“It was full of stuff that I guess anyone could cook, but all of the recipes looked like they’d be a pain in the butt. The first page had oyakodon, but I couldn’t do it. I mean, I probably could if I really tried, but it was all knife work.”
“You get used to it.”
“But when I read the book I gave you, the author had been so flustered just heating up curry in a pouch. It gave me the hope that I’d be able to live somehow, even if I didn’t have as much of an ability to function as her.”
She added that Sayaka hadn’t just had orange hair but orange eyebrows and eyeliner too, and it didn’t seem like she could live on her own at all.
“Was there a time when you couldn’t cook yet?” Mizuki asked.
“Of course. Everyone starts out that way.” No one could do it all right from the beginning.
“Then, did you teach Mom how to cook?”
When Mizuki asked that, Emiko’s hands stopped. When Mayumi was a child, she would come up to her mother while she was cooking and watch, and sometimes help out, but she didn’t recall ever teaching her how to make anything or telling her what she used for seasoning. She was pretty sure Mayumi had said she learned how to hold a knife in home economics, but she must have looked up everything else on her own.
“I would answer when Mayumi would ask what I was doing, but I might not have ever taught her properly.”
“Mom’s been too busy to cook ever since she and Dad divorced and we came to live out here, but she was good at it. That’s why I figured you must’ve taught her.”
“Would you like her to cook sometime when she has a day off?” Emiko asked, wondering if she was longing for her mother’s cooking, but Mizuki shook her head.
“It’s fine. Your cooking is better, anyway. I was just wondering if there were any recipes or whatever that’d been passed down through the Ishiie family. I’m sure Mom must’ve just remembered how your cooking tasted and reproduced it herself. Aww, the Ishiie family traditions might die out with my generation.”
Mizuki opened the toaster oven without even waiting for it to signal that it was done toasting, grabbing the bread with her fingertips. She threw it at a plate, crying about how hot it was and looking at her red fingers. She hadn’t even known how hot freshly toasted bread was.
“I’ll handle it from here,” she declared.
She put the bread on a cutting board, holding it with the tips of her fingernails as she chopped it up before putting it into a heat-resistant dish. Putting the curry on top, she checked with Emiko about the right amount.
“That should be fine,” Emiko said with a nod. “You know how the curry was a bit difficult to spread over the whole thing? I actually made it a little dryer than usual.”
“Huh? Why?”
“I didn’t think it would taste as yummy if the bread soaked up all the liquid.”
“Ahh, that’s a good point.”
As she nodded, Mizuki spread the shredded cheese and cracked the quail eggs on top. The piles of cheese ended up turning into slides, shuttling the eggs off to the sides, and she laughed as she watched. Realizing that she had to pay attention to how she topped it from the curry stage, she used a spoon the next time to make indents before cracking the eggs. She’d failed on the first one but succeeded with dish number two.
After she put the heat-resistant dishes in the toaster oven, she grabbed the salad from the fridge. Sitting down, Mizuki craned her neck to watch it cook.
“You know what, Mizuki? On my way to the supermarket today, I found a bookstore. They’re renting some of the shelf space out, and they’re looking for shelf owners.”
“Huh? Seriously?!” Mizuki cried out, eyes wide. When Emiko laid the flyer on the table in front of her, she picked it right up, sighing in wonder a few times. “It’s near the supermarket? I don’t remember seeing any new stores around there.”
“It’s in the residential area. There’s houses on both sides of it. If you go once, you’ll know the way right away. They said they’d be open tomorrow too. Would you like to come with me?”
“I will! I don’t have club tomorrow.”
The two promised to go after lunch the next day, and Mizuki pulled out her phone to look up Sumika Bookstore. It seemed she was interested in Junka’s past, with her being born in Okayama but going to university in Tokyo and then working there too. It was important for Mizuki to interact with adults outside of school and at home. She might even be able to learn some things from someone who’d actually lived in Tokyo.
“What sort of books did they have?” Mizuki asked.
“They haven’t opened officially yet, so I’m sure they’ve got a lot more coming in, but they had one of the books you’d bought. It’s a small bookstore, but they might stock the same sort of books you usually read.”
“Hmm. I’ll try checking it out,” Mizuki said lightly, getting up from her chair and moving in front of the toaster oven. Watching her squint inside through the window made Emiko imagine how Medama Curry’s author Sayaka had done the same, and she smiled.
Once they were finished cooking, Mizuki gave her grandmother the one she’d done well, saying that she was fine with the one with lopsided eyes as she took a picture of it. Scooping up some bread and curry with her spoon and putting it into her mouth, Mizuki smiled. She started talking about how cooking in books always described the smell and mouthfeel of the food in a way that made you hungry, even without any pictures. She looked satisfied.