I was rather pleasantly surprised when some of you reviewed on the first chapter; I really thought this would get maybe five unique visitors per new chapter uploaded and would hover at 100 reviews until I marked it 'Complete'. Thank you for your continued interest! As of writing this, I have around six chapters written as well as the rough plan for the entire story, and it's probably only going to cover Takumi's first year (and some change). There's going to be quite a bit of canon divergence (as you'll see in this chapter!), but the basic skeleton of the story should resemble the pacing and plot that you might all love and remember from the source material (manga specifically, in this case).

I did have a quick note to add here: Part of what I really love about the SNS ending is that romance is... pretty up in the air. There's no mention of characters dating or getting married in the epilogue, and while there's implications towards romantic feelings it's never the main focus of the manga. Partially because of that and partially because of my reworks, I... no longer have any idea if there will be any pairings in this fic, or what those pairings might be. Maybe it'll come up! Maybe it won't. We'll have to see. I hope that doesn't dissuade you all. This felt important enough to highlight now so you know you might not get the Sōma/Megumi story I promised back in 2015.

Rather unrelated, I've discovered that I love editing covers together, so I think I'll be making multiple for this story. Let me know if you like this first one!


Takumi had returned home for the little bit of time he had between his entrance exam and the first day of school, and it had been somehow harder to leave Isami the second time. He wondered if that was because some small, traitorous part of him had wanted to fail the entrance exam and bind himself to Italy for the rest of his life.

"It's okay, fratellone," Isami said, absently picking at a bandaged finger. "We're going to revolutionize Italy's place in the culinary world, right? You need the formal education and the reputation becoming an alumnus gives you so we can get a step up."

Takumi snorted. "Yeah, that's if I graduate at all," he said. "I don't think I really fit in there."

"Hmm…" Isami paused to think about his next words. "I think the only thing stopping you from graduating will be if you decide to leave the school."

"That's not the kind of school this is— they want people to fail. I bet they think that the smaller graduating class means that those graduates are all the better for it."

"But you're better. You're an Aldini." Isami leaned over and squeezed his shoulder. "You're going to be the best one there. I believe that."

Takumi wished he had his brother's certainty. He just gave him a weak smile and quietly thanked him, and soon after that he was on a plane back to Japan.

Staff had directed him away from the main flow of foot traffic at the start-of-the-year ceremony, and now he stood backstage, waiting to be ushered on. Apparently, as the only transfer student, he was supposed to give some sort of speech introducing himself to his classmate. Takumi fidgeted, trying to come up with something substantial that he wanted to say.

"Ah, Aldini-san, yes?"

He shook himself out of thought and looked over to see the blue-haired girl from his transfer exams— Tadokoro something, if he remembered correctly. When he said the name uncertainly back, she beamed and nodded.

"So you do remember me! Yes, I'm Tadokoro Megumi, third-year student," she said. "Do you have your dormitory situation sorted out yet?"

"Ah— not yet. I heard there was free housing somewhere conditional on helping with chores around the house, so I was going to ask someone in the admin building about that after this."

Her eyes lit up. "Oh! You mean Polar Star, of course. I'll walk you there; remind me if I forget."

"You know about it?"

"Of sorts." Megumi glanced behind her at some of the others waiting for their turns. "Actually— Sōma-san? Are you free after this?"

"Hm?" A tall student who looked to be around Megumi's age looked up from his phone. He had shoulder-length red hair tied away from his face with a white strip of cloth and wore a somewhat wrinkled dark grey button-up and dark wash jeans. Takumi briefly wondered why he was speaking at this ceremony, though he was sure that he seemed equally mundane. "Uh, I think I am. Why?"

Megumi put a hand on Takumi's shoulder and pulled him further into her classmate's vision. "Aldini-san here needs help getting to Polar Star to get settled in. We could help him get there, no?"

The student's expression went from politely unassuming to fired up and excited in less than a second. "Alright! Yeah, we can totally help you get there." The student grinned, and Takumi nearly took a step back from the feral edge to his smile. "Aldini-san, was it? You must be the new transfer."

"Ah, yes," Takumi said. He wondered vaguely if he was supposed to bow and decided to hold out a hand to shake instead. "Aldini Takumi. It's nice to meet you."

