Chapter 6 It’s MeYour Work Chocolates #2
“No, it was amazing. Absolutely delicious. The herbs gave it a refreshing flavor.”
Huh?
My eyes flitted to Iori, wondering if he was as confused as I. Clearly no longer interested, he had moved on to cooking the short ribs with Hozumi. They were chatting excitedly about how tasty it looked.
“But it’s not really a matter of flavor. The thing is, that was not meat, was it?” she said assuredly, holding a grilling tong and clacking it together.
“Not meat? Of course it was! That was absolutely meat!”
“Listen: Chicken meat is not meat.”
“What?”
“You see this? This is what you call meat!” She held a gleaming piece of meat up as if showing off a trophy.
“If it’s not red like this piece of meat here, then it’s not meat,” she said, displaying the raw slice of skirt steak.
I had to admit that, indeed, what she was holding was the quintessence of meat. Glistening with freshness, white streaks of fat ran through its crimson flesh.
Wait a second.
“Not all meats are red, though,” I said. “Plus, you said ‘chicken meat is not meat.’ You even called it chicken meat yourself.”
That was close. She seemed so convincing; I almost believed her.
“Chicken meat is quasi-meat.”
Quasi-meat.
Quasi-meat?
“What?”
“It’s quasi-meat. Meaning, it has qualities that resemble meat, though unfortunately it’s not quite the real thing.”
She shook her head regretfully, as though she were some sports commentator pointing out an athlete’s error.
“So, are you saying that the grilled chicken I served you for lunch was not meat? You think it shouldn’t be called ‘Meat Feast’?”
“Frankly, no. I would say it was wrong to call that a Meat Feast.”
“But you said it tasted good.”
“I told you, this isn’t a matter of whether it tastes good or not. For me, what is important is the experience of eating real meat. Chicken lacks that feeling.”
The young woman drained her glass of beer and sighed with great satisfaction.
She spoke with such confidence, I started to wonder if I was the one who was mistaken here.
After wiping off the grease from her hands with a hot hand towel, she pulled out her business card holder.
“I do sales at a book publisher.”
Drawing three business cards from it, she offered them to us.
Kikuno Yamada
Section Head—Sales
Seiran Publishing
“Today, I was out visiting clients and stopped by at Amayadori. But I couldn’t have any real meat while there, which is why I’m here right now. Do you know what I mean?”
Not in the slightest.
“After all, my motto is ‘one good meat a day.’ ”
Kikuno held her index finger up to my face.
“One…good…meat…a day?”
“As opposed to one good deed a day,” Hozumi muttered before taking a sip of his egg drop soup.
“ ‘One good deed a day’ means doing something good at least once a day, right? I’m definitely not cut out for something like that. Having meat at least once a day for my own benefit, that is much more important in my life.”
“Right…”
“I’d planned on having my ‘one meat’ of the day at Amayadori, but then I was served chicken. So I had to make my way to this yakiniku restaurant with urgency. It was a close call.”
“But chicken is meat!”
“Chicken is quasi-meat,” Kikuno said adamantly. “This is a nonnegotiable matter.”
What is wrong with her? Why is she so stubborn?
“Ms. Yamada.” Iori raised his hand as if he were in a classroom, suddenly interested. “What about pork? Is it meat, or is it quasi-meat?” He was clearly enjoying this.
“Good question. Pork is meat.”
“But pork turns white when you cook it. Is that acceptable?”
“Well, that does make it inferior to beef, obviously. However, it’s acceptable.”
Which part of that is obvious?
With her speaking so matter-of-factly, and with Iori and Hozumi listening so amusedly, I was really starting to feel as if I was the crazy one.
“What about lamb?” I tested her.
“Above pork but below beef. It is meat, though.”
“Hamburger steak?”
“Above chicken, below pork. It would be cutting it pretty close, but it’s still meat.”
I tried to trip her up. “What about chicken karaage?”
“I suppose that would be quasi-meat.”
I guessed that no matter how hard it tried, chicken was never going to make the team.
“I kind of get what you mean.” Iori chuckled. “I can relate to it, just a little. But why do you care so much about being able to eat meat?”
Kikuno looked as though she wanted to say, Do you really wanna know? and furrowed her brow as she reached for the menu. She ordered additional portions of meat, and we decided to do the same.
“I grew up on a farm,” she began to tell us. Kikuno rolled her falling sleeves back up and turned the knob to adjust the flame on the grill.
“My family grows rice in Nagano. I lived with my grandparents, my parents, and my younger brothers—three hungry growing boys.”
