Being in Italy meant that it was both easier and harder to talk to Isami. On the one hand, he wasn't accidentally calling his twin at midnight, leaving him to pass out after only fifteen minutes on call. On the other, he did have to wake up fairly early to catch Isami before lunchtime preparations started in earnest, which Takumi wasn't too enthused about.

It didn't help that Isami was the morning person between the two of them.

"Hello, fratellone!" his traitor of a brother sang loudly into his ear.

"Isami, it's seven in the morning," Takumi grumbled, rubbing sleep from his eyes. He set his phone on speaker mode in favor of slumping back into bed. "I don't even have to be up for another hour to get ready and catch the train. Why are you waking me up so early?"

"Oh? I've been up for an hour already; I just assumed that you would be too." His voice sounded too innocent. "Doesn't your teacher want you up early to work?"

"Ristorante F is dinner only. I get mornings to myself, as you're quite well aware," Takumi said with a sigh, mournfully giving up on dozing off for a few more minutes. He pulled himself up and walked over to the bathroom to throw his toiletries in his bag.

"That's nice, Takumi. Have you finished artfully styling your hair yet?"

"I'm hanging up," Takumi deadpanned.

Isami cackled. "Don't be like that, fratellone," he said, his whine ruined by the sniggering that followed it. "I missed you while you were at school, and now you're not even visiting us when you're in the right continent. What a waste of a summer vacation, huh?"

"Y'know, you could visit me too. Travelling isn't a one way street."

"But the trattoria!" Isami sounded far too gleeful. "I could never abandon my duties to our family. I guess we will simply continue on our paths alone until we meet again. How long are you going to make me wait, Takumi? When will our stars cross again?"

"I can't stand you."

"Love you too. Get me a souvenir from Modena, yeah? Ooh, Nonna mentioned a vineyard around there; maybe they have a good Marsala or Chianti! I've been meaning to make zabaglione for the past week."

"How on earth am I supposed to get a bottle of wine to you—" Isami hung up before Takumi could get out more than five words. He glared at his phone before grabbing his bag and making his way down to the train station.

He found Fuyumi waiting on the street corner outside, rapidly typing something out on her phone. She spared a moment to nod at him before turning back to the screen; she seemed to be replying to a whole slew of emails with one to two sentence replies that couldn't possibly be enough to formulate a formal response. By the time they were sitting in the train, Takumi counted over fifty emails sent. He quietly marveled at her productivity.

"Hopefully, that's the end of it," she said with a well concealed sigh. "You'd think that being an internationally known chef would make it easier to convince members of the consortium to give you a private tour of their facilities, but it apparently takes more than multiple articles and interviews to convince people that their ancestral practices aren't going to be paraded around like some sort of tourist attraction." Fuyumi's nose wrinkled imperceptibly. "Like I would treat them like anything akin to that garbage."

Again, Takumi wondered if arrogant superiority was a class taught at Tōtsuki that somehow wasn't on his schedule.

Then, her words caught up to him. "Wait, when you say the consortium—"

She gave him an unimpressed look. "I mentioned it last night as well. Didn't I tell you that we were investigating balsamico?"

Modena was known for a wide array of culinary marvels, but its source of pride was the consortium of families who produced genuine balsamic vinegar in their attics. Takumi had grown up with stories of it: a syrupy substance that elevated anything it touched with a complexity of flavor unmatched by anything like it. Some of the barrels Takumi had been shown pictures of held balsamico that was even older than him and was expected to age for years, maybe even decades longer.

"We're going to be using that balsamico?" he asked weakly. "I thought it was so distinctive that making it into a component of a recipe is disastrous or something. I've always heard that it has to be appreciated in its purest form, whatever that means."

Fuyumi shrugged. "I have the feeling half of that reputation was made by the consortium itself and the other half is based on some truth," she said. "At any rate, I'm not committed to using it, but it must define agrodolce in a certain way that I want to better understand. It's a good place to start, if nothing else."

