[Essay] An Unexpected Change of Heart

 By Manager

I’m the one who does most of the cooking in our house.

That said, I’m not doing anything particularly impressive. The ingredients get delivered, and I basically just cut and cook them according to the recipe. Still, that amount of work makes for a nice change of pace.

One thing that makes cooking easy is that my partner says everything is “good.”

And I do mean everything. Like she’s working from a template.

Yakisoba? “Good.”

Gratin? “Good.”

Forgot the salt? “Good.”

Misread the recipe? “Good.”

At this point, I could probably stir-fry some rubber bands and serve them up, and she’d calmly say, “Good.” I haven’t tested that theory yet.

Incidentally, I once had ramen at a certain baseball stadium that genuinely tasted like rubber bands and made me throw up. I had never actually eaten a rubber band before, but somehow, in that moment, I knew.

Still, even my partner has one peculiar food preference.

She likes things lukewarm.

Ideally, I’d like her to eat food while it’s still piping hot. But even if I put a freshly cooked meal in front of her, she will deliberately leave it sitting there until it cools down before taking a bite. The feelings of the person who cooked it do not enter into the equation.

Also, she will try to cover leftover udon with plastic wrap and save it for later.

It’s going to go soggy.

And she has a remarkably aggressive attitude toward expiration dates. If I ask, “This seems kind of old. Think it’s still okay?” the answer is almost always, “It’s fine,” which makes her entirely useless as a reference.

Basically, her standards for food fly so low they are almost scraping the ground, which occasionally makes me nervous.

But as far as customers go, the fact that she never complains makes her the best.

Then the other day, she suddenly said something that was not in the template.

“Wait, this again?”

For a moment, I thought I had misheard her.

To be fair, it was the third time in four days that I had served mushroom and spinach cream pasta.

Even I had vaguely thought, Is this maybe a bit much?

Yes.

But I had eaten it three times in four days and enjoyed it every time. More importantly, pasta is my partner’s favorite food. So I assumed that three times in four days would still fall comfortably within the usual territory of eating it with a relaxed expression and saying, “Good.”

Instead, she suddenly expressed an opinion like an android that had just awakened to self-awareness.

“What, is it bad?”

“It just comes up a lot.”

“You like pasta.”

“I do.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“Three times in four days is too much.”

Apparently it is.

Three times in four days is too much.

Even if you really like pasta.

Slightly dejected, I made a note in the notebook inside my head:

Even people who love pasta will object like a suddenly self-aware android if you serve them the exact same pasta three times in four days.

“But are you going to eat it?”

“Yeah.”

Oh, come on.

So you’re eating it anyway.

A suspiciously large amount of grated cheese had disappeared.

—The End