Chapter 1 My Ex-Boyfriend’s Favorite Butter Chicken Curry #5
“Well, that’s a relief…”
My cooking isn’t bad!
I stared at the ceiling and exhaled. The tension that had built up inside of me dissolved.
“I am so, so glad.”
Feeling a wave of relief, I flopped onto the counter.
“Were you that worried?” asked Hozumi.
“I had started to think that everything about the last four years was a lie.”
My doubts had made me wonder whether every time Kyohei smiled, said he loved me, or told me he was having fun, it was because he felt that he had to.
“I don’t know what the truth is anymore,” I said. “What I do know is that I was running around in circles the whole time, like an idiot. But I can now believe that there were times when he was honest with me.”
I was on the verge of tears again. Worried that the two men were fed up with my crying, I wiped my eyes on the sleeves of my dress.
“It’s Momoko, right?” Hearing a quiet voice, I lifted my gaze. It was Hozumi, who had finished eating. Dabbing his mouth with a napkin, he continued, “Have you heard of shikuhakku?”
“Shiku…hakku…Do you mean the idiom?”
My mind went blank at the unexpected question. Where is he going with this?
“It’s originally a Buddhist term,” Hozumi explained.
Iori exclaimed, “Look at you, showing off your Buddhist knowledge! You know, he doesn’t just look like monk, he is a monk. And believe it or not, he went to the University of Tokyo. He used to work for a corporate trading house, you know.”
“Please shut up.”
Iori smirked and carried on teasing him. He explained that Hozumi was a trainee monk at a nearby temple called Seizanji and that he had become a regular at Amayadori, where he got his daily fix of ice cream soda.
Hozumi cleared his throat and continued bashfully.
“Anyway, I was saying, in life, we encounter many kinds of suffering, like disease, aging, or having to be with someone you dislike. In Buddhism, these unavoidable sufferings experienced by humans are categorized as shikuhakku, or the four sufferings and eight sufferings.”
I had never heard about the origins of the idiom.
“The reason I decided to become a monk is because I learned that life itself is one of these sufferings. In other words, living life is also a suffering.”
“Life itself is a suffering?”
“Yes. Life is difficult as it is. Everything you go through in life, like trying to avoid being hated or getting hurt, is a struggle. But you threw yourself into a relationship and put everything you had into getting the person you loved to love you back. You even perfected your own signature curry.”
Hozumi gently placed his hand on the rim of his empty plate.
“You’re doing something extraordinary. You’re fighting shikkuhakku. You said that you were going round in circles like an idiot, but there’s no need to beat yourself up like that.”
“Hozumi…” I said.
“What a nice thing to say,” Iori added.
I did struggle. I was always thinking of Kyohei. I couldn’t push him out of my head, that was how much I loved him. It was proof that the love was real. Even if I wasn’t great at it, and things didn’t go as I wanted, I had faced the battle. I had faced life.
Just then, a sudden burst of energy filled up my body, and I felt the urge to get on my feet.
“I feel like…” Blood rushed through my veins, shuttling back and forth between my heart and my brain. “I’ve reached nirvana.”
“Huh?”
“All my resentment is melting away, like I’m…enlightened!”
I rose from my chair.
Iori and Hozumi stared up at me with their mouths wide open.
“Hozumi, would you mind doing a little Buddhist chant now? Like ‘Namu Amida Butsu’ or something?”
I knelt down and presented my hands before him. I’m ready!
“Actually, that chant belongs to a different sect than mine, so I can’t help. Besides, that’s not how Buddhist chants work.”
“Right, okay. Then can you say something like ‘Rest in peace, ex-boyfriend’?”
“That would make it seem like your ex-boyfriend is dead.”
“You’ve ruined it now. I was so close to getting rid of my resentment…”
“What exactly do you think Buddhism is?”
Dammit.
I had thought that if I kept the momentum going, I’d feel better about everything, and I wouldn’t have to suffer anymore. I’d wake up tomorrow morning and be completely over Kyohei. Imagine that! But it wasn’t going to be that straightforward.