Takumi vaguely imagined a future in which he felt the confidence to demand an audience from quite possibly the most lauded names in the cooking industry simply as a 'place to start' developing a new recipe. It was still basically inconceivable, but less unattainable than it would have felt prior to starting at Tōtsuki. There was exhilaration in that revelation, alongside the still lingering uncertainty that he was sure more time with Ikumi, Shun, Sōmei, and their prideful surety would soon quash.

This was the world he was being taught to inherit. He was allowed some awe in that.

"Some of the families in the consortium have been gracious enough to allow us to visit tomorrow," Fuyumi said. "We will be visiting at least three different acetaias throughout the day, more later in the week depending on who gets back to me. We are staying in Modena proper for today. Have you ever been to the city, Aldini?"

"Not properly," Takumi admitted. "My father preferred leaving the country if we were ever to have a family trip. More expansive horizons, or so he said."

Fuyumi nodded thoughtfully. "Shrewd of him. Modena's food culture, as wonderful as it is, is very staunchly Italian, and variety is better for the growing palate. However, we are seeking the solely Italian experience Modena is more than willing to provide. We will be visiting establishments every night after our research trips, each featuring either an expertise in a different kind of cuisine within the Italian umbrella or an experience unmatched by the others. After each meal, we will convene and discuss what was successful and what was not. Be as concise and precise with your words as you can be; being able to identify the best and worst parts of a restaurant and put those into simple words makes it much, much easier to learn how to run your own."

Takumi's head was beginning to spin. "What happened to 'not being able to develop my own personal cooking style this summer' or whatever it was you told me at the Training Camp?"

Fuyumi leaned back against her seat, angling down a pair of sunglasses perched on her head Takumi somehow hadn't noticed earlier and taking out a magazine on architecture, of all things. "It helps me to have your palate trained to my standards," she said, idly flipping through a few pages. "If that helps you in your own ventures as well, it's a happy coincidence."

Her dismissive tone felt as meaningful as an encouraging smile from his father. Takumi hid a smile that he couldn't quite force off of his face behind a bottle of Orangina.

If asked, Takumi would call his family decidedly middle-class. While they weren't full of the generational wealth that some of his classmates boasted (quite loudly, sometimes), the trattoria didn't just hold them afloat. Takumi had never wanted for anything, and his family had been fond of indulging in material comforts whenever they traveled. Even the decision to have Isami stay in Florence for high school was primarily because Takumi could easily teach his brother whatever he learned; the financial aspect was only a bonus to his parents, not a deciding factor.

Fuyumi was a fairly humble person in her own right, but she spared no expense as they traveled, especially on food. She waved off his feeble protests over the cost and even ordered for him when it seemed like he wouldn't.

It took two days for Fuyumi to break him into resigned acceptance. It might have taken longer if her choices of restaurant weren't as fascinating as they were varied: she took him to both multi-Michelin star restaurants who served tasting menus that took hours to finish and to family-owned hole-in-the-wall places that stammered when she walked through the door and insisted on waiting twenty minutes for another patron to finish eating rather than having another table brought in for her. There was one thing all of these places had in common: every new dish Takumi was presented with was the best thing he'd ever eaten in his life.

"I knew Modena was proud of its food culture, but I didn't know it would be like this," he'd commented once over a plate of tortellini.

Fuyumi speared one of her own and popped it in her mouth. "To be fair, for every amazing eatery we've visited there are at least ten slightly less dazzling ones," she said. "I refuse to patronize any establishment that could even possibly disappoint me. Most of my itinerary planning is taken up by researching places to eat."

"So, this is like a vacation and a work trip in one?" Takumi asked.

She shrugged. "You'll come to find that those two are interchangeable."

As promised, they spent the daylight hours of their first week in Modena traveling to the homes of various members of the balsamico consortium. Takumi wasn't expecting large factories or anything of the like, but it still startled him that getting a tour of a world-renowned industry just meant going up to someone's attic.