“So there were eight of you?” Hozumi said, counting on his fingers. “That’s a big family.”
“It was chaos. We weren’t necessarily wealthy, and because we were farmers, we mostly ate our own produce, which meant our meals were normally vegetable-based.
So on the rare occasions meat was served, it was like war.
My brothers would go wild and dig right in, and I wanted to make sure my hardworking father got his share, too.
Most of the time, there wasn’t enough left for me to satisfy my hunger. ”
The waiter replaced our gridirons with clean ones. Like an inquisitive bird, Kikuno carefully inspected hers as she continued her story.
“Which is why I’ve always had this longing for meat. When I was a young child, I decided that when I grew up, I would move to Tokyo and eat as much meat as I could. But after I started working for a publisher, I became so busy that I forgot all about my hunger.”
Iori chimed in thoughtfully, “I do get the impression that people in publishing are workaholics. The kind of people who work until three in the morning.”
Kikuno nodded her head at Iori’s words. “It’s exactly that.
We work to impossible schedules and targets, and we have to juggle so many different things.
But I enjoyed it. When I first started, I wanted to be able to do the job on my own so badly that I spent most of my time outside of bed working. But then…”
Seemingly satisfied that the flame was now at the right strength, Kikuno laid the thick slices of marbled beef on the gridiron in a reverential manner.
“It was springtime, just after my twenty-seventh birthday. An executive at one of the companies I work with took me out to a fancy steakhouse. The experience was so…well, it’s hard to explain. I didn’t think it was just delicious.”
Kikuno’s eyes lit up as she looked at us.
“The moment I bit off a chunk of that meat, it felt like every cell in my body came back to life. And I thought, My body deserves nourishing foods. If I work hard, I can nourish myself with this kind of food. From now on, I’m going to work for the sake of myself.
Eating that steak made me go, I’m alive! ”
Embracing Kikuno’s motto, Iori stuffed his mouth with a piece of short rib. “That’s where the ‘one meat a day’ motto comes from.”
“Yes. At some point, I was able to just let go and think, I’m going to work to eat meat, and eat meat to work. It may be a simple way to live, but there’s nothing wrong with that.”
I felt a surge of emotion that I couldn’t seem to suppress. Before I knew it, my vision had turned blurry. I had no idea that this was the reason she’d come to the café.
“It’s too soon to cry, Momo-chan,” Iori said.
“Just a moment ago, you were adamant that chicken was meat,” Hozumi added.
Using the fresh hot hand towel that Hozumi requested for me, I mopped my eyes.
“I’m sorry that I failed to serve you meat, even though you had taken the time to come to Amayadori.”
I knew I was being inconsistent. But until now, despite calling myself a chef, I had failed to see the direct connection between “eating” and “living.” That was what I was missing.
Seeing my tear-filled eyes, Kikuno waved her hands concernedly.
“Oh, no, please don’t apologize. The real reason I was there was because I’m interested in making an appointment with the Ex-Boyfriend’s Favorite Recipe Funeral Committee. I thought I’d check out the café first.”
“The Funeral Committee?”
My tears dried instantly.
“Then it was good that we ran into you here!” Iori said. “What type of meat do you use in your ex-boyfriend’s recipe? Let me guess—a cut of the prestigious Matsusaka beef?” he asked as he rubbed his sticky hands on a hot hand towel.
“Actually, it’s chocolate.”
“What?”
Out of nowhere, I felt a sharp coldness on the nape of my neck. Glancing up, I saw another droplet fall from the sky, this time hitting somewhere around my eyelid.
Not again.
“And of course it’s raining—it’s a Funeral Committee night,” Hozumi mumbled as we made our way back from the yakiniku restaurant to the café.
“I’m starting to think that it rains because you always say that,” I said.
“I’m only stating a fact.”
We walked briskly toward Amayadori, hugging our bellies, which were filled to the brim with meat. Leading the pack was none other than Kikuno. Striding down the street with her long limbs, there was a lightness to her step that made it hard to believe that she had eaten the most.
She’s a woman who makes you want to pursue her.
Watching the straight-backed figure in front of me, I felt the urge to catch up with her.
I found myself going faster to keep myself from being left behind.
Kikuno had this kind of mysterious charisma, though she probably didn’t realize it herself.
To be honest, she didn’t look like the type of person who had relationship troubles.
I didn’t have the slightest idea what it was that she wanted to talk about.
Arriving at Amayadori, we hung up our wet jackets, and I led Kikuno to the sofa. Rubbing her hair with the towel around her neck, she took another long look around the café.