We moved from Tojo's room to the kitchen to practice cooking.
"So, what are you going to teach me?"
She had already changed into an apron.
I had brought my own from home, so I tied it around my waist and spoke.
"Anything too difficult will be hard to follow, so I think we should start with some simple side dishes."
I had three candidates in mind.
Karaage, Vienna sausages, and rolled omelets.
Even a complete beginner could handle these.
They were also the bestsellers of the bento side dish world.
The choices I presented seemed agreeable to the two of them, as they nodded.
Kishimoto asked in a cheerful voice.
"So, what are we making first?"
"Vienna sausages."
If I had to rank them by difficulty, these were the easiest of the three.
All you had to do was score the sausages and pan-fry them.
Hearing my words, Tojo immediately picked up a kitchen knife.
"…Seeing you hold that gives me a rather ominous feeling."
"You wanna die, punk!"
As expected of a kendo club member, she was skilled at handling a blade, swinging the kitchen knife dazzlingly through the air.
Combined with her red hair and fierce gaze, it was incredibly menacing.
Anyway, after waiting for her excitement to die down, I placed the red Vienna sausages on the cutting board and explained simply.
"Just think of it as cutting about a third of the way up the sausage. Do it twice, and you get four legs. Four times, and you get eight. Easy, right?"
"Hmph, this is nothing!"
With that, Tojo began skillfully preparing the sausages.
With the two of us working, the whole bag of Vienna sausages was prepped in no time.
I decided to add a little decoration.
Kishimoto, who was watching us cook from the side, muttered.
"Black sesame seeds?"
"You have to give the octopuses eyes, don't you?"
Saying that, I used a toothpick to poke black sesame seeds into the octopus-shaped sausages.
With that, the prep was done.
I put a frying pan on the stove, and once it was properly heated, I tossed in the prepared sausages.
──Sizzzzzle!
As the heat was applied, the Vienna sausages began to curl outwards.
Unlike Korean Vienna sausages, which are mostly brown, the Japanese ones are characterized by their red exterior and white interior.
The red comes from dye in the casing, and the white interior is due to a high flour content, similar to sausages made with fish paste.
It didn't require any special cooking skills, so I just cooked them until the outside was golden brown and arranged them nicely on a plate.
Right after, Tojo, who had followed my lead and plated her cooked sausages, dusted off her hands with a proud expression.
"Heh! For me, something like this is a piece of cake!"
Having confidence while cooking isn't a bad thing.
We both presented our plates to Kishimoto, who was to be the judge.
With a "harrumph," Kishimoto picked up a pair of wooden chopsticks, making a gesture as if stroking a beard.
After dabbing it in some yellow mustard, one of my sausages disappeared into her small mouth.
Snap!
"Mmm!"
Kishimoto's eyes widened the moment she put it in her mouth.
"It just tastes like a normal Vienna sausage?"
"Well, yeah. I didn't add anything special."
Having tasted my sausage first, Kishimoto now tried one of Tojo's.
"Ah, this one's pretty good too, aside from being a little burnt on the outside."
Hearing her comment, I picked up one of Tojo's sausages with my chopsticks and popped it into my mouth.
Chew, chew.
"The heat control could be better, but for a first try, I'd say this is a passing grade."
Hearing our assessment, the corners of her mouth twitched upwards.
But we still had a long way to go.
The two great mountains of bento side dishes, rolled omelets and karaage, still remained.
***
Our eventful cooking lesson ended about two hours later.
Tojo Karen, who had gained confidence from the easy Vienna sausages, had completely lost her motivation after a series of failures.
"Haaah… I never knew cooking was this hard."
"It's okay! Your skills will improve quickly if you practice a lot!"
You can't expect to be an expert on your first try, but even so, this girl had seriously clumsy hands.
First off, her insistence on only using high heat was a major cause of her failures.
I never imagined someone existed who didn't understand that a gas stove has low and medium settings.
While I looked away for a moment, she complained it was too slow and adjusted the heat on her own, creating a charcoal-rolled omelet and a karaage from the twisting nether. After tasting her own creations, she made an indescribable expression.