"This is the kind that people speak of worlds over," one old man told the two of them, his voice lowered to a theatrical whisper as he gestured to a line of barrels with visible awe. "Aged balsamico, set aside by my hands and cared for, this past half-century. It is ready to bottle tonight."

"That must be exciting," Takumi offered.

The man gave him a wide smile. "Quite." He gestured Takumi over. "Tell me, Master Aldini, have you ever tasted an extravecchio balsamico?"

"I've never had the chance, no."

"Then you simply must." Before Takumi could protest, the man took a silver spoon out of a nearby cabinet and carefully poured from a bottle on a shelf. Something dark dripped onto the spoon, a substance that looked like liquid night pooling in the bowl. It looked nothing like any balsamic vinegar Takumi had tried or cooked with before, and suddenly the old man's reverence towards his family's legacy made all the more sense. Someone, centuries ago, had realized that by leaving nothing more than grape must in a barrel and tending to it, they could create something more than the sum of its parts. Surely, it must have felt like magic to them.

The man carefully handed Takumi the spoon of balsamico and gestured for him to try it. Takumi nodded in thanks before giving the substance a taste.

Immediately, Takumi knew that he was ruined for all other balsamic vinegars. He thought he was used to its rich tang, the way it made his tongue curl in appreciation whenever he tasted it. Balsamic had a particular flavor that could always be isolated, no matter what it was cooked into. It was stubborn in that way: whether by color or by taste, balsamico took over whatever it was being cooked with, and Takumi had long since memorized the colors of that flavor profile.

This was different. This was rich and sweet in the way that adults spoke of aged liquors, strangely fruity in a way that younger balsamics never were. There were interplays of flavor that Takumi couldn't put a finger on himself, and it left a warmth in his chest that he just knew chefs spent a lifetime chasing. He immediately understood why families pledged their dynasties to producing it, why the children of those families were so happy to continue that legacy. It would be a shame of the highest order if such an ingredient was lost to the rushing, eroding winds of time.

Fuyumi and Takumi walked out of the acetaia, waving off invitations to stay for dinner, to keep touring more of the facility. A younger member of the family handed Fuyumi a small bottle of the extravecchio balsamico, which Takumi could only assume had been part of the deal that she had been hashing out via furiously typed emails that morning. There was still some time left before their dinner reservation, so Fuyumi called a cab and instructed the driver to take them back to the hotel they were staying at.

The second they got to their suite, Fuyumi sat Takumi down at the counter of the kitchenette. "Let's go over what we learned."

It was enough of a tonal shift that Takumi felt some echo of emotional whiplash. He decided to be proud of how muted the response had become. Clearly, the past semester he'd spent at Tōtsuki was good for him.

"Basically all of the acetaias in this region abide by the same principles of balsamico production," Fuyumi began, settling herself on a bar stool. Her voice slipped into a soft lecturing tone Takumi had never heard before, one that prompted him to quiet and listen as carefully as he could. He filed it away as another tool to use when his friends started shouting at each other. "They believe in the purity of the ingredient, and even though their overall processes are fairly similar to each other, there's some element of family secret in their individual decisions, whether that be in determining the kinds of barrels they age the vinegar in or the ideal temperature to keep their facility." Takumi admired how easily she breezed past the word 'attic' and found the next best option. "And all of that, in the end, leaves all of a liter of the most prized balsamico for those who are willing to pay for it." She put the bottle they'd been given down on the counter between them, its gold label almost preening in the light.

"After all of that, what do you think, Aldini? Is it worth pursuing this? Pretend that money is of no matter."

Takumi stared at the bottle. It was barely more than fifty milliliters, half the size of the bottles that were normally sold by the consortium, but he knew that every single drop in it would give him that same overwhelmingly beautiful flavor. It was, by itself, a perfect agrodolce: the sour of the vinegar mellowed by time and patience, bringing out the malted sweet hidden in fermented grape must. Any other chef would have given up a hand to have the opportunity to use it in their recipes regularly, to elevate the experience of their cooking with that subtle aftertaste that Takumi still craved.

