Short story: Morning without breakfast

I like to eat porridge in the morning. But you like to eat sticky rice.

Both preferences have their problems, which culinary researchers often call regional cuisine. For example, a bowl of pho originated in the North. During the process of moving to the South, the soft and fresh pho noodles changed into dry pho noodles, the beef was chopped on a cutting board and put on the pho bowl in all kinds: rare, tendon, flank, brisket... and then there were also chicken pho and ostrich pho, beef stew pho, snakehead fish pho... for example. But the story of pho has nothing to do with the fact that you like to eat sticky rice and I like to eat porridge.

While rambling on about food, he suddenly thought, if we both liked to eat pho for breakfast, we would have met sooner, it would have been easier in this life. Because this city has many pho restaurants, but only a few delicious pho restaurants. And people who like to eat pho have to go to a delicious pho restaurant to eat, no one would go to a pho restaurant that only uses a lot of MSG and sugar for the broth. It could also be that on a crowded day, the people who go to eat breakfast have to sit at the same table. Coincidentally, you and I will sit at the same table. And surely you, as beautiful as that, as well-behaved as that, will be the one to pay for the pho. You will say: "Hey, why are you so stupid with girls?" He will reply: "Are you stupid with girls? Who said that? I'm stupid with you."

But you and I didn’t eat pho together. I ate white porridge with all the side dishes at the porridge shop near the market, the porridge shop is probably as old as me. In the past, when the market was still a small market, the porridge seller sold porridge in a steaming pot of white porridge nestled on the side of the road. Now the porridge shop has a brand name: “Mrs. Mum’s White Porridge”. Perhaps in the past, our grandparents randomly named their children, so the porridge seller had a name different from all the beautiful names that people give their children today: Dung, Loan, Tuyet, Ngoc, Bich, Hang, Thuy…

Okay, let's stop telling the story of porridge. I eat sticky rice because I've eaten it since I was little. Eating and drinking is just a habit in human life. That's why chefs have to prepare all the food they can find in this world to serve everyone. Life now is not like my parents' old days. My mother said, back then, when we bought goods with ration stamps, if we had a piece of good meat or a kilo of fresh fish, the whole family would hold a party, not like now: "You guys go to a restaurant, rely on your money, order all the dishes, but you can't finish them and then waste them. What a waste."

Mom sells sticky rice to support her children's education. Every morning, her sticky rice stall sells all kinds of sticky rice that she stays up late to prepare. The sticky rice stall has sticky rice with peanuts, green beans, red sticky rice, corn sticky rice, purple sticky rice, sticky rice with green beans, and broken sticky rice... Oh my god, the menu of her sticky rice stall is extremely rich. Every afternoon, my brother and I go to the coastal road during the season when the young leaves of the Indian almond tree are blooming, pick Indian almond leaves for mom to wrap sticky rice. If the Indian almond tree is out of season, mom wraps the sticky rice in banana leaves. Mom says that wrapping sticky rice in Indian almond leaves or banana leaves keeps it warm longer, making it taste better. Mom is right, because I grew up eating the sticky rice my mom cooked, kept warm in banana leaves or Indian almond leaves. And now, I still have the habit of stopping at the street corner on my way to work, where the sticky rice seller sets up her stall with two bamboo baskets in front of the electronics store that hasn't opened yet. Buy a package of sticky rice wrapped in leaves and bring it to the coffee shop, eat the sticky rice and drink coffee. There are many places in the city that sell sticky rice, some even sell it on pushcarts with very attractive ways of selling, but he doesn't buy sticky rice there, because they wrap it in paper with plastic lining. Sometimes modern life has changed things. As for him, he still likes sticky rice wrapped in leaves.

She said: "Do you know the song?The Second Love Letter"No?", he looked at me: "Why?". I sang softly:Sometimes walking on the long road. I ask myself, where are we going? If that day I didn't walk towards you. If we hadn't met, where would we be now?She affirmed: "It's not for no reason that your tire got punctured, it's not for no reason that it rained, it's not for no reason that I stopped by that place to eat porridge at that time. It's also not for no reason that the restaurant only had one empty seat right next to me."

