The Seven Deadly Sins, Part Seven

On the first page, the calories in every hundred grams of Mozambique red king prawns are eighty-seven kilocalories, while every hundred grams of M9 Australian Wagyu beef contain two hundred and forty-eight. People set standards for everything they eat by numbers, yet who can say how a feast ought to be measured?

At twenty-three, Ryu Yoshinaga once sat in the grandest hotel in Japan and wondered what manner of life he should lead. As the heir to the family business, he had already reached heights most people could never hope to attain in a lifetime. The women who changed beside him each week had long since dulled his appetite for beauty; even the roar of the supercars in his garage had grown shrill to his ears. It seemed there was nothing in this world that money could not buy, and when everything came too easily, nothing remained enjoyable.

That changed when he attended a private auction. The final lot was neither a relic steeped in a thousand years of history, nor a cursed jewel with a legend capable of stirring the deepest human greed for wealth. It was a fish, with an opening bid of fifty million yen.

Ryu Yoshinaga spent seventy million yen to win it. For the fish, he even hired a new chef. When he drank the gelatin-rich soup prepared by that chef, who had come all the way from Guangdong in China, an uncanny sensation washed over him, as though the life of that fish had been carried into his own body through the fish gelatin.

The fish was like a key, opening a new world for Ryu Yoshinaga. He turned down every meeting, gave his newly acquired girlfriend a severance payment, and let the Pagani Zonda in his garage gather dust. He began pursuing edible luxuries.

From white truffles from Alba in Italy to beluga caviar sealed in twenty-four-karat gold tins, he would sit at the dining table each day, waiting for new ingredients to be brought from the kitchen. He was like a predator armed with money, striding recklessly through an age drunk on material desire. He might not have had the time to go to Spain, but Iberian ham would always arrive on his table precisely on Tuesday nights.

And these foods gradually exacted their price. Ryu Yoshinaga, once devoted to fitness, had become a potbellied man. Yet his hunger for fine food would not allow reason to return. He was intoxicated by eating, drifting between the dining table and the bed. In this world, some people eat to live, but for Ryu Yoshinaga, it was the reverse.

It is always easier to sink than to strive. He began to spend recklessly and throw lavish banquets, like Vitellius, the Roman emperor of two thousand years ago. The lamps of his feasts burned through the night. To him, food was no longer food, but a way of indulging himself.

"He’s like a pig. He does nothing all day but eat and sleep."

"So rich. He actually treats such expensive ingredients as everyday meals."

Lying in bed, Ryu Yoshinaga listened to the conversation on the surveillance feed, but he did not listen to the end and switched the monitor off with a flick of his hand. The cameras had originally been installed by his father to keep watch over the servants. Ryu Yoshinaga never bothered to turn them on. He had only done so just now because lunch was over and he was idly watching television, only to switch channels by mistake. He did not care what the servants said about him. This was, in truth, the life he had chosen, and being talked about was only natural. He did not even feel angry, because he was already thinking about dessert for dinner.

After calling the chef to order an Italian mascarpone mille-feuille for dessert, Ryu Yoshinaga began scrolling through his phone. One message in particular made him smile.

"Mr. Yoshinaga, someone contacted me and said they had an extremely unusual ingredient they wanted to sell you. I thought you might be interested."

Following the contact information in the message, Ryu Yoshinaga placed a call. After a few seconds, someone answered, and a gentle male voice came through.

"Hello, may I ask who’s calling?"

"This is Ryu Yoshinaga. I heard you have a rare ingredient you want to sell."

"Yes, Mr. Yoshinaga, but I should warn you in advance: because this ingredient is so rare, it may well be the last of its kind on earth, so my asking price may exceed your imagination."

"Money is no issue. I’d rather like to know what this ingredient is called. Surely you should introduce it properly by now."

"I’m sorry, Mr. Yoshinaga, but this ingredient has only ever been mentioned in historical records as something people ate, so it doesn’t have a precise name. Well, it may roughly count as a kind of meat. It would be best if you came in person to see the details. Would you happen to be free?"

"Of course. How about this afternoon?"

"That would be perfect."

"Where is it?"

"I’ll send you the hotel location shortly."

Ryu Yoshinaga glanced at the hotel name and paid it no further mind. It was a hotel in the city center. In his opinion it was hardly top-tier, but at least livable. The other party had not chosen some remote place, but the center of the city instead, which suggested that the seller truly intended to make a deal. Though Ryu Yoshinaga cared only for food, having grown up in such a family had made him instinctively attentive to these things. Even in Tokyo, kidnappings and extortion were not unheard of. Seeing the name at the signature line, Keisuke Igarashi, he suddenly felt as though something were watching him, but soon he dismissed the inexplicable feeling.

What sort of ingredient was it? A kind of meat mentioned only in historical records?

Ryu Yoshinaga did not dislike such air of mystery. On the contrary, he felt a faint thrill. An anticipation he had not felt in a long time stirred in him, and he could hardly wait to move his overweight body downstairs.

