I’m not going to let this food and these girls make me feel out of place. “We have a very similar dish in Shin that’s a meatball with egg inside,” I say.
“Friendship between Shin and Pearl is very strong,” says Suki. I can’t tell if she’s mocking me. “What do you call that dish from Shin?”
Stupid me, why did I bring up anything about Shin? “We call it … meatball with egg inside.” Make me drink sand to death, Shinians are such peasants.
Course Number Two: “Clarity of the Moon.” It turns out that shortly before the start of the school year, Pearl was hit with a tsunami that washed ashore all sorts of unusual creatures churned up from the bottom of the sea. The chefs of Pearl mobilized and harvested all of them before scholars of science could collect them for study. The sea creatures are so rare that they don’t even have proper names.
The dish is served on a lovely porcelain plate that has a poem written on it in spidery black calligraphy. I can read the poem through the food because everything in this dish is bleached transparent in kelp vinegar. There’s a blanket of wide clear noodle garlanded with cucumbers cut as thin as paper and slices of uncooked white fish. At the center, encased in a bubble of gelatin, is a translucent creature that I’ve never seen before. It’s sealed in a dumpling made out of what looks like its own birthing sac, tied closed with its own pink intestines. The creature stares out at me from inside the sac with one great silver eye.
Then it blinks.
All the students begin to devour the dish.
Somehow, I manage to get this creature down my throat and make it stay there, but I don’t like to talk about the experience. It’s behind me now.
Course Number Three: “Geh-Hu.” After conquering the translucent sea creature, I feel a swell of confidence. How much worse could it get?
The conversation is also going well. I didn’t mean to insult Suki when I asked about Pearl Girl Detention Colony or whatever it’s called. But I’ve managed to save the evening. My skills of conversation are very high. I know that sounds conceited. But words are power. Look at Cricket. He even speaks Shinian like a foreign language.
As I’m thinking this, they bring out the dishes of tofu. No, not tofu! I turn toward Cricket, but it’s too late.
When he sees the tofu, Cricket says to Mitsuko in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear, “Oh, I can’t eat tofu. I developed an allergy to my own saliva after I started my ivory yin salt treatments to improve my wu liu practice. Whenever I eat tofu, I salivate so much. When I have to swallow so much of my saliva, I cough. The coughing causes me to salivate more. Which causes me to cough even more. It always ends in violent vomiting.”
Ten thousand years of stomach gas.
The girls giggle behind their hands. Mitsuko explains to Cricket, “It’s not tofu. It’s imitation tofu.”
Etsuko explains, “It’s made out of crabmeat. But it tastes just like the real thing.”
Chiriko adds with reverence, “It’s a new hatsubai.” I think that means new product. “From Eda.”
Suki says, “Of course.”
“Of course,” coo all the other girls in agreement.
Course Number Four: “The Cave of Jade.” It’s a rubbery cylinder, like a sea cucumber. The only features on it are four moist, glistening tubes growing out of its back, each ending in something that looks like a mouth with puckered lips.
The Shinian serving girl ladles seawater seasoned with eight-horned star anise over the thing. She catches my eye. I think she recognizes me as the Peony-Level Brightstar. It looks like she wants to show me how to eat it, but the last thing I want is for Suki and the other girls to see me talking with the Shinian servants, so I pretend not to see her. She bows and turns away in silence.
I instantly feel regret. She’s Shinian and she only wanted to be kind to me because I just arrived from Shin. And I dismissed her like a scrap of trash. I turn to her but only see the back of her head, braids bobbing as she skates away.
I watch the other girls. They take their eating sticks, insert them into one of the four tubes, and split them open. Green fluid leaks out. They each twist a tube off, dip it in the fluid, and eat.
Across the table, Cricket pokes his dish in the middle. It immediately deflates and shrivels.
“That’s not how you eat it. You’ve ruined it!” cries Noriko. “Well, don’t think you’ll get another one. That creature’s very rare.”
I immediately spear mine through the middle with my eating sticks, too.
Course Number Five: “Tea Olive Pies.” Finally, something that I recognize. I’m so grateful. Just sweet bean jam flavored with osmanthus in a moon cake crust. Nothing with blinking eyes or multiple tubes coming out of it. I savor every bite. I never want it to end.
Final Course: “First Kiss.” The eating sticks are taken away by the serving girls. A blunt knife is brought out. Then we’re each served a bristled tongue impaled on a stick.
I can’t do it. I drop mine on the floor when no one is looking.
When the last of the dishes is cleared, Supreme Sensei Master Jio stands up to address us.
“Ahihahaha! So sweet to watch you eat, little embryos. But as you shall learn when you attain sagehood, nourish abundance to nurture perfectly.” I’m starting to think that I simply can’t understand anything that comes out of