The student looked at the hand for a second before bursting into laughter and taking it firmly. Takumi could feel every callous and healed cut on the hand, and he knew immediately that the student in front of him was another who'd been exposed to a kitchen as a child and grown up surrounded by a flurry of hot oil and shouted orders. Judging by the boy's calculating expression, he'd learned the same thing about Takumi.

"Yukihira Sōma, though officially I'm a Saiba now," he said. "Pleasure to meet you."

"L-likewise," Takumi said.

"Sōma-san, you're being called up," Megumi said.

Sōma cocked his head to the side and listened carefully. "Oh. It seems I am." He dragged a hand across his face. "What a pain. I got all fired up to cook and now I have to talk to a bunch of snot-nosed brats."

"They're not all brats," Megumi protested, pushing him towards the stage. "Go on."

Takumi watched him walk to a wing, sticking his tongue out at Megumi all the while.

Was he actually called up…?

The school's director, Nakiri Senzaemon, had been giving a speech through the introduction; Takumi hadn't heard too much of it. He knew that the Nakiri patriarch had emphasized the low graduation rate to the first-years, though he wondered how successful that was as either a scare tactic or as a way to inspire the front-runners to keep propelling themselves forward. He wasn't sure if he himself was inspired, but it did spark a curl of some rebellious streak inside of him.

"Thank you, Director Nakiri. Next, a word from this year's First Seat."

First Seat?

In all of his scouring the news for mentions of his new school, Takumi had come across mention of the Elite Ten countless times. Tōtsuki's Elite Ten was a strange body, both school administration and common student, given great power of choice over how Tōtsuki would develop over the course of their tenure. At the end of the day, the Elite Ten were the handful of students that Tōtsuki truly invested in, and there was no graduating without being one of them. Usually, all of the students of the graduating third-year class were members of the Elite Ten— and there was always room for the most precocious second-years on top of that. To graduate having claimed a seat there… that was excellence pre-defined by the legacy of the generations of Elite Tens that came before you.

And suddenly, Takumi realized what Megumi meant.

Sōma walked onstage casually winding and unwinding the strips of cloth around his wrist, forcing the listening audience of first-years to wait as he tied one off and tucked the ends of the cloth under the binding. He took a second to stretch his arms out before leaning forward on the podium and staring out at the sea of murmuring students.

He looked, above all else, bored. "Ah, ohayō," he said, tapping his fingers on the podium. "Saiba Sōma, as you all know." He paused. "I'm going to be honest, I really thought the paperwork would be the worst part of this job, but I'm starting to think twice on that."

A smirk suddenly shot across his face, and he laughed into the microphone. "You all look so scared! Stop that, don't look so frightened. This is school! This is cooking! We all love to cook, right? That's why you're all here? Tōtsuki is a place to hone yourself and excel.

"Of course, that being said…"

Sōma tapped his bottom lip with a finger, the smirk still curled on his face. He looked like a cat, staring down at prey trapped in a corner and resigned to its end.

"I can already tell which ones of you will be graduating."

Takumi felt a chill go up his spine. Ordinarily, he'd probably scoff at such a statement; how could this eighteen-year-old know anything about that? How could he foresee his failure? And yet, there was something to the boy's eyes that made Takumi believe him.

"Sōma-san has always been intuitive."

Megumi had walked up beside him, looking out to where Sōma spoke to a sea of uncertain children. "From the first day I met him, he knew exactly how to push the buttons of everyone around himself so that they'd succeed or fail based on what he wanted to see from them. At first, he wanted to help everyone excel. He dreamed of being the first Tōtsuki generation to have a class size in the double digits."

"So the whole Elite Ten is third-years, then…?"

Megumi sighed. "He wasn't successful. Or maybe the others were too cutthroat. But no, we have our fair share of second-years this year."

Takumi stared out at Sōma, who was still talking with the insolent confidence that stirred the students he spoke to. Everything from the way he stood to even how he flicked the hair out of his eyes bled an earned arrogance and the understanding that he deserved every single moment of adulation he'd ever received. His presence was almost overwhelming, even in this school where a chef's presence was trained into its students.

Takumi felt himself clench a fist. To claw his way out of the shadows of his reputation, both here as a transfer underdog and back home as a twin heir to the trattoria… he wanted that, desperately.

