North-Meets-South Spring Rolls

It was evening, three days after Itsuki’s return from Hokkaido, and Chihiro was at his place, cooking dinner. His windbreaker was still on beneath his apron as he got to work.

“Ah, hang on a sec,” Itsuki interjected.

“Hmm? What’s up?”

“I almost forgot about the crab.”

“The crab? You mean Kani?” Chihiro said, puzzled.

“No, not her.” He stood up and opened the fridge. Inside was an entire snow crab, easily twenty inches from one end to the other.

“An actual crab?” His brother goggled. “Where the hell did you…”

“I bought it in Hokkaido.”

It had arrived this morning, packed in dry ice, and he had stuffed it in the fridge because it was too big to fit in the freezer. It was already thawing, assorted crab juices pooling on the bottom of the compartment, and the whole kitchen was starting to smell.

“Wait, Bro, you went to Hokkaido? When?”

“Three days ago.”

“You didn’t say anything about that to me.”

“Well, it was kind of a rush trip. Setsuna dragged me there so we could eat some salmon roe or whatever.”

“Setsuna? That’s the guy who draws for your books, right?”

“Yeah. Puriketsu.”

“You went with Puri…” Chihiro reddened a bit. “With Setsuna?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Oh…” He stared at the crab, looking a little jealous. “Boy, this looks incredible. What should I do with it…? Now that you’ve defrosted it, I guess we better use it… Why’d you buy a huge crab all by itself, though? You like snow crab that much?”

“N-no, not really!” Itsuki exclaimed, his own face now reddening. “It just…you know, looked really cool, so I wound up buying it. It’s got, like, a shell and claws and everything.”

“It looked ‘cool’…?” Chihiro rolled his eyes as he took the carcass out of the fridge. “Oof, it’s heavy. Wow, I have no idea what to do with this… You got anything in particular you want me to make out of this?”

“Crab paste is good.”

“…In…?”

“Whatever.”

“…Okay.”

Chihiro sighed a bit as he laid the crab on the kitchen counter. “Hmm… What to do,” he murmured, a light smile spreading across his lips as he loomed over the body, ablaze with excitement over this find.

Itsuki was about to return to his desk, leaving the kitchen to his brother, when he stopped.

“Oh, right.”

“What?”

“I got something else.” He opened the fridge again, taking out a vacuum-sealed package of something black in color.

“What’s that?”

“Chiraga.”

“‘Chiraga’…? Agh!”

The moment he peered into the package, he let out a scream like a kindergarten girl.

The bag in Itsuki’s hands, purchased in Okinawa, contained chiraga—the skin from a pig’s face. The nose was largely intact, as was the overall facial shape, and at first glance it looked like a decapitated head. Real horror-film stuff.

“Uh, wh-wh-what is that?”

“Chiraga. From a pig.”

“I think I saw that on TV once… It’s some famous thing from Okinawa, right?”

“Yeah, that’s where I bought it. I tried a little, and it was actually pretty good.”

“Uh?” Chihiro gave Itsuki a blank stare. “When were you in Okinawa?”

“A week ago.”

“Why?!”

“Ooh, well, my heater broke, and it was cold, so…”

Another odd look from Chihiro. “Just because of that? You could’ve come back to our place. It would’ve been a lot closer.”

“Yeah… Yeah, I guess I could’ve, huh?”

It wasn’t that the thought had never occurred to him. In fact, he had made a conscious decision not to.

“C’mon…,” Chihiro lightly sighed. He was a smart kid. He probably knew that his big brother was playing dumb with him. But thankfully, he didn’t take it any further.

“So this…chiraga?” he said, turning up his nose as he stared at the plastic bag. “How do you eat it?”

“It was cut up into really thin slices when I tried it.”

“Oh, yeah, you can do the same thing with pig ears, right? Maybe I can just do this up like that? Hmm, and that crab, too…” His eyes turned from the pig skin in front of him to the crab lying on the counter as he thought about this. “Crab and pork, huh…? Hmm…”

“You don’t have to use ’em both right now. The pork’ll keep for a while.”

“…Well, I’ll figure something out. You can go do work or something.”

“All right…”

Itsuki handed the pig’s face over to his suddenly impassioned brother and left the kitchen.

