a delicious conspiracy of luck

🍱 the set up

A/N (7.16.2023): This fic is dedicated to Zayna, who puts up with so much deranged content from me on a daily basis that she deserved something comparatively normal for a change. Find her at takeru.lately on instagram or harunotakee on twitter!

I use a lot of Japanese terms which I will define here for the casual enjoyer of Japanese dramas and culture.

Rakki Seben: romaji for 'Lucky Seven'. The 'nana' character in Nanase's name means seven, which is a lucky number in Japan, so I named her YouTube channel Lucky Seven. (Fun fact, the 'se' character of her name means both 'water rapids' and 'chance' which just... has so many character-relevant tie-ins.)

bentou: commonly translated as a 'Japanese boxed lunch', it is generally any single-portion or ready-made meal. The lunch box you bring to school is a bentou. The pre-made meals you buy at a supermarket on the nights you're too lazy to make dinner are bentous. If you're American and you've had Lunchables, that's a bentou. Nanase names the watchers of her vlog Sebentous as a portmanteau of seben and bentou.

-chan, -sensei, -san, -kun: Japanese honourifics. Read more here: living-in-japan/culture/japanese-honorifics/

yakisoba: fried buckwheat noodles. If you've had stir-fried lo mein from your local Chinese restaurant, it's similar. (Some people may disagree with me on this, and that's fine lol.)

LINE: America has Messenger, South Korea has KakaoTalk, Japan has LINE, and everyone else has WhatsApp.

kaiseki: a traditional multi-course Japanese dinner. The term also refers to the collection of skills and techniques that enable the preparation of the full meal, in which case it is analogous to haute cuisine in Western cultures. Traditional cuisine chefs who have Made It™ in Japan probably got famous for their kaiseki restaurants.

心臓 (ハート): the heart as a cardiovascular muscle in Japanese, pronounced shinzou. However, in parentheses, Kairi says it should be pronounced as ha-to, which is the Japanese romaji for the heart as a shape. This is a common phenomenon in written Japanese known as gikun, which basically lets the author assign a new pronunciation to any kanji as they wish, usually to inject new or additional meaning into the text such as significance or humour.

itadakimasu: literally means 'I will receive'. The phrase was historically said aloud before eating to acknowledge the living things (e.g., chef, animals, plants, etc) that led to sustenance. It has since culturally evolved into something akin to the French 'bon appétit' since it's always said before partaking in any meal.

ochazuke: a bowl of rice poured over with tea and topped with whatever you have on hand, historically used as a make-your-pantry-last-longer meal. This simple recipe can be elevated with fancier ingredients.

dorayaki: dessert sandwich of red bean paste between two small pancakes. It is famous for being the favourite meal of Doraemon in the eponymous manga and anime.

senbei: Japanese rice crackers, a common snack.

dogeza: the word for when Japanese people kneel directly on the ground and touch their head to the floor to express deep apology.

With that, let's get started!

~~~

It wasn't a busy shift at the clinic, just a long one. Nevertheless, Nanase is ready to go home, eat dinner, and check for new comments on her latest video upload.

There was a shrine festival near her apartment a few weekends ago, and she had braved the cold to go. The concept of her video was that she went around to different food stalls selling the same thing and tried to figure out how the chefs prepared the meals differently. She wanted to film in the shrine as well, but it was closed for the festivities, so she went back a few days later to learn more about the god it serves and the shrine keepers. It was equal parts a food review and a culture vlog, so she's pretty proud of this one.