"You're all upset," Sōma observed. "Some of you still look scared, others are pissed off. I don't know which is better or worse. If you can't push past either of those emotions to arrive at a full-throttled passion to prove me wrong and earn your place here, then you deserve to be winnowed out with the rest. You came here knowing that Tōtsuki only produces the best of the best, head chefs that will carve their names into cooking history. If you don't know if you want that, you'll soon learn.

"If you do want it… you'll find that here too."

Satisfied, Sōma walked away from the podium and noticed Takumi's expression. It had completely shifted from the nervous, overwhelmed child Megumi had dragged over for him to meet into someone whose fire had started. The caution was still there, twisting around his bones and wiring him into a stiff statue as Sōma approached, but that didn't douse the passion in his gaze, a combination of trained pride and something more

"Aldini-san," Sōma called out.

The boy stood straighter and looked Sōma in the eye. "Yes?"

He gestured behind him. "You're up next. Go stir up some trouble, eh?"

Takumi blinked at the strange instruction. "Ah— okay?"

As he walked onstage, wondering what Sōma meant, the length of the stage seemed to warp. It took him both three hours and a single second to cross to the podium, and as he looked out upon the hundreds of riled-up faces looking back at him, he had a passing thought.

This is nothing compared to the dinner rush.

"Ah, hello," he said into the microphone, wincing at a moment of feedback as he adjusted it. "My name is Aldini Takumi. I'm from Italy. I'll be joining your class, I suppose."

The murmuring started already.

"Truthfully, I don't care if I graduate here, really," he said, and everything fell to a dead silence. "I'd never heard of Tōtsuki before a couple of months ago, and I'm sure that whatever I learn here, I could have learned from somewhere else. This school is just a place my journey as a chef led me to, and I'm sure there are bigger and better places after it.

"My goal is to make my restaurant excellent. I don't care about any of you. I don't care if you have some sort of squabble with me. All I care about is leaving this school bringing honor to the Aldini name. For now, that does mean being first in the class, and I'll make it there."

There was an awkwardly long silence.

Takumi took an uncertain step back and bowed stiffly to the audience. "I wish you all luck in the coming years." He walked off to a sudden chorus of jeers and outraged screams.

Offstage, he ran into Megumi waiting patiently for Sōma to stop laughing hysterically.

"Did I say something wrong?" Takumi asked worriedly.

"Some might say that you stirred up your classmates for no reason," Megumi said, "but I'm sure Sōma-san would disagree with them."

"That was amazing, Aldini-san," Sōma said as his cackling petered off and he regained some breath. "You're going to have so many people after your ass."

Takumi blinked. "Is that a problem?"

"Absolutely not. It's the opposite." Sōma grinned. "Trust me, I'm the First Seat."

"Don't trust him just because of that; he spent our first year antagonizing everyone in our year," Megumi said, standing up. "Now that Sōma-san has regained himself, shall we head to Polar Star?"

"Right, right." Sōma got out of the chair, stretching his legs. "Forgot that we said we'd do that. D'you think Fumio-san would be upset at us for showing up without warning?"

"She wouldn't care if you stopped feeding the underclassmen your weird experiments," Megumi said, holding the door open.

"They're good!"

Megumi turned to Takumi. "If he offers you anything that includes dried squid, say no unless someone else has already eaten it," she said as if she was a professor mid-lecture.

"Spoilsport."

"I'm sure." They started off down the main roads, Megumi leading the way.

"Do you two live in Polar Star?" Takumi asked. "I can't imagine you would know the location of every random dormitory on campus."

"Well, really, by your third year you'll come to find that you know exactly where the best ingredients can be found on campus," Sōma said casually. "It's part of the skills you need to commit to expanding your territory, y'know?"

"A-ah. I see."

"But you're not completely incorrect," Megumi said, giving Sōma a warning glance. "We did live in Polar Star for a while, though we don't officially live there anymore. It's a nice dorm, but it's much more convenient to live closer to the center of campus."

"By the way, don't you have any ingredients for tonight?"

Takumi paused at the bizarre question. "Like, for dinner?"

"No, for…" Megumi's gaze slid over to Sōma, but by the time Takumi turned to see what she'd noticed he'd slipped into a calm poker face. "Actually, never mind, you'll see."

