Cat's Back #4 "Secret Sauce"

I'm just going to go get a stent put in!

The facility where I work has a director who is 77 years old.

This is a heartwarming story about me and the director, who had the back of a cat, in the middle of a scorching heatwave where even mosquitoes gave up on flying.

The cat-backed director, who sometimes complained of chest pain.

With a weak heart to begin with, he had fulfilled his role of absorbing the staff's stress.

The discomfort in his chest started after he lost his wife.

Kudo, my salt levels were flagged in my last blood test.

The director said, his eyes crinkling in a way that was far from salty.

Director, are you properly restricting your salt intake?

My wife left a recipe notebook behind. I've always had a bad heart, right? So, she used to be careful about that when she cooked. I'm making things exactly as written, but... I can't spend much time on it, can I? No matter how much I look at that notebook, the flavor is just missing something.

No matter how busy he was with work, the director always ate his wife's cooking at home.

Now, that cat-backed man is cooking for himself. Perhaps his wife had foreseen such a future... that she would be the first to be transferred to the country in the sky.

By the way, Director, what was your favorite dish that your wife made?

I had always wanted to ask him. Whenever I brought up cooking, he would shyly talk about restaurants to escape the topic, so I wanted to ask about his wife.

Well now... when you put it that way, it's hard to come up with an answer. Just as I thought... If I say that, then again...

Well, maybe it's her yakiniku sauce? Just as I was about to say, She'll be mad at you again, the director mentioned an unexpected dish.

I loved it so much that I'd put it on everything. But you know... she didn't write the most important part, the sauce, in the notebook.

While poking at the simmered vegetables served for the meal inspection, the director continues with his back rounded once again.

I think it probably has sake, soy sauce, mirin, sugar, and maybe sesame oil or garlic, but even if I get it close, something is missing. Things he ate as a matter of course, a voice he heard as a matter of course, smiles and gestures he watched. ...The human brain sometimes processes things in a cruel way.

I actually made this sauce with her once. I think it was the day the kids were coming home. She suddenly told me to make it with her, so I just did as I was told. Did it taste like your wife's cooking at that time? Well, sure, she was right next to me telling me this and that, so it tasted just like hers. ...Hmm? Come to think of it, she did add some of the soup she was simmering next to us into the sauce. The soup refers to the consommé-style soup she used to simmer so that the director, who couldn't handle alcohol well, could eat it even after a drinking party. And so, the door to the director's memory, which seemed like it would never open, began to open little by little.

"Yeah, that's right, it had spinach, komatsuna, carrots, and stuff in it."

A moment far removed from the stress of the staff.
With his eyes completely crinkled at the corners, I felt like a conversation could be established just by nodding, so I had stopped interjecting before I knew it.

"And then there was chicken, oh, and onions and ginger were in it too."

It was a soup his wife had researched and simmered herself, using ingredients good for salt intake and blood pressure so he could eat it every single day without worry.
Since she simmered it to match the facility director's late return home, the gentle broth from the ingredients had dissolved into it, along with a depth that must have been added.

And the most important seasoning that wrapped around that depth: "love."

People who are remembered are saved by being remembered.

"Facility director, you have tomorrow off, right!"

The "yakiniku sauce" that his wife had written down as a memory, which he would surely try to make.

"Oh, don't put in too much soy sauce! ...For your wife's sake, too..."