It was a sudden rain in the early morning on the street. Oh, why don't researchers try to calculate the number of love affairs that happened during the rain? Rain, some say, is really hateful, because it blocks the way home, because it wets clothes.

It was true that the rain blocked the way home. That day the sticky rice seller took a day off. I heard she had to take her child to the university entrance exam. Oh, a sticky rice seller on the street corner taking her child to the university entrance exam is interesting news for journalists to exploit into an article. I am not a journalist so I cannot exploit the story of the sticky rice seller taking a day off to take her child to the university entrance exam, but I think about the fact that her son must have to eat the sticky rice she sells every day.

The woman selling sticky rice did not sell sticky rice. He remembered that he had to buy some roses to give to the girls at work on March 8th. The car had just left the flower shop when it got stuck in a nail and had a flat tire. He drove it for a while before finding a place to fix it. The feeling of having a flat tire and finding a place to fix it was a joyful one.

I saw the porridge shop nearby, but I didn't see you yet. So eating porridge while waiting for the tire to be fixed and waiting for the rain to stop falling was also a reasonable solution.

- Give me a bowl of salty anchovy porridge.

He called out aggressively. And at that moment, he saw her eyes glancing over from the seat beside him. He didn't understand why he gave the newly bought bouquet of flowers to her.

That day, he told me: “I bought these flowers to give to the first girl I met on March 8th”. Oh, what a perfect excuse.

People teach that if a woman wants to seduce a man, she must dress well, in the right fashion, must know how to use the right cosmetics, must speak gently, must know what the man is thinking. In general, don't be foolish and show that you are smarter than him. As for you, I don't know if you apply those methods. I only know that I met you at a porridge shop, and you softened my heart at a crowded porridge shop. But because you don't like sticky rice, I started eating porridge.

One day, the sticky rice seller asked him: "It's been a long time since you bought sticky rice." He smiled: "I've switched to eating porridge lately." The sticky rice seller stared at him, she must have been very surprised. Oh, how she understands love!

I said: "I'm not beautiful". He replied: "I'm not beautiful at all". I frowned: "Everyone says I'm beautiful, says I'm cute, but not you? Why?" He smiled: "They flatter me, because you have something much better". I was confused: "What do you have that...?". He told me to close my eyes, I had just closed them when he kissed my lips. And whispered: "Because only I know that your lips are as sweet as rock sugar".

***

In the past, in the morning I liked to eat sticky rice, and you liked to eat porridge. But now I no longer like to eat sticky rice, but I follow you to eat porridge. Because if I eat sticky rice, I have no excuse to sit with you at the cafe early in the morning. Because the face of a lover in the morning, sitting next to a steaming pot of porridge is the most beautiful face. Because the way you eat porridge is very cute.

I told you about my mother. When I was little, our family life was difficult, and my mother had four children. So in the morning, instead of giving her children money to go out for breakfast, my mother woke up early to cook porridge.

I described my mother's porridge: "Every day my mother cooks a different kind of porridge. That's why we love to eat the porridge she cooks. One day she cooks green bean porridge with sugar, another day she cooks sweet potato porridge, then porridge with braised meat, braised fish, porridge with salted duck eggs. Some days my mother cooks fish porridge... in general, there are so many kinds of porridge that I can list here."

Oh my god, since I was little, I have only thought about that porridge for sick people. I remember when I read Nam Cao's Chi Pheo, when Thi No brought a bowl of onion porridge to Chi Pheo: "He took the bowl of porridge and brought it to his mouth. Oh my god, how fragrant the porridge was! Just the smoke entering his nose was enough to make him feel relieved. He took a sip and realized: People who have never eaten onion porridge in their entire lives do not know that porridge is delicious. But why did it take him until now to taste the flavor of porridge?" Suddenly, it was funny when talking about eating porridge, I remembered the bowl of onion porridge that has gone down in history in literature.

I prepared everything yesterday afternoon. This morning, I followed my agency on a few days' tour. I told them: "Stay home and take care of your health." I left early, probably before sunrise.

He drove his bike out of the house. He walked around the porridge shop. The place where they sat every morning was still empty. He intended to stop by. But instead, he drove straight ahead. He was afraid of the empty seat.

This morning, and every morning without you, I will not eat breakfast.