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Mako cherished those moments when Raleigh and her had bits of spare time to sneak out of the Shatterdome and visit the little dai pai dongs that littered the streets of Hong Kong. One of her favorite shops had a middle-aged women with wispy black-hair tied in a bun that frothed about her head as she stirred an enormous pot of curry fish balls. They were big, fat, and white, bobbing in the thick yellow-brown curry sauce and they looked very different from the ones Mako’s father would put in the oden soup made on cold days and before he got sick. But they were delicious; some of them had bits of green onions and fatty ground pork meat in them and Mako loved that.
Raleigh didn’t like the yudan as much as Mako did but his face lit up when they walked by the jerky shop and they usually came out with about ten sheets of them. Sometimes more because the shop lady would ogle at his light-colored hair and tall form and would give them extra for free. There was one time Mako found a half-chewed beef jerky in his jacket pocket when she wanted some of the hard candy he always kept with him.
And she always teased Raleigh for never failing to eat a Portuguese egg tart without looking like the whole thing exploded on him. She could taste the sweet, sweet sugariness of the condensed milk in his kiss and that made her smile because she felt a bit selfish in her indulgence of him and she didn’t care. She loved his sweet smile most of all. Of course, they always brought a box back for Hermann and Newton. Newton couldn’t live without them because they were the perfect size to cram into his mouth in a few bites while he ranted about his latest batch of fresh Kaiju guts. Hermann would sneer and roll his eyes at Newton behind his busy chalkboard but he eventually would eat one too.
It’s not like the Shatterdome cafeteria’s food was all that bad. The variety was nice – there was always white rice, mashed potatoes, multiple forms of potatoes really, that kept each country represented in the PPDC satisfied in the carb sense. And everybody had a small microwave in their quarters so they could reheat smuggled out cafeteria bread and clumpy leftover rice.
Mako didn’t mind the simplicity of the Shatterdome food at all. It made her remember the first time her Sensei made the effort to bridge the gap between their two very different cultures. He gave her a cup of instant miso soup that he specifically requested from the flight attendants during their flight from Japan to Alaska. It was too salty, it didn’t have as much tofu pieces as her mother would have put in it, and she wanted to sulk in her chair but was too afraid to show any disrespect to the man sitting in front of her. Her legs barely grazed the bottom of the airplane floor, the miso soup was too salty, and she wanted to cry so badly – but she couldn’t because this was her sensei.