Prologue 1-1: Tsumiki Nozomuno

Tsumiki Nozomuno exhaled loudly in the quiet restaurant.

She would never let out a gloomy sigh like that in front of the customers, but that didn’t matter now. The last customer had left a long time ago.

“Hahh...” Tsumiki looked around the empty establishment once more. Her shoulders slumped.

She’d been feeling pretty glum lately.

There were two reasons why Nozomiya wasn’t doing well. The first was the fact that the shopping street where the restaurant was located had been getting emptier and emptier over the past few years. The other was the chain restaurant that had opened in front of the station. It had taken the last of Nozomiya’s already dwindling customer base. Now the restaurant itself was in danger.

All Tsumiki’s parents would tell her was that she didn’t need to worry. But she knew it wasn’t a matter of pride. They genuinely didn’t want to worry her.

The three of them ran the tiny cafeteria together, and she loved it very much. She couldn’t bear to lose it.

But is there anything I can do...?

She was popular in the neighborhood for her cheerfulness and energy. It was just that all of her fans were older folks, and there weren’t enough of them to keep the place going.

The most obvious strategy was to undersell the restaurant at the station to bring back customers, but if that was feasible, she was sure her parents would be doing it already. If they weren’t, that must mean it wouldn’t work.

That meant that their last recourse was the food itself—to rethink the menu.

And it wouldn’t be enough just to change the flavors of some of the dishes they already served. She needed something to make Nozomiya a destination restaurant. Something that would win the hearts of customers, not just their stomachs.

But while Tsumiki had been a waitress for a long time, she’d never cooked. There was a certain reason her parents wouldn’t even let her set foot in the kitchen. There was no way she could come up with some amazing new dish that would solve everything on her own.

But Tsumiki wasn’t the type of girl to sit still in the face of adversity.

“...Yeah. Okay, it’s decided!” She wouldn’t let her beloved Nozomiya go out of business. She was ready to do anything to keep that from happening.