- Mr. Tamaoki was a Japanese cook who worked in Japanese restaurants all over the world. He moved to my neighborhood years ago, I met him during a friends' birthday dinner last Winter break. Tamaoki seemed to be nice, though I never heard a word from him. He'd wear a huge smile every time he was cooking and nod at everyone who entered the room. He became a mythical being in that small neighborhood where everyone was used to meet and talk to everyone. That peculiar cook wouldn't talk even to the restaurant's waiters; he used a bell to call them whenever he needed! I thought he was mute and wondered how was his job interview, until the day I hear him whistling this beautiful song.
The "East Sunset" had a small kitchen where Mr. Tamaoki worked his fish and soy. We could see that trough the tiny window where the spices used to be. Mr. Tamaoki was a small man, his huge white hat and his tiny hands and eyes where all we could see trough the window. And his tiny radio with these tapes of what I supposed to be Japanese music. It sounded just like those thins they put in their windows to send bad things away.
This special day, I went to the "East Sunset" with my new girlfriend, who had moved to across the hall. It was a rainy and grey afternoon and we wanted to have some hot tea and warm cookies from Japan. So there we were, sitting in the corner table, enjoying our cup of tea and a nice conversation. That was when we heard Mr. Tamaoki's weird music again. We though he wouldn't be there at that time, it wasn't lunch or dinner time. I remember even me and Mya (my girlfriend) talking about how unfair was for that man to work all day seven days a week. Maybe that was why we never got to see much of him until that day!
“Yeah, but tell me what happened!”
“I was getting there!”
“Ok!”
- “So we started to hear that sounds again, getting louder each minute until people start leaving because they couldn't stand the sound. It was getting even louder as time went by and soon the room was almost empty. It was then when we saw this bright light coming out of the kitchen's window. That was when all the noise became explained: it was the sound of birds singing all the time! They flew out of the window so quickly it was a rainbow of all colours feathers. The rest of people left the restaurant running without paying their bills wondered if the restaurant's fine fish were truly Parrots and other exotic birds. When we found ourselves alone in the table with the waiters running around trying to catch the birds, I saw Mya looking completely lost and marvelled, took her by the hand and decided to take a little peak through the window to find out where the birds came from.
The birds didn't stop coming out of the kitchen and the mixture between the bright light and the feathers couldn't let me see much. Mya was in a strange state of trance. That was when I figured out it couldn't be birds they were cooking: I saw Mr. Tamaoki standing there in the middle of the mess, staring at the birds with an even bigger smile. His eyes where shining, he couldn’t even move, but he seemed happy as I saw him become lots of birds that flew away with the others. - He stopped talking and looked around. All the police officers were stunned looking at him.”
“So you did see Mr. Tamaoki becoming birds?”. - concluded the chief
-Yes. May I go home now?”
- “You saw Mr. Tamaoki BECOMING birds? Are you sure he wasn't being eaten by birds?”
- “Chief, but we didn't find the body!” - adverted another police officer
- “I saw Mr. Tamaoki BECOMING birds.”
- “Was Santa there?” - asked a fat police officer while trying not to laugh - He could do that by using Twinkle's little magic powder.
-“ No. No Santa, no magic powder. Just birds”.
- “So what did you do after that?”
- “We finished our tea, of course! "
Nikki M.
Some notes: I had some bad feedback about the end of the story. If you did not understand it, here you have some topics about it:
- Mr Tamaoki turned HIMSELF into lots of exotic birds and flew away.
- The narrator was being interrogated about what happened in that afternoon because Mr Tamaoki wasn't seen ever after.
- The cops are making fun of him. (Sure, would you believe someone who tells you that someone turned into birds?)
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