the onions. This perfect timing in how the meat was cooked... There's no mistake."
She rose smoothly to her feet.
"You... it can't be. The legend who vanished from the spotlight without a trace a few years ago..."
I just stood there with the ladle in my hand, blank. What was she talking about?
Ms. Nagumo's eyes were wet, as though she'd met a god.
"Important figures from all over the world came to Japan just for one plate of yours. After you disappeared, the whole industry searched for you for years. You're him, aren't you? Kashiwagi—"