Wagashi and Algorithms: Reviving Grandma's Legacy with Viral Dreams - The Morning Disaster That Went Viral Too Much

The morning after the DM from Kyota Babe——Mizuki stood in front of the workshop. She held her smartphone in both hands, checking the screen over and over. The feature in Kyota Babe was confirmed. That alone should have been incredible, but Mizuki's mind was already racing ahead to the next move. TikTok. TikTok——the video-sharing app famous for short vertical videos that go viral one after another——she wanted to post a video of Ohana's hands kneading anko. Just her hands. No face. No workshop. Only the craftsman's movements. The problem was convincing Grandma. She opened the lattice door slowly. Already, the sound of tapping echoed from the workshop. Before six in the morning, and Ohana had already started kneading anko. "Grandma, do you have a minute?" Ohana answered without turning around. "Busy." "I know, this'll be quick! It's an app called TikTok——" "Idiot." Instant rejection. Mizuki didn't give up. She didn't have the luxury of giving up. She thrust her smartphone forward, trying to show the screen. "Let me explain with numbers! We have twenty-six hundred Instagram followers right now, and with a video we could get way more——" Ohana extended one finger in her white glove and gently pushed the phone screen away at a forty-five-degree angle. Like she was avoiding something she didn't want to touch. "Don't understand that machine talk." "You say you don't understand, but you're pretty good at pushing it away, aren't you!?" Ohana turned to face her for the first time. Her pale violet eyes looked straight at Mizuki. Mizuki took a deep breath. This was the moment. "Just hands. Only your hands moving. Your face won't show. The workshop won't show. None of the tools' details will show." Ohana said nothing. Mizuki continued. She pointed her phone at her own hands, recorded for ten seconds, and played it back right there. The screen showed only Mizuki's own hands pretending to knead anko. Ohana stared at the screen. After a moment. "……Just hands?" "Just hands! Only hands will show! Not even the finger joints!" Ohana's eyebrows moved slightly. "If the finger joints don't show, how exactly are you filming the hands?" ……That was precise. Very precise. "Th-that's just a figure of speech!!" "Don't do business with figures of speech." It took fifteen minutes from there. Mizuki negotiated, Ohana listened silently, Mizuki rephrased, Ohana made corrections——and finally, three conditions were set. ①Nothing above the wrist shows. ②The oak spatula isn't filmed from the front. ③Never film from an angle where the anko's proportions are visible. "Got it! I'll follow all of them!" Ohana looked at Mizuki's eyes for one second, then turned back toward the workshop. "Break them, and there's no next time." Mizuki's "Yes!" came out an octave lower than usual. --- She posted the video at noon. Ohana's hands——aged fingers and wrists, the white gloves removed——moved in steady rhythm, kneading anko. The oak spatula crawled along the bottom of the pot slowly, the anko clinging to it, then slowly peeling away. Over and over. Only sound in the video. She tagged it ASMR——the content genre that draws comfort through auditory and visual stimulation——and kept the caption short. "110 years, kneaded by these hands." That was all. Six hours later, followers exceeded ten thousand. Mizuki stood frozen, still holding her phone. Ten thousand. Ten thousand people. Yesterday it was twenty-six hundred. Comments scrolled past. "Why does this sound so good" "Could listen forever" "How old is the person with these hands" "Total craftsman" "Where's the shop" "I want to go" "Already went, it was amazing"——one after another. DMs came in. One. Two. Five. Ten. Advance orders. "Can I get six habutae mochi in two boxes" "Ten tsukimi manju, do you ship" "Three assorted wagashi sets"——by the next morning, over three hundred. Mizuki took a deep breath. This is bad. Bad bad bad. Happy, but what do I do. Have to manage it. Have to pack it. Have to reply. Have to answer if the phone rings. Have to check the next batch of anko. All of it. Right now. At the same time. Mizuki sat in front of the computer and opened the order management spreadsheet——a dedicated sheet she'd made in a file called "Tsukimi-an Revival Plan.xlsx"——held her phone to her ear with her right hand, pulled packing tape with her left, eyes on the screen. "Yes, this is Tsukimi-an! Six habutae mochi in three boxes, understood——" Her hands moved while she talked. Five tsukimi manju, wrapped in cushioning material, into a box, tape sealed—— "Thank you, may I have your address?" The voice on the phone read an address. Mizuki tried to switch the pen to her right hand, but her right hand held the phone, so she wedged her smartphone between her neck and shoulder to write down the address. Packing tape fell on the floor. She picked it up. Placed the address label on the packed box. The call ended, and Mizuki turned to the computer. She was about to enter it into the order management sheet—— Her hands stopped. She looked at the packed box. Two address labels were stacked on top of each other on the same box. "……Huh?" Two different addresses on one box. Physically impossible. She'd have to peel one off and verify everything again. She couldn't remember which was right anymore. That's when the burnt smell drifted from the back. Mizuki's mind went white. She ran. Burst into the workshop. Thin smoke rose from the bottom of the pot. The next batch of anko, left on the fire. Completely forgotten. She turned off the gas. Lifted the pot. The bottom was brown. A white apron appeared from the back. Ohana looked at the pot. At Mizuki. Back at the pot. "There it is." Low. Quiet. "That's what happens when you bite off more than you can chew." Mizuki couldn't speak. If she opened her mouth, apologies and excuses and tears would all pour out at once, and she was terrified of that, so she kept it shut. Ohana took the pot from Mizuki's hands and set it in the sink. Then she