The bread: not too thick, not too thin. A little thicker than sandwich slices.
Toasted lightly, the surface turns golden brown and gives off a toasty smell. The smell of toasted bread is strangely disarming. Not for any logical reason—somewhere much older in us, I think, people are made to feel safe at the smell of freshly baked bread.
I spread on a thin layer of mustard butter and laid down a fluffy bed of shredded cabbage. Then I gently sandwiched in a minced-meat cutlet that had been dipped in sauce.
When I cut it in half, the breading gave a crunch.
From the cross-section, juices seeped out along with the steam and soaked into the cabbage. Brown sauce, meaty fat, and crisp, fresh cabbage. All of it held tight in the golden toasted bread.
I rolled it up in parchment paper. Twisted the ends tight to close it.
So it could be held in one hand. So it wouldn't fall apart as she bit into it. So her hands wouldn't get dirty. So she wouldn't need a plate or chopsticks.
So she wouldn't have to stop the hand drawing her manga.
This way, she wouldn't have to put down her pen. She wouldn't have to take her eyes off the screen. She could just pick it up with her free left hand, bring it to her mouth, and that would be that.
Serving someone a meal is, by nature, asking for a little of their time. You have them sit, you face them, they eat. But what this person needed right now wasn't to be faced. It was not to be disturbed.
At the very top of the stairs leading to the second floor.
There I set up a small folding stand and placed the paper-wrapped minced-meat cutlet sandwich on it. I'd let it cool just a little so the steam wouldn't make it soggy. Beside it, a lidded flask of barley tea.
From behind the door came the sound of a pen racing along.
I didn't knock. I didn't call out. I just spoke, as if to myself, quietly enough that it would only carry through the gap in the door.
"Go ahead and keep drawing while you eat."
No answer.
That was fine. This wasn't a meal left in hopes of an answer.
I went back downstairs.
Half a day passed after that.
Late at night, when I went to turn off the kitchen light, I noticed the stand at the top of the stairs was empty. The parchment paper had been left neatly folded. The flask was empty too.
From the gap in the door, the sound of the pen still came.
It hadn't stopped. She was able to draw.
That was all I checked before I turned off the light.
And that's as much of the story as I knew.
It was much later that I learned what had happened on Ms. Makabe's side.
That into her deadline-frayed mind, only the toasty smell had suddenly drifted. That she'd put down her pen, opened the door, and picked up the paper package. That the inside of the parchment had still been faintly warm.
That the instant she bit into it, the breading crunched and juices filled her mouth. That during a deadline, taste should have meant nothing to her, and yet that one bite had been strangely, remarkably good.
And—that at the sound of dripping sauce, the hand holding her pen had stopped for the first time in her life.
That as she bit into the paper package, she happened to look up and, for a long time, followed with her eyes the back of the man standing in the kitchen.
Not fussing over her, just leaving nourishment and going. How rare a kindness that is for someone who creates. Not being looked after, not being encouraged—just something warm, there, without her concentration being disturbed in the slightest.
And—that in the sketchbook at her side, before she knew it, she'd drawn a middle-aged man in an apron. That she realized it had become the face of her own manga's protagonist. That she'd startled so badly she dropped her pen.
"...Huh?"
That, alone in her room, she'd let out that dopey sound. That she'd hurriedly shut the sketchbook, and then, unable to let it go, quietly opened it again and gazed at his profile for a while.
"I was just observing him, that's all."
That she'd made that excuse to no one in particular. That she herself didn't yet realize that "observing" was beginning to turn into something else.
I still didn't know any of it.
I'd just cleaned up the frying oil, and, thinking about nothing more than what to make tomorrow, turned off the kitchen light.
Even after her deadline passed, Ms. Makabe didn't come down.
Normally, people who've made it out of hell are starving. After she turns in her pages, she comes down to eat like a dam has burst. Saying "I'm alive again," she goes back for seconds and thirds of rice. That was how she always was.
After a deadline, Ms. Makabe becomes a different person. The dark circles vanish, the color returns to her face, and her messy hair gets neatly tied back. Every time, I think, "Huh, was she always this pretty?" She doesn't like it when I say so, so I don't.
But that night, she didn't come.
Only the sense of her coming down kept stopping partway down the stairs and turning back, again and again. A creak as she came down one step, a pause, then back up. I listened to that over and over from the manager's room.
She had to be hungry. And yet she couldn't come down.
People have nights like that. Nights when your heart gives out before your stomach does.
One in the morning.
I sat in the manager's room beside the landline, sharpening a knife for lack of anything better to do. The only sound in the room was the blade sliding across the whetstone, a soft rasp, again and again.
I don't carry a smartphone. A life chased by notifications was something I put an end to at my last job. So the nights are quiet, and I can hear all the little sounds around the house.
The night wind rattling the storm shutters. The pendulum of the wall clock. Komugi's breathing as he slept. Mixed in with those, every so often, faint sounds dropped down from upstairs.
That night, the sound of a finger scrolling a screen went on and on. Refresh, look, refresh again, look.
I recognized the sound of that repetition. The unstoppable movement of fingers on a night when you can't keep from checking something. Knowing that every time you check, you're whittling yourself down a little more, and still, you can't stop.
After a while, another sound mixed in.
From upstairs came something like quiet sobbing.
Maybe I was imagining it. But if I wasn't, I couldn't just leave it.
I got up and went to the kitchen.