The Exiled Sword Saint Hired Me to Cook, Not to Fight novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Miso for the Saint
Tomoe walks out of Genzo's dinner service and climbs a snowed-in mountain, where the exiled Sword Saint hires her to make miso soup and warm a bed. The snow closes the pass and the dojo has one futon left.
Tomoe Kisaragi put down her ladle in the middle of the dinner rush and untied her apron.
Forty guests sat in the main room of the Mori Kitchen, waiting for the dish that everyone in the capital talked about.
It was her dish, a clear soup of winter clams with ginger oil, and it was on the menu under another person's name.
Genzo Mori stood at the serving window with his gold tooth showing.
"Why are you standing there, Kisaragi?" he said. "Table nine is waiting."
"Table nine is waiting for my soup," Tomoe said.
"It's the house soup."
"It's mine. I made it at fifteen, in my mother's pot, and you put your name on it."
The line cooks stopped moving.
A pan hissed on the range behind her, and nobody touched it.
"You'll lose your place," Genzo said, quietly. "Nobody will hire a cook who walks out on me."
Tomoe picked up her roll of knives from the shelf and hung it across her back.
She put the notebook of her dated recipes into her pocket.
She set the pot of clam soup in front of him.
"Then serve it yourself," she said. "You can tell table nine how it's made."
Genzo opened his mouth and closed it again.
He did not know how it was made.
Tomoe walked out through the dining room, past forty staring faces, and into the first snow of the year.
She walked until the lamps of Kyoraku thinned out into frozen rice fields.
At the foot of Mount Hakuun a rice-seller with a handcart told her where the work was.
"There's a dojo at the top that wants a cook," he said. "The pay is double. Nobody has stayed past three days."
"Why not?"
"The Sword Saint lives there." He made the sign people make against bad luck. "The one the capital threw out."
Tomoe looked up at the white mountain.
She had one coin, a roll of knives and a pair of boots that were already wet.
"Double," she said, and started to climb.
It was dark when she reached the gate.
The old Seiryu dojo sat in the snow with a sagging roof and one yellow window.
Tomoe knocked.
Nobody answered, so she slid the door open herself.
The hall inside was bare and cold enough that she could see her own breath.
A woman stood at the far end with her back turned, facing a hanging scroll on the east wall.
She was very tall and very still, in a grey quilted robe with a long sword at her left hip.
Her black hair stopped at her jaw.
"Close the door," she said without turning. "You're letting the warmth out."
Tomoe looked around the hall.
There was no warmth to let out.
"I heard you wanted a cook," she said.
"I did." The woman turned around.
A thin white scar ran across her left cheek.
And her dark eyes went over Tomoe once from boots to braid.
"Shiori Kagami," she said. "Most people stop at the gate when they hear it."
"I heard it at the bottom of the mountain." Tomoe stamped the snow off her boots.
"Tomoe Kisaragi. I need a kitchen, and a roof."
Shiori's mouth moved, very slightly.
"The kitchen is through there. The stove works. I eat rice, pickles and tea."
"Every day?"
"For a year."
Tomoe stared at her.
Then she pushed past the Sword Saint of Akitsu.
She carried her roll of knives into the dark kitchen and lit the stove with a match from her pocket.
The cupboards held a sack of rice, a crock of old miso and a bundle of dried kelp.
She found a pot and set water to boil.
She cut the kelp with a knife she had owned since she was twelve.
When she looked up, Shiori was leaning in the doorway with her arms folded, watching her hands.
"You don't have to stand there," Tomoe said.
"It's my kitchen."
"Then sit down. You make the room feel colder."
Shiori sat, stiffly, at the little table.
Tomoe whisked the miso into the broth and tipped in a handful of dried greens.
And the whole kitchen smelled of soy and warm bean paste.
She ladled it into a chipped bowl and set it down.
Shiori didn't pick it up.
Her hands lay on the table beside it, long and pale, with the knuckles gone blue.
"Your hands," Tomoe said.
"They're always like this."
Tomoe took Shiori's hands in hers without asking and folded them around the bowl.
They were as cold as river stones.
Shiori went completely still.
Her fingers curled slowly around the heat, and around Tomoe's, and she lowered her head and drank.
The kitchen was very quiet.
When the bowl was empty Shiori set it down and did not look up.
"I will pay you double what you were paid in the capital," she said. "Silver, on the first of each month."
"All right."
"I want this soup every morning. Nothing else is required." She stopped.
"And I want a bed warmed by someone who is not afraid of me."
Tomoe blinked.
"That's two jobs," she said.
"It's one wage."
"I'm not afraid of you."
"You've known me for an hour."
"I've known you for one bowl," Tomoe said.
"You drank it like you hadn't been fed in a year. I'm not afraid of someone who does that."
Shiori finally lifted her eyes.
Something went across her face too fast to read, and then it was gone.
Outside the wind rose.
A pale curtain of snow blew against the window, and the old hall creaked.
"The pass is closing," Shiori said. "Nobody comes up or down until the thaw."
"That's fine. Where do I sleep?"
Shiori was quiet for a moment.
"There were three futons in the storeroom," she said. "Two have rotted through. The last one is mine."
Tomoe looked at the long thin woman with the blue knuckles.
"Then we share it," she said.
Shiori's eyes went to the scroll on the hall wall, and her jaw set.
"Back to back," she said. "You on the wall side."
"Back to back," Tomoe agreed, and she picked up the empty bowl to wash it.
She did not see Shiori's hand tighten on the edge of the table until the wood creaked.
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend