The students quickly hurried off to the elevators that led them to their rooms; the provided pamphlet mentioned that students were allowed to bring whatever tools they wanted to use in the scheduled seminars, so Takumi made sure to grab his knife set as well as his case for his mezzaluna before heading to the first room listed on his schedule. He noticed Sōmei on the way in, and when the alumna leading the class told the students to pair off with the partners Chapelle had assigned, he shrugged and headed to the taller boy.

"Aldini Takumi-san."

Takumi glanced backwards. One of his classmates, a girl with a steely-eyed glare and purple hair tied up in a tight ponytail, was walking over towards him, her arms tightly crossed in front of her chest. Though she wore the base student uniform, she had foregone the generic chef's jacket provided to the student body in favor of a crimson coat with proud Mandarin characters embroidered in white.

"Hi," he said cautiously. "Have we met?"

She scoffed. "No, thankfully for you," she said. "If you had, you'd be on the floor for your disrespect."

The girl paired with her winced and gave Takumi an apologetic glance, though she didn't try to stop her.

"Hōjō Miyoko. Heir to Hōjōro in Yokohama." Her eyes narrowed further. "We have something in common, Aldini-san. We both are prepared to claw our way to the top to prove ourselves worthy of our birthright."

"Are you talking about what I said at the commencement ceremony? I thought I was clear enough that I don't care about the politics of this place," Takumi said.

She snorted. "Trust a boy to completely misconstrue the purpose of this Academy. Listen to me, and listen well: I will stop at nothing to make it to the top, and you aren't going to be the one to topple me. Stay out of my way, Italian."

"Why do people care so much that I'm from Italy?" Takumi wondered out loud, turning his own glare to her. "Listen, Hōjō-san. Even if I did know who you were before today, I wouldn't be able to say anything about your restaurant since I've never heard of it. I don't care what your personal plans are because my plan is to turn Trattoria Aldini into a household name worldwide, and if that goes against anything I do in my career as a student, so be it. For now, I want to focus on this workshop, whatever it entails. Leave me alone." He firmly pushed past her with Sōmei to get to their assigned workstation, doing his best to ignore the whispering that followed them.

Sōmei chuckled quietly. "How have you managed to antagonize arguably the two most hot-headed girls in our year already?"

"I don't mean to," Takumi hissed at him, feeling a flush at his face. "It just happened, I guess."

"Everyone!" The alumna at the front of the room cut off any further conversation. Visually, she didn't stand out to Takumi; she wore her brown hair in a braid over one shoulder such that it hid the name embroidered on her jacket, and she smiled beatifically at her classroom as people turned to look at her. She reminded Takumi of a preschool teacher, in all honesty. "Please get to your stations so we can begin your first task of the Training Camp."

Uneasy murmuring hummed throughout the class. When Takumi glanced at Sōmei , he just got an exasperated eyeroll in response that he was inclined to agree with.

"My name is Inui Hinako. I graduated with the 80th Generation as Second Seat. You may call me Chef Inui while in the Camp, and if we make arrangements for your career after it concludes, we will revisit this conversation. Now, get started!" She cracked open a small bag of snacks and popped one in her mouth.

There was a solid three seconds before anyone bothered to speak up. "Um, Chef Inui…"

"Hm?" She looked up from her crackers. "Did you need something?"

"You didn't…" the student trailed off, quailing under Hinako's gaze. "You didn't give us our assignment, chef."

"Oh! How silly of me. You're to prepare for me any Japanese dish you can with any ingredients you see there," Hinako said, gesturing towards an empty table that had been set in front of a window. The view out of the window included a picturesque angle of the mountains the students had been driven through, along with a beautiful, slow-moving stream and what looked like endless grasslands. A perfect landscape, some might say.

Takumi felt something in his stomach drop. "Saitō-san, how confident are you in foraging outdoors?"

Something in Sōmei 's expression shifted. "You cannot be implying what I think you are."

"Chef Inui," the same student from earlier said, uncertainty turning into trepidation in their voice. "There's nothing on that table."

