At what point do you admit you have a crush on someone?

Momo would like to know. Is there a rule out there that says it can only be a crush after a certain amount of time? Does it count as a crush if you’ve hardly ever talked to her and have seen her for a total of three times? Do twenty-seven year olds like her even get crushes anymore?

She feels silly, but Momo really wants to put a label on what she feels for her sweet, strange and clumsy neighbor, the one with wire-rim glasses and bright orange hair to match her personality.

Momo was charmed from the first time she met her, when the neighbor was moving in. Momo had just gotten home from work and was about to start climbing the stairs to get to her second floor apartment when she spotted a woman with three stacked boxes in her arms struggling to take a step.

Do you need help? Momo had asked, to which the new neighbor replied, very sweetly, No, I’ve got it! The neighbor then tripped on a crack and sent one box flying to the end of the hallway. Maybe Momo is easy to endear, because as she helped the neighbor with the boxes, Momo couldn’t fight the thought: oh no, I’m kind of in love with her. It wasn’t actually love, she knows that, but whatever it was made her head spin all the same.

The second time they met was when they bumped into each other one morning on their way out to work. The neighbor had dressed professionally, in slacks and a tie, so Momo assumed she had something like an office job. The conversation they had as they walked out the door was quick, but the neighbor actually recognized Momo and blushed deeply before apologizing for making a fool of herself on her moving day. I’m not a klutz, I promise! I just wasn’t expecting a crack on the floor, she’d said. Momo had brushed it off and said she’d completely forgotten by that point, which wasn’t entirely a lie.

The third time? Oh, the third time… That’s what has Momo wondering if what she feels constitutes a crush.

Yesterday, Momo had been throwing out her trash into the community dumpster when the wind made an empty takeout box smack her right in the face. After a barrage of panicked apologies, Momo removed the box from her face and found herself in the presence of the pretty neighbor, this time with her arms full of takeout boxes and fast food bags. When Momo had asked why a majority of her trash looked like that—a question even Momo isn’t sure where it came from—, the neighbor chuckled. It’s the only thing I can eat. I’m not the best cook out there, so to save me the stomach troubles, I just order out.

When the neighbor dumped her trash and excused herself, and when Momo re-entered her apartment to get started on dinner, all she could think of was the sad expression on her neighbor’s face as she explained all the takeout boxes. Had she resigned herself to her fate the moment she found out she wasn’t a good cook? Was she unhappy when she ate?

And worse, something Momo couldn’t wrap her head around, has the neighbor not eaten a single home cooked meal since she arrived here?

Before Momo realized it, she was making an extra bowl of today’s meal. It’s nothing extravagant, just shiraae, a side dish she used to enjoy back in Japan. Something about it—maybe the tofu or the carrots adding color to the dish—makes Momo think that her neighbor would really like it, and so she wraps clear plastic around the bowl. She climbs downstairs and knocks on the door before she loses her nerve. Would the neighbor actually appreciate this? Would it be offensive somehow?

The door is answered rather quickly—her neighbor is in pajama pants and an oversized sweater. She looks so ridiculously pretty Momo forgets why she’s standing there.

“Oh, hello!” The neighbor greets kindly. She opens the door wider and leans on the door jamb. “Did I ever ask your name, neighbor?”

“I don’t think we’ve formally introduced ourselves, no. I’m Momo. Hirai Momo.” She bows quickly, and when she straightens, she sees the other woman smiling.

“Hirai Momo,” she repeats slowly, almost like she’s savoring it. “It’s a beautiful name. I’m Minatozaki Sana. Pleased to meet you!”

“Well, Sana, I’m here to welcome you to the building with a small gift! I hope you’ve been enjoying your time here.” She hands Sana the bowl. “It’s been a week, right?”

Sana takes the bowl and looks at it, the smile seemingly etched on her face growing even wider. “It has been! Time flies, doesn’t it? Everyone is nice here, but that’s probably because I’m on the ground floor. Can’t say the same thing if I were on the second floor, since I tend to drop things a lot.”

“Not a klutz, huh?” Momo giggles, calling back to the first day they met. Sana’s face turns red.

“Ah, yeah… You told me you forgot about that! Did you lie to me, neighbor? Way to start off on the wrong foot!”

“Don’t worry,” Momo says smoothly, though she’s not sure it’ll convince Sana if the grin on her face is still there, teasing. “Everyone trips. Just try not to do so when you walk to the kitchen and try my shiraae.”

“So that I don’t break your bowl, right? Yes, ma’am,” Sana says, giving Momo an easygoing salute.

“No, no,” Momo says, waving that off. “I just don’t want you to miss out on my world-famous cooking. Can’t eat it off the floor, you know?”

Sana smiles at this—does she just smile at everything?—and thanks Momo. “I’ll take care and relish every bite. Thank you, Momo.”

“Have a nice night,” she replies before heading back to her apartment.

-

The next morning, Momo finds a washed bowl at her doorstep with a note tucked under it.

Thank you, neighbor ♡

Shiraae is usually just a side

dish, right? I couldn’t tell.

