Chapter 589: Tempura
"Tempura... that looks delicious."
Temari stood at the counter, her gaze settling on the hot wok on the stove. Golden oil rolled around several batter-coated shrimp and pieces of fish.
The air was heavy with the particular fragrance of deep-frying -- toasted flour and the natural sweetness drawn out from the ingredients by heat. Temari's nose twitched involuntarily. She swallowed, not entirely with dignity.
"Though eating something like this at midday is definitely going to add weight, isn't it?"
There was no one in Gaara's household who was particularly skilled at cooking. They were all combat-type shinobi, after all. The food the three of them produced wasn't inedible, but it was simple -- the kind that filled your stomach and nothing more, that left no desire to have it again, that would never surface in your memory at midnight and make you hungry.
Temari had sometimes thought she should set aside time to properly learn to cook.
Beyond looking after family, there was another reason -- one that made her heart beat a little faster every time she thought about it. She and Shikamaru had been growing closer and closer. She sometimes lay awake at night, her mind drifting to what might happen one day if things kept going the way they were going. If they were really going to build a life together, she at least needed to be able to put a proper meal on the table.
But recently, someone else had started taking care of their meals entirely on their own.
Standing at the stove was a girl with golden twin-tails. Her hair was the kind of bright, slightly dazzling gold that drew the eye. The tails hung from either side of her head. Her face was delicate and soft, her features carrying a quality somewhere between a young girl and a grown woman -- a girl's clarity and a woman's warmth at once. The kind of face and figure that made even other women's faces go warm.
She wore a simple home outfit, a section of pale slender forearm showing below the sleeve. The way she stood at the stove and moved had the easy fluency of someone who had been cooking in that kitchen for fifteen years.
She turned her head, her gaze landing on Temari, and gave a gentle smile.
"Don't worry. Tempura isn't actually that high in calories. Shrimp and fish are both naturally low in fat. Having it occasionally won't cause weight gain."
Temari watched that face. That smile. Those blue eyes that looked like they had something to say.
Uzumaki Naruko. She knew that the "person" in front of her was a puppet. Not alive.
But the expressions, the features -- they looked completely real from every angle.
When she smiled, faint lines formed at the corners of her eyes. When she spoke, her lips moved with the syllables. When she turned the tempura in the wok, every knuckle of her fingers moved in a rhythm that was natural, nothing like something pulled by threads.
Every detail told Temari this was a living person. Not a puppet, not a toy. That contradiction -- knowing the truth and feeling the opposite -- meant that everyone who spent time around Naruko simply couldn't treat her as a puppet.
After Naruko had been fully exposed, Gaara had no interest in keeping things hidden anymore.
He no longer kept Naruko in his room. And Naruko, genuinely like a member of the household, had simply begun a shared life with them.
She got up early to cook. She brewed a cup of hot tea and left it on Gaara's desk when he worked late. She had dinner ready around the time Temari and Kankuro usually came home. On nice-weather days she brought the bedding out to the balcony to air.
When she did these things, her expression was entirely natural. Natural enough that it felt like she simply belonged in this house.
Temari was astonished. Could a puppet really do all this? She had trouble believing it. She had even briefly thought about whether to take Naruko apart and see how she was constructed on the inside.
That thought lasted about one second before she dismissed it. Not because it seemed rude, but because she was afraid that if she looked, she would find nothing but wood and mechanisms.
She would rather believe that Naruko was Naruko. Alive. With feelings. A person who belonged here.
Even Kankuro, her maker, found it strange.
Every time he saw Naruko busy in the kitchen, he asked himself the same question: was his craftsmanship really that good?
His part had been the puppet's internal movement mechanisms. The external appearance had started with a design he'd commissioned from a well-known artist in the Land of Wind. The outer shell -- Naruko's face, her figure, every line of her -- had been carved piece by piece by Lady Chiyo. The puppet's core was Lady Chiyo's work as well.
Kankuro had thought carefully about how to care for his brother. Of course he had considered it: Gaara's feelings toward Naruko had long since gone beyond anything that could be described as "owner and puppet."
Kankuro didn't want to examine exactly what that meant. But he knew one thing. That image -- what Naruko represented -- was precious.
When Lady Chiyo delivered Naruko's outer shell, the clothing was already prepared and in place. Which meant that of everyone who had ever seen Naruko in her true state, only Lady Chiyo and Gaara had.
Kankuro had not tainted the beautiful image his brother held. Not in the slightest.
Naruko continued.
"Tempura's calorie count is only about half that of ordinary fried foods. It's not exactly a low-calorie dish, but eating your fill every once in a while won't cause any problems."
She said this, then used her long cooking chopsticks to lift a finished shrimp from the oil and set it gently on the oil-absorbing paper beside the wok.
"Look." A hint of quiet pride crept into Naruko's voice. "The paper underneath -- not a single oil stain."
Temari leaned over. She picked up the shrimp, lifted it from the paper, held it up, then bent to look at the sheet left behind. Completely clean. Nothing.
"Wait, really? Not even a drop?" Temari turned the shrimp over to examine the underside, then held the paper up to the light. "This came out of a deep fryer, didn't it? How is that possible?"
"Hm-hm." A quiet, satisfied sound from Naruko. "It's because I use a special technique -- steam-frying. An ordinary cook wouldn't be able to do this."
"Tempura batter is made with ice water and egg. And the oil temperature has to be kept at around one hundred sixty degrees. When the food goes in, the high heat instantly sets the batter and locks the moisture inside the ingredient."
"Then the steam generated inside the ingredient creates a steam environment within the batter coating -- so it's frying and steaming at the same time. That's why the batter itself absorbs almost no oil."
Her chopsticks didn't stop while she talked. She lifted another piece of fish from the wok and set it on the paper.
"That's... incredibly technical." Temari listened with a slightly dazed expression. Her gaze moved from the paper to Naruko's face, focused and intent as she explained. A complicated feeling rose in her chest.
Lovely to look at. Gentle-natured. Attentive to others. Exceptional at cooking. And clearly, genuinely in love with her brother.
If only she were real. Temari thought it quietly to herself. If her brother actually had a wife like this, she would never need to worry about Gaara's future again.