"It's… Disgusting!"

When his official rejection letter came in, Soma Yukihira 'bout shat his slacks. No, he hadn't wanted to go to that dumb snooty pretentious cooking school, anyway. But I didn't think they'd actually reject me! He screamed to himself as he read the expensively thick letter with the shimmering Tohtsuki Academy crest across the top. Laying on his bed, having just closed the diner, wondering what he would do now, he'd never felt so defeated. She really flunked me.

Yeah, when he was leaving, he was given an informal rejection letter from that mousy girl with a territorial attitude. Yeah, he'd sat on a grassy mound in the middle of that gigantic campus, staring in disbelief at the enormous red rejection stamp across his picture until the sun went down. No, he doesn't remember the long trek home after that. But now that he was holding the official, "No, sir. You are neither wealthy nor worthy enough to be a student at our snooty school, nanner nanner, pbbffft!" Soma felt like a ton of bricks had just landed atop his chest. And it felt like absolute shit.

"Make me one proper dish."

I did that.

"Those whose plate impresses me—"

It did!

"—will transfer. All others will be forever banned from the Academy."

Soma's frustration pushed him to the brink of bitter tears. All he could do was tightly clench his fists into his wiry twin mattress, the letter suffocating under his chokehold. He couldn't understand this particular taste of failure, which bugged the hell out of him. Food was Soma's sole passion. It was his first introduction to love. He loved cooking; and couldn't think of anything more reflective of who he was as a person, as a Yukihira, apart from the lessons it taught him. Soma loved the thrill of proving people wrong—and the delight of meeting people where they were—through food. His mother taught him that, and he had done just that during his transfer exam. How could she reject his mother's memory like that?

Soma Yukihira, you're being irrational, a razz voice teased.

"I know," he sadly whispered, his eyes sliding down to the long white handkerchief wrapped along his left forearm, tears pricking the corners of his eyes for the first time in years. But this really stings, Mom.

But it was odd because he genuinely didn't know why.

—

Streams of salty water slid down his cheek and filled the dried cracks on his lips before Soma woke up. Outside his bedroom window, the sun had already tucked itself under his side of the world. For his part, Soma didn't remember drifting off to sleep, but his tears informed him it had been a depressive slumber. All he could recall was a haunting dream. A distant memory almost too repressed to remember but never honestly forgotten. It was a nauseating mashup of his life's longest, most traumatizing month.

It started with a bone-chilling crash in the restaurant's kitchen. Mixing bowls, pots, and pans clanged and rolled across the dining room floor. Soma, upstairs preparing for another dull day at school, flew down the staircase, attaching their cozy two-bedroom apartment to the family restaurant.

"You okay, Mom?!"

Tamako Yukihira had been up long before her son that morning, thorough in her morning opening routine for Yukihira Diner. When she didn't respond, Soma's heart tripled in speed. He searched over the counter, and under the tables, as the chairs were yet to be turned down for customers. Then, his eyes caught a glimpse of messy brown hair in the reflection of an overturned mixing bowl.

"Mom?!" Soma spun around and found her unconscious on the kitchen floor. Her white handkerchief lay limply on her head in surrender.

Mom became ill too quickly for twelve-year-old Soma to realize what was happening, but reliving it felt all too real again. One week she was burning customers' fried rice orders on purpose and nearly popping cooking oil all over the back of the house, constantly munching on her beloved squid tentacles. The next, she was in the hospital, bedridden and hooked up to so many wires and machines; young Soma was sure his mother would come back home looking like DBZ's Android 18. As fun as it was to see on tv, it frightened him to tears in real life.

But Dad was there. He returned from abroad as soon as he got the call from Grandpa Yukihira, which made Soma feel safer than scared. Dad made sure to keep the restaurant packed and lively. But his banter didn't compete because his dad's presence couldn't compare to his mother's laugh. Yukihira Diner regulars were sure to remind him of that.

Then the dream blacked out, and all Soma could hear ringing in his ears was the agonizing beep of the machine telling them his mother had gone on to be an ancestor. He tried to wake up, but his eyes refused.

A haggard and heartbroken, albeit younger, Joichiro Yukihira comes into view. His long hair is unkempt from grief and not its usual carefree mess. His posture is taut as he kneels in front of his deceased wife's altar, looking more lost than the boy had ever seen his father. There is no sense of time at the moment, but the sacral incense has burned down to ash, and the final wisps of smoke linger around the beautiful woman's portrait. Soma realizes they're both staring at the beautiful woman in the picture. His father doesn't even notice that he's there.

"Hey, Pop?" Dying brown eyes meet two desperate golden orbs burning. "Yeah, son?"