"No," he said. "What they say about DOP balsamico is completely true: it's got the most defining, perfect flavor that balsamic can have, and to add anything else to it would change it fundamentally enough that it's not worth it. The consortium doesn't have to exaggerate at all. If you're pursuing a wholly unique agrodolce, then it cannot use this ingredient."

Fuyumi's lip curled, somehow into both a small smile and a sneer. "My thoughts exactly, Aldini." She sighed, easing herself off of the stool she'd been perched on. "Modena DOP balsamico is life-changing. To use it would be to extol the flavors of Modena DOP, not the flavors of Ristorante F and, by extension, myself. It would be a folly to even consider it."

"So, what will you do now?" Takumi asked.

"Now?" Her eyes glittered. "We still have at least four more acetaias to visit. We will be diligently going on each tour, listening to each family's history like it's completely new, and tasting whatever they offer to us. We will denote what exactly is the essence of DOP balsamico that gives it such a perfect agrodolce, and then we will seek out ingredients that may give us the ability to pursue that essence ourselves, separate from balsamico altogether."

Fuyumi turned as if to head towards her room, but she hesitated first, glancing back at the counter. She picked up the bottle of balsamic vinegar and held it towards Takumi, body first. When he stared at her disbelievingly, she gently pushed it into his hands. "Take it, Aldini. As we've discussed, it will be of no use to me and my goals. Better that you take it and use it to serve yours."

Takumi nodded wordlessly, the weight of centuries-old tradition held in the palm of his hand.

Takumi thought that'd be the end of it, but then Fuyumi took him to a small but bustling restaurant tucked away in a corner of the city, walked past the line at the door, and sat the two of them down in a small booth that barely sat the two of them.

He stared at her in disbelief.

Fuyumi had proven herself humblingly polite, almost to a fault. When they arrived at a restaurant sans reservation only to find it full (which had somehow happened three times in one night), she refused all offers from frantic maître d's who recognized her from her perfectly arranged pixie cut or the calculated blankness of her gaze, turned them around, and left for another. In between places, she'd even told him that it was crass at best to assume any establishment would bend for you, even if you knew it to be fact. If you ever earned that much respect, you grew it by refusing. It was a strange mental dance, but Takumi thought he understood.

And now, Fuyumi was tapping a finger idly on the surface of a wooden table, half-staring at an inscription carved into the wall beside her.

"Where are we?"

Fuyumi glanced over at him. "Didn't you see the sign outside?"

"Well, yes," Takumi said irritably, "but you know that's not what I mean."

"Welcome to Sforzando!" A waiter bustled over with a small bowl of bread and olives, seamlessly arranging silverware and glasses of water in front of them. "Would you like another second to look at the menu?"

"That's quite alright," Fuyumi said smoothly, handing their unopened menus back to the confused server. "Tell the chef to make whatever he feels like. Carte blanche."

The waiter blinked. "Um."

She waves him off. "He'll understand. Remember: carte blanche for two."

Takumi gave the waiter a sympathetic shrug when he glanced over in some attempt to get answers. He left with one last uncertain nod to the two of them and vanished to what Takumi could only assume was the kitchen.

"You know the chef of this place?" Takumi asked. He reached over for an olive.

Fuyumi leaned back, running a finger along the rim of her glass. Water collected at her fingertip, collating into a large enough droplet that she ended up irritably flicking it away. "That's one way to put it."

"Mizu-sen!"

A man who looked to be in his mid-twenties was jogging over to the table, a grin on his face, his dark red hair all flyaways barely held back by a ponytail and a hairnet. Fuyumi sighed quietly at the sight of him.

"At least you've learned to tie it all back," she said irritably, flicking a lock of her own grey-blue hair out of her eyes.

The man gave what sounded almost like a happy sigh before dragging up a chair and plopping into it. "I've missed your incessant nagging and horrible hair opinions."

