Going to See a Movie
Sakura adored Karasushi. She adored it so much that, if the mood struck her, she could eat it for all three meals of the day. A proper Japanese person, she believed, ought to know how to eat sushi as readily as rice.
And so she stopped by Karasushi again today. Eating alone in Japan meant never having to mind a single glance from anyone else. In a way, it was the country where the culture of dining solo had taken root most completely. From one-person barbecue joints on down, there was a staggering variety of restaurants built for a table of one.
A bright chime rang as Sakura stepped inside. The chef had seen her so often that he knew her face, and he was the one to greet her first.
"Miss Sakura! Back again today?"
He spoke to her without missing a beat, hands still shaping sushi. He had been at it so long he didn't even need to look at what he was doing. That was how seasoned a sushi chef he was, and the shop had earned a reputation as a hidden gem. People liked to say franchise food all tasted the same, but the truth was the opposite — flavor varied wildly from one restaurant to the next. The ingredients might be identical, but a cook's hands always left their own mark.
"I've been missing your sushi terribly, Chef."
Sakura set her bag on the table as she said it. Just as she claimed, she had woken that morning already aching for Karasushi, and she had spent ages waiting for lunch to arrive.
"Haha. Didn't you come yesterday?"
"A whole day is forever!"
With that, she set her place with practiced ease, all by herself — soy sauce into the little dish, water into the cup, chopsticks laid out just so. It was conveyor-belt sushi, so she could start eating at once.
For her first piece, she chose egg.
Some famous manga had claimed that if you wanted to judge a sushi chef's skill, you ordered the egg. Of course that was a story from the nineties, and these days it was only half true. Too many shops simply bought factory-made egg and set it on the rice. Order tamago on a whim, and you were more than likely to end up eating something that had come off a production line.
This place was different. They made the egg themselves, and the freshness and flavor showed. That was why, whenever Sakura came to Karasushi, egg was always the first thing she reached for.
She snatched a plate of egg sushi off the turning belt, set it on the table, and lifted the lid. A fragrant smell of egg rose and tickled her nose. She ate it every day, and yet every time it felt new.
Today, though, she realized something was different. The egg was fine. It was the rice — each grain so glossy it seemed to spill light, shining. Even Japan's famous Koshihikari, she thought, couldn't look like this. That was how much today's rice pleased her.
She steadied her pounding heart, lifted one piece with her chopsticks, and put it straight into her mouth. She had been expecting the egg sushi she always knew. Her eyes flew wide.
"Ah..."
It wasn't the taste she was used to, and a cry of pure wonder slipped out of her. With every chew, the texture and flavor of the rice made it impossible to keep her head. To think rice like this existed! It tasted so good she felt blessed just to have been born. She wondered whether she would ever eat rice this delicious again in her life.
She chewed, swallowed, and hurriedly asked the chef.
"Chef, did the rice change today?"
He laughed as if he had been waiting for the question.
"Heh heh. You noticed? Headquarters sent us a new rice."
And then he told her the rest. At first he had looked at it with more than a little doubt. For decades headquarters had sent the same rice, and then overnight it was something else. That it was Korean had rubbed him the wrong way, too. Korea, after all, still sat a little uncomfortably with him.
But the moment he cooked a batch and tasted it, he had no choice but to sing Karasushi headquarters' praises. Rice this good didn't matter even if it came from Korea. Thinking of how the customers would love it, he couldn't help getting excited. He had a chef's heart, after all.
Watching people eat something delicious filled him with a quiet satisfaction. The price was exactly the same as before, and the flavor was far better? From where a chef sat, there was no reason not to welcome that.
And so, once they began selling sushi made with Starlight rice, the customers' reactions exploded. People who had come expecting ordinary sushi went wide-eyed at a flavor from another dimension and shoveled piece after piece into their mouths without coming up for air.
Sales, as a baseline, had doubled. It had been less than a month — short enough that someone might call it a passing effect — but anyone who had tasted Starlight rice would never believe it was temporary. From here on, Karasushi would only lock down its place as Japan's number-one conveyor-sushi franchise more tightly than ever.
The gap with second place was already there. Starlight rice would drive the wedge in for good. The other sushi chains couldn't use it.
"Hyah! Hyah!"
I threw punches at my reflection in the mirror. We were going to an action movie today, and this was advance practice — me, like the hero, taking down the wicked villains.
The door creaked. It opened, and Haru came into my room with an armful of clothes. One look at how many there were and my face went pale. If I tried on every single one of those, there would be no time left to see a movie. I attempted an escape still wearing my dinosaur pajamas and was promptly captured. Unless I took the emergency stairs all the way down, the only way out of this building was the elevator.
"Hana! You have to get dressed before you go out!"
Haru caught hold of me and launched into a speech. My sense of how a girl ought to carry herself was still lacking. I was not to go outside in dinosaur pajamas. And so on. She delivered it all very earnestly, framed entirely for my benefit, but to me it was nagging. I could only nod along as if I understood.
And then, for a full hour, I became Haru's dress-up doll. She had sworn to find an outfit that suited me, and she put me in the clothes she thought I looked best in.
Under her hands I turned into an adorable child. A skirt dripping with frills, a top that looked fluffy just to look at — before I had ended up in this body, I couldn't have imagined it. Back then, a sloppy T-shirt and a pair of baggy pants had been the whole of my wardrobe.
"Ugh..."
The mirror showed a child so cute that any parent would have keeled over on the spot. The unfortunate part was that the drop-dead-cute child was me.
Staring any longer gave me a strange feeling, so I turned away from my reflection. Then I grabbed Haru's hand. Clothes were clothes, and the movie was the movie. For once it wasn't a laptop or a TV — it was a real theater, vivid sound and an enormous screen!
I tore off toward the office, feet pattering. Haru followed behind. A polite grown-up said goodbye before leaving, didn't they? But the office was empty. No way...
"Looks like they left early, since there's a company dinner today. Shall we go enjoy the movie too?"
Haru took my hand, and we left the building to see the film. Outside it had warmed enough that a short-sleeved top and a skirt were perfectly fine. Spring weather like this really was the best time to be alive. I found myself wishing summer and winter would just disappear. Then we could live in a temperature that was neither hot nor cold.
The catch was that the bugs wouldn't die, and that was a little frightening. Even now, places like Australia, where the temperature never really dropped, had insects of terrifying size — swarms of bugs that made the mosquito I'd seen yesterday look tiny.
"Movie! Movie!"
I chanted it like a slogan and climbed into Haru's car. The car was already covered in traces of me. I spotted the Rumi air freshener plugged into it and broke into a grin.
I decided that later I would bring even more Rumi merchandise and decorate the inside. Rumi was a character loved by everyone, young and old.
"Let's see..."
Haru adjusted the navigation and set the theater we were heading to. I stared blankly at the screen.
Once the route was set, she eased the car into motion. It felt almost like the first time I was heading out into the city, and excitement bubbled up in me. It was a different feeling entirely from going to school.