"I feel like I'm missing something."

"No, no." Megumi waved his concerns away while ushering him further forward. "I misremembered something. Don't worry."

I'm worrying, though…

"Aldini-san, you said your goal was to make your restaurant excellent, right?" Sōma asked. "We've got another hour of walking to go. Tell us about your restaurant."

"My… ah, well, I work at a trattoria in Italy."

"A trattoria? That's like a diner, right?"

"Yes, in a sense. It's a small restaurant that serves mostly locals. Some of our regulars have been going there for my entire life."

"And you're inheriting it." There was a strange gleam in Sōma's eye.

"Yes. Well, my brother and I are." Takumi gripped his knife case more firmly. "He stayed behind to learn the trattoria's techniques while I came here to be formally educated."

"Smart. Then when you graduate, you'll teach him all you learned and vice versa."

"Yeah, that's the goal— you think I'm going to graduate?"

Sōma laughed and smacked Takumi on the back, jolting him forward. "If you don't, it'll be because you had an emergency call you back home. I can sense it; you want this more than most of those kids I have to be a 'role model' to."

"You could at least be kinder when talking about them…"

Both boys ignored Megumi. "Really? I-I wasn't sure if—"

"If you'd be able to?" Sōma looked over at him appraisingly. "For chefs like us, the only thing that could stop us from excelling is a lack of confidence. You've got the skills required to flourish here, let alone succeed. Don't doubt for a moment that you belong in this place, even if the scions and heirs of whatever don't make you feel like that."

"Aren't you one of those scions?" Takumi asked. "I've heard the name Saiba before."

Sōma shrugged. "I guess," he said. "But remember, I told you that's not my name. I came here as a Yukihira, and that's who I'll be when I leave."

What he's been saying… that's what Isami told me. "You said 'chefs like us'?"

"Of course! I'm inheriting a restaurant of my own, you know." Sōma gave him a toothy grin. "Restaurant Yukihira is a small special-of-the-day shop that serves a neighborhood of families and a nearby shopping district. When I graduate, I'll probably end up as the head chef there while Pops finishes traveling the world. And from there… well, I'll figure something out."

"You always say that," Megumi said with a sigh. "No matter. We're here."

Takumi wasn't sure what Megumi meant by that; they were still walking down a pavement surrounded by fields. If he squinted, he saw a house at the other end of a five-mile walk that he assumed was their destination. "What does 'here' mean?"

Megumi swept her hands out. "All of this land is owned by Polar Star. It seems like they're leaving some of it to fallow for the season."

Takumi stared at her. "One dormitory owns all of this?"

Sōma shrugged. "Technically, the people living in the dorm own all of this, but they claimed it in the dorm's name and will pass it down to underclassmen when they leave the school. I think they're even planning to convert part of this into an orchard for students to come, though I'm not sure who's spearheading that." He helped them jump a fence and cut through the field itself, ignoring the large loop that the main road took around Polar Star's farmland.

Takumi looked around him. This land hadn't been worked yet, yes, but he could see parts of it closer to the dorm that were. It was a mind-boggling amount of space for a single dorm to lay claim to, perfect for those who were committed to growing their own ingredients to pursue their cooking further.

Just who lives in Polar Star…?

The dormitory building didn't impress Takumi. It was built from weather-worn wood, its paint chipping, and vines climbed up one of the support columns. Clearly, the inhabitants of the dorm cared much more about the surrounding land than the house itself.

Megumi knocked lightly a few times and, when met with no reply, opened the door cautiously. "Hello? Fumio-san?" She ushered the others inside and closed the door behind them.

The foyer looked decrepit, dust piled on the ceiling beams. Takumi was sure that there was at least one mouse in this building, even if he couldn't see or hear any trace of one.

Megumi made her way over to what looked like a series of pipes and opened a metal flap over one. "Fumio-san, it's Megumi. We're visiting for the night, and we've got a new hopeful with us."

"EH? WHAT, THAT NEW TRANSFER THAT I'VE HEARD SO MUCH OF FROM THE OTHER KIDS? HE'S HERE? AND WHAT'S THAT WE?" The sound of an older woman's voice echoed through the pipe, making Takumi jump from the volume of it.

Sōma leaned over Megumi's shoulder. "Hey, Fumio-san," he said into the pipe.