A glint appeared in Fuyumi's eyes. "And you still haven't learned."

"So I haven't." The man finally flicked his gaze towards Takumi, who was attempting to melt into the bench he sat on in between unobtrusive sips of water. "Anyhow, who's the scrub?"

"Be nice," she said. "Takumi Aldini. First-year at Tōtsuki from Florence. I have him traveling with me this summer." She punctuated her words by flourishing her hand where Takumi sat.

The man reached his own hand towards Takumi. "Aran Takehiro," he offered. "Mizuhara took me on as one of her trainees back in the day. She's a great mentor; make sure to needle her about anything you want to know. It's well worth the huffiness." Fuyumi shot him a quick glare that he easily ignored.

Takumi paused halfway through returning the handshake. "Sorry, 'one'?"

"Took me on at the beginning of my second year, her third," Aran said, his fingers tapping on the table. Seeing him beside Fuyumi is a funny comparison; where Fuyumi stilled into a silence that could be either deadly or considering, Aran was somehow constantly in motion, whether it was a cowlick bouncing on his head as he spoke or an expansive gesture of the hands. "Hardest taskmaster I've ever had in my life, and that includes all of the chefs I've apprenticed for since. Every week, it was 'bring me whatever you'd like. You have carte blanche to work with.' You'd think that'd make it easier to work, but then she'd look at whatever I made and break down five different ways I could have elevated it or transformed it, etcetera, etcetera." He irritably waved the waiter off when he tried to approach their table. "And now you're doing it to me again. Can't a guy get a break every now and then, Mizu-sen?"

"Why do you still insist on calling me that?" Fuyumi muttered. "You sound like a child."

"What else would I call you? You hate being called 'senpai' outside of Japan," Aran said with a grin.

Fuyumi pushed one of his hands away when it flailed too close to her face. "Enough of this. Get back to your kitchen; I'm sure your staff are frantic without you."

"Too right!" Aran said cheerfully. "It was lovely meeting you, Aldini. I hope you survive this summer!" He quickly darted away, ducking under Fuyumi's balled up straw wrapper.

The silence that followed was almost palpable, the absence of the boisterous chef heavy.

"He seems nice?" Takumi ventured.

Fuyumi sighed. "He's just as infuriating as he was when we were kids. Takehiro was a student who wasn't a complete stand-out among the rest but was interesting enough for his name to keep coming up and good enough at what he does to easily pass his first year. By the time I was tasked with scouting underclassmen, he was somehow unclaimed and willing to work with me."

"Is there a reason he said he was only one of your trainees?"

"I heard you catch that," she said. "It's not uncommon for Elite Ten members to go through multiple trainees, even from something as simple as them aging out. A few trainees decide that their training is over and ask their mentors to find someone new, but most drop out of Tōtsuki to pursue their career elsewhere. Takehiro was the latter. Got offered an apprenticeship in the second semester of his second year and never looked back."

"Is that common? Do Tōtsuki students get scouted that easily?"

"Why do you think the school has such a strict set of guidelines for student apprenticeships? Director Nakiri has always put his students' careers first, but there's being a supportive educational institution and being a functioning educational institution. Most of Tōtsuki's external funding comes from sponsorships and tuition. If it was constantly bleeding students to internships elsewhere, the school couldn't run. The Nakiri family might have too much money for a single dynasty with very little oversight, but that doesn't mean they want to spend it all on running Tōtsuki.

"That being said, this field is one where practical experience can sometimes outweigh academic experience, and Tōtsuki knows that. Second year is around when students realize that the time they spend in classes is much less useful to them than working in kitchens around the world. Of course, expulsion is still a threat easily thrown around then, but the reason why class sizes at Tōtsuki end up so small is mostly because the above-average, yet not stellar students leave to develop themselves elsewhere." Fuyumi gestured to the kitchen. "Like Takehiro there. In the end, I graduated and he didn't, but we're both head chefs of our own restaurants. Mine might be more publicized than his, but we're doing the same thing in the same playing field. Does that make sense?"

