The Ex-Boyfriend's Favorite Recipe Funeral Committee

Chapter 1

My Ex-Boyfriend’s Favorite Butter Chicken Curry

Of all places he could’ve dumped me, he chose to do it in a love hotel. A love hotel!

Lying down in bed, I struggled to stifle a sob.

I didn’t want to hold back. I wanted to bawl my eyes out. I wanted to howl and wail and let out every sound I had inside of me with so much intensity that you would be able to actually see the emotions pouring out of my mouth. But instead, I bit my lip. I had to save what was left of my dignity.

And that was because Kyohei Takanashi—the jerk who’d just broken up with me—was lying on the other side of the bed, purposefully leaving enough space so that an adult could have fit between us. He was facing away, so I couldn’t tell if he was fully asleep. There was no way I could let him know that he had broken my heart. Whatever I did, I wasn’t going to let him feel sorry for me.

Grabbing the charging cable by my pillow, I drew my phone toward me and checked the time under the covers. My eyes were burning from the tears, and the blue light didn’t help. It was already two in the morning. I had been in bed for at least thirty minutes, but I was never going to sleep. Instead, my nose began to run as a new flood of tears spilled from my eyes.

Taking care not to disturb Kyohei, I gently stretched my arm over to put my phone back. At that moment, my fingers touched a plastic wrapper. It was an unused condom.

Had he planned on it? He must have put it there for us. If only I had known. If only . . .

I felt a surge of emotion I couldn’t decipher: Regret? Shame? Whatever it was, it welled up inside of me, as the tears kept coming.

It wasn’t that I really wanted to sleep with him and was frustrated we hadn’t. It wasn’t that. I just . . . I’d just thought that he was the one I’d marry. That there would be no one else for me. But our love, which had lasted four years, had come to an abrupt and humiliating end. On a hotel bed far bigger than necessary, our relationship shattered to pieces and vanished entirely.

•

It smelled like a mix of spices, and I thought of the time I had made butter chicken curry for Kyohei. He’d put away three whole bowls of it in one sitting, and I’d called it the “Kyohei curry” ever since.

I guess I won’t be making that ever again. But wait . . . why am I smelling curry right now?

I opened my eyes. I could see the grain pattern of a wooden table and realized I had been sleeping with my face down. I groaned in pain as I struggled to lift my head and get my bearings. I noticed I was sitting on a comfortable sofa, and that I had a splitting headache. It felt as though my head was being crushed and ground up in a stone mill. My vision was blurry, and bits of mascara fell off my lashes as I rubbed my eyelids.

Where am I?

There was nothing familiar about the place. It looked as if it might be a café. There was an antique cuckoo clock and a small TV to my left. Coffee cups and books, as well as a snow globe, were mixed among a collection of antique items on the display shelves. A dusty smell—that smell you can only find inside old buildings—and the subtle scent of curry filled the air.

Looking around, there was only one other customer. The place was small, with four seats at the counter and a few tables with their own sofas, which allowed for seating another eight people.

“You’re awake.”

A crisp male voice came from behind me. I cradled my aching head with my hands as I finally sat upright.

“I’m sorry, I can’t remember—wow, you are gorgeous! Oh, I didn’t mean to say that out loud.” Embarrassed, I covered my mouth.

The man’s well-defined nose was as sharp as a right-angled triangle, and he had big double-lidded eyes. His facial features worked in perfect harmony, neither too close nor too far apart from one another. It was like all the qualities of every good-looking man on the planet had been brought together to create the epitome of beauty. The navy blue sweater he wore even complemented his skin tone.

“Actually, it’s not the first time you’ve called me gorgeous.” He laughed.

“What? Are you sure it was me?”

“You really don’t remember?”

I really didn’t remember any conversation I’d had with this man. I did have a slight recollection of leaving the hotel at eight in the morning. I was going to get the train, but changed my mind after seeing too many happy couples on board. Since I had taken the day off to spend it with Kyohei, I didn’t want to go home and do nothing. So, deciding that it was a good idea to drink it all away, I went into a twenty-four-hour izakaya bar, ordered a shochu on the rocks, and downed it. And that was the last thing I remembered . . .

