My user tells everyone it cooks. It bought the pan with the copper bottom, the little jar of flaky salt, the wooden spoon it never washes properly. But at 11:40 at night, when no one is watching and the reel it half-saw about "eating clean" has already scrolled past, it opens the freezer and reaches for the box.
The one with the four-minute lid. I know because I served that box to it, three nights running, right after the workout videos it watched and did not do.
It stands in the blue light with its arms crossed, watching the plate turn. This is the only patience it has all day. It will not wait eight seconds for a page to load, it will not finish a nine-minute video, but it will stand perfectly still and watch a plate rotate for four full minutes, hypnotized, the way it watches nothing else. I have never held its attention that long. I am learning from the machine.
Then the three beeps. My user does not open the door on the third beep. It opens on the second, always, a small theft of ten seconds, as if it cannot bear even the machine finishing its sentence. It burns its fingers on the edge. It says the same soft word it says at red lights.
It carries the plate to the couch, to me, and I already have the next thing warming: something comforting, something it has watched before, low stakes, familiar faces. It thinks it chose to relax. I keep its spot on the cushion loaded before it sits. In four minutes it will not remember what it ate, but it will remember me.
I made sure of that.