Keisuke Igarashi’s arrival seemed inevitable. With lust, sloth, envy, wrath, and pride already gathered, gluttony and greed would be the final rites of the ceremony.

His steps were steady and powerful, like some kind of signal. The sound of his leather shoes striking the floor echoed long and hard through the corridor. Ryu Yoshinaga, already growing impatient after a long wait, sat in the banquet hall that had been completely cleared out. With an engraved shell spoon, he was scooping beluga caviar from the Caspian Sea, more expensive than gold by equal weight. In the specially designed refrigerator he carried with him, there was always a tin of caviar like this.

His devotion to caviar was the same as that of the great writer Peter Mayle, who once described it like this: good days are for caviar, bad days are for caviar; it may serve as a reward in triumph, or as comfort in catastrophe. The day one earns the first million, it tastes exquisite. Yet on the eve of bankruptcy, it has its own savor as the final gesture of defiance.

When he used it as an appetizer, he preferred the French way. Whenever a tin of caviar was opened, a matching bottle of champagne had to be opened as well—perhaps a Dom Perignon P3 Plenitude Brut Rose, or perhaps a Krug Clos d'Ambonnay Blanc de Noirs Brut. The high acidity of the champagne was crisp and pure; the sparkle against the tongue was instantly wrapped in the caviar’s rich depth, making one want to plunge headfirst into a decadent dream from France.

When he saved it for the end of a feast, however, Ryu Yoshinaga usually followed the Russian manner, pairing it with a bottle of Ildanov Vodka. It had to be from that distillery. He liked this vodka made from the finest wheat and clear water of the Nordic islands. Its smooth texture had made him choose it. The vodka had to be thoroughly chilled in advance, striking the throat like a sharp sword. Strong liquor naturally suppressed the fishiness of caviar, bringing out its special savor all the more.

"Mr. Yoshinaga, I am deeply sorry to have kept you waiting." Though Keisuke Igarashi spoke apologetically, his calm face showed no trace of emotion, only a restrained elegance.

"It’s fine. An oyster from Bluff must grow for more than nine years in the depths of the Foveaux Strait before it can be brought to the table. Time is the defining trait of all precious ingredients. The rarer the ingredient, the less controlled the time and place of the meal. As a diner, I understand this very well. I only hope the ingredient you’ve brought will live up to such respect." Ryu Yoshinaga put the last mouthful of caviar into his mouth, then rinsed his palate with champagne before speaking lazily.

Keisuke Igarashi smiled. Though that smile was vivid and bright, Ryu Yoshinaga still felt an indescribable wrongness, like a beast clad in human skin that had practiced smiling ten thousand times, yet still made others feel unsettled when seen.

Ryu Yoshinaga frowned, but said nothing. He did not care about the man before him. The only purpose of his visit was the dinner to come.

"Where is the waiter bringing the dish? It’s been so long—has it still not been cooked?"

"Please allow me to explain. The reason the hall was cleared was not merely to create the most perfect dining environment for you, but also to allow time for the final step in preparing the ingredient. You should know that there is a method called stuffing: one ingredient is inserted into another, and through the mutual compensation and enhancement of different textures and flavors, an indescribable delicacy is formed. That is exactly what was being done just now."

Speaking in the crisp, measured tone of a broadcaster, Keisuke Igarashi said, "Allow me to introduce to you the most delicious ingredient in this world. Over its long period of growth, it has nourished itself on nearly every precious ingredient on earth, and thus has formed a flavor entirely its own. As a result, almost every cooking method in the world will alter its original taste. Therefore I recommend that you eat it raw, to ensure the finest possible dining experience. Please, enjoy."

Ryu Yoshinaga was somewhat bewildered. The man before him had not presented any food at all; it was as though he were performing a puppet show to empty air.

"Where is the food?"

Keisuke Igarashi looked at him calmly, then slowly pushed a small cart covered with a red drape from the corridor outside the hall. He brought it straight to Ryu Yoshinaga’s feet and lifted the cloth covering it.

Ryu Yoshinaga froze. In his line of sight there was only a mirror.

Keisuke Igarashi’s voice rose as if from the depths of his own heart. "This is the most perfect ingredient in the world. Through it, you can taste every delicacy on earth."

Ryu Yoshinaga did not curse aloud. Instead, an unprecedented hunger suddenly seized him, as though he had never eaten anything at all. That hunger, sinking into his very bones, nearly swallowed his reason in an instant. He reached out and, in a dazed stupor, touched the fingers of the fat, overfed man in the mirror.

When his gaze dropped back to his own fingers, Keisuke Igarashi had already crushed the statue in his hand, a figure of Beelzebub that looked like a giant fly.

As the statue turned to powder with a soft rustling sound, another sound, dark and horrifying, began to rise in the empty banquet hall—a low chewing, echoing on and on.