Ten minutes before I could leave work, the lousy office computer we had used for five years crashed yet again and absolutely refused to save the quarterly report my incompetent boss urgently wanted. In that instant, staring at the blue screen with white text, my hands hovering over the keyboard, my mind suddenly became as still as dead water. All I could think was whether I should head straight to the roof and hang myself afterward.
The moment I walked out of the office, I took out my phone and saw my wife's message: ‘I'm staying at my parents' place tonight.’ My heart, squeezed almost to the point of stopping, instantly rebooted as wildly as if it had been shocked with electricity.
It was a miracle! I had worn a world-weary face and thought only about logging out of life, but the moment I realized I would not face my wife's nagging tonight or pretend not to notice the red marks all over my health report, I sprang vigorously back to life. Even my steps felt as light as when I had just left military service at twenty. Excited, I rode over to Breeze Plaza on the second floor of Taipei Main Station. The entire level is restaurants, including several yakiniku places. I used to think shops like these would not last whenever I passed, yet somehow they have now been open for years.
The shop follows a clean, minimalist Japanese style with wood tones. Online reviews keep raving that it is ‘fresh and comfortable, even for dining alone.’ All I can do is sneer. To an old corporate drone like me, the real advantage is its affordable solo yakiniku sets: for as little as 218 dollars, you get a tiny grill all your own. No socializing, no responsibility for turning anyone else's meat, and no pretending to be generous by giving away the good cuts. That is true freedom from pressure. To celebrate this sacred ‘night of freedom,’ I weakly paid another 39 dollars for unlimited drinks.
I ordered a diaphragm set. It arrived packed with kimchi, cabbage in sesame dressing, Koshihikari rice, and a sesame-oil fried egg. I poked the egg open with my chopsticks, took a bite, and could not help complaining inside: where exactly is the sesame-oil flavor? I am already this old, and years of business dinners may have dulled my tongue, but there truly was not a trace of sesame fragrance.
I lined up the fresh chicken thigh, beef belly, smoked bacon, and diaphragm across the grill. I have to admit that, by a gourmet's standards, the meat quality here is definitely not outstanding. But when the fat began sizzling over the flames and the aroma rushed toward me, whether it was cheap or fine no longer mattered. I shoveled big mouthfuls of meat in with Koshihikari rice. The guilty pleasure of fat bursting in my mouth was the perfect salvation after this goddamn day. Both tasted so good there was nothing left to say.
I finished an entire platter of meat alone and stuffed my belly round. Afterward, I touched the yakiniku smell that would never wash out of my clothes and stood in the Taipei Main Station concourse, drawing a deep breath of free air. My wife would return tomorrow, and that lousy computer waiting at work could crash at any moment, but at least here and now, this meal had tasted good.
The mutterings of a middle-aged corporate drone:
Only at this age did I understand that happiness is not some promotion or sudden fortune. It is taking advantage of my wife's night at her parents' place to leave work, claim a tiny grill entirely my own, and eat a meal of meat without accommodating anyone. Tomorrow she will return, and she will certainly detect the greasy smoke on my clothes in one second and give me hell. But at least for this moment, the solid aroma of meat has comforted this body covered in red health warnings.
