Work Text:
“Bye guys! That will be all for today’s video! Be sure to tune in next week where I will be live streaming the grand opening of The Red Eyed Mule next Saturday. I would love to meet you guys as we try out new food together. See you next time!” You waved at the camera for a few more seconds before pressing end on your remote to shut it off. You took a deep breath and threw yourself back into your swivel chair.
“Ohhhh my god, I’m so tired,” you said into the ceiling. Being a content creator was not something that you intended on being. It kind of just happened over the years. It started off as you having an Instagram page trying out different restaurants around the city, often trying out two or three meals before giving it a rating. You had that page for up to a year before it spiked unexpectedly, and people were suddenly curious to know who you were. After steady growth you decided to make a YouTube channel, but kept it strictly about food, sprinkling vague information about yourself occasionally. You wanted to keep some anonymity but also share your love of food with your fan base.
You got up to take down the camera to start editing the footage. You had the same routine as always. You took requests to visit a restaurant by either your fans or the restaurant contacting you themselves, you ate there three times trying three completely different dishes, filmed at the location to show the view and the food, then filmed back at home to give final opinions. You tried to mention everything you could, like how the ambience was, the prices, the drink selection, if the place was kid friendly or not, if it was accessible to the disabled, your honest opinion on the food and textures, literally anything you could think of. Your very thorough analysis with clever commentary had your YouTube doing numbers, so much so you were able to pay off all your student loans. You even had travel and lifestyle tv channels offering you a chance for your own mini show in between ads. Life was good and you were getting paid to eat and give your opinion. It was a Taurean dream.
But you hated editing. Picking apart through hours of footage to decide what was going to make the cut was taking the fun out of it. You wished you would’ve stuck with an Instagram or just made a blog instead, but you digressed. You sat at your desk and got to work, getting up every once in a while to stretch. You had completed three videos before you had gotten a notification on your phone.
You kept separate Instagram accounts for convenience. One was for your YouTube channel which had thousands of followers, but the other one was just for friends and family, which hasn’t even hit up to a thousand yet. You kept it private and had completely different users so that no one would find your personal one, but people can be very crafty. You looked at the request to message notification and clicked on it to see it was from a restaurant. You rolled your eyes and put your phone down to get back to work. You had a lineup of all the other eateries you needed to review and it would last you well into the year. You finished another video within an hour and went to sleep without another thought.
The next day you got up early to run in the nearest park. On your way there you saw that someone had finally bought out the small empty space in the midst of other businesses. You idly wonder who would be there as you drove by to continue your day. You ran around the track until you couldn’t anymore, only taking minute long breaks between each lap. You laid on the green to catch your breath as you stared up into the blue sky and watched planes soar past.
Moving to a new, bigger city for grad school had been scary, but it also was the best thing you could’ve done for yourself. Not only were you the first in your family to get a degree, but now you were making enough money to take care of yourself and send money back home to your parents.
You winced when you thought of your parents. You had to call them soon, but the only thing they wanted to talk about was finding a partner for you. You were just too busy to go on dates and you didn’t want to go on the blind dates they would try to set you up with. You sighed as you raised yourself off the grass. You couldn’t avoid them forever, and it wouldn’t be that bad to at least try their way first. As you walked back to your car you dialed your mom's number and she picked up on the second ring.
“My little banana, how are you? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, mama. How are you?” You heard some background noise but you couldn’t tell what it was.
“I’m fine, papa’s fine, your brother's fine, we just miss you, that’s all. When are you going to come and visit?”
“Soon enough,” you got into your car and started it. “I just gotta finish some stuff up over here but I’ll try to visit during the holidays.”
Your mom squealed on the other line. “I have so much to show you. Papa bought me a cat you know? It’s the cutest little thing and it reminds me of you.”
“Is that what I’m hearing in the back? I thought you said you didn’t like animals.”
“That was before my only daughter left me all alone.” You could hear her pouting on the phone. “Now I have a, what do they call it, a fur baby! I’ll send you pictures.”
You laughed at your mothers enthusiasm. “I can’t wait to meet them.”
“Have you seen the man I sent to you the other day? The engineer guy? He lives in your area and he’s exactly your type,” she tried to slide in casually.
