His headache worsened. He wondered what look was on Shoma’s face right now, standing on the other side of that door. After checking that everything had been put back in its original place, all of the drawers and cabinets shut up tight, he grabbed Penguin No. 1 by the top of its head and once more put his hand on the doorknob.
The guilt and nerves of breaking into a stranger’s home, of opening and shutting and rummaging through all of their things, had taken its toll on me, and I collapsed sloppily across the corner sofa in front of the large TV set. At first, I thought this to be a very clean house, but on further inspection, I started to get a different impression.
Oginome Ringo’s home felt too sterile. Perhaps she had a tidy mother who loved cleanliness. But the overly straightened room was cold, with none of the personal touches to suggest that people actually lived there. Though, I was uncertain if this was a good or a bad thing.
“Hey, Aniki,” I called from the sofa, hanging my head.
“What?” he asked suspiciously, scrutinizing whether the potted ornamental plant he investigated had been placed correctly back into its previous location.
“Just what the heck is the Penguindrum?”
“Who knows.” He stared at me, the furrow of his brow deepening.
“We keep searching around aimlessly, but we have no idea what color, what shape the thing is. Even today, we haven’t found a single unusual thing.”
Kanba ignored my questions and opened the drawer on the TV stand, pawing through the DVDs and other detritus inside. “If you’ve got time to gripe about this you could at least help a little. It’s too early to say that there’s nothing to find in here.”
A movie that I thought I might have once seen started playing in fast-forward on the TV screen.
“That’s true, but, even if you did find the Penguindrum, you wouldn’t even know if it was the Penguindrum, would you? What I’m saying is, what are we even looking for?”
“Well, the Penguindrum, obviously. Stop complaining and make yourself useful. We still haven’t searched the whole kitchen. Get up already.”
I sat up, pressing him, interrupting his gloomy, exasperated words.
“Listen, I know we’re looking for the Penguindrum, but we have no idea what the Penguindrum is, so that means we have no idea what we’re searching for, right?”
“Yeah, I know. But the real issue here is that you don’t want to be doing this dirty job anymore, right? This one’s no good either, eh?” he said cynically, and stopped the DVD.
Just like I feared, I foisted the whole task of entering Oginome Ringo’s room and searching her stuff off onto my brother. But he was the one who let me off the hook. Furthermore, that wasn’t what I was saying. It wasn’t remotely the same thing.
“If you hate this so much then you don’t have to help anymore. I’ll look for the Penguindrum on my own, and I’ll save Himari on my own. Just me,” he emphasized, taking another DVD from its case.
“What are you saying?” I asked. “We decided the moment we set through that door. We’re ready. We’re going to do this together, for Himari.”
Kanba shrugged.
I continued, “I know that! We still gotta try, right?! It’s not that I’m not willing to do this. It’s just, I have some questions.” Deciding that I was finally on board with his plans, I stood from the sofa. Just then…
“I’m home!”
We looked at each other, and practically dove behind the sofa, curling ourselves up out of sight. Not giving us a moment to think, Oginome Ringo entered the living room. We held our breaths, bodies numb. There was nothing more we could do. This was no longer just a simple trespass.
With a little tune, Ringo sung and danced down the hallway into the living room.
“Hooray, it’s Curry Day!”
She put her bulging grocery bag of curry ingredients into the kitchen and went straight to her bedroom to change from her uniform into her normal clothes. Her eyes fell upon the clock on her windowsill. If she started now, she was certain she would have a hot curry ready just in time for dinner.
She went back to the kitchen, clad in a blue apron that fit with the rest of her favored color scheme. She washed her hands neatly, heart already bursting with the anticipated happiness that she knew was just a few hours away.
“Wonderful, tasty Curry Day! The taste of happiness, Curry Day!” she sang.
She took the ingredients from the bag and lined them up on the counter to the beat of her song. Carrots, potatoes, onions, pork, apple jam, and big round apples. A new type of curry roux, cumin, cinnamon, and ginger.
Once the pot and ladle and cooking chopsticks were all perfectly prepared, she set vigorously to work.
As she worked, Ringo’s thoughts wandered frivolously, wondering if curry might have been the first dish ever cooked in human history. Naturally, it would not have been a curry like the one she made now, but some curry-like dish. Surely, it had been a young woman who made this dish, making all of her cooking implements from scratch, using fruits and leaves from trees in the forest as her seasonings, exhaustively fanning the flames, drawing the water and pouring her heart into it, all for the sake of feeding someone she loved, so that they would smile and tell her how wonderful it was. Curry truly was the taste of joy.
She packed some grated apples in with the pork, so that it would not get tough once stewed. This was the secret technique of the Oginome family.
She toasted the spices well, then cut the carrots up finely, the potatoes into large chunks. She wondered briefly if she ought to prepare the roux as written on the box, or if she should alter the amount slightly, but given that it was her first time making this kind, she decided to follow the instructions.
The apple jam was the very last thing to go in. Just a little spoonful, the secret ingredient.
Ringo loved the sound of the ingredients stewing in the pan. It was as if the ingredients were whispering to each other, bursting with innocent mutual encouragement, Let’s be delicious, let’s make whoever eats us happy. In the lulls of the warm lullaby, gentle white steam rose like the sweet tones of a mother speaking to her babe. Curry had to be eaten with someone special, someone you hoped to spend the rest of your days with. These were the rules of Curry Day.
Stirring the pot, Ringo peered quietly inside.