Silence. Then:

"YUKIHIRA, YOU RASCAL! YOU AND YOUR FATHER, EXACTLY THE SAME— DON'T ANY OF YOU MOVE!"

"Yeah, I hear you," Sōma said, leaning back to let Megumi close the pipe. "Well, she sounded excited."

A cloud of smoke burst from a hallway in a high-pitched hiss, flooding into the main foyer. Megumi winced at the sight. Before anyone could say anything, Takumi heard the voice of the woman echo from a far-off pipe: "ROOM 208! YOU MODIFIED THE WEST LOUNGE INTO A SMOKING ROOM AGAIN?! YOU ARE PROVIDED A SHED OUTSIDE TO USE AS A SMOKER! THE NEXT TIME I SEE SMOKE IN THE DORM, I'LL TURN YOU INTO SMOKED CHIPS! DO YOU UNDERSTAND?!"

"Yeah, yeah," Takumi heard someone mumble.

"Maybe we should go to the kitchen," Sōma muttered.

"Fumio-san'll blow up on you again if you do," Megumi pointed out.

"That's half the fun of coming here," Sōma said.

"Yukihira Sōma, you'll be the absolute death of me," someone growled from down the hall. An older woman with wild greying hair held back with a hairband glared at him as she stomped up to the three of them. "Megumi-chan, stop hanging out with this ruffian. Look what he's done to you!"

"It's good to see you too, Fumio-san," Sōma said with a grin. "And I've been telling Megumi to stop hanging around Kurokiba-san, but does she listen to me?"

Fumio's hand twitched as if to slap him. "You idiot! I meant you!"

"Fumio-san, this is Aldini-san," Megumi said, diverting the woman's temper to the somewhat shell-shocked first-year. "We met at the start-of-year ceremony."

Fumio squinted. "Now, I know why Sōma-kun might've been dragged to that, but what were you doing there?"

Megumi just smiled. "Part of my duties are knowing what's happening in all of Tōtsuki, no?"

Fumio scoffed. "You don't need to make your excuses to me, child, I've watched you grow up."

"Um, excuse me," Takumi said, feeling rather out of place. "What is the procedure to getting a room here? Is there paperwork I need to fill out?"

Fumio blinked before rounding on Sōma. "Did you not prepare the kid at all?!"

"He can handle whatever you're going to throw at him," Sōma said, waving her off. "I did, remember?"

"That was by luck, you buffoon!"

"No one's answered my question," Takumi muttered to himself.

"Aldini-san, what do you know about Tōtsuki?" Megumi asked.

"Er— it's a cooking school? Perhaps the most prestigious one in the East, let alone the rest of the world?" Takumi wracked his brain. "It's known for being cutthroat in its mission to create the best chefs that the world has ever seen and providing them with the resources to truly excel before they're left to navigate professional life."

Megumi nodded encouragingly. "And in a school that acts as a microcosm of the cooking world, how do you think you'll have to prove that you deserve a place in a dorm?"

Takumi's eyes widened in realization. Then: "Is that why you asked if I had ingredients?" he asked. "Why didn't you tell me then?!"

"Well, honestly, Sōma-san told me not to," Megumi said as if that made all of the sense in the world.

"And you listened?"

"You! Boy, Aldini-san, was it?" Fumio was staring at him now. "You might be a bit of a shrimp, but you look like you've got a spark in you. I'm the Polar Star dorm mother, Daimaidō Fumio. You can call me Fumio-san. Are you ready for your test?"

"A-ah! Yes! That is—" Takumi trailed off. "Do you have any ingredients that I could use?"

"Hmph! You're in luck, we haven't started dinner preparations yet, so you have more available to you than if you came later tonight." Fumio ushered them to the kitchen, which nearly shone with how clean it was. Takumi wasn't surprised in the least; it made sense that the students who took care of the dorm cared more for their prep area than anywhere else in it. "Everything set aside on the shelf on the left and on the top refrigerator shelf is for dinner so don't use it, but whatever else is in the pantry is free for you to use. We don't have any fresh produce available, though I can't imagine that's a problem for you."

Takumi took a second to poke around the pantry's offerings. Even though Fumio implied he'd be spoiled for choice, the items provided were… well, saying they were lacking would be kind. He rummaged for as long as he could, digging through the fridge and freezer for anything he could scrounge up.

