Chapter Three | The Bowls We Carry

Yui had never learned how to cook.

Not really.

She knew how to follow a recipe, how to boil rice and stir soup, but the kind of cooking that happened in the teahouse—it wasn’t about instructions. It was about remembering. And scent. And sound.

That morning, the kitchen was quiet except for the gentle clatter of knives against wood and the bubbling of broth on the stove. Aya-san handed her a bunch of shiso leaves and gestured: “Tear, not cut.”

Yui obeyed. The scent rose—peppery, green, clean. It reminded her of summers that didn’t hurt. Of the small garden her grandmother once kept, with mismatched pots and tiny blossoms leaning toward the sun.

"Food remembers," Aya said quietly, as if she'd heard Yui’s thoughts. “It holds what we forget.”

They prepared ochazuke that day—tea over rice, with umeboshi, seaweed, and grilled fish flaked gently with chopsticks. A dish for comfort. A dish for returning.

The woman who came in around noon wore a crisp suit and shoes too loud for the wooden floor. Her eyes were tired in a way that no amount of sleep could fix. She sat in the far corner, tapping her phone with the kind of urgency that doesn't belong in places like this.

Aya-san didn’t say a word. She simply brought the ochazuke, set it down, and returned to the kitchen.

Yui peeked through the curtain. The woman stared at the bowl for a long time. Then slowly, as if remembering how to eat, picked up her spoon.

She didn’t finish it. But when she left, she bowed. Deeply. And her eyes looked slightly less lost.

That evening, as Yui was stacking bowls to wash, she asked, “How did you know what to make for her?”

Aya-san paused, wiped her hands, and said simply:
"She looked like someone who needed something warm to carry."

Yui thought about that long after the dishes were clean.

How many of us, she wondered, carry hunger that has nothing to do with food?