When the lanterns come on, the endless traffic makes the city very lively.

"It's amazing. If we were in our hometown, everyone would be at home waiting to go to bed at this time, right?" Aki leaned against the railing on the roadside, looking at the night scene with novelty and confusion, which she had never seen before since she was born.

This is Tokyo, a city that every rural child has at least thought about. It is like a pilgrimage in the corner of his heart, and the 'holy' they are going to is something that children living in Hokkaido cannot use.

Imagination describes the prosperity.

She came here. She came to Tokyo. Even now that she has actually set foot on this land, Aki still has a sudden feeling of unreality.

Regardless of worrying about the fare, Baxuan hurried over in a taxi, and what he saw was this scene.

Very beautiful.

"I really envy you, Baxuan."

"Envy?" Before he could catch his breath, and listening to Aki's confused words, Hachiken said inexplicably. Shouldn't the other party explain now why he appeared in Tokyo, which is more than 1,400 kilometers away from Hokkaido?

Aki didn't explain. She still leaned against the railing, looking at the city that seemed to be made of neon lights under the night, and talked about unrelated things.

"Remember when we were in agricultural school? That day we found an abandoned brick oven in the woods. Then you made pizza for everyone."

Ah, of course I remember. Although that was nearly ten years ago.

At that time, they were still studying in the agricultural school. Baxuan was always out of tune with everyone because he was a child of a big city. He had no farm to inherit, and he had never even seen farmland since he was a child.

Just because he was almost suffocated struggling in the mountains of books and questions, but his grades were still difficult to improve, so he gave up, surrendered, and applied for an agricultural school that had almost no requirements for grades. After an impulse, it was difficult for his parents to do so.

He understood, so he became more and more withdrawn, and went alone to a world that he had never touched.

There, he was like an idiot who knew nothing. Farming, feeding horses, raising pigs, slaughtering, and processing dairy products were all daily activities that the classmates around him were accustomed to, which he had never been exposed to. Among the classmates,

He is like an imbecile. Even after learning the knowledge, he doesn't know where to use it in the future - because his family does not have a farm.

But that day, a small opportunity made Baxuan stand out. They found an abandoned stone oven in the school forest, and then Baxuan said those words——

"Can this be used as pizza?"

It was just a word he said unintentionally, but it made the whole school, from the newly enrolled classmates to the teachers and principal, excited.

Pizza?

According to legend, many people have only heard the name of this mysterious food and have no basic concept of it! It is a foreign thing. For these children who were born in the countryside of Hokkaido in the 1940s and 1950s, it is already out of reach in the city.

Distance, in foreign countries, is just like fairy tales, a concept completely independent of dimensions.

Just like talking about alien planets, it is divorced from reality anyway.

So that day, the originally ‘imbecile’ Baxuan became an omnipotent God in everyone’s eyes!

Because he had only tasted it a few times in Western restaurants, and his meager knowledge was actually no different from other students, he actually baked a pizza party for the whole school.

No one knows whether that 'pizza' is really pizza in the real sense, but what does it matter? Anyway, no one has eaten it or seen it except Baxuan. As long as everyone thinks it is, then

That’s it.

It has been ten years now, but Baxuan's memory is still fresh. Others can remember it because they ate pizza for the first time. But the reason why Baxuan still remembers it is that he seems to have got the ingredients wrong.

——No one knew this, but it was a pizza banquet that satisfied the whole school, without any flaws.

Pizza is like that and must be like that.

"When I came out of Hokkaido, I actually wanted to take the Shinkansen. Previously, the Shinkansen only ran from Tokyo to Osaka, but recently the Aomori route was opened, so I wanted to take it."

Aomori is the closest city to Honshu Island and Hokkaido across the sea.

"So you came to Tokyo by Shinkansen?"

"Yes, I started from the farm in Hokkaido, took a long-distance bus to Hokusha, and then took a ferry across the strait to Aomori. I took the Shinkansen from Aomori to Tokyo."

No wonder she is not near the airport, but here. Hachiken glanced at the Shinkansen Tokyo Station not far away.

The reason Aki said is not surprising. Many people dream of taking the Shinkansen.

I remember that the TV series "Shinkansen Love Story" was filmed a few years ago. It is difficult to explain such a complex, but the maglev Shinkansen can always be perfectly integrated with words such as love, longing, and the future. After all, it is the top civilian technology of this era.

The crystallization of it makes people feel like they are leaping ahead of the wave of the times.

This seems to be another 'once in a lifetime' series of pilgrimages.

"How do you feel?"

"Well, it's pretty good. The carriage is very clean. It's like something out of a science fiction movie..." Aki knew that Baxuan was asking her about how it felt to take the Shinkansen, so she replied. But after pondering for a moment, she still told the truth, "Actually,

It’s not that good either. It seems like it’s faster, not bumpy, and doesn’t feel special.”