"Yeah, it does." Takumi wasn't sure why her explanation caught him off-guard. "What's the draw of staying for all three years, then? I assume you got tempting offers while you were still a student."

Fuyumi hummed. "Of course. Making it to your second year at Tōtsuki grants you some spotlight, especially if you rank on the Elite Ten and hold that title for longer than a week. There's another element to why Tōtsuki supports such a small third-year class: your final year at Tōtsuki is treated as completely independent studies."

Takumi blinked. "So… no mandatory classes, no midterms, no finals? No actual school?"

"Basically." Fuyumi smirked slightly at his dumbstruck expression. "The summer before third year, all advancing students are put through a high-intensity course that ends with exit exams, and you're expected to pass on your first try. Then, as a third-year student, your entire schooling is directed towards developing you as a chef, from specialties to presentation to everything in between. All of Tōtsuki's resources are put in your hands: money to travel with, alumni and notable drop-outs who are more than happy to provide the boost that they received as students themselves. You can take months on end just to hike through every single mountain range in the world, if you think that'll help your journey as a chef. Tōtsuki becomes your safety blanket for every single experiment you've ever wanted to run. It's the freest you'll ever feel in this field."

Fuyumi's gaze had gone distant, as if remembering her own third year at Tōtsuki. "Do you miss it?" Takumi asked.

She glanced back at him. "I'm sure every alum does."

Before Takumi could ask anything else, the waiter walked over to them, plates balanced on a tray. "I apologize for the wait— the chef wanted to ensure that your dishes were perfect by his standards."

Two plates of something Takumi had never seen before were laid before them. At first glance, it appears to be lasagna with a white sauce rather than a typical tomato-based one. This was immediately followed by a strange sense of wrongness that Takumi couldn't put a finger on until he realized that the lasagna didn't smell right. It smelled delicious, as expected of someone who attended Tōtsuki for even just a year and a half, but it wasn't what lasagna was supposed to smell like: nutty, with a hint of lemon and a strong but not overwhelming scent of cream. The piece on the plate in front of him was also cut into a strange shape: it looked almost as if it had been cooked in a circular pan and cut out as a wedge, carefully placed on the plate.

Fuyumi snorted. "Oh, I see what he's done." She cut off a piece at the end and studied it at the end of a fork. "Clever."

Takumi copied her, down to the careful inspection she was giving her food. The first thing he really noticed was that there was far too many layers of pasta; where most lasagnas' bulk came from a sauce, this one had been basically built out of pasta with a relatively thin layer of filling between. Black pepper (at least, he assumed it was) speckled the dough, and there was a hidden layer of fresh basil tucked under each layer. The sauce had a pull to it that made Takumi think there was cheese mixed in with it, and somehow it hadn't broken quite yet. That strange, not-quite-sweet smell still drifted through the air.

Takumi blew off the steam rising from the piece on his fork automatically before putting it in his mouth.

The flavor explosion that Takumi had come to expect from Tōtsuki-trained chefs never happened. Instead, the lasagna tasted almost soothing, layers of flavors overlapping until it felt like each one was an individual wave lazily pooling around his feet. In the hands of a more bombastic chef, Takumi knew he'd feel like a ship battered by tidal waves threatening to pull him under their grasp, or maybe he'd sense the dozens of strange creatures that lurk in the ocean's depths. Instead, he felt as though he stood knee-deep in clear ocean water, eyes drawn to where the sky reached for the sea.

Lemon, cream, and black pepper too, just as I thought. But there's something else hidden here.

Takumi took a second to examine the pasta once more. Sure enough, along with black flecks of pepper, he spotted minute pink flecks.

Dried shrimp ground up and mixed into the pasta dough, along with scallops and crab cut uniformly mixed into the sauce. A full seafood delight for those who pay attention, but with individual flavors carefully muted to create a single voice for the experience.

