“Don’t you think a woman touching her earlobe is a charming gesture—kind of sexy?”

“Tsukiko, that sort of thing doesn’t suit you.”

“Pardon me.”

As I rinsed the somen, my gaze was fixed on Sensei’s hands wielding the kitchen knife. Egg, myoga ginger, shiso, scallions, shredded cucumber, crushed sesame seeds, umeboshi paste, simmered eggplant. He prepared the condiments, one after another. He served each on its own small plate. I dumped the drained noodles into a large bowl, and Sensei furrowed his brow.

“Tsukiko, that simply won’t do for the somen,” Sensei said as he returned the noodles to the colander. He immersed the colander in water again, and then he drained smaller clumps of noodles, one at a time. He wound each clump into its own bundle as he put them back in the large bowl.

“This makes it easy to pick up with chopsticks, doesn’t it? Here, Tsukiko, you try it.”

What difference does it make, since you’re going to eat them anyway? I held back these words as I fumbled at scooping the somen noodles into separate lumps. Sensei carried the plates of condiments into the tatami room where the low table was set up. The glass doors had been flung open, and the cicadas were buzzing outside. It was Saturday afternoon.

We had eaten lunch here another time, just before the end of the rainy season. That day we’d had soba. I’d been sprawled at the low table while Sensei prepared the meal. At first he’d said, Make yourself comfortable, Tsukiko, but after a while he’d scolded me. At least you can set up the tray stand. While Sensei was swiftly coming and going between the kitchen and the tatami room, I had wiped down the table and dillydallied about, slowly bringing out some small plates. Eventually he had said to me, “You’d better just sit back down, Tsukiko. Otherwise, you’ll only be in my way.”

That was two weeks ago. The rainy season had ended, and the hot weather had arrived. It was true what they said about the first ten days after the rainy season always being hot and dry.

“Sensei, you’re actually quite the chef, aren’t you?” I said to him.

He’d once told me that he hardly ever cooked.

“Well, nowadays I have started cooking occasionally,” he replied. “When my wife first ran off, I had no choice but to cook all my own meals.”

“I see.”

“Let’s dig in, Tsukiko, shall we?”

The yellow of the egg and the green of the shiso, the lapis of the eggplant along with the pale red of the myoga ginger. Sensei and I slurped our somen noodles as we listened to the drone of the cicadas and the leaves of the cherry trees rustling in the garden. When we had eaten all of the somen that was in the bowl, Sensei went to the kitchen and emptied the rest of the noodles from the colander into the bowl and brought it back out.

“Sensei, the somen doesn’t seem easier to eat this way. Haven’t you just dumped all the noodles into the bowl?” When I pointed this out, Sensei looked at me with a deadpan expression. “Well, that’s just the way it goes.” He scattered a heap of myoga ginger into his dipping sauce and then took some noodles with his chopsticks. The songs of the min-min cicadas and the abura cicadas seemed to be vying with each other. Every so often a faint breeze would pass through, cool against the sweaty napes of our necks. We ate up the somen, devouring every last noodle.