"Who said anything about the table?" Hinako's expression didn't change, but her smile suddenly felt sinister. "All of your core ingredients can be found in the lands around the Resort. We have tools in the storehouse for those who want to try their hand at fishing or working with the animals kept in the paddocks, and the forests and rivers have been tested and found food-safe. Seasonings, basic cooking oils, and cookware are in the pantry. You have two hours to properly prepare and serve me something that proves your place in Tōtsuki Academy." She clapped her hands twice. "Get to work!"

There was a sudden flurry of motion and noise as students wailed their panicked incompetence and ran out of the room in a panic. Takumi watched them run out, blinking. "They're really panicking."

Sōmei scoffed. "Of course they are. They're all going to turn in the same cooked fish with the same gummy texture and hope to succeed."

"Aldini-san."

Takumi glanced over his shoulder to see Miyoko and her partner, who was awkwardly tugging on her jacket and glancing over her shoulder. "Yes, Hōjō-san?"

Her lip curled unpleasantly. "Tell you what. If you manage to pass this task on your first try, I'll stop discounting your words and treat you like an actual rival and not just a little boy playing pretend at being a restaurateur."

Takumi glared. "Fine, but only if you do the same."

Miyoko's smile curled unpleasantly. "Of course."

As she stormed off with her relieved partner in tow, Takumi turned to Sōmei . "Do you have anything in mind?"

"Of course I do," Sōmei said. "Japanese cuisine is my specialty more than yours. Do you think you could forage some plants if I sketched them out for you?"

"Yeah, I can take care of that," Takumi said. "Meet back here in half an hour?"

Sōmei nodded before heading to the storehouse Hinako had pointed out.

It took Takumi an embarrassing amount of time to find everything on Sōmei 's list, but he found himself hurrying past students who were too busy arguing with their partners to even glance around and find the plant patches that Takumi was after. He soon wandered through what looked like an herb garden and noticed something sprouting that he paused to pick up. Takumi found Sōmei by a particularly marshy section of the river, a fishing rod stuck in the ground beside him. After being told the additional ingredient that he'd found, Sōmei had simply raised an eyebrow and nodded his approval before dictating his own plans and shooing Takumi back to the kitchen to start preparation.

Miyoko had long since returned with her partner, and the two of them hunched over what looked like some sort of poultry. Few other students had returned, most with paltry looking fish that they were worriedly fussing over. Takumi just put his basket down and began to prepare a presentation dish to Sōmei 's specifications.

"Already on presentation? With nothing to show for it?" Takumi heard Miyoko comment from behind him, and though he immediately wanted to swipe out all of Sōmei 's careful plans and install his own twist on something with the mountain plants he'd found, he pushed the instinct away and simply arranged perilla with a slightly stiffer wrist.

"Hōjō-chan… maybe we should focus on finishing our dish…" Takumi heard her partner timidly say. "We might run out of time for all of the preparations you wanted to do…"

"You raise a good point, Enomoto-chan," Miyoko said, turning back to her station. "We can't let another person's amateur cooking tarnish our shine."

Takumi glanced behind him to see what the girls were planning. Miyoko was in the process of drizzling some sort of honey-based concoction over the firm skin of the plucked duck she'd been holding up earlier, while Madoka stood nervously to the side, her face set determinedly as she waited with a knife brandished.

"We should roast for approximately ten minutes before adding the rest of the sauce," Madoka said. "That will allow enough moisture to leave the duck so that the skin still tenses, even though we don't have time to dry it out."

"Noted. Start the timer," Miyoko said, opening the oven with her foot and shoving the duck in with almost no care for her bare hands. "We should prepare the rest as we wait."

Madoka nodded before turning, knife in hand. She began to thinly julienne a collection of vegetables and herbs on her cutting board, twisting her wrist every once in a while. Miyoko looked over her work with a critical eye before nodding and sliding more ingredients her way.

At that point, Takumi shook his head to clear it and turned back to his own workstation. He'd prepared the serving dish to Sōmei 's exacting standards, so he decided to busy himself with the far more time-intensive part of their challenge. He managed to get almost thirty minutes of quiet to slice the remaining ingredients he'd harvested, throw them in a jar with a mixture of rice vinegar and sugar, and place them in a fridge.

"Where's your partner, Aldini-san?" Miyoko called over as Takumi checked on his ginger. "Are you going to be relying on him with twenty minutes left? Surely, you can stand on your own."

Takumi glanced at the clock, startled that Sōmei had taken so long. He began to wonder if he needed to go out and grab a fishing rod of his own.

