He sat down on the bench in the park as usual, took off the wrapper, and tried smelling it. It had a somewhat raw smell, but he couldn’t tell what it was at all. He took a large bite out of it.
—Mn! It’s an egg! A boiled egg!
It was an onigiri that had a boiled egg with the bittersweet taste of shoyu buried in it. So they even have ones like this, Tatsumi thought as he chewed. He was impressed by the abundance of variation the convenient store had of onigiri. When he thought about it, there were often boiled eggs included in his bento when he lived with his family. Fried eggs may have been more of a standard side for bento, but since his little sister hated fried eggs, and would only eat boiled eggs for some reason, the bento made by their mother usually included boiled eggs. She would make several variations of boiled eggs like salty ones, ones that tasted like pickled ginger&h.e.l.lip;&h.e.l.lip;and ones like the one stuffed in his mouth. He stayed in a dormitory for the blind during high school, so it had been five years since he had eaten a bento from his mother.
—Hmmm&h.e.l.lip;&h.e.l.lip;how nostalgic.
He reached for his second onigiri as he chewed.
“&h.e.l.lip;&h.e.l.lip;!”
At that moment, a gust of wind blew by. It was a wind so strong it almost took off with the convenient store bag Tatsumi was holding. He thought he heard a quiet voice behind him say, ah!