"Aldini-san." He paused what he was doing to turn back. Megumi and Sōma were sitting with Fumio at the table, the former with her head resting on interlaced fingers and the latter leaning on the table with an elbow. Sōma continued. "Make sure you have enough for all of us to have a taste, yeah?"

You absolutely have to be kidding me. "Yeah, I can do that," he said, ignoring an imaginary Isami snickering on his shoulder. "I'll have to make a few adjustments, so it might take a little longer."

"Well? Step to it," Fumio snapped. "I'm not getting any younger."

Takumi jumped at the sudden sharpness of her tone. "Yes, ma'am!" he said, bowing to her. "I'll begin now— thank you for waiting!"

He began amassing the ingredients he had noted scattered around the kitchen: the forgotten bag of scraps at the back of the freezer, the jar of strange looking marmalade in the door of the fridge, and a small can that had caught his eye in the pantry all ended up on the counter first.

Megumi's eyes narrowed as she watched him grab two pots and start them on the heat. When they were followed by a skillet, she leaned back and crossed her arms. "I see…"

"Megumi-san, do you already know what he's going to make?!" Fumio asked. "All he's done is prepare a stock!"

"Hm? Well, yes, he's chosen a safe option so it's pretty easy to guess where he's going to go from here," she said.

Takumi nearly stumbled to a momentary pause before hurrying to the next stage of his preparations. How did she deduce my recipe from three pieces of cookware?

Sōma blinked, then squinted hard. "Oh, I see. Yeah, I get it," he said.

"Well, I'm still in the dark," Fumio said with a scowl, "if any of you high and mighty children feel like enlightening me!"

"It's a risotto," Takumi said as he grabbed a couple of clean bowls as well as another he'd spotted in the fridge. "A Japanese-inspired version of one, at least."

Sōma perked up at that, curiosity morphing into understanding glee as he watched Takumi empty the small can he'd picked out into a bowl along with a handful of flour and potato starch. He stirred the mixture up, creating a strange beige paste that slowly began to hold together its own mass. He threw some oil onto his skillet before scraping the mixture in, where it began to loudly sizzle.

"Is he making some sort of patty with that?" Megumi wondered out loud. "It looks too crumbly to hold itself together like that."

"I don't know if a patty like that would fit in with a risotto," Fumio added. "I've at least never heard of delivering one with such a huge chunk of protein before."

Takumi ignored their musing and began his risotto in earnest, taking the broth he made from the vegetable and meat scraps in the freezer and slowly stirring it into his pot of rice. After he was sure that it was well incorporated, he opened the jar and took a sniff.

Huh? What he'd assumed was orange marmalade was a different sort of preserved fruit. It was yellower than he'd expected, and it gave off a sharp sweetness that made his mouth water. He cautiously stuck the end of a chopstick into the sticky gel and tasted it.

This is…!

It was even better for the dish than what he'd hoped. Nodding to himself, Takumi took a spoonful of the strange substance and added an equal amount of leftover broth, mixing it quickly to dissolve the sugars, before carefully adding it to the risotto as well. He strained out the fruit that floated in the resulting fluid and put it to the side.

Now, he just had to finish it.

"Hmm? You're done now, boy?" Fumio asked as Takumi carried three bowls of his creation over to the table.

"Yes, I am. Please give it a taste."

Sōma dove in with no hesitation, scooping out a spoonful of his risotto along with some of the broken patty bits Takumi had prepared. Before eating, he held it up to his face and smelled it, eyes closed. "I see. If I were blindfolded and asked to label what this dish could be, I'd assume it was some sort of okayu, but you've cooked this to a perfect al dente risotto instead. This food is filled with Japanese flavors— just as you said when explaining that this was a Japanese-inspired risotto."

Megumi swirled her spoon in her bowl before lifting it to watch the risotto drip from it. "I didn't see any cream or milk left in the fridge. How did you get this consistency?"

"With this." Takumi picked up the half-used bowl he'd taken from the fridge.

Fumio furrowed her brow as she leaned over to see what he held. "That looks like Ryoko-chan's failed tofu experiment," she commented. "She couldn't get the curds to fully separate from the liquid so it never set properly."

