The Wonder Of Ramen

…Ah.

Ah… I understood now… That was it!

Come to think of it, when I first ate Taisho’s ramen, I had been astonished by how freely conceived it was.

The custom of slurping noodles with disposable chopsticks, bamboo shoots simmered in a sweet-and-savory seasoning to make menma, the technique of elevating ordinary ingredients like chicken, pork, and wheat to the level of art… Oh! It was truly like a Kalman cat’s eyeball rolling free! (An elven expression meaning “the scales fell from one’s eyes.”)

Taisho’s ramen had splendidly ‘shattered’ the rigid ‘common sense’ I had clung to. And that had felt wonderful.

That sense of wonder, that creativity, that free spirit… If the first person I had met had been Ren rather than Taisho… I surely would have been deeply astonished and moved by Ren’s ramen, and his ramen would have become ‘my standard for ramen.’

That was right. I had deliberately ignored it. I had been a coward.

When I had become absorbed in Ren’s ramen, I had undeniably felt the same wonder I experienced the first time I ate Taisho’s ramen…

And yet Taisho’s ramen had shone too brightly, the memories had become too precious, and over twenty years of desperately longing to see him again, it had grown into something absolute, like the sun itself… I had been afraid to deny that.

Ouri slapped me on the back. He looked at me and gave a firm nod.

Steeling myself, I stood, stared straight into Ren’s eyes, still half hidden beneath the cloth, and then declared,

“Ren… I admit it! I was wrong. I lost. What you made is unquestionably ‘ramen’!”

Ouri nodded too.

“I’ll admit it too! This here is proper ‘ramen’! And damn delicious ramen at that!”

Ren flashed a broad grin and raised his chin proudly in his usual arms-crossed pose.

“Damn right! Took you stubborn benefactors long enough to figure it out! And ‘veggie-potage style’ isn’t all there is. Like I said earlier, the world I came from has more kinds of delicious ramen than you could ever count. The kind that completely ‘shatter’ everything you thought was ‘common sense’… incredible ramen like that!”

At Ren’s words, I trembled with excited joy.

To completely ‘shatter’ one’s ‘common sense’… that was precisely what I sought from ramen!

But at the same time, those words filled me with despair… because I could not go to their world.

That night when I had tried to reach their world by pulling the Yatai together with Taisho had not been my only attempt. Over the past twenty years, I had wandered this alley countless times because I longed so desperately to see Taisho again. I had even asked Ouri to build me a ‘makeshift Yatai’ and wandered around pulling it.

But every time, I could only look up at the sky beginning to brighten, then drag my exhausted body home after walking all night.

Ah! Their world held endless wonders!

There were sensations there I could never exhaust, no matter how much I tasted.

And yet… I would be forever unable to experience any of them myself…