i forgot the disclaimer lol i don't anything but this verse is entirely my headcanon

also! yukihira kaede made her debut in Renaissance so yes souma and erina will eventually (emphasis on eventually) end up together but there's a lot of background that needs to be addressed regarding sorina in order for the next gen to make sense.

thanks for reading!

By the end of the summer, they were all scattered to the winds.

Hayama had just finished his first global tour as head chef for Emirates, and now he was in New York, pursuing a business track at Columbia on full ride. Business? Econ? Something like that. Hisako had been in a rush to catch her flight to Cambridge when Erina called her, because MIT freshman orientation was a thing.

Alice and Kurokiba, the new chief officers of the Nakiri-Totsuki Group, were in Colorado, taking an extended vacation at a resort in Aspen, long enough that people had started to wonder if they were ever planning to come back and run the company.

It had taken four out of thirty-six prepared Google Slides to explain to Totsuki's board and her grandfather that Nakiri Erina, with all due respect, did not give half a shit about being the new head of the Nakiris, and even less about becoming CEO of the Totsuki Network. Especially not at eighteen years of age. After she became the queen of the culinary realm, she'd have all the time in the world to get into that diplomacy bull.

Until a few days before the shitshow in the boardroom, Erina had been more than prepared to shoulder whatever burdens a veritable empire would force her to bear, but it only took a doubtful eyebrow raise from Hisako and a "you sure about this, Erina?" from Alice for Erina's resolve to go into shambles.

Considering the paths her fellow graduates had chosen, there was absolutely no need for her to be sitting in an office at all hours, and what's more, she was one of the most highly sought-out Totsuki alumni on record. The list of scouting gala recruitment offers for all the 92'ers in the graduation report she and Yukihira had written (read as dropped on Hayama's desk and then fled to Paris for a romantic getaway) had been over a hundred pages, and thirty of them were for the first and second seats alone.

As such, after nigh on two decades of relentlessly preparing herself to become the magnum opus and crown jewel of Totsuki, she threw it away to start new. Shinomiya Kojirou had arrived at the scouting gala with guns blazing to offer both her and Souma the foundations of their careers as a part of his franchise. She didn't know this at the time, but Souma declined because already had his hands full with Fountainhead. Erina accepted a role as head chef for the legumes magician's latest venture in London.

During the meeting, once it became all too clear that Erina had no intentions of reversing her decision, the subject of the discussion became just who exactly was going to take over, because Nakiri Senzaemon adamantly refused to have his retirement stolen from him a second time.

All eyes went to Alice, but she refused with a simple statement.

"I'm not going to be a second choice."

She and Erina exchanged a glance.

Sorry.

It's not your fault. But I'll still blame you anyways.

Dammit, you're making me feel horrible.

You know you love me.

In your dreams.

I'm living my dream, Erina.

Then Kurokiba Ryo put on his bandana and taken charge of the proceedings, and nobody had the courage to oppose him.

By the end of the hour, he and Alice had become CEO and COO of the consolidated Nakiri-Totsuki Group with joint headquarters in Tokyo and Copenhagen, Doujima Gin had taken over as dean of the academy, Saiba Asahi had been named the new head of the tourism department to maximize Totsuki's outreach via his Noir connections, and Eizan Etsuya, present CEO of Eizan Capital LLC, involuntarily had become chief financial manager for the entire network. Ten minutes after Kurokiba called to inform him of this development, Eizan eliminated all of Totsuki's hedge funds, arguing that Nakiri-Totsuki could expand its own capital with aggressive short term trade and some other jargon nobody really understood but pretended to.

Nakiri Erina had just inadvertently caused a goddamn revolution.

And then, of course, Souma was in Finland, an instant celebrity due to the rave reviews Fountainhead had garnered at its debut. The others had dispersed as well, their paths coming to resemble the spokes of a wheel.

It would be a long time before she saw any of them again.