Editing City Series:Volume7 Layer 6 (section)

===Record 36: You Are Nearby===
[[Image:TOKYO_087.jpg|thumb]]

'''10/03/1997

'''18:22

I called out to you and then we were off to the ramen shop where Senpai was waiting.

The ramen shop only had counter seats and Senpai was at the seat furthest back with two empty seats next to him.

You sat next to him and I sat next to you. That had sort of become the standard layout for us.

I listened to Senpai’s voice past you and occasionally gave my own input.

After discussing our role in the athletic festival tomorrow, we took a break.

The ramen had arrived. It was just like a nonhuman like Senpai to choose the Moon Viewing Ramen.

Senpai received his first, then you and me, and finally the lab coat guy sitting next to me.

The lab coat guy turned toward me as soon as his ramen arrived.

“Long time no see.”

“Who are you?”

“The trivial details like that can wait. Wouldn’t you find it creepier if a complete stranger came up and introduced himself to you at a ramen shop? That greeting gave you a chance to break the ice by making fun of me.”

“I don’t quite follow, but I do get that you’re kind of weird. So what do you want? If you spoke to me for no reason, then I’m upgrading my assessment of you from ‘kind of weird’ to ‘extremely weird’. And my guess is that upgrade is happening. Congrats in advance.”

“I will be ignoring that, okay? Now. To put it simply, we are complete strangers. We are even in different classes. It seems unlikely we will be able to find a love between us that crosses gender lines. So I’m stumped. What are we supposed to do?”

“My mind is turning toward punching.”

“Excellent choice. Give me a good one here.”

The professor-like boy pointed at the edge of his ramen bowl. I didn’t get it, but I activated my Mobilized Writing.

'''If you throw a punch with belief in your heart, all things will receive the blow in accordance with the conservation of energy.

I punched the bowl and something weird rolled out onto the counter.

“What is that?”

“The non-delicious part of the ramen. The phase transition tells me this is a semipermanent non-deliciousness. In my experience, the problem must be in the stock and the noodles.”

I groaned and punched my own bowl. The same thing came out.

“Did you see that?” said the Professor. “No difference. The only difference between our orders were the extra ingredients, a sign of just how cheap and plebeian the owner is, but the non-deliciousness remained the same.”

“Which means the problem is with the noodles and soup, not the extras! But now that it’s gone…”

“Yes, this is now the perfect ramen. Let’s eat!”

We began chowing down. And surprisingly…

“This is missing something. Is ramen like life in that it requires some imperfection to really enjoy it?”

“Perhaps so,” said the Professor as he cut off a small piece of the non-deliciousness, added it back into his bowl, and tried the ramen again. “Ohh! This is good! Really good! And did I mention good!? What a pleasant surprise!”

We nodded and gave a thumb’s up to the man with a small mustache standing behind the counter.

“Great work, man!!”

He opted to chuck us both out of his shop.

'''Author Comment:

His first encounter with the Professor.

The Professor already knows who the protagonist is at this point. Not because he’s famous but because he caught the Professor’s interest.

It feels like ramen shows up a lot in my stories.