The air inside the ramshackle noodle stall smelled of simmering pork bones, alkaline noodles, and the faint, sweet scent of despair.
Akigami Chō shifted his weight on the wooden stool.
Creak. Pop. Groan.
The stool screamed in protest. Chō winced. He wasn't that heavy. He was just... calorically dense. He was a tightly packed unit of potential energy waiting for a catalyst.
"Now," Kirimen said, wiping a ceramic bowl with a rag that had seen better decades. He leaned over the counter, his eyes twinkling with the knowing look of a man who dealt in comfort food. "I'm looking at you, Akigami Chō, and I'm guessing that you, like me, are not a health nut."
Chō adjusted his sash, which was currently fighting a losing war against his midsection.
"I am also a health nut, yes," Chō said, with dignity.
Kirimen raised an eyebrow. "You are a large shinobi, larger than I am, and 'health' and 'nut'..."
"...don't go together," Chō finished, nodding sagely. "I love honey-roasted nuts, but that's it. I like to be healthy, but I'm not a nut about it. Call me 'Well-Rounded Chō' when it comes to health."
He picked up a pair of chopsticks and clicked them together. Click-click. The sound was crisp, hungry.
"So, what," Kirimen asked, tossing a handful of scallions into a pot. "They bring you those flavorless soldier pills on missions?"
"Kekkou desu! No!" Chō exclaimed, offended. "Steamed cabbage buns. Which I don't mind. But you gotta eat four or five dozen of them to fill you up!"
Chō let out a laugh that shook the counter.
"I mean, I'm starving here! I got a cabbage bun. A cabbage bun does not a ninja meal make."
Kirimen chuckled, steam rising around his face. "Right."
"Chotto! Chotto-chotto!" Chō waved a hand dismissively. "So, a cabbage bun and some other stuff, but we were so busy talking about the Land of Earth invasion I really didn't eat. So now I'm starving. Do you have any ramen back there? Do you have any summoning-scroll delivery?"
"We're dropping the noodles in just a minute," Kirimen promised.
"Ahhh." Chō closed his eyes, visualizing the noodles. "I would use the Expansion Jutsu for a bowl right now. I would turn my hand into a giant scoop and just... fwoomp."
"We'll bring the menu in," Kirimen said. "Is that your favorite, Ichiraku ramen?"
Chō's eyes snapped open. A shadow passed over his face.
"Oh, I love ramen," he whispered, leaning in conspiratorially. "But I can't go to any buffets anymore."
He looked left. He looked right. He lowered his voice.
"I mean, they have my picture up. Big kunai through it."
He pitched his voice high and angry, mimicking a shop owner.
"'No buffet! Buffet not for you! You eat all the narutomaki! Son of a beast-tail! You cause trouble, you no come here!'"
Kirimen snorted into his broth.
"I went to one place that said, 'Grand Opening! All-You-Can-Eat Ramen!'" Chō continued, his face tragic. "I got to the front, the guy said, 'We closed.' It says Grand Opening up there, pal! 'No, we closed, no buffet here. We a laundry service now. You cause trouble.'"
Chō slammed a hand on the counter. The salt shaker jumped.
"It's not my fault I get hungry! It's the jutsu! It's the metabolism! The hunger... it speaks to me, Kirimen. It says 'Consume.' And I say, 'Okay, but do you have soy sauce?' If I eat ramen, I'm there for two-three days. I become a fixture. They start dusting me."
"It is the most economical as far as the buffet goes," Chō reasoned, counting on his fingers. "You go to a buffet, it's 800 ryō. You have one bowl of food, that bowl cost you 800 ryō."
"Exactly," Kirimen agreed.
"You go back twice, a bowl costs you half that."
"You're down to 400 ryō now."
"By the time I'm done," Chō grinned, "I'm paying two, three ryō a bowl. I am robbing them blind with my mouth."
"So you're getting real value for your ryō?"
"Absolutely. It's the shinobi way to do things. Maximum efficiency. Minimum waste. And sometimes they give you a Flicker Scroll just to get you to leave. 'You no have to pay! Just go! Use the scroll! Disappear!'"
"The Sunagakure buffets are the best, though," Chō mused, staring at the boiling water. "You were just in the Land of Sand?"
"I was in Suna about six weeks ago, yes," Kirimen nodded.
"Yakiniku C," Chō said reverently. "Now, they don't have an all-you-can-eat at the Suna branch of Yakiniku C."
"No, they do not," Kirimen confirmed. "There are other places with the 5 ryō all-you-can-eat desert lizard and cactus buffet. Is there any item as you are going across the buffet that you would not eat?"
Chō's face darkened. He shuddered. A ripple of fat rolled down his arm.
"Salad."
He spat the word like a curse.
"Salad! It horrifies me. Salad gives me a nervous tick. You try to like it, because when you're training you have to watch your weight, obviously. I watch my weight all the time—I watch it go up!"
Kirimen laughed again.
"And when you diet," Chō continued, his voice rising in panic, "they put out a lot of salad and that is what makes me snap. I go full-on 'Human Boulder' on salad. I can't take it. The first day you eat a salad you go, 'Mmm, I'm gonna have a salad, mmm. Look at me, I'm a rabbit. I'm nature.' Then after the second day, the nervous tick starts."
He demonstrated, his left eye twitching violently.
"You start hanging around kunai shops. You start looking at your teammates and wondering if they're edible. You start thinking, 'Does the Nara clan taste like venison?' And you try to dress the salad up a little bit, you put a little grilled chicken in there."
"Sure," Kirimen nodded.
"Maybe some chocolate dango," Chō added seriously. "Just crumble it on top. Like croutons."
"No, that's not good for the training," Kirimen pointed out.
"It's still not good, though," Chō sighed, slumping on the stool. "I lose my friendly, Akimichi-like demeanor on salad, is what I'm telling you. The hunger inside... the Memory... it wakes up. And it doesn't want lettuce. It wants a continent."
Kirimen placed a steaming bowl of Miso Chashu in front of him.
"Here," the chef said softly. "No salad. Just pork."
Chō's eyes widened. The tick stopped. The hunger purred, domesticated once more.
"Kirimen," Chō whispered, picking up his chopsticks. "You are a sage."