"Hōjō-san, if I didn't know any better, I'd thought you cared about me," Sōmei said with a scoff as he walked into the room. Two fish dangled from a string in his hand.

Miyoko glared at him. "Hardly," she said. "I'm always rooting for your downfall."

"How unoriginal of you." Sōmei put his catch down on the workbench. "Let's get started, then."

Takumi took a respectable three steps back.

"Does he scare you, Aldini-san?" Miyoko asked.

"Not at all," he replied. "I just happen to know how much space he needs."

"Both of you, shut up," Sōmei muttered under his breath, closing his eyes. "I can't hear Isanakiri."

Watching Sōmei work with the fish he'd caught was a revelation in and of itself. Takumi had known the guy for a few weeks now. He'd mentioned himself that he worked primarily in sushi and that he was pretty good at it. He could list off a seemingly neverending array of fish he wanted to work with after he secured a place on the Elite Ten— and the funding associated. Once, he'd even stumped Zenji with a question about caviar so esoteric and specific that the Miyazato Seminar hadn't discovered much about it. To call him knowledgeable was laughable; if it was even adjacent to sushi, Sōmei was bound to have at least heard about it and more likely to have worked with it himself.

Takumi knew all of that. Intellectually, he knew there was a reason why people whispered that Saitō Sōmei was a master of sushi, and at such a young age. Practically though? He'd never seen Sōmei prepare anything in his specialty.

He'd seen Sōmei prepare the classics that Chapelle had insisted on drilling into them: after the boeuf bourguignon, their instructor had demanded that they demonstrated their capability to spatchcock chickens and perfect quiches. He'd watched Sōmei slice potatoes into even, golden disks with a boredom set in his shoulders, Isanakiri assigned to be little more than a cane or left to lie on the counter. Even when they hung out in a test kitchen outside of class, Sōmei was inevitably frying something or pan-searing something else, his maguro bōchō perpetually left to the side. Only once had he brandished it to practice some specific cut of fish, and even that was then breaded and thrown into a pot of oil.

Now, Sōmei approached the admittedly small fish he'd caught with a slight grin dancing at the corner of his mouth. He slowly unsheathed his knife, examined it for any flaws out of habit, and stepped forward with the blade. In a smooth flurry of motion, he'd cleaned the fish and had unwanted cuts set aside, flesh still shimmering with fat and quivering. Sōmei finished off his food by running a careful brush of sauce across his chosen sections and arranging them artfully on the leaves that Takumi had prepared. He looked over everything with a critical eye, and nodded for Takumi to hand him the rest of his prepared ingredients.

"Chef Inui, please judge our cooking," Miyoko called out, walking over to the head table with a plate in her hand. Takumi glanced over; he'd almost forgotten that others were taking part in the workshop, even with the slowly overpowering smell of steamed fish around him.

"Oh! This looks lovely," Hinako said, peering at the presented dish. "There's a glaze on this duck that feels much more inline with a preparation from the mainland."

"The technique was used," Miyoko admitted, "but the flavors are wholly Japanese, I assure you."

"Well, all that's left to do is try it." Hinako delicately picked up one of the slices of duck meat and took a bite. She perked up at the flavor and nodded to herself with a smile. "Yes, this sauce… rather than using a traditional tian ming jiang, you've used ingredients that are more typical of unagi no tare." She enjoyed another bite, her eyes half-lidded in pleasure.

"Eel sauce?" a student echoed.

"Yes— a flavor profile more often found on our archipelago than in China." She took another bite. "It gives a depth to the duck flavor that this preparation of the animal emphasizes, turning it from a slightly sweeter banquet dish into something light that I could imagine an entire household enjoying together." Hinako nodded to herself. "Yes. Excellent work. Hōjō-san, Enomoto-san, you both pass."

Madoka immediately bowed to her, while Miyoko simply tossed her head and said, "Thank you, chef."

"Can we serve you next?" Sōmei asked, stepping forward with their plate ready. "Our dish will taste best fresh."

Hinako clapped her hands in anticipation, her eyes going wide as Sōmei set the plate in front of her. "Sashimi on shiso? I didn't realize there were any fish species available on Resort land that could be served like this."

