Island in the Curry

日本式カレーの秘密

Image generated by ChatGPT by Iwakami Ran.

The streets of Yokosuka in winter. The wind is cold. I turn up the collar of my trench coat.

Tucked away in a quiet back alley stood a curry restaurant. Its name: Taj Mahal, Indian Curry Specialist.

I come here every day. Not that I can say it aloud, but — I’m a spy for a certain eastern power.

11:30. The shop opens. I enter at precisely 11:35.

“Welcome,” the master says, with all the enthusiasm of a man counting ceiling tiles. That’s the idea. Just popular enough to stay open. No more. All part of keeping the Public Security Bureau off our trail. Can’t be helped.

I take my usual seat and order the Special Daily Curry. The moment I sit down, two PSB tails walk in behind me.

They order the same thing.

(Hmph. As if they could ever understand. The meaning of this curry.)

The Special Daily Curry arrives.

Even a veteran spy like me felt the color drain from his face — just for a moment. But the two PSB men didn’t seem to notice.

(An island serving.)

The rice stands alone in the center, completely surrounded by a sea of jet-black curry. An emergency signal from the organization. “The land (you) is encircled by the sea (the enemy). All escape routes are cut off.” In other words: the order to withdraw.

Two seats away, the PSB pair are scooping up the same curry, blissfully unaware. (Pathetic fools. They have no idea their intelligence is being fed straight back to us.)

I calmly scanned the full surface of the plate. There had to be an exit.

There. Upper right of the plate — two o’clock, if you’re reading a clock face. At the far edge of the jet-black sea of curry, a single bright-red fukujinzuke pickle, sitting alone. (A traditional Japanese condiment, always served alongside curry.)

(…I see. So that’s where the boat comes in.)

The position of the pickle: Pier Three, two o’clock from here. Time limit: however long before this curry goes cold.

I tightened my grip on the spoon.

First — eliminate the island (the rice). I moved the spoon with blinding speed, sweeping rice and curry into my stomach in one relentless assault. I could feel the PSB men staring. “What’s with this guy, he’s eating like a maniac…”

(Hah. Did you really think you could keep up with a spy on active duty?)

Finally, I bit down carefully on the last piece of fukujinzuke left at the edge of the plate. (Good. Coordinates confirmed. Hold on, extraction vessel.)

I rose from my seat and laid a thousand-yen note on the counter — not placed, laid. “Thanks for the meal, master. …It was good.”

“Oh. Yeah.” His trademark dead-eyed reply at my back, I burst out of the restaurant. The cold winter wind slapped my face. I turned up my collar even higher, fixed my bearing on the two o’clock direction — Pier Three — and broke into a full sprint.

“He’s gone again.”

The young part-timer murmured from behind the counter, clearing away the empty plate. The master lit a cigarette and exhaled like a man with nowhere to be.

“Same time every day. Eats with that look on his face like the world’s ending.”

He glanced over at the two men two seats away, still quietly working through their curry.

“Those two — colleagues of his, you think? They come in right after him every day, order the same thing. Must be close.”

“Seems like it. Oh — master, another Special Daily Curry just came in!” “Yeah yeah. Pain in the neck, this dish — gotta use the deep bowl just to get the rice to sit in the middle right. Might just pull it from the menu.”

The pier at Yokosuka, in winter.

The master and his part-timer had no way of knowing. That a man stood there, staring out at a grey sea — waiting for an extraction vessel that would not come.

fin.

This piece was written with the assistance of an AI writing program, primarily in translating the original Japanese into English.