It felt like I was biting into a main dish. I can

see why your cooking is world famous.

Momo hugs the note to her chest, crinkling it in the process. Sana appreciated her gesture and complimented it!

That very night, after coming home from work, Momo finds herself with very little time but an unusual amount of energy. She opts to make gyudon, probably the easiest recipe she knows, and pops the rice in the rice maker before anything else. When she checks the hour and sees that there’s just enough time to make the gyudon a little bit fancier, she takes out a burdock root and an egg and adds both to the mix. Momo works quickly but methodically, thinking about Sana all the while. Is it weird that she’s so charmed about someone she hardly knows, making food for her and anticipating tomorrow’s note?

Momo guesses that the only way to make it less weird is simply to get to know Sana better, to have real conversations with her and maybe even become friends, if she’s lucky. Having a crush—Momo decides at that moment that it’s a crush—on a friend is decidedly less weird than having a crush on a virtual stranger.

Momo finishes making dinner and plates Sana’s portion; in no time, she finds herself at Sana’s door, looking at the softest smile in the world.

“Good afternoon, Sana. Looks like I had leftovers again, just enough for one lucky neighbor.”

Sana chuckles sweetly and lifts a shoulder in what Momo dares call a flirty way. “Am I the lucky neighbor?”

“If you want to be,” Momo breathes out, “and if you haven’t ordered food yet, of course.”

“Of course I’ll take this.” Sana looks at the contents in the bowl in her hands and gasps. “It looks delicious! Is this gyudon?”

“It is!” Momo’s heart thumps in her chest as she points out certain ingredients through the fogged up plastic wrap. Sana adjusts her glasses as she listens carefully. “I didn’t have a lot of time today so I went for this. I hope it’s not too watery, I tried to get as much water out of the tofu without going overboard.”

Sana marvels at the food before looking up at Momo. “This might be a silly question because of your name, but are you Japanese, by any chance?”

“I am!”

Sana smiles, this one a little smaller than the other ones, but it looks more heartfelt. “I am too…”

“Hey, that’s something we have in common, then. I feel a sort of kinship now,” Momo says, to which Sana nods happily. “Enjoy the gyudon, and tell me if it was missing anything.”

“I will, though I doubt it’ll be anything less than perfect,” Sana says, waving goodbye. “Thank you, neighbor.”

-

The very next morning, Momo finds a bowl outside her door and another note tucked under it. Momo opens it with bated breath:

It was delicious! It didn’t need anything.

The gyudon reminded

me of home and of hanging out with my

friends as a teen. Thank you so much, Momo.

-

Two weeks pass, each day ending with Momo handing off a dish and starting with Momo finding an empty bowl at her doorstep. It’s a nice routine she falls into, coming home and immediately getting to work on a meal for both her and her neighbor. Momo even calls her mother more often, at first only to ask for more recipes, but eventually it becomes a highlight of her day after work. Momo’s mother gives her new recipes and Momo’s delicious gifts to Sana only get more delicious, with Japanese curry, naporitan, nabemono and karaage only a few meals among them.

The Friday before it officially becomes three weeks since Momo started making food for her neighbor, Momo’s mother asks the question that should have popped into Momo’s mind from the beginning.

“But I thought you hated cooking?”

Momo freezes in front of the stove, phone caught between her ear and her shoulder. “What?”

“Momo, honey, it’s been great talking to you again. I’m happy you’re calling me more often, but I’m confused. For years,” her mother says, “you hated cooking. You said you only did it to survive and not depend on takeout your whole life. Now you’re asking for recipes and I even hear you hum as you cook. What changed?”

Momo thinks hard. Her mother is right, Momo did hate cooking. It used to be the most ironic thing ever, to be gifted the ability to learn recipes quickly and have all her dishes have a certain je ne sais quoi to them. Why have such an ability if she’s going to hate doing it so much?

But Momo doesn't really know what changed.

What she does know is that lately she’s found herself willing to take time out of her busy days to make an extra serving for her neighbor. She even forgot she hated cooking. Doing it felt as normal as brushing her hair in the morning.

Every time Momo shows up at her doorstep, Sana looks pleasantly surprised, like she wasn’t expecting to see her at all. They make small talk usually lasting between two and ten minutes, after which Momo excuses herself to go eat dinner alone in her apartment. She wakes up to an empty bowl and a handwritten note everyday.

Is Sana what changed?

“I guess I found someone that made it worthwhile.” Momo smiles as her mother, predictably, starts firing questions at her.

-

After a month of making Sana dinner, Momo finds it hard to believe that her neighbor has liked everything she’s made. The woman hasn’t even hinted at dissatisfaction regarding her dinner. Is Sana just being nice? Does she think it would be ungrateful to complain?

Momo is so deep in thought, worried about the unlikelihood that Sana likes everything she makes, that she almost jumps onto her counter when there’s a knock at her door.

She hurries to open it and is surprised to find Sana on the other side, her face bright red like she ran here holding her breath. Before Momo asks anything, hey eyes flick down to Sana’s hands—there’s something there, a bowl.

