Cole gave Quint the verdict, and the guide nodded.

  He brought them back through the lobby and up a wide staircase to the second floor, where the dining options spread out along a broad promenade. The setup felt more like that of a mall, but scaled the fuck up – distinct storefronts, distinct branding, everyone trying a little too hard to pretend they weren’t sharing the same hallway. The Terrace did the whole outdoor-café cosplay; the Pavilion leaned into terracotta; the Conservatory just looked… big.

  Quint rattled off the standard rundown as they walked – brief descriptions, nothing they hadn’t already read in the pamphlets – before stopping in front of Sakura Hall.

  The entrance had actual trees flanking the doorway, their branches heavy with pinkish-white blossoms. Cole’s first thought was cherry blossoms, but something about them seemed off. The pink was too saturated, the petals too round. Tanaka had clearly found the closest local equivalent and committed to the bit, which was fair enough; the effect worked even if the botany was a little glitchy.

  They walked through a wooden corridor lined with paper screens painted with scenes Cole didn’t quite recognize. If he had to guess, he’d say it was Tenrian history, but rendered in a style that looked distinctly Celdornian rather than the expected Japanese. It was a weird fusion – safe exoticism for the locals, probably – but it landed.

  The interior kept that same fusion vibe going. It offered a standard Western layout: normal tables, normal chairs, nobody sitting on the floor. But the lighting came from paper lanterns overhead, and the art on the walls stayed consistent with the entrance. All in all, it was Japanese enough to feel intentional, and Celdornian enough to not alienate the clientele.

  A woman in a kimono-style uniform approached before they’d finished taking it in. She wore dark fabric with clean lines, and she carried herself like a real pro.

  Quint handled introductions, requested a table on their behalf, and excused himself with a short bow. His job was done.

  The hostess led them deeper into the hall, weaving past occupied tables until they reached one near the back. It sat by a window that offered a view of an interior garden with stone lanterns, raked gravel, and a few sculpted shrubs.

  They sat down, and within maybe ten seconds another staffer appeared with a wooden tray and five steaming towels rolled up in a neat row. Cole took his and pressed the heat into his palms while the others did the same.

  Once they were done, the towels went out and the tea came in – light, mild, poured for them without anyone asking for preferences.

  “Would you prefer our seasonal tasting experience, or shall I bring standard menus for your party?” the hostess asked.

  Cole glanced around the table. Nobody looked like they were gunning for a multi-course commitment, nor did they look anywhere close to abandoning the orders they’d already picked while scanning through the pamphlets earlier. “Standard menus, please.”

  “Of course.”

  She had five ready before he could ask; everyone had one in their hands within seconds.

  Cole grabbed his. The cover felt like suede, or something close to it. Weird choice for something that’d inevitably get soy sauce on it, but hey – commitment to the aesthetic.

  “Please take your time. I shall return shortly with your starter.”

  He flipped it open and scanned the categories out of habit, though he already knew what he wanted. He’d had his eye on the tempura combo since he’d seen it in the pamphlet.

  The hostess returned with their starter, which turned out to be a ceramic bowl holding… potato chips? Well, they probably weren’t potato, but still.

  Cole almost laughed. Fine dining this was not – at least, not by Earth standards. But here? This was probably exotic as hell. Probably blew their minds the same way that sushi had blown American minds back in the eighties.

  He grabbed one and bit in.

  Damn was that crunch just right – satisfying, clean. Tanaka had nailed the texture, alright. The flavor ran sweeter than he was used to, though. Not sweet like those honey BBQ ones, just… warmer. Earthier? Whatever root vegetable they’d subbed in definitely wasn’t a potato, but it was close enough.

  He reached for another. Then a third.

  Okay, these were actually kind of addictive. The sweetness that had thrown him off at first started making sense; it balanced out the salt in a way regular chips didn’t. It gave them a rounder flavor profile – less of a one-note sodium bomb, more of a complete thought. If these had been available back home, he’d probably have gotten fat by now.

  Mack had apparently reached the same conclusion. The guy was already five or six deep with no signs of stopping, and for the first time in weeks he actually looked blissful, which was a hell of a step above simply ‘relaxed.’

  Cole filed that away as a win and reached for another chip.

  The hostess came back right as they got done demolishing the bowl, notebook in hand. Cole went first, ordering his tempura gozen. The others followed. Mack took the sashimi platter, which tracked; the guy had been eyeing raw fish since they’d seen it on the pamphlet. Miles went for the teriyaki don, Ethan grabbed some kind of noodle bowl, and Elina ordered the unagi after a brief deliberation that probably involved more thought than Cole had put into his last three meals combined.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  The hostess repeated everything back and confirmed drinks – water all around, plus a pot of tea for the table – before vanishing toward the kitchen.

  Cole topped off his tea and let the silence settle for about three seconds before Miles broke it.

  “Okay, but for real—” Miles nodded at the now-empty chip bowl. “We gotta figure out how to make more of those. Mass produce ‘em or somethin’. Start a whole damn operation.”

  “Yeah. Franchise it,” Mack added. “Tanaka’s already got the brand. We just license the recipe, set up distribution—”

  “You’d need consistent supply chains,” Ethan cut in, and Cole could already hear the fun draining out of the conversation. “Sourcing the potato or whatever vegetable, quality control, packaging. And that’s before you even get into labor. Who’s managing the production floor? What’s your throughput? How about production bottlenecks? The actual recipe? Well, to be fair, we do have Lisara for that, but still.”

