Chapter 10: Starting from Zero
The apartment building I lived in stood along the national highway. Once we stepped outside, we emerged onto an unnecessarily wide sidewalk, and beyond it, several cars drifted along the road.
We headed north, the opposite direction from the school to the south.
A few seconds’ walk brought us past a convenience store with a spacious parking lot—the one that had become my second mom through sheer frequency of visits. Two hundred meters farther north stood a supermarket, our destination.
It had only taken about three minutes to get there, yet sweat was already trickling down my face. The moment we stepped inside, however, a blast of cold air wrapped around us like heaven itself.
“What would you like to eat?”
While I tugged at the collar of my patterned T-shirt to funnel the cool air inside, Yuki Ohira calmly picked up a shopping basket from the stack near the entrance and asked the question.
“I’ll carry that.”
Before answering, I reached out for the basket.
“It’s fine. You are my master, after all. All you need to do is answer my question.”
“Master or not, carrying stuff like this is a guy’s job, isn’t it?”
I took the basket from her somewhat forcefully.
Apparently deciding that arguing over it wasn’t worth the time, she let go almost immediately.
“Thank you.”
“No problem.”
With that brief exchange, the issue of who would carry the basket was settled. Then I turned my attention back to her original question.
“What do I want to eat…?”
“You do understand that it has to be something that can actually be made with ingredients from a supermarket, right?”
“I know that.”
“Somehow, I doubt it. You seem like the type to come up with something completely ridiculous.”
“Don’t decide what kind of person I am. Today’s the first time we’ve actually had a proper conversation.”
“Then perhaps you should stop making your shallow personality so easy to understand after only one proper conversation.”
This maid had a vicious tongue.
Seriously, the poison she casually spat out was incredible. I didn’t think I could ever beat her in a verbal argument.
Not that I’d planned to make any strange requests to begin with, but now I definitely wasn’t going to. There was no telling what she’d say if I did.
Then again…
Being insulted by someone this beautiful had a certain appeal, didn’t it?
No, scratch that. It felt like she’d go far beyond mere insults, so maybe not.
Something I wanted to eat…
I glanced around the store, searching for inspiration.
“Oh.”
“Did you think of something?”
“Yeah. This.”
Just as I reached for a product to drop into the basket, Yuki grabbed my wrist with the force of someone apprehending a shoplifter.
“Wait! What exactly are you trying to put in there?!”
“Hm? Fried chicken bento.”
“Fried chicken bento?! A fried chicken bento?!”
Seeing the faint anger in her eyes, I spoke as though patiently explaining something obvious.
“Convenience store fried chicken bentos are great, but supermarket fried chicken bentos look pretty good too, don’t they?”
“Are you an idiot? Are you actually an idiot? Why do you think we came all the way to the supermarket together?”
“To buy lunch.”
“Ingredients! We came for ingredients! I said I’d cook for you! Is a pre-made bento homemade? Go on, answer me.”
“Well, technically someone in the supermarket deli made it, right? So it is homemade.”
“I said I would make it!” she shot back. “If your choices are a supermarket employee’s bento or a meal cooked by your personal maid, obviously you pick the personal maid! What are you even thinking?”
“It was a joke. Just a joke.”
Her relentless rebuttal was honestly a little frightening, so I quietly returned the bento to the shelf.
Still, it had looked really good. I’d have to come back and buy one another day.
“What is it? Do you want fried chicken that badly? We can make fried chicken.”
“Not really in the mood for it anymore.”
“Then what exactly was that entire exchange…?”
Pressing a hand to her forehead, she let out a long sigh.
If I pushed her any further, I felt like an even deadlier dose of sarcasm was headed my way.
Better stop joking around and seriously think about what I wanted.
The problem was, my usual lunches consisted of convenience store rice balls and cup noodles. Asking me what I wanted for lunch was harder than it sounded.
When I thought of lunch, I pictured something quick and simple. Back when I lived with my family, it was usually instant ramen, udon, or fried rice.
No wonder I couldn’t come up with an answer right away.
I glanced at Yuki.
Since I still hadn’t given her a request, she stood there looking completely unable to proceed. Or rather, there was a subtle pressure in her gaze that seemed to say, Hurry up and answer already.
Honestly, what kind of maid pressured her master like this?
Hm?
A maid…
A maid café…
And the classic maid café dish was—
“Omurice?”
“Omurice, huh?”
Yuki’s expression suggested she hadn’t expected such a surprisingly reasonable answer.
“That’s a good choice. It’s actually one of my specialties.”
A maid whose specialty was omurice.
She really was the ideal, textbook maid, wasn’t she? Maybe this was genuinely her calling.
“Omurice means we’ll need…”
Muttering to herself, she mentally reviewed the recipe and listed the ingredients we’d need.
“Ah…”
A small sound escaped her lips, as though she’d suddenly remembered something.
Then she looked at me and asked cautiously,
“You do at least have a frying pan… right?”
“Nope.”
“I thought so.”
Her mouth fell open.
Still, there was a hint of resignation in her expression, as though she’d already expected that answer.
“If you don’t even own a frying pan, then I should probably assume your apartment has absolutely nothing in it, Morigami-kun.”
“You cleaned the place yourself. You should know.”
“You really are an unpleasant person sometimes.”
The remark dripped with sarcasm.
Deciding that further retaliation would only invite disaster, I suddenly remembered something.
“Oh, right. I do have a stove. An IH cooktop.”
“The one that came with the apartment.”
Since she lived in the same building, of course she knew that. Apparently built-in appliances didn’t count.
“Well, that’s fine. Knowing that your place has basically nothing actually makes shopping easier.”
Rather than dealing with a random assortment of incomplete kitchenware, she’d rather start from scratch.
Honestly, I could understand that feeling. Starting from zero was often simpler.
