Snowblood

Chapter 18: Yakiniku

It turned out that at a yakiniku restaurant, you grilled your own food on a small burner in the middle of your table. It was a concept that would cause trouble in litigious America, due to the likelihood of someone getting burned. You ordered a selection of various raw meats and vegetables, which came cut up into pieces of a convenient size and thickness, grilled them to suit your taste, and then ate them with any one of a number of sauces or plain, as you chose.

"This is fun," Kari said, wrapping a strip of beef around a piece of green onion before putting it on the grill. "Like camping out, only without mosquitoes or rain. Oh, please tell me they do s'mores for dessert! "

"S'mores?" Yukie asked.

"You've never had them? You toast marshmallows—actually, they taste best if they're burnt just a little—then you sandwich them between pieces of graham cracker with a square of chocolate. They're called s'mores because after you try one, you want some more," his daughter explained, turning over her piece of food to grill evenly.

Yukie laughed. "I don't know if the concept has reached Japan yet, but you can ask our waitress when she comes by again."

"Yukie? Nee-chan, is that really you?" A woman had appeared at their tableside.

She was forty-something, short and a little plump, with a round, pleasant face. Matronly. Some women were clearly more attractive in middle age than they had been twenty years before, like Lisa, and then there were some who you looked at and thought: I bet she was something, back in the day. This woman was in the second category.

"Haruko?" Yukie replied, weakly. "Y-yes, it's me."

"I can't believe it! After so many years—. Look at you, you're so elegant and poised now! When I saw you from across the room, for a moment I thought I was looking at Grandmother's ghost. "

"Haruko, what are you doing bothering these people?" A little old man came bustling up behind the woman.

"You shut up!" the woman snapped back at him. "It's because of you that I haven't seen my only sister in so many years."

"Your—Yukie? B-but still so young?" he stammered. Then his eyes bugged out at Matthew. "Whoa, who's the huge foreigner and what happened to his arm?" He said it in Japanese, of course thinking neither Matthew nor Kari would understand him.

"The huge foreigner's name is Darrow Matthew and his ex-wife splashed it with hot cooking oil," Matthew remarked in the same language. He had taken off his coat and rolled up his sleeves, as the restaurant was warm and the grill warmer. "And you are?"

"Ah," The man's face grew red, and he bowed. "I am terribly sorry. I am Yamato Isamu, and this is my wife Haruko. Ah—your Japanese is really very good."

"Thank you. So is yours," Matthew returned smoothly.

"My sister and my brother-in-law," Yukie confirmed for Kari's benefit, her voice very even and colorless. "Haru-chan, my friend Darrow Matthew and his daughter Kari."

"I am very pleased to meet you," Kari chimed in. "Please forgive any social errors I might make, for I am young and this is my first visit to your country."

"What a lovely young girl," Haruko exclaimed, clearly charmed. "Are you enjoying yourself so far?"

"Yes, I am, very much." Kari replied demurely.

"Wonderful. Are the three of you here together on a trip?" Yukie's sister looked from one of them to another.

"Yes. I wanted to see my old home again, and they were kind enough to come along with me," Yukie's smile at her sister was genuine but a little strained.