“No, I haven’t. Been too busy,” you bit your thumbnail at the stop sign. “But, I can try, at least. I will give him one solid chance but then you have to stop sending me these men. It’s getting weird.”
Again your mother squealed and clapped her hands. “Oh I’m so excited. I only want what’s best for you, banana, and I’m just worried about you being all alone. You know me and your father moved to a new country together so I was never alone. Don’t you feel lonely sometimes?”
You thought about her question. Did you feel lonely? Occasionally, but it was fleeting in most cases. You liked the idea of being in a relationship, in theory. You just had so many other things to focus on right now that it seemed like a hassle. “I’m fine, ma. Just promise me you won’t send anymore dudes my way.”
“I promise,” she giggled. “It sounds like you're driving so I’ll leave you for now. Tell me how the date goes! I’ll talk to you soon, okay?”
“Bye, ma.”
“Bye, banana!”
A month has went by and you still haven’t went on that stupid date. Not that you were doing it on purpose but you just haven’t found the appropriate times. Whenever you two did have a set time, one thing or another got in your way. You were going to try to meet him today, and you had brought out a frilly blue blueberry dress to wear out. You matched it with white sandals and put your hair in a low bun too keep your hair off your neck. You checked yourself one more time in your mirror and left the house to put in the location in the GPS that the man had sent you. You were surprised to see that it was in an area you passed by frequently. As you got close to the place you realized that it was the lot that was empty before for months on your way to the park.
“Silent Garden?” You said out loud. You parked your car at the square and made your way down to the building. You entered the small dining room and was pleasantly surprised. Despite its size it didn’t feel cramped. There were square tables and white modern chairs, but a mural on one wall that you guessed was landscape from the Edo time period. There was a counter that overlooked a bar with an array of drinks that you know but many of them were foreign. You were a little early than your date and sat yourself down at a table. You waited patiently for someone to come up and serve you as you aimlessly scrolled through your phone. Suddenly you felt a presence behind you.
“Hello. I didn’t hear you come in. Can I get you anything to start?” You looked at him and continued to lean back because he was just so tall. He was wearing a white button down and khaki pants. On his wrist was a silver watch and rings on each hand. He was wiping them off and then flung the towel onto his shoulder. He had silver framed glasses around his eyes that widened ever so slightly when he took in your appearance. You thought his brown eyes were warm, but felt shy under his gaze.
“Oh, it’s fine, I haven’t been in for long. I’m actually waiting for a date to come in,” you flushed. You couldn’t see it because you looked back down on the table but the man had a small look of disappointment.
“Alright then. Can I get you started with anything?”
“Yes, I’ll take the blackberry sweet tea for now,” you panned over the menu. You flipped the sheet over and was surprised by the specials section.
“You make Ethiopian food?”
The man chuckled and rubbed his neck. “I specialize in Japanese and Danish food, but I try to dabble in other cultures if I can. I just happened to choose Ethiopia for the next few weeks.”
You were still in shock. You knew only one place in this whole city that served food from your home country food and was surprised to see someone else appreciate its delicacies.
“Well I won’t order my food just yet but I’m highly intrigued. I haven’t had food from home in a very long time so I’ll probably order something from there,” you smiled up at him. He smiled at you too and you felt your heart quicken. You looked back down at the table while he went back to get your drink. You thanked him and continued to wait for your date, but ten minutes turned to twenty minutes, and twenty minutes turned to thirty minutes. You looked up at the door with a fallen look and fished out your phone to text him. Your message wouldn’t go through. “Did he block me?”
You stared into the void as you tried not to cry. The one time you make time for someone and they completely waste it? You were more angry than sad. The blonde man came back out again and you wiped away any signs of distress. “I’m sorry, it seems like I wasted your time. My date is coming anymore,” you wryly laughed.
“I’m sorry to hear that. It should be a crime to stand up a woman like you.”
“Well such is life,” you sighed.
“I'll still make you a meal. It’s on the house.”
“Oh you don’t have to. I’m fine with paying.”
“As the owner, I insist.” You raised your eyebrows.
“You’re the owner? And you make all the food? Is this a one man show?”
“For now it is. I had a dream about owning my own restaurant for years so now that I’m retired I’m taking my time with it.”
