Grimgal of Ashes and Illusion - Volume 14.2 - Chapter SS2

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Scene #22: At the North Station

Monzo had only been to that ramen place once. It was on a trip. Monzo’s parents loved ramen, too, so visiting that place had been one of the objectives of their trip.

Never again.

That ramen place, called Station, had closed down.

He hardly remembered how it had looked from the outside, or what the interior was like, but this much was certain: he had ordered miso ramen.

This ramen is amazing...

The moment he saw the miso ramen he had ordered, young Monzo was shocked. The soup looked like jelly since there was a layer of fat formed on the surface.

Hot...!

He took a sip, and it was unbelievably hot. Stars shot out of his eyes. He remembered whining, “I can’t eat this,” to his parents. His father told him, “Wait until it cools,” but it was coated with a layer of fat, so the temperature wasn’t going down in a hurry. This place was in the far north, in a chilly region of the country. Maybe that was why they developed a ramen that wouldn’t get cold.

Whatever the case, it took a long time before he could start eating. His parents suggested putting some in a separate dish, but Monzo firmly refused. Even at a young age, he wanted to eat his ramen directly from the bowl. To Monzo, that’s just the kind of dish ramen was.

When he was finally able to eat, Monzo polished off that miso ramen in no time flat.

I’ve never eaten something like this before..!

It was intense. It tasted of all five flavors: sweet, salty, sour, spicy, and umami. If there were a sixth flavor, richness, Station’s miso ramen had it in spades. What went into it? How was it made? These questions were beyond the young Monzo. However, the rich, deep, broad flavor just kept coming at him.

Miso! Miso! This is miso! What is miso soup? That’s not miso! This! This is miso! This is the real miso...!

Monzo loved the miso soup that his mother made, filled with many other ingredients. But now that he had tasted this miso ramen, miso soup was just too weak for him. How could it be so weak? Miso soup was no way to use miso. If it wasn’t miso ramen, it didn’t even deserve to be called miso. Here was the miso truth. The world is made of miso. In the beginning, there was miso, and miso made the world. God was dead. Miso was the all-knowing, all-powerful god of this world.

This is what the word delicious was created to describe!

He clearly remembered thinking that.

Monzo had loved ramen for as long as he could remember, but after eating the miso ramen at Station, his love for ramen truly awakened. He realized there were so many ramen places in the world, and every time he saw one, he wondered. What flavor of ramen do they serve? What type? No, no, it might not even be a type you could categorize. He came to think about these things 24-7. The miso ramen at Station was Monzo’s awakening.

Again and again, Monzo begged his parents to take him to Station for ramen again.

But it wasn’t the sort of place they could drive to on the weekend. It was in a town they would have to take a plane across the sea to reach. Monzo’s family was not especially poor, but they weren’t especially wealthy, either, and there was also his parents' work to consider, so they could only manage one small family trip each summer.

Before they could make it back up there, Station closed.

He could never taste that miso ramen again, but there were a number of ramen places in the same tradition as Station.