Rice Cooker Revenge – Chapter 2

RYU

The lights are low in the kitchen and everyone is gone for the day. The restaurant never stays open past midnight, all the customers having left for the izakaya across the street that stays open until 2am. I grab a handful of carrots from the refrigerator and stand at the butcher block, knife at the ready.

“Practicing again tonight?” the rice cooker asks.

I sigh and close my eyes. “Yes. Always. How else will I be able to prove to The Chef I can proceed with training?”

“You won’t be able to. You’re just like all the others.”

“I am not.”

“Are.”

The rice cooker and I sigh in time with each other. I have no idea how long I’ve been fighting with the damned thing, but it insists on goading me every single day. It clucks at me when I walk by and laughs when The Chef yells at me, as he does several times a shift. The whole situation is ludicrous. I mean, what the hell did I do to piss off the rice cooker?

“Look,” I say, peeling the carrot skins onto a towel on the counter. “There’s still a lot for me to learn.” I take a deep breath and concentrate on the carrot. This is the hard part. I have to cut in and, with a spiral-like consistency around the core, make the carrot into a flat rectangle for perfect dicing. I always screw this up, and The Chef banned me from doing this task. My carrots always come out uneven.

“You know what? I think you’re doing a great job as it is. Who says you need The Chef to teach you anything more anyway?”

I gently place the knife on the butcher block and turn slowly to the rice cooker.

“Are you joking? You’ve been telling me for the last few weeks that I’m worthless.”

“I have not. I’ve only been kidding around with you. Come on! We’re friends — life long.”

“What about yesterday? You called me an idiot when I was working on my tempura frying technique.”

The rice cooker laughs. If it was a real person, he would be bent at the waist, one hand on a knee and the other waving in the air. “Even I know more about tempura than you do. You need to make sure the oil is at the perfect temperature before battering and frying! I didn’t see you check the thermometer once.”

I cross my arms. “I was going on instinct. Have you any idea what that means? I doubt you do. Rice cookers don’t possess much in the way of feelings.”

“Hmph. It’s true, I’m a hunk of plastic and metal, but I assure you, I have feelings as well. But I agree going on instinct is the way you should cook. That’s how The Chef has been doing it for the last thirty years, and that’s why his tempura is the best in Tokyo… Or so says pretty much everyone who walks in the door. He only has the one competitor three blocks over… What’s his name?”

“Natsugawa.” I actually like Natsugawa. He’s a nice old man, but his son wants to take over the business, so he has no need for trainees.

“Right. How could I forget? The Chef grumbles about him at least once a week.”

The Chef has no clue what goes on outside of his restaurant. He has no idea people talk about his restaurant on Facebook, that a famous YouTube vlogger came in and raved about his meals, nor that his reviews are off-the-charts on several other websites. I look at them every morning when I wake up.

I return to my carrot slicing, pleased I finally got a flat sheet from which to julienne.

“That looks good! You’re getting better.”

I grab a sweet potato from my pile and begin peeling it. “Why are you being nice to me all of a sudden? It’s not like you to give me praise. Are you trying to butter me up or something? What? What do you need?”

“Nothing. I swear.”

I cut in silence for a while, making sure the slices of sweet potato are all the same width. Carrots, sweet potatoes, shrimp, and teriyaki sauce over rice for breakfast tomorrow morning. Maybe I’ll throw in an egg too. Who am I kidding? I’ll be too tired to cook anything tomorrow morning anyway.

“What happened to that girlfriend of yours who used to come here?”

I wince, setting aside the sweet potato slices with the carrots and dumping them both in the plastic bento box I washed earlier. My eyes burn and my lungs ache. Three in the morning is no time to be working, or even practicing, with a knife, but when else will I get the chance? I can’t afford the kinds of knives we use here. Practicing at home would do me no good.

“She broke up with me. For obvious reasons.” I wave the knife around at the cold, dark, and empty kitchen. “I never took time off to spend with her. I’m here pretty much every night and open the place up every morning at ten. No time for girls.”

“Oh. That’s too bad. She didn’t want a famous chef for a boyfriend?”

I laugh as I grab the sponge from the sink and rinse it in hot water. “You must be joking?”

“I’m not joking I really think you have something.”

I wipe down all the counters and throw the scraps in with the burnable trash. “Well, thanks, but it’s not enough yet. Chef-san is beyond annoyed with me. I think if I screw up one more time he’s going to fire me and move on. The entire tempura batch was a disaster, and it was all my fault.” I rub at a kink in my neck and smack my face a few times to wake up. “I need to sort the trash before I go home, so I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Night, Ryu. Sleep well.”

I catch myself waving at the rice cooker on my way out the door, then stare at my traitorous hand. Why am I waving to a machine that cooks rice?

I work for thirty minutes sorting the trash, possibly the worse part of my day but I do it while listening to music on my ancient iPod, the hand-me-down from my older brother I live with. He’s also not married but has a better job than I do, working in an office, making more money in a week than I do in a month. I’m just glad I don’t have to live with my parents anymore.

I unlock my pieced-together bicycle and head home. Hopefully I’ll be in bed before dawn.