"Ugh… Mmph… Hah!"
With tears welling up in her eyes and a strangely suggestive expression, Tojo managed to swallow what she'd put in her mouth instead of spitting it out, but from then on, her chopsticks only ever moved toward the food I had made.
She treated her own cooking like it was garbage.
For Tojo, who lacked patience when cooking, I taught her how to use a timer.
For someone with a short attention span like her, it was better to set a fixed cooking time.
We had to wrap it up for today due to the time, but I wrote down the recipes and cooking methods on a notepad and urged her to practice them again.
Tojo then clutched the recipes I wrote for her to her chest as if they were treasure.
"Well, we should probably have dinner before it gets too late."
After checking the ingredients left over from making the bento dishes, I decided to make my specialty: Chinese food.
─Chiiiiik!
I poured oil into a large wok, added a generous amount of thinly sliced green onions, and stirred with a ladle.
This was to make scallion oil, a process to infuse the oil with flavor and add umami to the dish.
A typical home gas stove wouldn't be able to produce the high heat needed for Chinese cooking, but this place used a commercial-grade one, so there was no lack of firepower.
Seeing the scallion oil come to a boil in an instant, I added the pre-beaten eggs and instant rice to the wok and mixed them together.
Clang! Clang!
Like a ship caught in a storm at sea, a golden wave of rice leaped up inside the black wok with every shake of my arm, mesmerizing the onlookers.
Finally, I seasoned it simply with just salt and pepper, packed it into a rice bowl to shape it, and then flipped it onto a plate.
Completed in about five minutes, the golden fried rice revealed its beautiful form on the plate.
"Woooow!"
Kishimoto's eyes sparkled at the appearance of carbohydrates.
The same went for Tojo beside her.
As soon as I handed them spoons, the two of them began to devour the fried rice.
I had set aside a portion for myself, and as I was savoring the fried rice, Kishimoto suddenly asked curiously.
"Ryu-chan, when did you get so good at cooking?"
Hearing her question, I searched through my old memories.
"When was that…"
The first time I decided to make my own bento was during the second semester of my first year.
Unlike in middle school, when my school was near my house, I now had to leave home by 7 a.m. at the latest to get to school on time.
So my mother would wake up at dawn every day to make my bento, but seeing her tired face always made me feel sorry, so starting from the second semester, I decided I should make it myself.
The first day I made my own bento, I woke up at 4 a.m. to start, but I failed to make anything edible and ended up skipping lunch.
The next day, I learned how to crack an egg properly and barely finished around 7:30 a.m. Naturally, I was late for school that day.
As time went on, the time it took me to make my bento gradually shortened, and one day, I realized that when I woke at 4 a.m., the sun was no longer up outside.
By repeating the same act every single day without fail, I had reached a certain level of mastery.
My father, who had silently watched all my efforts from the side, allowed me to enter the restaurant kitchen from that day on.
It felt like I had been acknowledged as the successor to Mikoya, the diner that held my parents' youth.
After hearing the story I had calmly recounted, Kishimoto dabbed the corners of her eyes with a handkerchief she pulled out.
"Sniffle! To think you'd make your own bento for your hardworking mother, it's so touching!"
"Who makes yours?"
"Hm? My mama makes mine with lots of love, of course!"
This filial daughter…
As we ate while making small talk, the fried rice on our plates quickly disappeared.
Smacking my lips in regret that it was over, I asked the two for their plates to do the dishes.
Tojo tried to stop me, saying a house servant could do it, but as a guest, I felt it wouldn't be polite, so I cleaned up everything myself.
She offered to have me driven home, just like when I arrived, but I refused since the subway was still running.
So Tojo walked us to the subway station herself. She mumbled for a moment before bowing her head deeply and speaking.
"Thank you both for today. I won't forget this kindness."
Kishimoto, smiling happily, was the first to suggest they exchange email addresses with Tojo. She waved and said,
"See you at school tomorrow!"
It seemed the two of them had naturally become friends after today's events.