“Okay, everyone has a drink, right?” asked Yuna. “Cheers!”
“Cheers!” Rinka repeated.
“Ch-Cheers!” I sort of stiffly followed up as we all raised our glasses.
A few days had passed since the cultural festival came to an end, and Yuna, Rinka, and I had all gotten together to have our own three-person after-party in advance of the full-blown one our class would be throwing. The venue: a yakiniku joint by the local station! It was part of a chain with branches scattered all across the country, and it happened to offer a student discount that made it a very easy-on-the-wallet sort of place for people like us to frequent! Which was, of course, all news to me!
The total price for today’s two-hour course, including all-you-can-drink soda: two thousand yen each! Which was cheap! Probably! I’d never been to an after-party before and had no clue what the usual price for something like this was, so I wasn’t in any position to judge!!!
“Hee hee!” Yuna giggled as she looked over at me. “You can go ahead and stuff yourself until you’re sick today, Yotsuba! Eat as much as you want!”
“I will!” I said.
“Hold on. It’s already all-you-can-eat, for one thing, and for another, you’re not even treating her,” Rinka chimed in with a roll of her eyes.
“Oh, lighten up! It’s an atmosphere thing,” Yuna declared with a cocky grin before grabbing a nearby pair of tongs and loading the grill up with thinly sliced beef, which had arrived with our drinks. “Gotta go with rib meat first! It’s the only right choice!”
“I’m more of a skirt steak person, myself,” Rinka said as she filled the unoccupied portions of the grill with her own choice of meat.
Before I knew it, the grill on our table had transformed into a barbecue battlefield! We were seated at a four-person booth, and after a very strict discussion of the possible arrangements, Yuna and Rinka had ended up on one side of the table while I sat alone on the other. That meant there wasn’t much I could do to intervene—I just had to sit still and watch their struggle play out!
“Don’t worry, Yotsuba,” said Yuna. “I’ll grill up plenty of rib meat for both of us!”
“I have her portion under control, actually,” Rinka chimed in. “I’m pretty confident when it comes to cooking skirt steak.”
“Excuse me? What’s your deal?”
“I could ask you the same thing.”
“H-Hey, guys...?!” I anxiously interjected. Yuna and Rinka were giving each other very pointed looks, and the festive after-party atmosphere I’d been enjoying just seconds ago had been overwritten by something a lot less peaceful!
“Who goes to a yakiniku joint and doesn’t order rib meat?!” snapped Yuna.
“People who aren’t hopelessly behind the times and know that skirt steak’s better, maybe?!” countered Rinka.
“I, umm, I like both of them, actually,” I stammered. “Oh! Hey, who wants rice?! I don’t know about you, but I don’t think any trip to a yakiniku place is complete without a big bowl of—”
“Get me a large!” Yuna and Rinka said in perfect unison!
“Did you two rehearse that in advance or what?!”
One second they were taking hard-line stances in the rib meat versus skirt steak debate, and the next, they were placing the same order with pinpoint precision! I was overwhelmed—and a little exasperated, honestly—as I grabbed the menu tablet and placed an order for three bowls of rice, two large and one medium. Then I added in a salad and some soup too, on a whim. It was all-you-can-eat, so why not?
“Okay, rib meat’s done!” said Yuna.
“The skirt steak’s cooked just right as well!” said Rinka.
“Th-Thanks!” I said as they piled my plate high with lightly browned meat in the blink of an eye.
Hmm? Is it just me, or am I not going to have to cook my own meat at all tonight...? I wondered. The two of them were reigning over the grill like a pair of feuding feudal lords, after all. I usually ended up doing most of the cooking when my family went to this sort of restaurant, so being fed like this made me feel a little restless.
“Okay, let’s eat!” I said. Our rice hadn’t arrived yet, but it would’ve been a shame to let the first round of meat go cold. The question was: Which to start with?
Eeny, meeny, miney...this one!
“I’ll start with a piece of skirt steak... Mmmh, this is so good!”
“Heh heh!” Rinka triumphantly chuckled.
“Grr... I never said skirt steak was bad,” grumbled Yuna.
The meat was soft, but had just enough chew to be satisfying—exactly how skirt steak should be. Rinka had talked a big game about knowing how to cook it just right, and she’d lived up to her own hype. I wonder if she’d cook skirt steak like this for me every day if I asked...?
Rinka was giving Yuna a How do you like that? sort of look, and Yuna seemed a little frustrated...b-but I wasn’t trying to take a side in the great meat debate or anything, for the record! “Okay, time to try the rib meat next!” I quickly continued. “Mmh, yeah, this is great too!”
“Of course it is,” Yuna huffed.
“I guess...that makes this a draw?” said Rinka.
The rib meat was ridiculously tasty in a super in-your-face sort of way. It came drenched in sauce that matched its meaty flavor really nicely, and Yuna had done an incredible job cooking it to perfection! I had absolute confidence that I was, at that very moment, eating the tastiest grilled rib meat in the world.
Love really is the ultimate seasoning! This is bliss!
“You sure can make a piece of meat look like it tastes amazing,” said Yuna.
“That’s because the two of you cooked it for me!” I replied. “Oh, but don’t mind me—you should eat up too, okay?! We’re on a time limit!”
“Naturally,” said Rinka.
Yuna and Rinka grinned at me, then got to work on their own helpings of meat. To my surprise, they both ended up grabbing equal portions of each cut.
Eh, they’re both delicious, so no wonder. Enjoying both of them is the right move for sure!
The rice that I’d ordered arrived soon after, and the salad and soup came out just a moment later. Seeing as I wasn’t on grilling duty, I took it upon myself to portion them all out to everyone. Grilled meat tasted even better when you’d done something to earn it, after all!
“So, which is your favorite in the end, Yotsuba?” asked Yuna.
“Skirt steak, right? Right?” said Rinka.
“Hmm... Well,” I began before resting my chin in the palm of my hand and pausing to ponder. Had I preferred the ultra-savory flavor bomb that was the rib meat, or the soft, exquisitely meaty skirt steak? “If I had to pick a favorite, it’d have to be...intestine, I guess.”
“Intestine?!” Yuna and Rinka exclaimed in unison.
Awww, come on! It’s really tasty!
✦ ✦ ✦
To make a long story short, all three of us kept ordering plate after plate of food, grilling and sharing away as our after-party carried on. I’d been really set on getting my money’s worth at first, but the thing about two-hour all-you-can-eat deals is that you always seem to end up feeling pretty stuffed just half an hour to an hour in.
Around the time our grilling and ordering speeds had slowed to a leisurely crawl, a thought seemed to strike Rinka. “By the way,” she said, “you met up with Mio Kuruma again after the first day of the festival ended, didn’t you?”
“Oh, yeah,” I replied. “We had to so she could give my uniform back.”
“I figured,” said Yuna. “You smelled like her afterward, you know?”
“W-We didn’t do anything weird, if that’s what you’re thinking!”
I hadn’t noticed any lingering scents on my uniform at all the next time I put it on, honestly...but Yuna and Rinka, it seemed, were a little more sensitive on that front. Mio had given it back to me on the night after she snuck into the festival...