Bento

Obentō.

お弁当。 お弁当。 おにぎり。 おにぎり。 おにぎり。 おにぎり。 おにぎり。 おにぎり。 おにぎり。 Glad to see you made it to the end.

If you enjoyed your time with us today, pop a follow, share all you want with friends and family, and even comment if you'd like as well.

Itching for more? We post Monday through Friday once a day to a total of five episodes a week.

Something spicy and rich, with a hint of sweetness, hung in the air.

On the kitchen counter, there was a bento box, not the cheap plastic kind from the sandwich shop down the road, but lacquered black with little patterns carved along the lid.

An elastic ribbon, pink, held it shut, and a note was stuck on top with handwriting I didn't recognize, rounded letters and a looping C signed at the bottom.

The message, three words lightly underlined, read, Enjoy, C. I stood there, still holding Mark's coffee, now forgotten.

He was still in work clothes, tailored blue shirt rolled at the sleeves, dark trousers, a few grey strands standing out at his temples and along his jaw.

He'd kept his running build since college, tall, always a bit gangly, wide hands, his jaw slightly off kilter from those old brakes I secretly loved.

He stopped, clearly surprised to see me, then seemed to notice the bento box and the note in my hand.

Oh, hey, I didn't expect you home, already.

None of it shows up on the spreadsheet, but it's the stuff that actually makes life worth living.

So what's his answer? Because I was bracing for something preachy, and then he pulls out a bento box, which I did not see coming.

Right? This is the fun part.

He calls it bentoism, named after the Japanese lunchbox with little compartments.

Okay, but let me be the skeptic here.

I found the framework a little vague.

When the present self and the future collective genuinely conflict, the bento box doesn't tell you which compartment wins.

Yeah, I had the same reaction.