  Miles stared at him. “Man, why are you like this?”

  Ethan raised his hands, like he was totally innocent. “I’m just saying, it’s not as simple as ‘make chips, sell chips.’”

  “It could be that simple, but nooo, somebody’s gotta bring up supply chains.”

  Cole snorted and let them argue. Ethan wasn’t wrong – logistics really mattered – but there was something almost medically compulsive about the way the guy couldn’t let a hypothetical stay hypothetical.

  The conversation drifted from there, logistics giving way to other hypotheticals, none of which went anywhere productive. Cole half-listened, half-watched the other tables out of habit. Most of them were nobles, from the look of it, maybe a few wealthy merchant types mixed in. Hard to tell the difference when everyone dressed like they had something to prove. Nobody paid them any attention, which was how he preferred it.

  He was mid-scan when the food arrived, all at once.

  Cole’s tempura came out on a lacquered tray, arranged like someone had thought about negative space. The prawns, or whatever passed for prawns here, sat in a neat row alongside slices of something that looked like sweet potato, a few pieces of that Yumeji mushroom from the menu, and some kind of leafy green he didn’t recognize. All of it was golden-brown, perfectly crisped, not a drop of excess oil in sight. The dipping sauce sat in its own little dish, alongside a mound of grated radish and a wedge of citrus.

  It looked like the platonic ideal of tempura; the kind of image that usually only ever existed in commercials and food blogs.

  Mack’s sashimi platter came out next – six types of seafood, four pieces each, fanned across a bed of shredded white radish. The colors ranged from deep ruby to pale pink to something almost translucent, each slice glistening under the lantern light like it was posing for a magazine cover.

  Miles got his teriyaki don in a wide ceramic bowl, the glaze catching the light in a way that made Cole’s mouth water even though he had his own food sitting right in front of him. The sauce had that perfect lacquered sheen, dark and slightly caramelized, draped over sliced meat and a bed of rice that looked like it had been molded by a master chef.

  Ethan’s noodle situation was more rustic, featuring thick wheat noodles in a dark broth, topped with scallions, a soft-boiled egg split down the middle, and a few slices of braised pork. Or whatever meat was closest to pork in this world. It smelled like someone had cracked the code on umami and decided to put it in a bowl.

  Elina’s unagi came out on a rectangular plate – rich, caramelized, glazed with that sweet-savory sauce that made eel one of the few things even picky eaters couldn’t argue with. It sat over a bed of rice, the glaze soaking into the grains underneath. Simple, elegant, the kind of dish that didn’t need to try hard because it knew what it was doing.

  Everyone except Ethan got a bowl of miso soup and a side of rice to round things out.

  Cole almost asked if anyone wanted to trade bites, then caught himself. They were here for five days. He could order literally any of this tomorrow. No need to turn lunch into a sampling marathon.

  He started with one of the prawns, dipping it lightly – just enough sauce to add flavor without drowning the batter. Then, he tasted it.

  The crunch hit first. It was delicate, almost fragile, shattering on contact instead of going soggy. Then the prawn itself, though? Holy shit.

  It was tender, faintly sweet, and cooked to that perfect point where it was just set but still had some give. The dipping sauce cut through with a savory-citrus note that made the whole thing click into place; the cherry on top. This wasn’t just good tempura. This was the tempura. The version all other tempura strive to be.

  He worked through the rest of the plate with more intention than he usually gave food. The sweet potato-looking thing had that caramelized edge he liked. The mushrooms were earthy, dense, almost meaty – honestly better than half the actual meat he’d eaten in his life. Even the leafy green, which he’d expected to be decorative filler, had a peppery bite that made him reconsider his stance on vegetables.

  Over the course of lunch, they mostly just shot the shit – Miles and Ethan debating whether they could make water jets with magic, Mack asking Elina about noble etiquette and getting increasingly horrified by the answers, the usual back-and-forth that happened when people who’d been through too much together finally had nothing urgent to talk about.

  Cole drifted in and out. Not because he was bored, but because Elina kept pulling his attention.

  She wasn’t doing anything special – just eating, relaxing – but something about that hit him harder than it should’ve. He’d felt it before, most recently with his ex a couple years ago, though never quite like this. Maybe it was the fact that this was the real Elina, when she wasn’t in a life-or-death scenario.

  Cole let the feeling simmer and looked away before he got obvious about it. He returned his attention to the tempura.

  By the time he hit the last piece, he was looking at his empty tray like it had personally betrayed him by not having more food on it. He was going to have to recalibrate his entire mental ranking of tempura after this. Maybe his entire ranking of food.

  They wrapped up with dessert – a small bowl of what the menu called ‘frozen cream,’ which was exactly what it sounded like. Ice cream. Vanilla-ish, from the taste of it. The flavor had a floral edge, like the bean was a distant cousin of the Earth version, but it was cold and sweet, so the difference wasn’t that important.

  Cole finished his in maybe six bites, which was probably undignified for a place like this, but whatever. If he tried savoring it, he’d lose to gluttony.

  Mack pushed back from the table, grinning like he used to. “So. Hot springs?”

  “Hot springs,” Cole confirmed.

  They settled the bill – or rather, confirmed it was going on their room tab, which was going on OTAC’s tab, which meant Cole didn’t have to think about what a meal like this actually cost – and headed for the exit.

  The onsen awaited.

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