Walter hated the house, but he’d spent too much money on it and put too much work into it to want to sell it so soon. The simpler solution was to throw himself into work instead, and treat the place like an oversized closet for his clothes and his records. It was a place he went to occasionally eat, and relax when he wanted to be left alone.

Walter’s kitchen was the sole exception to his spartan lifestyle. Brushed steel appliances and polished granite counter tops were all stocked with every manner of gadget a grown man needed to feed himself, and many he didn’t. Walter walked straight to the kitchen and opened the large refrigerator door, peering inside while he figured out what he felt like putting effort into. There was a cut of beef in one of the drawers, and a decent amount of produce in the other, so he pulled everything out. Walter grabbed a steel pan from the rack on the wall and put it on the burner to heat while he cut thin strips of beef. The rest, he threw into a bowl with a quick pawful of sliced Cremini mushrooms from a paper box and a quick marinade of soy sauce and brown sugar. He put the bowl back into the fridge, and then turned back to the stove. While he waited for the beef, Walter began pulling out bowls and knives, to get everything ready for the moment he needed it. By then, the pan was starting to get hot. Walter pulled a single egg from the fridge and separated it into two small bowls, salting the yolk and beating it with a fork. Once the pan was hot enough, he took it off the heat and set it on a thick bamboo mat, and poured the yolk in, spreading it thinly so he got a piece of bright yellow egg paper. It only took a minute or two for the residual heat of the pan to cook the egg through. Walter lifted the egg from the pan and dropped it onto the cutting board. With a knife that was probably a little too big for the job, Walter cut the egg into thin strips. After that, he went onto the produce. Matchsticks from carrots and bell peppers, chopped quickly with the same knife. Once done, he repeated the process for the white of the egg, cooking it into a thin sheet and slicing it into long strips. Sliced onions, enoki mushrooms, and chives, all separated out into their own neat little piles on the cutting board. He quickly blanched some spinach, saving the water from it. Moving quickly, to not lose the heat, Walter tossed a bundle of dry glass noodles into a ceramic bowl and poured the spinach water on top to soak. The spinach, he mixed with soy sauce and sesame oil while the noodles steeped in their bowl, cooking slowly from the countertop.

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Walter put the pan the egg had been in back onto the stove to heat up again, and tossed a small squirt of vegetable oil into it. Once the oil was hot, Walter tossed in the onions and chives, adding a bit more salt to them. The oil exploded, crackling and hissing in the pan when the onions were dropped in, immediately searing everything it touched. Walter gave the pan a quick toss to spread everything out, reaching out with his other paw to pluck up one of the mushrooms on the cutting board to nibble on. By the time the onions were done, the noodles were soft in their bowl. The noodles got drained, rinsed, and cut up with some scissors so they weren’t a mile long, and then everything went into the bowl with the spinach to be mixed together and seasoned. Walter washed out the pan again, and repeated the process with the mushrooms, sautéing them and mixing them in with the rest. And then again with the bell peppers, searing them just enough to heat them through and change their texture, and then once again with the beef and mushrooms from the fridge. Then, he minced a few cloves of garlic and tossed it into the bowl, along with some seasonings and the egg strips.

The whole thing took less than fifteen minutes to throw together, but by the time Walter was done, he was starving. Once it was all mixed together, he put half of it onto a plate and the rest into a Tupperware container and tossed it into the fridge. Everything else went into the sink to be dealt with later. Finally ready to eat, Walter grabbed a pair of steel chopsticks from the silverware drawer, and pulled a beer from the fridge. He passed right by the dining table and went to his recliner in the living room to eat and watch the news. As he settled, making sure his tail wasn’t going to go all numb from being squished underneath him, Walter made sure his plate was well away from his ash tray on the end table. With the evening news just getting started, Walter settled in for a quiet meal by himself. Every network had their biases, but sometimes those biases just got old. So he ate. He drank his beer. He switched through channels, and eventually pulled a cigarette out from a pack on the end table and lit it. When he was done with his plate, he set it aside on the table until he finished his cigarette. With nothing new having happened between Walter getting off work, and finishing his dinner, he got up to go clean up his mess in the kitchen. For a brief moment, he considered just tossing everything into the dish washer, but even with the amount of bowls and knives he’d used, there wasn’t enough to be worth running the machine. Not wanting to forget about running it later, Walter ran the sink instead and quickly washed everything by paw, stacking it all on the multi-tiered dish rack beside the sink.