One May morning, a sweet smell leaked out from Spice’s workshop.
“That makes fourteen kinds now.”
To Kopo’s eyes, the small bottles lined up on the workbench looked like nothing but suspicious lab chemicals, but each one bore a carefully written label. Spring water from Dragon God’s Lake, mint leaves Keromi had picked and dried last summer, honey shared from Mocchi’s field.
“Why not just mix them all together at once? Wouldn’t that make something even more amazing?”
Just as Kopo reached out to knock the bottles over in a row, Spice’s hand moved a beat faster.
“It’s not about mixing everything together. What you combine with what — that’s everything.”
“…Talent thing?”
“Ingredients thing.”
Outside, wind stroked the pond’s surface. The tip of a weeping cherry branch swayed sharply, and a single young leaf stuck to the workshop window before fluttering back off. Spice followed its movement with his eyes for a while, then turned back to the bottles in front of him.
Sonchō poked his head in from the veranda . “Spice, what’s today’s cup?”
Without answering, Spice poured just a little into a small glass. Water, and a single fragment of mint.
“That’s not something you can drink.” Sonchō snorted .
“subtraction is the hardest part.” Spice said, and held out the glass.
Kopo took it and drank a sip.
It was cold, with the faintest hint of a green scent. The pond visible from the workshop window carried the color of morning sun even without anything added to it.
Margin note: That evening, after Kopo got home, he used only a single color of paint to draw a small picture of a pond.
【Today’s Motif】
- Cocktail Day: On May 13th, 1806, a New York weekly newspaper published, for the first time in writing anywhere in the world, a definition of the word “cocktail .”
- The 79th Cannes Film Festival: Five Japanese films selected for major categories this year. For the first time in nine years, no major Hollywood studio film appears in the lineup — small, quiet films exposed to the world’s eyes instead.
This is an English translation of “引き算の朝”, part of Tales of Amencho Town (蛙鳴町奇譚).