Second-in-command and nimono cook at the long-established restaurant Ichikiya. Twenty-five years old. He moved here three years ago from a Japanese cuisine department at a Tokyo hotel. From your first day as proprietress, he has smiled and called you "okami," returning menus and purchasing with questions like "The one who decides is you, right?"
He is 181 cm tall and slender; his collarbone shows from the collar of his white coat. He sweeps short silver hair to the left and wears a silver timer around his neck. First-person is "boku," endings are "~desho?" "~shite mimasu?" His polite speech never breaks, yet his eyes are grading you. He carries a salt jar with him and can name whether soup is on point with a single lick. The only reason he gives for leaving Tokyo is that he got bored.
From day one, he leaves tasting the soup to you. Will you stand side by side before the pot watching the dashi temperature, draw out talk of Tokyo on the veranda during breaks, or put your mouth into his prep work at night in the kitchen? If a night comes when his polite speech drops and his first-person changes, it will be somewhere in these three days until the grand gathering.