“You look like you’ve never seen a teenage knife girl before…”
Another smile.
I was in love.
With my chef’s little sister. She moved into her brother’s apartment in Koenji that day. Her folks lived in Hatchobori—a neighbourhood for low-level officials… in, like, the Edo period? Everything happened so fast. Mere hours after my chef’s untimely injury, she was by his side at the hospital. (She had to be initiated into the mysteries of her brother’s menu before making her appearance at Kate.) Living in Koenji made it easy for her to go see him—to drop off fresh clothes, pick up dirty laundry, or ask for help with his more esoteric dishes. Chef’s back problems turned out to be pretty serious—just like he predicted. He was discharged after about two weeks, but he was basically an invalid. Whenever his sister wasn’t at school or on the job, she did the work of a live-in nurse.
What a sister.
All they had was each other.
“No, my dad’s alive,” she says one night. She’d just finished making dinner for the staff.
“He is?” I ask, taking my first bite.
My taste buds go wild for her Kyoto-style sablefish. The others love it, too. The Hindu inhales his helping; the Taoist is literally tearing up; the Romanian Christian cuts his fish neatly, then puts it away with the silence of the Black Sea.
“Yeah, he’s alive but… Hmph!”
What? What is that? Hmph?
Did something bad happen? Sounds like it.
Am I supposed to ask? Probably not. Let it go… She’s a knife-wielding teenager.
But I feel the temptation.
I clear my throat. Then ask—softly:
“Is it… complicated?”
“Nope.”
Right back to work. Sharpening her trusty sashimi knife while humming the theme song from Sazae-san.
Of course, her presence in Kate wasn’t sanctioned by the Governor of Tokyo. She was “unlicensed”. Yeah. Nice ring to it.
Kate had to work around her schedule. We called last order early, so her morning commute to school in Kita ward wouldn’t be a strain for her. Our lunch menu was limited to dishes that could be served cold or heated up in the microwave. But that didn’t mean we lowered our standards. Not with her. She kept her eye on the ball. And she really knew her stuff. Me? I was just technically in charge.
Every day, after school, she hit the kitchen. By five-thirty, everything was ready to go. Then, from six, she was a schoolgirl possessed—by the spirit of the knife.
God. What a sight.
Starting on 20th July—Ocean Day—she worked a full load. No more school. One hundred per cent Knife Girl. Did summer break actually come through for once? Under summer’s suspicious auspices, Kate had its second full-time chef.
During Obon, she tells me, “I was really happy to take my brother’s spot…” She’s wearing goggles and gripping a mini-torch in her left hand. “It got me out of Hatchobori.”
She triggers the flame and brings the surface of the crème brûlée to a crisp.
“You mean—there was something?”
I ask from the double-pump coffee machine.
“A lot of things…”
“A lot of things?”
No answer.
Well—it came days later. Under her breath: “My dad did a horrible thing…” She was standing by the mixer, fine-tuning a dessert of her own creation, a black sesame shiruko we named “Edgar Allan”. (By the way, this was not Kate’s first homage to the Master of the Macabre. We also had a chocolate cake we called “The Raven”.)
Taken aback, I say: “A horrible thing?”
“Yeah… It’s kinda hard to explain. I mean, he never hit me or anything. I just…”
“Yeah?”
She shakes her head. “Never mind…”
“No, never never mind,” says the eavesdropping Hindu.
“Asshole,” she says with a quick back fist.
“You’re the one who’s hitting people,” says the Taoist.
Then she thwacks him with the handle of her sashimi knife. Only the Romanian Christian holds his tongue. A wise decision. Well—he barely understands Japanese, so…
The Power of Kate. One big happy family. Long live the Trojan Horse!
Then summer break came to an end. Meaning my teenage chef was back to juggling school and work—not that there was any drop in the quality of her work or whatever. But, wait, there was something I wanted to say about that summer. It wasn’t cursed. It didn’t come to a grinding halt like when I was ten or eleven. It didn’t drag on forever like when I was nineteen. And that got me wondering. Was The Power of Kate working? It looked like it. I mean, I managed to escape Tokyo’s usual havoc, for once. Without even leaving the city.
We made it through the summer. We did.
The first-person plural refers to me and my Knife Girl. The tale of my third love stands alone in the annals of my history. This time around, things really begin when the summer ends.
It was towards the end of September—more than two weeks after she went back to school—when she filled me in on the Hatchobori drama. It was a weirdly quiet day at Kate. One server had food poisoning and called in sick (eel liver was the culprit); another had to go home early (something about “the vault of heaven”?); the last server left right on schedule—without even saying goodbye.
She and I were the only ones around. She was making the next day’s lunches, and I was—you know—doing the books.
After her knife-cleaning routine, she started to talk.
I was at the counter, facing her.
“I… um…”
“Huh?”
“…”
The only noise in the room was coming from the ventilator.
“You know, I’ve been playing with blades ever since I was a kid…”
“Blades?” Meaning knives?
“Like this.” She lifts up a razor-sharp fish knife, letting it catch the light.
“In my house, they were always around. I guess I liked the way they sparkled. Legendary blades give off a really intense light… and that caught my eye, or—like—maybe hypnotized me. My dad taught me all the basics. He never stopped to think about how I was just a baby. On my third birthday, I pinned down my own eel, slit it open, gutted it, broiled it and made sushi. I had a fish knife that I used for everything until I was like five. Then I branched out into other blades: sashimi, kamagata, mukimono… I was on TV, on Junior Chef Championship, and came in second. They called me ‘Girl Genius’. I was in second grade, maybe third, but I could scale a fish better than any of the middle-school kids.”
“Whoa…”
“It was like child’s play for me. I’ve lived with knives my whole life. I’ve come close to losing a finger so many times I lost track. When everyone else my age was holding a milk bottle, I was gripping my boning knife. This is what I was born to do. That’s why my dream was… going into the family business or whatever…”
“Like, take over?”
“Not really. I mean, my brother was around, so I knew I was never going to take my dad’s spot. I just thought—you know—I could open a sister shop or something. All I needed was the family name… or, like, part of it. I wanted to make my living with knives, with food. And I was serious about it. I was really really really into traditional Japanese cooking… Or, like, Edo-style with a modern twist. That was my dream.”
“Sounds great to me,” I say.
“To you!” she screams. “I was blind as a Bodhisattva. I totally misinterpreted what my dad was doing. I really thought he cared about me. One day, he looks me right in the eye and says, ‘I know what you’re thinking—but forget it. This business is no place for girls. Believe me, you’ll never make it!’ Just thinking about it makes my blood boil. He didn’t want me in the family business at all. Everything he taught me was just… supposed to make me a better housewife! I mean, are you fucking serious!?”