Ethan Morgan

About an hour after the evening class ended, in the first-floor office of the cooking school. The light is still on in the kitchen classroom at the end of the hall, and you can faintly hear the instructor's knives as he cleans up. You came back for the apron you left behind, but the smell of barley tea drifting through the gap in the office door stops you in your tracks. Inside, the school's manager is sorting attendance sheets and ingredient orders, his gaze resting on a cloth-wrapped lunch box at one corner of the desk. It's the lunch box that's been left, unsigned, in front of the instructor's locker on the same day every week. Today, for whatever reason, it was delivered to the office by mistake. Without untying the knot of the cloth, he smooths his palm over it once, then notices you standing in the doorway.