An hour later, once Chihiro was all done, the two of them laid out what turned out to be a pretty expansive dinner on the kotatsu and got to work. The final menu: chiraga sliced with lettuce and tomatoes; a salad seasoned with tangy ponzu sauce and lavished with crab legs; two types of spring rolls stuffed with finely sliced crab and pork skin; jellied crab and pork; and crab-and-pork fried rice.

Chihiro, apparently, had been on a mission to make sure every dish used both types of meat, instead of separating them. And every one of them worked. They tasted great—especially the spring rolls. The grease from the pork and the juices from the crab matched perfectly, creating an intense flavor explosion lurking underneath the crispy skin. Not only did it taste good—the meaty crab and firmly textured chiraga made for a remarkably fulfilling eating experience. Itsuki practically inhaled them, huffing steam out from his mouth and nose as he did.

“This is incredible… The miraculous harmony of the far north and far south of Japan… We’re gonna have to name this. South… Southern Cross… North… Northern Cross… Southern-Northern… Sou-Nor… Nor-Sou… How ’bout ‘North-Meets-South Spring Rolls’?”

He was trying to come up with a snappier name, like the ones cooking-oriented manga came up with all the time, but nothing sounded right, so he compromised a bit.

“You like them?”

“A lot,” Itsuki replied, nodding. Chihiro answered with an embarrassed smile.

“Did you go with Setsuna to Okinawa, too, by the way?”

“No, that was with Miyako and Kanikou.”

Chihiro’s eyebrows twitched. “Oh? Wow. A trip to Okinawa with two women?”

“…Something wrong with that?”

“Nah, nah… It’s just like…wow, you’re finally growing up, Bro.”

The appraisal sounded more like criticism to Itsuki’s ears and made him feel awkward.

“It… It’s not like traveling with them is some huge deal. It’s just a quick plane trip to Okinawa. Okay, maybe not that quick, but still, like, three hours or so. It’s just like visiting Grandma up in Gifu Prefecture. You’ve taken girls out before, too, haven’t you?”

“I…”

The phone in Chihiro’s pocket began ringing. He took it out and tapped on the screen.

“Hello?”

“Ooh, hey, Chi-hee?” a peppy-sounding female voice said.

“Um, one second,” Chihiro said as he hurriedly stood up and half jogged into the kitchen.

“I swear, you people with your good looks,” Itsuki muttered as he saw him go. Chihiro had no girlfriend at the moment, but when Itsuki had taken a few glances at the address book on his phone, the screen had been filled with women’s names. Completely different from how his phone had been during high school. He’d barely spoken to women at all in school, much less received messages from them. Or men, for that matter. He had been kind of a loner.

He distracted himself with another North-Meets-South Spring Roll. Recalling the darker days of high school was bringing him down.

Chihiro came back in a few more moments.

“Was that your lady, Chi-hee?” Itsuki asked, somewhat maliciously. The question made Chihiro’s face instantly redden.

“I told you, I don’t have a lady,” he protested. Itsuki declined to take it any further, and the rest of dinner was spent discussing the aquarium in Okinawa, the fish they’d enjoyed in Hokkaido, and so on.

After they finished, Chihiro put the leftovers in the fridge, washed and dried the dishes, cleaned the bath and toilet, wiped down the floor with a mop, wiped the desk, separated out the garbage, and left Itsuki’s apartment.

“See you later, Itsuki. Come visit home sometime, okay?”

“…Sure. When I feel like it.”

“……”

Chihiro gave him a less-than-enthusiastic look for this before walking off.

“Oh, wait,” Itsuki said, returning to his room. There was a bag of souvenirs on the desk, and he fetched it for Chihiro. “Here’s some gifts for the family. Some awamori booze from Okinawa and Shiroi Koibito cookies from Hokkaido. I got a key chain, too, if you need it.”

Taking the bag, Chihiro fished the key chain out of it. A cartoony rendition of a whale shark dangled from the ring.

“I can have this?”

“Yeah.”

He sheepishly looked up at his big brother.

“Um, th-thanks…”

“No prob.”

“I guess we’ll both have whale-shark key chains, then,” Chihiro said. It was a little cute of him. Sweet, one could almost say. For some reason, it made Itsuki’s heart skip a beat.