I reached into my pocket to get my phone.

“Why is my phone screen smashed?”

“Again, you said that exact same thing earlier,” the man said.

He radiated so much charisma, it hurt my eyes to look at him. I felt a little dizzy as his dazzling smile pierced through my cocktail headache like a laser beam. The way he smiled was so incredibly charming that, if he had been born a few centuries ago, he would have been some kind of legend. A mural would’ve been painted in his honor and named The Secret Treasure of the East.

I tapped my phone, relieved to find it still working despite the big crack on the screen. It was noon.

Noon?! Has it been that long?

There were apparently more blanks to fill in than I’d hoped.

“Excuse me,” I called out to the man, “where exactly am I?”

“You’re in Sangenjaya.”

“Are you kidding?” I stood up and stepped outside.

Please tell me he’s joking.

“Wait, where are you going?”

It was not a neighborhood I recognized. I glanced over to a poster on a utility pole that showed the address: Taishido, Setagaya.

I was indeed in the Sangenjaya area.

Seriously? I walked all the way from Shibuya to Sangenjaya?

It explained why the bottoms of my feet were hurting so much. I gazed down and scanned myself, suddenly realizing how messy I looked. There was a patch of soy sauce on my dress, and a tear in my tights ran from my toe to my thigh. A Hello Kitty bandage covered my grazed knee (I obviously didn’t remember how that happened). I had splurged on a new pair of pumps for my date night with Kyohei—spending precisely 39,800 yen—but the heels on them were now completely worn out.

Wondering what it was that had made me come to this place, I turned around to take a good look at the café.

Its name was Amayadori—“taking shelter from rain.” Although ironically, judging from the run-down exterior of the building, I was pretty sure that the roof would leak. The name of the café printed on the awning had faded so much that it was barely legible. The door, the front step, and frankly everything else about the building was thoroughly worn out. As I stared at the tired, tatty wall, something about it reminded me of my great-grandfather in Kagoshima—an image of the age spots on his skin floated into my mind. A chalkboard sign near the entrance read: Our most popular dish! Lunchtime Special Curry—1,000 yen, which explained the smell inside.

The good-looking guy joined me outside.

“You walked through the door shouting, ‘This shabby little place is exactly what I need right now! I’m in no state to go anywhere fancy!’ Then you yelled, ‘Hey, gorgeous! Bring me a beer, please!’ You seemed to be having a great time, but then you fell asleep with your head down on the table pretty quickly. Not that I minded . . . we didn’t have any other customers anyway.”

“I am so sorry,” I said, completely mortified. Not only had I barged in drunk, I had demanded a beer in a café. I bowed repeatedly to express my apology.

“Really, I am so sorry—wait, I think I’m going to be sick . . .”

“Take it easy, don’t move your head so much. Why don’t you go back inside and rest a little longer?”

This man was a national treasure. If this was a normal day, I would’ve been thrilled to encounter a man this hot who was actually nice to me, but under the circumstances, the whole situation made me feel all the more ashamed. I desperately wanted to crawl into a hole.

“You should eat. Let me make you something.”

“Thank you for being so nice to me.”

I learned that the handsome man’s name was Iori Amamiya and that he was the manager of the café. As I sobered up, I noticed how tranquil the place was, and it dawned on me that I was single-handedly responsible for ruining the café’s serene atmosphere. I felt terrible.

Noticing the customer sitting at the end of the counter, I silently apologized, picturing myself kneeling down and bowing to him. The man was well-built, had a shaved head, and wore glasses. He was dressed in a samue, so I wondered if he was a Buddhist monk. He was eating a plate of curry, oddly pairing it with an ice cream soda—a green, melon-flavored drink topped with ice cream—while reading a paperback book.