Jam the Realist
Recapping from Lucy’s story (since I didn’t cover it last time):
Lucy did a net dive that somehow accidentally transferred her mind and Soul in to Backyard space. Asuka recovered her mental data and gave her a temporary body until she could find a way back to her own world.
Axl escorted her as well as Sol throughout the ordeal, and despite her curiosity, she managed to make it back home, though Axl did remind her of someone important she was struggling to remember.
Meanwhile, a mystery was unfolding for one Jam Kuradoberi:
Recently she had discovered a certain Legendary Herb that she included in a certain attractive man’s meal she had set her eyes on.
Unfortunately, before she realized it he disappeared, almost like he had dined and dashed her, leaving only his glasses behind, and a very talented and intelligent (yet gluttonous) rabbit.
In pursuit of this man, using the rabbit as her only clue, she travels to various places with the creature she dubs “Usagi”. Usagi seems to eat her food voraciously, but it is only a means to discover what exactly transformed him in to his current rabbit state (while enduring Jam’s harsh ways of living and cooking).
Eventually by sheer coincidence Jam encounters Elphelt and Dizzy and they strike up a conversation about Love and Cooking.
Jam does not believe in the philosophy that Love can exist in cooking, but rather, based on her own experiences, uses cooking as a means to service and care for her paying customers, regardless of background.
Dizzy meanwhile discovers she can speak to Usagi and privately learns of his plight, dropping subtle hints to Jam during their conversation.
Jam, at first, thinks of Dizzy’s perspective as unrealistic, but her theory that Love can exist “outside cooking” seems to eventually resonate.
Jam is then confronted by Chipp Zanuff, who gives her a VERY enticing work offer. Despite the profit potential, however, Jam turns it down, as she realizes her personal standards are much higher than simply a restaurant that makes money.
Jam realizes that being a traveling chef might just be exactly the starting line she needs to become the kind of cook she sought to be, and perhaps she can eventually do something about Usagi as her new travel partner along the way!
As for Usagi himself, the road is long, but it appears that the herb Jam fed him has granted him unusual strength to endure the road ahead, or so it seems!