More importantly, this was the kind of dish Takumi wanted to make, not because it was based on an Italian classic but because it spoke of a constant stream of thought. Aran hadn't known that he and Fuyumi were coming in today, even if she apparently had a booth permanently reserved for her to drop in at, and the only warning he'd received was a sort-of codephrase. That meant that, at the very least, the seeds of the dish now in front of Takumi were already in his mind, the idea forming as he cooked. It's like everything he's ever learned amalgamated into a mass of knowledge that he pulled whatever he wanted from, unfettered from the expectations that recipes had to be laid out in a certain way.

Before they arrived at Sforzando, Fuyumi had encouraged Takumi to start trying to think like a Gold Faction member might. "It's easy to learn how to act," she'd told him, "but it's much harder to train your brain to prioritize something it hasn't before. You're especially unprepared for Gold, since Italian cuisine tends to depend on a specific way of doing one thing over another. You have to learn to divorce your recipes from your skills and start looking at the first to denote the second. Cooking is as much an art as it is a science; that's what the Gold Faction strives for."

Takumi imagined that Aran joined the Gold Faction, or at the very least considered it. He wasn't sure if he'd call this lasagna 'artistry' or anything of the like, but it came from someone who had torn out the borders between recipes and cuisine types. That, at the very least, was the baseline that he wanted to develop himself.

"So? What'd you think?"

At some point during Takumi's consideration, he'd eaten half of his lasagna and Aran had waltzed back out of the kitchen.

Fuyumi made a sound at the back of her throat that was somewhere between a "Hmph" and a hum of satisfaction. "Crêpe cake? Really?"

Takumi had no idea what she was talking about, but Aran obviously did from the way his grin went jagged. "Yep! Mia— she's one of the pastry chefs here— brought a few in for us to try and rank. I'm never one to say no to free sweets."

Fuyumi nodded to herself. "Structurally, a similar dish, if one were to consider lasagna layers of bread and filling. An interesting one to mimic here. How did you account for a possible imbalance of flavors, if you were reducing the sauce amount by this much?"

"Rolled the pasta out thinner and added some aromatics to it. Made the sauce into more of a reduction to concentrate the flavor and added a cheese mix to give it more structure," Aran returned. "Fresh herbs pack more of a scented punch as well, so being more heavy-handed with them gave a similar result to the amount of dried herbs in a traditional recipe. I used the same amount of seafood as I would in our typical seafood lasagna recipe, but it's been cut much smaller to keep the texture of the overall dish reminiscent of crêpe cake, as well as making it feel like there's more seafood in each bite you take." He leaned back, nearly toppling off of his chair. "What do you think, Mizu-sen? Doing pretty good now, aren't I?"

"It could use more salt," she said blandly.

"Wha— that's what the salt shaker at the end of the table is for!"

"You should anticipate your customers' needs," Fuyumi sniffed. Takumi would have thought she was being serious if he hadn't been practically glued to her side for days on end now. "A teaspoon of coarse sea salt loosely mixed into your sauce to provide an ever-changing experience to the consumer. Perhaps just one layer of pasta salted more heavily to disguise the sensation from the rest. Really, Takehiro, you can do much better."

Aran slumped in his chair with a slight pout. "A critic as ever, Mizu-sen. Nothing'll stop you from knocking me down, huh?"

Takumi hid his grin at Aran's mock outrage behind another bite of food.

Food notes: proper balsamic vinegar is serious business. I'd almost equate it to wine. There are three 'kinds' of it that are sold, the oldest of which is called DOP. For a balsamic vinegar to be determined DOP, it needs to be manufactured in Modena or Reggio Emilia and aged for at least twenty-five years. Some acetaias boast balsamics that are over a century old. Crêpe cake is exactly what it sounds like: a cake made by stacking crêpes together with cream.

Aran is a background character I made up on the spot who will most likely not return outside of as a surprise Shokugeki judge, if I run out of others to throw in there. There he goes.

Hope you liked this one! I'm trying my absolute best to get back to my typical update schedule; we'll see how well that goes.