we go together like sugar and vinegar
"are you okay?"
It's a stupid question, Kinokuni Nene decides right after the words leave her mouth. But it just passes her involuntarily and she almost punches her own throat right after. She's not supposed to be asking that question, certainly not when he's decided his fate to become part of the rebels that are basically the sworn enemies of gourmet cooking. But she realizes right after that she digresses, because she knows that her asking him has nothing to do with the fact that he's the enemy and she's considered a god, and has more to do with the underlying fact of what happens to them right after graduation.
Isshiki Satoshi offers a grin. It's not at all wide and charming, like all of his other smiles, but it's small, thin, and carries amusement more than it carries actual happiness. She thinks he's mocking her (it wouldn't have been the first time), but the way his cerulean eyes flicker with intensity suggests that everything about him right now is real.
"Why would you ask something like that, Kinokuni-kun?" he hums, letting his crossed arms fall on his side. "Do you think I'm not okay?"
"I don't know," she admits, because she really doesn't know. It's a spur of the moment thing: the way his eyes had darkened during the meeting, the way he clenched his palms into fists underneath the table, thinking no one will notice (but she does; she notices a lot about him), when Nakiri Azami had waltzed into the room, and the sudden shut down of emotions in his face that leaves him with a fake one—all these revelations had caused her to approach him right after the meeting was done and over with.
He doesn't reply, so a moment of silence passes before them. She knows that she should leave because she's already asked the one question she's been meaning to ask, but her feet don't seem to want to move.
"Looks like we have to fight each other," he softly says. His words caress her face for a moment, as if trying to tell her that he doesn't want to fight her, that everything will be okay eventually, and that it will never matter who they are in this very moment.
"Yes," she answers curtly, voice thick with an indescribable emotion. Sorrow maybe? Guilt? Disappointment? Whatever it is, it's tearing her throat apart, shredding every last of her ability to speak. It hurts, but she decides she can live with it.
"Central is wrong, you know that," he mutters, his voice pulling her, begging her to see every negative aspect about it.
She knows it's wrong, but it feels right for her. She sees so many students dejected, trying their best to reach the top—which is them—but they can never do it. And they resign themselves to the same fate: that they'll never be the best. It hurts her in more ways than one, because she sees herself in those students' eyes. How defeated she felt whenever he came up with an overwhelming dish far better than hers, how destructive she felt whenever he does something perfect immediately while she's stuck in a never-ending loop of practice, practice, practice, because they've always been pitted against each other time and time again. But she doubts he knows that; how deep this whole Central really means to her.
"Nene—"
"Don't call me that," she bites out harshly. Her blood's pulsing, she notes, as she tries to remember the last time he called her by her own name because it still hurts. The way the two syllables roll of his tongue, the way the sky in his eyes narrow at her own ruby ones, the way she feels her ears burning, blazing, and blistering all at once—every single one of those things hurt.
He leaves his mouth parted.
"I shouldn't have asked," she confesses. And although many have fallen victim to the harsh honesty that only Kinokuni Nene is able to make her own. She's not honest though, she's sure of that, it's just that she's unable to lie. She thinks Isshiki knows that as well.
His cerulean eyes quiver with another emotion, but it hardens again as if it was never there in the first place, as if he's trying his best to match her emotionally detached eyes. He puckers his lips, furrows his eyebrows, tugs on the blazer of his uniform harshly, but it all seems like procrastination to her.
"You should be careful, Isshiki," she concludes, trying to forget everything and anything in the short conversation between them, "Central is not averse to the idea of expulsion."
He bobs his head, closes his eyes, and gives the brightest fake grin that has never worked on Kinokuni and never will. Once the grin is up, she instantly knows that they're back to their charade that has always confined them since the beginning. The next thing he tells her, she knows it to be a lie, "Thank you for warning me, Kinokuni-kun."
She leaves him then and there, not even bothering to wait for the drop of the last syllable from his unforgiving fraud smile.
"what are you doing here?"
The question hangs in the air tightly, breathing down their necks without mercy. To be frank, Kinokuni didn't mean to say it; it just came to be. Maybe it doesn't matter. After all, she's finally lost (to a junior, no less) and her brain has given up on her once the judges reached their decision. Plus, it's Isshiki—no matter what she says, or does, or even gestures, he never seems to go away permanently.
