Aglio e Olio

Then the craziest thing happened.

Ryoji reached behind me, grabbed the back of the office chair I was still sitting in—wheels and all—and started pushing.

“Wait—what—”

He didn’t answer.

Just rolled me—rolled me—across the floor like a forgotten suitcase.

Past monitors, tangled cables, half-dissected drones. Straight toward a side room I hadn’t even noticed before.

Behind us, Hiroto chirped back without missing a beat, “Debrief time! Just as always!!”

He sounded… delighted.

We coasted through a sliding door into what looked like… a break room?

No, a kitchen.

Tiny. White. A narrow metal sink. Two induction plates. A tiny pantry shelf. A drawer that looked like it hadn’t been closed properly in a decade. There was even a dish rack with mismatched mugs and something suspiciously like an espresso maker that had been modified to run diagnostics.

Ryoji parked me at the corner table without a word and started rummaging through a cupboard.

“Are you seriously—?” I started, but he was already halfway into another drawer.

He was going to cook.

He was actually going to cook.

“Spaghetti,” he said to no one in particular.

And all at once, I remembered.

The bruschetta.

Back in my apartment. That night when we found Mr. Sakamoto in my father’s photo.

That same dissonant calm. Like cooking in the middle of chaos was just how his brain recalibrated.

But this wasn’t calm for me.

I stood up, fast. The chair clattered back. “Ryoji—seriously—what are you doing? This isn’t—this isn’t dinner hour. My entire life might be a lie and you’re looking for garlic?!”

He didn’t flinch.

Didn’t even look up from the pot.

Just pointed at me with a wooden spoon—no, a pair of chopsticks he was apparently repurposing—and spoke with that maddening, almost monastic composure.

“Rushing to conclusions on cases with circumstantial elements,” he said, “leads to errors.”

Then he finally looked at me. Not with coldness.

But with something quieter.

Surer.

“Raw emotions make poor investigators. Wait for the puzzle to finish. Then we decide what it means.”

The worst part was—I believed him.

I didn’t want to.

I wanted to scream, or cry, or pace like a madwoman through this absurd sci-fi hideout and demand answers that wouldn’t come.

But he was right.

We didn’t know anything yet.

My father might have lied. Sure.

He might not be a meteorologist. He might be working in bio-engineering. Or secret surveillance. Or something involving Godzilla for all I knew.

But so what?

So he lied.

Maybe he was under some super-secret-oath. Classified. Sworn to secrecy. Protecting national interests. Top level clearance. Diplomatic cloak-and-dagger. Government backchannels. Right?

Right?

Maybe that was why I always had to call the weather station. Leave a message. Why he never picked up himself. Why it always came through hours later, a polite return call, like a trained response protocol.

Maybe it wasn’t personal.

Maybe it was… protocol.

Totally normal.

Completely reasonable.

I almost had myself convinced.

Okay. So maybe he wasn’t where he said. Maybe he wasn’t who he said.

But hey—still dad, right?

Still the man who sent birthday postcards with sea charts doodled in the margins. Still the voice that told me he’d try to make it to my debut, even if he always called two days later to apologize.

Right?

Normal.

Totally normal.

I sat back down.

Watched the steam rise from the pot as the scent of garlic and olive oil filled the air.

Ryoji stood over the pan, expression tight but composed. He only looked up when the first hint of calm touched my shoulders.

His face softened—barely. A small shift.

But I caught it.

He noticed.

Of course he did.

Ryoji flicked on the gas burner with a practiced twist. A quiet click—then flame.

“Pot,” he said.

Hiroto buzzed over like a caffeinated bee and handed him a battered steel one. Ryoji filled it from the tap, placed it over the flame, and adjusted the knob.

“Now,” he said, eyes on the rising heat, “there are four rules to spaghetti.”

He spoke like someone briefing an agent on classified operations.

“One: salt the water with sale grosso. Two: never break the pasta. You’re not making soup.”

Hiroto gave a dramatic gasp and held up a limp spaghetti strand like it was a violated treaty. “They did this once on TV. I screamed.”

“Three,” Ryoji continued, as if uninterrupted, “don’t add oil to the water. It’s a lie. Doesn’t stop sticking, just ruins the sauce grip.”

Natsumi blinked. “That’s actually… kind of useful.”

“And four,” he added, glancing at the sauce pan he was heating on the second burner, “timing. You don’t drown the pasta. You lead them in. Like an orchestra.”

“That’s poetry,” Hiroto whispered. Then he held up a tiny hourglass he’d snagged from the counter. “Seven minutes for al dente. I’ll count.”

I watched them—this absurd duet of calm precision and chaotic cheer—as the aroma of tomatoes, garlic, and something vaguely herbal filled the air. Basil?

It was almost comforting. Too comforting.

And then Ryoji ruined it in his usual way.