"Right? I think so too." Baxuan agreed, "Just like pizza is actually not that delicious."

That's just a certain kind of complex, and it's nothing special if you look at it with a normal mind.

"That's not right. The pizza is delicious. I still remember the taste from ten years ago. So this is the second thing I did when I came to Tokyo. Hachiken, would you like to treat me to some Western food? I have never tasted real Western food.

What?"

"Ah?"

"Then the third thing - I actually ran away from home."

"Huh?" Baxuan didn't come back to his senses for a while. When he realized what Aki meant, his voice couldn't help but raise an octave, "Li-run away from home!"

But in this noisy environment, it was drowned out by the noise of the cars.

"Dad must sell these two foals. We had a fight and I ran away. I ask you to keep them."

Aki's tone was calm, as if he was talking about a casual topic, but Baxuan no longer knew how to answer.

He just stared at the traffic blankly, considering the possibility of sending Aki back to Hokkaido from Tokyo. Otherwise, he would be torn alive by Aki's father!

When Sakura came home from the bus stop, her father had already prepared dinner.

Dinner is her favorite hamburger, which can be considered a type of Western food. However, going to a Western restaurant to eat Western food always gives people the feeling of a "candlelight dinner". If it is a young man and a woman of similar age, it will definitely be a date.

.

Of course the dining table at home will not feel like this.

"I'm starting!"

With a mouthful of hamburger meat, Sakura chewed it with satisfaction - but she wasn't, because she had other things on her mind, so she didn't even care about the taste of the hamburger meat. From time to time, she looked at the packaging box she brought back next to her seat.<

/p>

"What's wrong? Is there something in that box?" Fujiryu also saw Sakura's absence.

"Ah, that is actually the dessert I brought back from Lingya's house. There are two apple tarts."

Sakura was a little confused, she couldn't figure out her feelings. Fujilong didn't care, he just thought Sakura wanted to eat dessert.

"It's okay to have dessert, but only after finishing the main meal."

"No, I've already eaten my share. This one was brought back for dad."

"For me?" Tenglong was a little surprised, but also a little happy. No matter what, it is always gratifying for the little cotton-padded jacket to remember him. This kind of heart is enough.

"You can eat it yourself, dad doesn't like desserts."

"Liar, obviously... ah" Sakura stopped talking. Even if her father asked, she would not say any more.

[Obviously mom said that is dad’s favorite egg tart.]

After dinner, it was Sakura who was in charge of doing housework today. She cleared away the dishes and washed them in the sink. She finished the housework in more than ten minutes and then went upstairs carrying her schoolbag.

The box of egg tarts was still placed beside the seat. Fujitaka shook his head when he saw it, reached for the box, and prepared to send it to Sakura's room.

It's true that he doesn't like desserts. On the contrary, his daughter is particularly fond of these snacks. Sakura can think that she is enough, and this intention is better than anything else and is enough for him.

But at this time, the food box that was originally just a cover was inadvertently opened. Fujitaka stopped, no, he even stopped breathing.

Dream color——egg tart?

What was in the food box was not the strawberry tart he was most familiar with, but the aroma of apples. But there was no mistaking it. This shape and the egg tart embryo were the ones he was most familiar with.

Fujitaka picked up an egg tart, carefully put it to his mouth like a fragile treasure and took a bite.

Taste is the shortest memory. Sometimes after eating something, you forget the taste in the blink of an eye. But sometimes, a certain taste can remind people of memory fragments from many years ago.

Fujitaka doesn't like egg tarts.

It’s just that his favorite thing happens to be egg tarts. There’s nothing wrong with the taste.

Under the wild cherry blossoms in spring, next to the busy station, and even in the library where there was a quiet sign saying "no food and drink". I still remember the librarian's eyes, but he didn't point it out because he was a professor in the school. He and her were always together.

It tasted sweet at the time, but now I think back on it with sourness.

【The long night has turned a deaf ear, the wind beats the banana trees, the rain beats the pots, and the dreams come and go and are hard to find】

I think of the haiku I learned when I was studying classical literature in school. It was recited by the ancients. Only by experiencing it can you understand the taste.

Earn every last bit of crumbs in your hands carefully.

Fujitaka knew that this egg tart could not be made by Nadeshiko. He clearly understood that Nadeshiko had been gone for seven years, and this was a fact that no one could change.

I still remember that Nadeshiko seemed to have learned the recipe for this egg tart from a student at a pastry school. For the dream-colored strawberry egg tart, the name of the little pastry chef seemed to be Berry, and he was still an intern who had not yet graduated.

After just a chance encounter, she and Nadeshiko quickly became friends, and even told Nadeshiko the recipe she finally created.
To be continued...