opened the cabinet and started pulling out fresh ingredients. Without a word. In silence. "……Grandma, I'll do it." "You'll burn it again." No argument there. --- Eleven at night, Mizuki was wrestling with the order management spreadsheet. Confirming over three hundred DMs, checking addresses, matching items and quantities one by one——barely halfway done. Her eyes were blurry. Her back ached. She glanced toward the workshop. The light was on. Mizuki stood and walked quietly down the hallway. She stopped at the workshop door, opened it a crack, and peeked inside. Ohana sat on a round stool. Her back was slightly hunched. But her hands kept moving. The oak spatula crawling along the pot bottom, that steady rhythm. Over ten hours since midday. Words came from Mizuki's mouth. "Grandma, you should rest. You don't have to make extra for me." Ohana didn't turn around. "Who said I was making extra for you. It's our wagashi. I'm making it for that." Mizuki tried to say something, opened her mouth——closed it. There were no words. Or rather, there were plenty of words, but none of them felt right. Thank you, I'm sorry, I love you——all of it felt wrong for this moment. She closed the door softly. Walked back down the hallway. Sat in front of the computer. Stared at the spreadsheet numbers. Heat gathered behind her eyes. But there was no time to cry. Five more DMs came in. Mizuki rubbed her eyes and started typing replies. --- The next morning, fog hung in the air. Thin mist drifted up from the Koyanagi River, blurring the lattice door of Tsukimi-an in white haze. Mizuki had finished shipping the night before, caught a few hours of sleep——maybe three or four——and was now stacking cardboard boxes at the entrance. Exhausted. Her eyes felt heavy. But she had to organize the next shipment. The delivery company——not Fujimoto Delivery, which usually handled Tsukimi-an's shipments, but a major carrier she'd called for bulk pickup——was supposed to come this morning. Ten boxes. Cushioning material. Address labels. Shipping slips. Mizuki said "Alright" out loud and lifted the top box with both hands. Just as she stepped onto the stone pavement of the entrance—— Her foot slipped. The wet stone from last night's rain betrayed her shoe sole. The box flew through the air. Mizuki's body fell forward. Both hands——grabbed something. Two seconds of stillness. Both hands were firmly gripping the chest of a brown uniform. She looked up. A young man in a major delivery company uniform. Early twenties, probably. Round eyes. Red ears. It took Mizuki's brain another second to process reality. "I'm——I'm so sorry!!!!!" She jumped back. Two boxes rolled at her feet. The delivery guy stood frozen, still holding his pickup materials. Red ears. Red neck. "Ah……no……" Mizuki's face burned all the way to her ears. She could feel it. This is bad. Bad bad bad. No, my foot just slipped, it wasn't intentional, but it looks like—— A low voice came from the back. "Mizuki. Hugging the delivery man isn't a business practice." Mizuki spun around at full speed. "That's not it!! My foot!! Just slipped!!" The delivery guy picked up the fallen boxes. Red ears, not looking up. "Ah……I'll……come back……" He said only that and left at a fast walk——almost running——forgetting to leave the pickup boxes behind. A while later, Ohana came out from the back. She looked at Mizuki's face. One second. "……You're bright red." "Grandma!!" Ohana turned back toward the workshop. Her back seemed somehow lighter than usual——or so it seemed to Mizuki. --- Late afternoon, still trying to forget the delivery incident while her face stayed warm, Mizuki was organizing SNS DM messages. Going through over three hundred DMs one by one. Most were orders, encouragement messages, or "Where is your shop?" inquiries. One DM stood out. From @wagashi_lover. Mizuki read the screen twice. "The way you presented the TikTok video was clever. But a surge in advance orders creates a gap with manufacturing capacity. If you don't set an order limit at this stage, you risk losing trust through quality complaints. Consider setting an upper limit and using the next-shipment notification feature." Not encouragement. Not criticism. Pure, precise business advice. She checked the account. Followers hidden, zero posts. Profile just said "I like wagashi." Nothing else. Mizuki read the advice again. ——It was right. Everything she should do immediately was written there. Manufacturing capacity——the maximum Ohana could make in a day was sixty pieces——ignored while taking orders would either drop quality or miss deadlines. Mizuki knew that, but the excitement of the numbers had pushed it aside. But who was this person? Something about them. Felt important. A nagging feeling in her chest. Not romantic——probably not. Just that precision, that way of writing, felt familiar somehow. Mizuki set the order limit to fifty and replied briefly to the DM. "Thank you, I'll use this." Just that. She sent it. --- Late on the last day of the month, the account book lay open on the kitchen table. Under the yellow light of the bulb, Ohana and Mizuki sat side by side. Ohana opened the ledger, Mizuki leaning in from beside her. Mizuki's finger traced the page. Sales figures. Fixed costs. "Wait." Her voice came out. Sales: 470,000 yen. Fixed costs: should be 500,000 yen—— "……We're in the black." The difference: plus 32,000 yen. Mizuki started to stand. Her chair scraped back. A sound that wasn't quite a voice caught in her throat. Ohana quietly reached out and pulled the ledger back. She checked the numbers herself. Looked at the figures slowly. Stayed like that for a few seconds. Then, softly. "……Hmph. Probably just luck." But her voice was a little lower than usual. A little softer. Mizuki was about to call out "Grandma……" when—— Her phone vibrated. She checked the notification. From: Starlight Influe

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Episode 3

Name: Wagashi and Algorithms: Reviving Grandma's Legacy with Viral Dreams
Author: Novelia

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