Iori, who had been silently observing the conversation, suddenly spoke. “Recovering from a breakup isn’t that easy. But listen, Momo-chan, I have a better idea.”
“Oh! What is your idea?”
“To get back at your ex.”
“Get back at him…”
I recalled his words from earlier, that the three rules of healing a heartbreak were empathy, time, and revenge.
“You mean to take revenge?”
“Exactly. You were so passionately in love that you even invented the most authentic, delicious curry. Yet your ex couldn’t accept your love. Isn’t that kind of annoying?”
“It…it is.”
“So,” he said enthusiastically, lifting the corners of his mouth into a bright boyish grin, “why don’t we add your curry to our menu?”
“Huh? Add it to the menu…?”
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” Iori theorized, raising his forefinger. “Your curry is going to be the new dish on our menu. And it’s going to become so famous that people are going to wait hours in line for it.”
Iori winked, as if to say, You know what’s going to happen next, don’t you?
My curry will get famous…and then…
“Kyohei might hear about it!”
Iori nodded.
“The curry will become legendary,” I continued, “and it’ll be featured on TV as ‘the number-one dish in Sangenjaya’! And then it will turn into a collab with 7-Eleven, and be sold as one of those boil-in-a-bag curries all over the country. Right?”
“I wouldn’t go that far, actually,” Iori conceded.
“And six years later…Kyohei will walk into a store and purchase it unknowingly.”
I had gotten so animated, I thought my heart was going to leap out of my chest.
“She sounds like she’s preaching,” Iori directed to Hozumi.
“The ‘six years’ part makes it oddly realistic,” Hozumi commented.
“Kyohei will take one bite of the curry and gasp. He recognizes the flavor! He will examine the package and is astonished when he sees a certain name printed on the bag. And that is because the name belongs to his ex-girlfriend from six years ago!”
Iori chuckled. “Has she completely lost it?”
“Manager Iori! Please let me work here!” Rising to my feet, I offered him my hand.
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” Iori replied.
I felt a cool sensation on my palm as Iori shook my hand. It was a deal.
Hozumi watched us with a cold look on his face. “Iori, does this have anything to do with the kitchen staff position you’ve been trying to fill?”
“I—I don’t know what you’re talking about. Of course not!”
“I heard you saying on the phone that your sales were not great.”
“Were you eavesdropping? Now, that’s a dirty habit,” Iori said. “As soon as I tasted her curry, I knew Momo-chan was a talented chef. Besides…”
“What?” I asked.
“I have another interesting idea.”
One month had passed.
“What is this, Manager Iori?”
“Do you like it? I made it myself. Pretty impressive, right?”
“You’re missing my point. What on earth is ‘The Ex-Boyfriend’s Favorite Recipe Funeral Committee,’ and why is my name on it—as the president?”
Having successfully resigned from my company, I had been looking forward to making a fresh start during my first day at the café. But when I arrived, I was taken aback to see a prominent poster pasted onto a chalkboard at the front of the café:
The Ex-Boyfriend’s Favorite Recipe Funeral Committee
Heartbreak Stories and Memory-Filled Ex-Boyfriend (or Ex-Girlfriend) Recipes Wanted!
“Since you’re now officially a member of the staff here, I want to be honest with you.” Iori looked dead serious as he spoke. “Modestly speaking, I have an incredibly good-looking face, do you agree?”
“Umm…”
Was he like this before?
“With a man as beautiful as me running this café, it should attract more customers, don’t you think?”
“I wish I could deny your theory, but I have to agree. I would expect it to attract lots of women.”
As usual, Amayadori was dead silent. Its backstreet location wasn’t exactly ideal for attracting passersby.
Once you were inside, it had a lovely atmosphere. Its vintage charm was certainly appealing, so why wasn’t it getting more customers?
“So that is where the problem started!” Squeezing his fists, Iori spoke fervently. “The women start to become regulars. All of them. Some come to lunch every single day, and others sip ice cream sodas at the counter while spilling out their relationship troubles to me.”
“That sounds great.”