"Probably not enough coagulant," Takumi commented. "I gave it a taste and it was close enough to silken tofu to substitute for the missing dairy."

Preliminary conclusions drawn, Sōma put the spoon in his mouth.

The flavor didn't burst in his mouth the way he expected it to. Rather, it carefully grew in intensity. What was first a mouthful of mostly creamy rice was joined by a darting essence of something that flickered like light glinting off of a fish as it darted by. Before he could fully take in the scene, the flavor faded from his tongue, making him take another bite. As Sōma slowly worked through the full bowl, the whole impression became visible to him. It settled into him: the feeling of a hike through unknown woods. Anticipation hammered his gut as he pushed through brush, and something akin to excitement began to build as he tried to balance on a series of stones across a small creek. The fish he'd seen earlier danced in the shallows, watching as he navigated their home. At one point, he slipped, only for another's hand to reach out and secure him. They got to the other side and stared up at a large tree covered in green fruits before continuing on. The camaraderie and the knowledge that someone was at his back, then piercing through the woods to look around and see the full, wonderful view of everything he'd walked through to get to that summit…

"That jar— was that ume?"

"That's what it smells like," Takumi said, gesturing to the preserves. "I think it's got some sugar in it as well."

"It's honey ume tea," Megumi said. "You can make a plum syrup by putting the ume in with sugar or honey in a jar and leaving it to ferment. You then mix that syrup with hot water to make a very tart tea. Ume itself is from southern China, but much of the east enjoys this type of tea; some people even tout it as good medicine for gut health." She peers at the risotto. "I would never have thought to use it as a lemon substitute."

"I thought it was some sort of marmalade when I first took it out," Takumi admitted. "When I realized it was more sour than I expected, I decided it was still a good counterbalance for the dish."

"This is a very different impression from the dish you made to qualify for transfering," Megumi commented, examining a small brown chunk that she ate separately. Canned mackerel thickened with potato starch and flour. Fried to crisp it up and broken over the risotto for a more balanced flavor. "It's subtler, in a way."

"Is it?" Takumi asked. He stirred a spoon in the pot and tasted his offering. "Risotto is the first thing I remember learning how to make, so it's something I'm pretty confident in making. The tofu adjustment— that's something my brother first thought up. I'm a bit surprised that I remembered it, to be honest."

"Your brother at the trattoria," Sōma stated.

"Yes. He was trying to make a risotto that could hold up to being baked into a calzone without losing any of its texture. I think I was working on a dessert lasagna at the time."

Megumi blinked. "Isn't a dessert lasagna technically just a layer cake?"

Takumi fidgeted. "I mean. Maybe? Definitionally? I mean more like making a sugary pasta dough, candying tomatoes, and preparing with ricotta and mascarpone instead of making the more traditional version. Nothing really worked, so I abandoned it when I was ten."

"Well, I'd say that this is more than good enough to earn you a room here," Fumio declares, scraping the last few bits off of the side of the bowl with relish. "Room 207. Door should be unlocked and the key should be on the nightstand. Let me know if it isn't."

His smile was brilliant. "Grazie!"

After the boy left, dragging his bags with him, Fumio went to clean up after his trial. "Are you two planning on sticking around for dinner? Isshiki-kun is cooking tonight."

Megumi hummed. "I was going to head back to the main campus and take some of the workload off of Tsukasa-san, seeing as Kobayashi-chan is probably making him do hers on top of his. I could come back this evening, though; I need to make sure my protege is producing the quality I expect from him."

"I've got some paperwork to finish up too." Sōma stood up with a slight frown. "Apparently, Erina-chan is restarting her war against all of the RSes she's deemed low-class. She's trying to push for a Shokugeki against the Chan RS already, and school's just started for the year."

"Do you think she's just doing it because she knows the paperwork for every Shokugeki ends up on your desk for approval?" Megumi asked.

Sōma snorted as he called for a car to pick them up. "Who knows? She was just as much of a terror at the beginning of last year, before I finally got First."

"If you have that much work to do, get on your way," Fumio said over the sound of the sink running. "I'm sure the other kids have the Aldini boy settled in already. You shouldn't have to worry about him."

"I'm not worried about him, Fumio-san." The two women turned to him, Fumio startled and Megumi wearing a small, knowing smile. "I'm fascinated by him."