“Sakamoto worked for the government,” he said flatly, stirring the sauce with a spoon shaped like a wrench. “High level. Before Mosan.”

I froze.

No lead-in. No warm-up. Just a verbal landmine tossed into the pot.

“Mosan didn’t start as a rogue lab. Bioengineering contracts, postwar tech adaptation, some military pharmacology. But it evolved.”

He added a pinch of salt. Stirred.

“Into what?” I asked, carefully.

“Shadow ops,” Ryoji replied. “Classified research. Experimental bodies. Some of it legal. Some of it… less so.”

Hiroto was chopping parsley on the side, pausing only to hum a weirdly cheerful rendition of La Donna è Mobile.

“We got followed by pros,” Ryoji added. “Two on the train, more after the mall. One definitely US-trained. The kind that keeps walking even if you notice them.”

My mouth opened, but no words came out.

He met my gaze. Calm. Too calm.

“That kind of tail only gets assigned when the subject’s clearance is above civilian level.”

I stared.

“So you’re saying—”

“I’m saying,” he interrupted, “your father’s probably not just a meteorologist. And someone wants to know if you know that.”

It hit me like a pressure drop in the room.

And yet… it clicked.

The protocols. The call relay. The mysterious absences. The fact I never once reached him directly, not once in years without going through some middle voice—Mayumi or one of the others. Always so polite. Always so efficient.

As if he just read my mind, Ryoji dropped the spaghetti into the boiling pot and said, “You’ve known for a while. You just didn’t want to look.”

I didn’t answer.

Hiroto looked up from his herb pile, blinking. “Well, it does make sense. A guy with clearance that deep has to mislead even family. Protect the circle. Even if it means telling his daughter he’s counting clouds while really—”

“Enough,” Ryoji cut in, quiet but sharp.

Hiroto paused mid-gesture, then did a theatrical zip-lip and gave me an exaggerated wink.

I didn’t smile.

I was still working through the part where my father might be under government surveillance and I was the reason they were sniffing around.

“So what now?” I asked, softly.

“Now?” Ryoji lifted the spoon and tasted the sauce. “Now we eat. Then we sleep.”

He poured the pasta into a colander like he’d done it a thousand times before, steam curling around his face. The faint clatter of water against steel echoed like punctuation.

Then he moved fast—pan still hot, garlic already sautéed in olive oil to a soft gold, chili flakes just beginning to sizzle. He ladled a bit of the starchy pasta water straight into the pan. It hissed like a warning, emulsifying the oil into a glossy sheen.

He tossed the spaghetti in with a flick of the wrist, coating every strand as he swirled it through the mixture, letting the garlic cling to the noodles and the scent bloom with heat.

No shortcuts. No cheese. No herbs. Just oil, garlic, pasta, and fire. The way it was meant to be.

“Tomorrow,” he said, “we ask your father.”

I nodded slowly. Then watched him divide the pasta into mismatched bowls.

Hiroto clapped. “Bellissimo!”

Ryoji slid one bowl toward me without a word.

I accepted it, heart still thudding beneath the silence. I didn’t know what tomorrow would bring.

But for now, I had warmth.

And the truth was starting to boil.

As I twirled a forkful of spaghetti, Ryoji nudged something toward me.

The plastic coin cup.

“You can call your friends,” he said, barely above a murmur. “We still got some coins left.”

He nodded toward the clunky relay machine near the wall—the same ridiculous, jerry-rigged, spy-grade phone booth that had just rerouted my entire reality.

I stared at it, then at him.

”…Thanks.”

Before I could say anything more, Hiroto was already bouncing in place like he’d downed three sodas.

“Yes! Yesyesyes—lights on, system warm, we’re green! Say the word and I’ll open the line. Please. Call someone. Anyone. I just want to observe you in a civilian context. Do you cry differently depending on who you’re talking to? Are your gestures more regional when speaking to fellow Japanese? This is priceless!”

“Hiroto—,” I started.

“I’ll be good,” he said, throwing up both hands in a faux oath. “I’ll just stand here and absorb your existence like osmosis!”

I snorted. I couldn’t help it.

And somewhere between that sound and the next bite of pasta, I realized—

This wasn’t simply dinner.

This was Ryoji watching me from the side of the stove, quietly making sure I didn’t implode.

He’d pulled me into this strange lab with its eccentric child genius and its kitchen made of cables and gas flames and late-night uncertainty… just so I could eat. Just so I could breathe. Just so I could feel like the floor was still under my feet.

He never said it out loud.

Never needed to.

He was trying to look after me.

Not as an agent. Not as a bodyguard.

As something else.

And somehow, that was what steadied me most.

Not the food. Not the coin cup. Not the mission.

Just the quiet, impossible fact of him.

Still here. Still steady.

Still making sure I didn’t fall.