Chapter 5: A Delicious Bento

When I reached the upper grades of elementary school, I started making my own lunches.
Part of it was because I wanted to ease my mother’s burden, but it was also because I needed to make lunches for two people.

Yes—there was someone I ate lunch with.

One day, as usual, I was eating lunch at Hanako-san’s place.
Then, without thinking much of it, I asked her,
“Hanako-san, don’t you eat meals?”

“I can eat, but I’m fine even if I don’t,” she said with a smile.

Just then, some fried chicken caught my eye, so I asked her,
“Hey, will you eat some fried chicken?”

Hanako-san hesitated at first, but when I said, “I kind of want to see you eat,” she accepted with a look that was both happy and embarrassed, saying, “Then… maybe I will.”
The expression she had at that moment was so cute that I wanted to take a picture of it and preserve it forever.

…No, I should have saved it as a video!—that’s what I think now, but there was no way an elementary schooler back then would have had a cellphone.

When I picked up a piece of fried chicken with my chopsticks and said, “Here—say ah,” she blushed even more and said, “Eh? W-wait, that’s embarrassing,” but in the end she gave in and ate it.
The fried chicken from a cold bento was by no means a special taste, but Hanako-san smiled and said, “It’s good.”

For a while after that, I kept sharing my side dishes with her, but once I started making lunches myself, I decided to prepare a portion for Hanako-san as well.
I brushed it off to my mother by saying, “I’m in my growth phase.”

The first bento I made, I put a lot of effort into it, but there were limits to what a regular elementary school kid like me could do, and the finished bento ended up being filled with a few frozen foods, some rolled omelet, and vegetables.

Even so, Hanako-san was overjoyed and ate it, saying again and again that it was delicious.
That bento was the first meal in my life that I ever thought was really good, and it remains a memory I can never forget.

After that, I made and ate similar things a few times, but they never came close to the taste of that moment.
Still, no matter what I eat, I don’t think anything will ever surpass the feeling I had back then.