Noodle Diner Miracle 💯%

The bathroom door swung open with the gracefulness of a drunken elephant as Jordan groaned through the doorway. They had been within the confines of the company office for less than ten minutes and they already wanted to quit and never look back. Jordan had been a good student in school, got decent grades and was able to secure an internship at a popular company fairly easily. Their people skills and ability to adapt on the fly saw them hired before the end of the school year and they were able to rise fairly easily through the ranks until they became a supervisor. However, it seemed like the higher Jordan climbed; the harder it was for them to feel like they loved what they were doing.

The verbal thrashing they just got from their boss at the meeting that morning was totally undeserved. The more often they were thrown under the bus by their boss, the harder it was becoming to bounce back and find the energy to get through the day. Sometimes they wondered why they woke up in the morning and why they bothered to come in when they kept getting disrespected; aside from the need to pay bills and rent. As they were standing in the bathroom stall, some tears began to form at the corner of Jordan’s eye as they started thinking to themself: “I don’t get why this has to happen to me, I’m doing literally everything I can and it’s never enough for these people!”.

After a few moments of anguish, Jordan went ahead and breathed slowly, centering themselves to try and head back out and take on the rest of the day. As the dreadful workday finally came to an end, they equally dreaded going home.

Home hadn’t felt like home since Jordan’s partner, Niki, had passed a few months back and the long commute back home gave Jordan plenty of time to reflect on how much they missed their beau. The space that once made them feel safe now felt cold and desolate. Every night since Niki passed, Jordan did the same routine which was shower, scarf down some food, and fall asleep on the couch with the TV on; at least the food helped them feel a bit more warmth. As they made their way up the stairs to their third floor apartment, Jordan expected this to be a usual night of sleeping on the couch, but they noticed that there was a flyer on their door for a ramen noodle soup restaurant nearby.

The flyer made some lofty guarantees about the authenticity of the place- This ramen shop was “as close to taking a plane to Japan as you could get”; the noodles were made fresh daily with imported flour, the soup stock had been perfected over many months, and the tonkatsu crispy breaded porkchop was like “no other meat you’d ever had” and promised to be tender and crispy. Jordan heard a low rumble from her stomach just from reading the flyer and decided that they might as well head out for dinner tonight because there’s wasn’t much in the fridge anyway. The place was less than five minutes away, which was great because Jordan’s stomach was on the verge of collapsing in on itself.

The inside of the ramen noodle shop was warm and quiet, as the dinner rush had yet to start. On the shelf above the counter was a small, red, round, plaster Daruma doll with a jolly mustached face. As Jordan admired the doll, a loud and hearty “Irashaimasu! Welcome!” rang out from behind the counter from the gruff-looking owner, who was grinning with a punky grin and motioning for them to sit. The owner went on to say “You came at the best time, you can enjoy ramen with no distractions; except for me” as he winked playfully. There was a certain vibe coming from the owner- he made you feel like it didn’t matter if you were his first bowl of the day or the last, everyone was important to him.

Jordan decided to go with the tonkatsu breaded porkchop ramen with the shoyu soy broth made in-house daily by the owner. There was fresh shaved, smoked bonito fish on top as well; which made it smell amazing. You could see the shimmer of the pork fat on the top of the broth, and when you took the noodles out of the bowl they were tender and gave a bit under the pressure of the chopstick but they still held up to the hearty vegetable and egg toppings. As Jordan ate, they chuckled to themself and thought “Niki would have loved this place… too bad we didn't find out it was in town before she passed.” Their sense of time evaporated and they lost themselves in the theater that was the bowl in front of them. The saltiness of the shoyu broth paired perfectly with the fattiness of the tonkatsu.

“Hey there…now that I got a good look at ya, I just realized somethin’. There was a person who had left a laptop bag here for you a few months ago; it has ya picture on it and everythin’. Would you mind takin’ it off ma hands here?” the owner gabbed. “I’m sorry, what…?” Jordan retorted; “I’ve never even been here before, who could have left a package for me?”. “I don’t know” said the owner, “but I’m pretty sure this is you, isn’t it?” as he turned the package around to show Jordan a polaroid picture of themself from five months ago pinned to the side of the bag, it must have been from right before Niki had died-Jordan could tell it was an older picture since their hair was shorter and a different color. Jordan slowly took the laptop bag from the owner’s hands in disbelief, opened the laptop bag to peek into it, and saw there was a little black leather notebook along with twenty thousand dollars in thick stacks of cash. Jordan flipped the notebook open and on the first page was a message written there:

“You know not who I am, but I have seen how you work. It is thankless, and you do much for those who care not for you. I have seen this unfold countless times to countless others before you. The end result is always the same, they lose more than they realize until it is too late. I have no need for the money you see before you, I have since outgrown the need for it. Learn from those who failed before you, lest you follow their footsteps.”

When Jordan thumbed through the rest of the notebook, they found that the other smooth, crisp pages were blank. Jordan sat staring, face frozen in a look of shock while they tried to process what had just occurred. Over on the other side of the restaurant the owner was busy serving the dinner rush that had just started piling into the back seating area of the restaurant. Jordan took a twenty out of their wallet and left it sitting under the empty ramen soup bowl that they placed on the top of the counter. As they left the ramen shop they head a faint whisper behind them saying “If you don’t make time for yourself, it’ll be gone before you realize it”. Jordan turned around quickly to see if they could determine where that whisper had come from and didn’t see anyone right behind them who could have said that and left.