Would this man stop giving you whiplash? “You look way too young to be retiring.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I did well in the corporate world but it’s not for me. I want to spend the rest of my days doing what I love.”
“Wise words to live by,” you nodded. “If you really don’t mind, I’d like to have doro wat, please. I like it especially spicy.”
“Coming right up,” he winked and walked away. You smiled to yourself and looked down at the menu. On the corners of the sheet it had little bonsai trees and you couldn’t help feeling like you saw it somewhere before. You were about to give up before the thought popped up in your head. You brought out your phone and opened your Instagram to scroll through your direct messages.
There it was, a profile with the same bonsai tree that had messaged you a month ago. You clicked on the message and they were asking for your honest opinion on a meal, specifically on how to fix it. They didn’t even ask for an appearance on your channel or anything. It was far too late to respond but you ventured into their actual profile to see how it looked.
It had less than hundred followers and followed only twenty, one of them being your main account. There were beautiful shots of the food they made from different angles. The captions were succinct overviews of the taste and any historical facts about the food. There were maybe one or two questions in the comments and the owner always made sure to reply.
The username was the same name as the restaurant you were in and you sat back in awe. What were the chances? You thought about ways you were going to apologize to the owner just as he came by with two plates of steaming doro wat and injera in his hands.
“Thank you, but I didn’t order two?”
“I can’t leave you to eat all by yourself, now can I? And I would really like to have your opinion on the meal. I’ve made it before but I never had anyone to bounce off of.”
“What if someone comes in?”
He set a plate down in front of you with the injera in the middle and the other doro wat on his end before going to flip the sign in the window to “closed”.
“That fixes that.”
You shook your head speechless but felt the butterflies in your stomach doing somersaults.
“Thank you…” you waited for him to say his name.
“Kento. Kento Nanami.”
“I’m Y/N L/N. Thank you, Kento, for the food. Let’s see how you did.”
He sat down in front of you crossing his legs to the side to avoid numbing into your legs under the table. You tore off the piece of injera and dipped it into the broth and ate it. You covered your mouth with your hand and let the spices cover your tongue. He even got the level of spicy you like correctly. You closed your eyes and let them roll into your head. This was too good to be true.
You finished chewing and looked behind you to where the kitchen laid. “Are you sure you don’t have an old Ethiopian lady cooking back there with you? You really made this all from scratch?”
Kento let out a breathy laugh. “I’m flattered. It took many tries but I finally got it right. I’m pleased to know it’s up to your standards.”
“Oh it’s perfect. Everything about it is perfect,” you said as you put another spoonful in your mouth. Kento had a small smile on his face as he watched you eat before digging into his own food. You both ate in silence until the plates were clean and you leaned back content.
“This was great, Kento. Thank you, really. You turned a shitty day into a pretty okay one.” He gave you a full on, ultra bright smile that put the sun to shame.
“And I’m sorry for not answering your dm from a while ago. I thought it was just another place asking for promotion,” you apologized.
His eyes widened at your admission. He had a feeling you never opened his message, but he hoped that you would visit his shop one day. “I understand. I’ve been watching your channel for years now and I can’t imagine how busy you get. If I can be completely honest,” he started and you leaned in. Whatever he said would make or break your attraction to him, and he was doing so well so far.
“I added the specials section in the menu because of you.” You cocked your head to the side in confusion. “The very first place you reviewed maybe three years ago was Taste of Life in the west side. You had greeted the owners in Amharic and sometimes it slipped into your speech throughout the video. When I messaged you I hoped that I could invite you to taste a couple of dishes,” he admitted and his ears were turning pink.
Now it was your turn to get shy. You almost deleted that video because of how unprofessional it looked, but you couldn’t bring yourself to do it remembering how young and happy you looked. He had seen your very first video and he picked up the fact that you were Ethiopian to impress you later on. You felt your face heat up as you stared at the table. Your fingers were so close to his yet too far away.
“Now I’m flattered. I really wish that past me had opened your message earlier,” you glanced up at him.
“It’s not too late. You’re here now, and I can cook you anything you’d like.” He slowly closed the gap between your hands and gingerly held yours.
“You really know the way to a girl’s heart, Kento.”
“Just for you,” he smiled and laced his fingers in yours.