He approaches her with the same stupid outfit earlier ago, smiling the same smile with closed eyes and gentle hands and miraculous wavy orange hair, by the large glass windows in the lobby where random people litter about aimlessly. She's following the snowfall from their beginning in the night sky to their eventual ending on the ground, mixing with the others to be indistinguishable.
"You did well," he starts. His voice is light but strained, like it's hard for him to be speaking so freely and animatedly (but falsely) to a person like her.
"Isshiki," her voice cuts through, irate, panicky, desperate. She's begging him not to do this to her, not to see her as pitiful or treat her so delicately, because she's neither of those things and losing an important match doesn't warrant either of them.
He faces the window as well, watching everything with her a few steps away, but she feels as if he's never been closer.
"He beat you because he has something that you lack," he tells her.
"Stupidity?" she can't help but remark.
"Well, yes," he pauses, cracking a soft smile that feels genuine somehow. It sends a thrill to her palms that she made that happen. "But no: spontaneity."
She lets out a breath, then—"You just insulted your precious junior."
He doesn't pause to say, "It's what makes him formidable."
They stew in the silence for a while, breathing, blinking, and choosing to steal glances at each other, but they're still focusing on the snow that has enveloped the land. It's been a while since they've been like this, Kinokuni notes. Between him getting kicked out of the Elite Ten and their rebelling and the eventual match that decides the future of Totsuki, they haven't really been this peaceful for a long time. She bathes in it, in those few precious moments, because she knows that their next one is miles away.
"The great thing about losing is that you have the chance to be better than you were before," he offers, breaking the sweet silence between them. Finally, she looks at him properly but he's facing the stars but it's enough for her. She sees his left eye, so blue and so bright, but filled to the brim with unexplained thoughts. She sees the slope of his nose, curving and sharp at the end, exquisite like it's been drawn carefully. She sees his thin lips, pale like his skin, but it looks so soft and she wonders briefly how it feels. His whole face is serious, calm, and absolutely serene. Hers must be serious as well, rougher, and definitely not serene.
"I know," she whispers in such a breathy tone that even she flinches at the urgency of it, of the emotions that lays deep within those two accidental words.
"Use this battle as strength, instead of a checkpoint that we mark a dead end," he continues. She's not sure why he's sprouting out random advice for her when she's clearly the more matured and clear-headed of the two. She knows her lessons already, the decisions that made her fail, the points she needed to improve, so… why?
Maybe he's… "Are you worried about me?"
There's a pause in his movements and a certain wild look in his eyes, as if he's been caught. The beats in the few moments of silence causes a chill to climb up her spine, and a certain glimmer of eagerness that's certainly not missed by Isshiki. But, everything restarts again and instead he asks her with closed eyes and a wide grin, "Do you really want to know, Kinokuni-kun?"
She pulls her face away from him, a bit disappointed.
"It's fine if you don't answer," she replies, trying to gain her focus again at the falling snow.
He chooses not to continue their conversation.
"You should go," she decides, intertwining her hands and letting it lay right in front of her, "You need to get to the next bout."
"You'll be fine," he whispers, maybe it's for him only, trying to convince himself, understanding that she's never been the same, that they're always changing, carefully but definitely. This time, as a parting gift, he offers a tug on his lips and a world of emotions in his eyes.
She nods curtly, a bit breathless and a bit surprised, and waves him off.
"isshiki?"
Kinokuni says this with a startled tone, staring at the taller person at the other side of a door. It's unusual for him to knock on her dorm room, past seven in the evening, without an inch of his false smile on his face. He's wearing his school uniform, and he's brought a basket of assorted fruits and vegetables. The way his cerulean eyes, both glowing even after the dark has fallen, is strict and narrow suggests that this would be a serious conversation.
She lets him in, asks if he wants any tea, and goes to prepare it after he's said yes.
"What brings you here?" she asks, setting the tea down in front of him. He's sitting on the cushion prepared, absently picking on the edge of the basket, and she takes her seat across from him, setting her hands down on her lap as her family has always taught her to do.
"I've been thinking about our conversation during the Regiment de Cuisine…" he trails off, finally staring back at her eye-to-eye.
"That was days ago," she notes.
"And you're right," he ignores her last comment, choosing to emphasize that, "I was worried."
end
a/n: what why is this ship so cute. any other shippers of this out there?