Sōmei nodded, crossing his arms. "The only reason I took as much time as I did fishing was because I kept catching fish that I wouldn't use for sushi," he said. "However, it's the right season for sakuramasu, and that's what I've served here. Feel free to eat just the sashimi or to enjoy it with the shiso leaves Aldini-san prepared."

Takumi straightened as Hinako turned towards him. "How were these prepared?"

"They were just quickly blanched and seasoned to support the sashimi," Takumi said. "The hope was to make a garnish that both served as decoration and added to the experience of eating the food itself."

"And after you're done, please cleanse your palate with our quick-pickled lemongrass ginger," Sōmei said. "It should be a more refreshing, acidic note to completely offset the fatty nature of the sakuramasu."

"Thank you," Hinako said, reaching over to pick up a piece of fish. She studied the ruddy flesh for a second longer before taking a bite.

Sakuramasu was a variant of salmon that was touted as having a superior flavor: fatty, rich, and, according to some critics, the best kind of sake that you could taste. The fish that Sōmei caught and prepared was definitely not the best-quality sakuramasu; that title went to those who fished at peak season and dedicated their work to finding premium fish. That didn't mean that the sashimi wasn't good; the fattiness of the sakuramasu swept through Hinako with a flick of a tail, and when she tried a piece with the shiso, the bright springtime flavor of the leaf created an interplay with the fish that almost danced in her mouth.

It's like being swept away, out on a current into summer by a sakuramasu merman with fins of shiso…

Sōmei impatiently tapped a foot as he and Takumi watched Hinako get swept away in a vision of bliss. When she finally blinked her eyes open, he inclined his head towards her. "Well? What do you think?"

Hinako tapped her bottom lip with her chopsticks. "I've given a variant of this test for the past few years, whenever I've been asked to come to this Camp," she said. "Countless students have served me fish, cooked in every way imaginable. This is the first time that I've been served it uncooked, and at the expected standard for such a dish. Good work to you both." She checked her list of students. "Saitō-san, Aldini-san; you both pass. Please wait at your stations until the task has wrapped up so that the buses can take you back to the main resort building."

The two boys exchanged curled grins. "Thank you, chef," Sōmei said.

As they walked back, Takumi caught Miyoko's eye. The contempt that had been present there was gone, replaced by consideration and intrigue. For a brief moment, Takumi wondered which he preferred.

When she opened her mouth, Takumi expected more sly words designed to curl into his chest and linger next to where his uncertainty liked to live. Instead, she just said, "Sashimi?"

"Well, when you're a sushi chef and you're given the opportunity to use fresh-caught fish, you generally go for it," Sōmei said with a dryness that Takumi welcomed.

Miyoko's lip curled into a smile, albeit an unfriendly one. "That makes sense," she said. "I wouldn't have thought of it. Then again, my style prefers fully cooked proteins. Less salmonella."

"A shame," Sōmei returned, "to cut yourself off from one of Japan's culinary masterpieces."

"Sorry, you're Enomoto-san, right?" Takumi said, turning away from whatever insult-laden conversation Sōmei and Miyoko were descending into.

Madoka seemed more than relieved to ignore them herself. "Yes. Enomoto Madoka." She screwed her face up slightly. "I don't think I have to clarify that I'm in the 92nd Generation to you."

That startled a laugh out of Takumi; Madoka had seemed so quiet and uncertain when next to Miyoko, but there was a slight bite to her words, as if to claw that expectation away from anyone who held it. It made sense how she worked so well with Miyoko.

"No, I know," he said. "That was a clever knife trick you used earlier. Why angle your knife like that?"

Madoka mimed the technique briefly. "It was a technique proposed two decades ago that wasn't popularized until recently," she said. "Just a modified julienne. The concept is that if you slice certain ingredients diagonally, you get a longer but still even cut. Much better for something leafy, if you don't want to use a chiffonade. I wanted to test it out in an actual cooking setting and not just a test kitchen." She screwed her face up. "I don't know if I like it."

Takumi blinked. "That's a far more cerebral answer than I expected," he admitted.

She just laughed at that. "I do tend to overthink things."

The workshop wrapped up soon afterwards, and Hinako directed the students who had finished her task towards the buses. Takumi just glanced backwards as some of his classmates— or, perhaps already former classmates— sank to the ground, having not managed to produce a satisfactory result.