Wait. A bowl?!

“Oh!” Momo moves to the side to let Sana in, but Sana doesn’t move. Instead, she hands the dish over. It’s not Momo’s, so the woman isn’t sure why she’s being given it. “Good afternoon, Sana. What’s this?”

“Good afternoon! I just dropped by to give this to you.” Sana’s expression becomes hopeful. “You’ve been gifting me such wonderful food that I felt it was high time I repaid the favor.”

“Sana, I wasn’t doing this just so I could get something from you,” Momo says softly. She knows Sana doesn’t mean it like that, but she can’t help but feel bad for this.

“I know. But there’s nothing wrong with repaying the favor anyway. I know you come home tired all the time and still decide to make an extra serving for me.”

Before Momo can think of a way to ask what Sana means, save her pride just a little bit and pretend these are just leftovers, Sana is already halfway down the stairs.

Wistfully, Momo looks back at the bowl on her counter.

Sana can cook? That’s a silly question. Of course she can’t. Then…what’s in front of her?

Momo quickly unwraps it and is met with a peculiar sight. It’s like omurice except… Well, Momo hates to say it, but wrong somehow. Momo checks under the egg and the rice looks fine, so she shrugs it off. She’s never been one to judge a book by it’s cover, after all, and dives right in after getting a spoon.

It tastes…bad. Momo wants to like it, she really does, but whatever Sana did to the omurice doesn’t agree with her stomach. After a few hours, Momo concludes she got food poisoning, and the next day, she even has to skip work in order to sleep away the stomach pains.

-

Around noon, Momo wakes from her nap to hear knocks at her door. Tiredly, slowly, she nearly crawls to the door only to find Sana.

“Hi, Momo. I just got home and I noticed your car was already here. You’re usually home hours after I am. Is everything alright..?” There’s genuine worry in Sana’s eyes. Momo cringes. She appreciates Sana’s thoughtfulness, but she wonders if honesty will make things easier for everyone. Sana doesn’t seem like the type to be offended easily, but would complaining about the one time she decided to cook for Momo make her upset?

“Wait, hey, you look sick,” Sana observes, cutting Momo’s train of thought short. Her eyes widen in shock and she pales. “Was it the omurice I made?”

“I mean, maybe it was something else I ate. Maybe there was a worm in the apple I ate yesterday?” It’s a weak argument, but the look in Sana’s eye breaks Momo’s heart and the latter would do anything to make it go away.

“I doubt that.” Sana turns red and apologizes profusely despite Momo’s refusal to blame her. “I swear I followed the recipe closely…” She furrows her brows in frustration. “I’m so sorry, Momo.”

“It’s alright, really. I’ve had…worse food poisoning?” Momo regrets the joke, but at least it lightens the darkness in Sana’s eyes.

“I should have known better,” Sana continues, stepping into the apartment and leading Momo to a couch. Does Momo look too weak to stand right now? She must be worse than she thought. “Your food meant so much to me. You made me feel so welcome, with your cooking and the small conversations we had. I thought this would be a good idea.”

Momo places a sweaty hand on Sana’s. “Seriously. It’s okay. It’s the thought that counts.”

Sana frowns again, though this time it’s not as deep. She thanks Momo for being honest about the omurice. “If you had lied and told me it was good, it would have gotten to my head and I would have made more.”

Momo groans and shakes her head. “I don’t think I would be able to handle multiple bouts of this.”

Sana laughs dryly and sighs. “Seriously though. Maybe one day I’ll be able to repay you for your kindness correctly, without almost killing you. ”

“Don’t pressure yourself,” Momo says, pretending not to have heard the compliment but blushing anyway. “But if you’re set on it, I’ll be expecting.”

Sana bites her lip and looks like she wants to say something, but she hesitates. Momo sees Sana fight herself in real time. “What if I took you out to dinner?”

Momo’s world spins, though whether that’s because of the food poisoning or because the woman she’s crushing on just asked her out to dinner, she doesn’t know. “You’re asking me to dinner? When I look like this?” Momo gestures to herself. She hasn’t moved all day, trying to keep the nausea at bay, so she was in pajama shorts and an oversized tee. Her hair probably looked like a mess right now, too.

“Well, I’m not asking you out to dinner tonight, Momo. I can wait until you’re feeling better. So what do you say? At least I wouldn't be the one doing the cooking, right?”

Momo can't help but laugh at that. “I guess. I wouldn’t mind dinner with you at all.”

Sana shakes her fists excitedly and jumps to her feet, glasses almost flying off her face. “Great! Can I get you something now, though? I won’t make anything this time, I promise. I can order you some fried chicken, or whatever you want.”

Now that Momo thinks about it, she hasn’t eaten all day. Her stomach grumbles, but as much as she loves fried chicken, it’s probably too much for her fragile stomach to bear right now. “I’d like that too, but how about you get me something lighter?”

“Would fruit be fine? I can’t up a banana.” When Momo laughs and agrees, Sana continues. “Wait for me. I won’t be long, okay?”

“Okay,” Momo says. “Thank you, Sana.”