I bit down.

Nobody remembered the first time they ate there. They only remembered the need to go back.

Muki watched. She never smiled. She simply nodded once, as if to say, Yes. That’s it. That’s the taste.

Then, on a grey November evening, the door appeared in the basement of a closed-down bookstore. I climbed down the creaking stairs. The counter held only one plate. Muki stood behind it, her hands still.

I picked up the cracker. It was dry, plain, almost nothing.

Outside, the city was loud again. But I carried the quiet with me. And I understood, finally, what the double hyphen meant.

It was a pause. A breath. The space between what you were and what you could become.

And I tasted quiet . Not silence. Quiet . The quiet after a storm when the birds aren’t sure if it’s safe to sing yet. The quiet of a room where someone has just stopped crying. The quiet of a kitchen after the last guest has left, and the cook sits alone, content.

She was small, ageless, with flour-dusted forearms and eyes the color of burnt honey. She wore a stained apron over a grey sweater. She did not greet us. She simply cooked.

On the plate: a single, unadorned saltine cracker.