"Did one-third of that class really fail that assignment?" he muttered.

Sōmei glanced back at them contemptuously. "Aldini-san, you've availed yourself by surrounding yourself with high-achieving people," he said. "Even those horrible miscreants from your dorm are passionate about the field of cooking. The vast majority of students in our generation are children who think that if they go to school, they'll do well." He shuffled Isanakiri to the other hand. "Why else do you think the children born to the food industry do so well at the Academy? They come into here knowing the standards that they have to hold themselves to. The students who just came here to learn how to cook well will never matriculate, even if they don't realize it yet."

Some of the students around them glared at Sōmei for his blunt words, but all of them averted their gaze when he turned to eye them.

After the expulsions, three classes of students could fit into one of the large buses, which meant that when Takumi and Sōmei found themselves sitting with Daigo and Shōji . As all four of them exchanged details on their tasks, Takumi realized that multiple instructors had overseen a similar task to Hinako's, though the state of their pantry seemed more generous than others'.

"They had us evaporating water to get salt!" Shōji spat out, shaking his fist at the bus ceiling. "Something about understanding the purity of the ingredients?"

Sōmei shrugged. "I suppose it's a skill one would need to learn if you were camping and searching for a gourmet meal."

"That's what I thought!" Daigo said, holding his hand up to Sōmei for a high-five. The boy just stared at the hand until he lowered it with a sulk.

"Have you heard from the others, yet?" Takumi asked.

"Yoshino immediately texted us to say that she and Sakaki-chan passed," Shōji said, holding his phone up. "Ibusaki-san probably passed. Marui-san's probably almost unconscious and not in any state to text or call."

"Well, as long as no one's confirmed out we could probably just assume they're still in," Takumi muttered. He glanced up to see that the blonde girl from his transfer exam was on the bus as well, along with the pink-haired girl that followed her around everywhere. "Was she in your class?" Takumi asked.

Shōji followed his gaze. "Oh, Nakiri-san and Arato-san? Not in ours, no. I'm not surprised to see them here though; can you imagine Nakiri Erina failing?"

Takumi made appropriate noises of disbelief and amusement at the comment, still staring at Erina. She seemed unperturbed by the anxious whispers around her, opting only to lean over and whisper something to her… friend? aide? He wasn't sure what Hisako was to her.

He didn't have too much time to think about that particular relationship. When they arrived back at the main building, Yūki shrieking in joy to see them and running over to tackle Takumi into a hug, they were immediately ushered to a large room that had been set up with multiple cooking stations and a large dining section near the back.

The man Shun had identified as Sekimori Hitoshi stood near the cooking stations. "Students!" he called over. "Your second and final task today is to prepare fifty meals for the customers that will be joining us momentarily. You have sixty minutes to finish this task, and you are free to retire for the night once you've completed it. You have five minutes to study the recipe at each station, but time will start when the first customer enters. Please go to your stations."

Takumi had never seen Yūki deflate so quickly. "Don't we get dinner?" she asked weakly.

To her misfortune, Hitoshi was walking close enough to overhear her. "You may prepare your dinner after you've retired for the night," he said.

"We don't get dinner provided for being here?"

"You're a chef, aren't you? You can prepare your own breakfasts and dinners." He ignored her feeble protests to continue down the line of students.

Takumi glanced over the recipe; it was a fairly standard one for some sort of beefsteak meal, and though it seemed fairly spartan it was a simple one to make in bulk: rice, the steak, a bowl of soup, and a small selection of stir-fried veggies. Takumi quickly multiplied all of his ingredients by five and began setting up his station, chopping veggies to throw into a pan.

"One minute, students!" Hitoshi called out just as Takumi had his marinade prepared for the night. "Steel yourselves!"

The sight of the 'customers' that Hitoshi mentioned made Takumi pause in shock. The men walking in surely weren't trying to flex their arms, but every step they took made them bulge and their skin was taut across pure muscle.

"The bodybuilding club has arrived, and therefore the task has started!" Hitoshi said. "The American football and wrestling clubs will be arriving as soon as their practices end. Get to it, students!"