"Let's have a cooking battle!"

—

When Soma was cooking against his father, he knew who and what he was up against in the kitchen. Joichiro Yukihira was always a behemoth in front of an open flame (though it snapped every last nerve in him to admit in a cooking battle). Losing to him burned like hell, all 489 times, but he'd grown almost desensitized to it.

But this loss? Soma shook his head uncontrollably. A small voice strained out of his eyes. They felt too dry to keep open. "Sorry I lost, Pop,'' he sniffled, embarrassed to be crying in his sleep, though no one was around to catch his rare moment of vulnerability.

That day, the day he took the transfer exam to be admitted into a school he did not even want to attend, he felt the same rush of excitement that clear oil popping over an open flame for an audience of hungry spectators always brought him. Except, this time, his audience of one ignited a new urge to impress and please within him. As Soma prepared his impromptu dish with eggs, his imagination sparked in anticipation for the moment he would watch her enjoying his food. Soma was sure the plate would get him admitted into the cooking school (he didn't feel he needed to attend to become a chef; he already was a chef, dammit.) That day, Soma couldn't wait to see her reaction to the way the cubed chicken broth gelatin melted over the soft scrambled egg and sticky rice. He'd put all his creativity and ingenuity into that dish, dammit! He squeezed his eyes and sniffed his nose. Specks of gold and deep purple light bounced around the black of his eyelids and danced into the gracefully moving silhouette of…

Soma sat up.

It was the third time in three days that getting sad about being rejected led his mind back to the meanest girl with the longest hair and smoothest skin… But she rejected you… and the brightest amethyst eyes… No, they were indigo…that he'd ever seen.

(Not like he was trying to pay attention to her like that, though…) Right.

Erina Nakiri. A name seared into his memory like a brand.

Damn it all to hell if it didn't catch him by surprise that the scowling God Tongue examiner really meant it when she called his Transforming Furikake Rice "disgusting" of all words a chef could choose. Even though she was obviously swept off her feet straight to heaven from just two bites. That's what Soma couldn't wrap his simple mind around. How could she reject his food like that?! He remembered how alive and wired he felt in that exam kitchen like he could sense that the rest of his life was beginning in that room. And it lit him up to the max. So, he cooked with all that intensity boiling over, rolling out of him and into his dish. And he'd done so for her.

Just how Pops taught me, even if he's never said it. A deep wave of humiliation pummeled his guts. I'll never be as good a chef as him at this rate. Fuck!

Growing up under his master chef dad's tutelage (and shadow) always lit a fire under Soma to succeed in the kitchen. And after endless nights reading his father's recipes and his parents' cookbooks, watching his father for tutorials, countless evenings battling his food almost always left Yukihira Diner's regulars satisfied. In fact, he had not failed to impress or even please a single diner since he got into middle school. Not even when he recently began presenting new dishes for their restaurant menu to his dad. Dad…shoot. How would he tell his dad that he had lost a cooking battle to a girl?! A Shonen Weekly randomly plopped him on the head from the floating bookshelf above his bed. Ah! Jeez, sorry, Mom! But that was worse than Soma's nearly five-hundred losses to him growing up. He'd never seen another kid cook except for him. If he found out, his old man would never let him live it down.

His dad was already well a week into his New York job, and there was no way he could run the shop, go to his neighborhood school, pay the bills, and stay alive for three years. But here he was, almost three days after he received it in the mail, without a single clue about what to do. He should probably call his father, but honestly, what good would come from telling him? He'd just reverse-psychology Soma into figuring it out for himself like he always did. He honestly had the laziest parent.

But Mom would've known exactly what to do. She always had the correct answers to solve his problems. He caressed the wrapping folds, closed his eyes, and sighed. Strangely, his room smelled like burnt fried rice.

I miss you, Mom. I miss and need you and wish you were here, now more than ever.

a/n: first, thank you to everyone to read The Kindling-wow! those numbers were heart-fluttering-and my first reviewer, this sooner post is dedicated to you. second: Tamako Yukihira is one of my favorite characters in the entire SnS series because of how influential she is to Soma and Joichiro, and how little we get of her life/backstory (which i find to be a total injustice to her fictional legacy). writing (and rewriting) this one-shot was like perceiving and adjusting to an optical illusion on an emotional level, and i didn't expect it to emotionally move and sway the way it did, but as the fingers type, i follow, ya'fee me? so, do expect that to be a very common occurrence. next one-shot v soon come! And as always,

-My pleasure! Hope you enjoyed!-

8.20withlove

Disclaimer: sadly, I do not own SnS :(