“But then, the more I listen, genuinely trying to help, their interests start to shift…toward me. They turn to me and say affectionately, ‘If you were my boyfriend, I would never need to feel this way…’ ”
Right.
Everything made sense now. It explained how he had become such a good listener.
“That’s a nice problem to have.”
The bell on the door made a dull sound, and Hozumi entered, mumbling angrily to himself.
“They don’t even know what this greedy guy is thinking. They’re better off coming to Seizanji temple. I could offer them much better advice…” He headed straight to the far end of the counter and sat himself down.
Iori glanced at him and continued. “Once they’ve opened up to me about their relationship troubles, ninety-nine percent of the women fall in love with me.
I always turn them down—it wouldn’t be right to date customers.
It normally ends with them screaming at me, ‘You led me on!’ before storming out of the café crying. And that’s how I ended up with this.”
Iori removed his phone from his pocket and held it out. Hozumi and I peered into the screen, which showed Google reviews of Amayadori: The manager is a jerk. I’m never going back. Don’t let this man deceive you!
A stream of insults followed. They were hands down the worst reviews I had ever seen.
“Wow,” I said. “The average rating is 1.8. How did you get one hundred and five one-star reviews? Even a rural dentist with a bad reputation can do better.”
“I never intended to lead them on. I was just offering my best hospitality.”
“I didn’t know handsome men had these problems.”
“Well, I can see that you’re definitely still hung up on your ex, and you’re a bit of an oddball, so I don’t need to worry about you falling in love with me.”
“Did you just call me an oddball?”
“And, oh!” Iori beamed. “Your name has been added too, Hozumi!” He pointed to the poster.
“Huh?” Leaping out of his chair, Hozumi took a closer look.
“I’m relieved that you’re so willing to be involved,” Iori said. “I can’t thank you enough.”
I also took a good look at the poster. “Oh! He’s being serious. It says: President—Momoko Yuuki; Burial—Hozumi Kuroda.”
“But I don’t want to be involved,” Hozumi objected.
“That won’t be possible. I’ve already handed out the flyers, and it starts at ten o’clock on Friday night.” Iori picked up a flyer and waved it around. The same logo from the poster was proudly displayed.
“Ten o’clock on Friday? But it’s Friday today! We can’t start today!” I cried.
“I’m sorry, but this will determine the survival of this café.
My role in the Ex-Boyfriend’s Favorite Recipe Funeral Committee is to listen to people’s stories.
Momo-chan, yours is to empathize with them.
Hozumi, your duty, since it’s kind of your line of business, is to ‘bury’ their resentment for good.
We’ll get the customers to share their heartbreak recipes, and we’ll add them to our menu.
We’ll be killing two birds with one stone. ”
It felt a little bit as if we were being coerced into the whole thing, but I supposed it made sense. Kind of.
“If our café becomes famous, Brutus might even want to do a feature on us,” Iori whispered into my ear.
Brutus magazine? Well, well…that didn’t sound too bad.
Iori drew himself closer to Hozumi’s ear and muttered something. Knitting his brows, Hozumi paused for a while. Then he let out a sigh, as though he had relented.
“Two glasses a day, and we have a deal.”
“You want two free drinks a day?”
“No, two free ice cream sodas.”
“That’s a lot of ice cream soda.”
“I can’t help it. Training as a monk requires an inordinate amount of energy.”
“That’s your excuse?”
Watching their exchange, I burst into laughter.
Gentle drops of rain began to fall. I stepped outside to lay out the doormat for wet weather. In doing so, I noticed that the chalkboard sign had been rewritten.
On the front, it read:
New Dish!
My Ex-Boyfriend’s Favorite Butter Chicken Curry
On the other side, it said:
Now Open
The Ex-Boyfriend’s Favorite Recipe Funeral Committee
The wound in my heart was still open and painful, and I regularly thought about Kyohei. But over the past month, little by little—and I mean teeny tiny steps—I was starting to feel more ready to live with my scar.
I turned the sign so that customers could see the committee’s details. The first gathering would be held that night.