At the final word, Takumi immediately turned back to his station. He could hear students fussing at each other, accusations of stealing workspace and ingredients flying over his head, but he zoned them out as best as he could. This wasn't a competition against any of the students here; this was just another rush hour back at the trattoria, and he'd lived enough of them that this was nothing. After his initial set of ingredients was ready, Takumi was able to prepare five servings at a time, and as quickly as they went down on his serving counter they were picked up by hungry athletes.

"Station 64! Those portions aren't correct, please re-plate," Hitoshi barked out. "Station 36! Keep an eye on your surroundings; you'll be expelled immediately if you cause a fire." He paused to watch Takumi work. "Good pace, station 78." He checked the list of students. "Aldini Takumi?"

"Yes, chef," Takumi said, his words muffled by the sizzle of fresh beefsteak on his pan.

"Keep up the pace; you're done when you run out of steak for your griddle." He turned to keep correcting students.

"Yes, chef!" Takumi barely remembered to respond, too consumed by the food around him to remember his propriety. Only a short amount of time after then, Takumi opened his fridge for more meat only to realize that it was empty.

"Aldini Takumi, fifty meals served!" one of the attendants nearby called out. "You may retire for the night."

He nodded to him before washing his hands at the sink and walking back to the main hall. Adrenaline seeped out of his body and he felt his feet dragging slightly. When he made it back to his room, he put down the mezzaluna and knife set he'd brought with him and winced at the smell of beef coming from his body.

A bath might be a nice idea, he pondered before sighing and looking for a yukata to change into.

There was something imminently silly about wandering down the halls of a fancy resort in what felt like little more than a bathrobe to get to a public bath. Takumi had just managed to stave off the worst of his admittedly European embarrassment when he nearly ran into someone.

"Ah, sorry," he said, glancing up to see Erina.

She looked thunderstruck to see him. "Aldini Takumi," she said with a blank gaze.

"That's me." He shuffled his feet. "Um— how're you doing?"

"Fine," she said shortly. "Worse, now that you're here."

"Ah."

They stood together awkwardly.

"Besides," Erina coughed out. "This Camp was never going to be a challenge for me. The tasks set out challenge normal Tōtsuki students. I'm, of course, going to excel at everything set before me. Kinokuni-senpai wouldn't expect any less."

"Sorry, who's Kinokuni?" Takumi ventured.

Erina gave him another startled look. "Kinokuni Nene? Only the highest ranked second-year student currently attending Tōtsuki?" She scoffed. "Then again, I suppose you hang around Isshiki-senpai's flunkie instead, so you've learned his level of disrespect."

"Don't talk about Ibusaki-san or Isshiki-senpai like that," he said sharply.

She rolled her eyes and flicked a lock of hair over her shoulder. "Whatever." A smirk curled on her face. "I can't wait to see if you'll be thrown to the side the way everyone else is. Surely whatever fluke you've ridden on to get here won't last so long."

Before Takumi could get any more outraged, he heard a series of footsteps from down the hall. "Erina-sama! I asked the front desk and they said—" Hisako cut herself off, her cheer morphing suddenly into something like mild fury. "The transfer student! What are you doing here?!"

"I finished my dinner challenge and was going to take a bath," Takumi said stiffly. "I can only assume you're doing the same."

Hisako huffed. "How ungentlemanly, to presume about a lady's bathing habits!"

"You're both in yukatas. At a resort. With a public bath," he pointed out.

Hisako blushed furiously and began stammering her anger, but Erina just narrowed her eyes and grabbed her hand firmly.

"Let's go, Hisako," she said. "Clearly, some people are too unrefined to understand what manners are." Hisako visibly relaxed at Erina's words, harrumphed one last time at Takumi, and walked back to the elevators with the blonde.

Takumi took a brief moment to wonder if they'd finished the dinner task before or after him before shaking the thoughts off and heading down to the men's public bath. The other students in his section had seemed so far from finished that he thought he'd have it to himself, but having seen both Erina and Hisako he wondered just how accurate that was.

As he'd somewhat expected, the bath wasn't completely empty. What he didn't expect was that the other person there was the man who'd identified himself as part of the 69th Generation in his opening speech just that morning. Dōjima Gin was a built man, though it wasn't like his suit hid that very well. It was still surreal to see just how his muscles bulged as he ran through what seemed to be a series of stretches on the edge of the bath.

Gin noticed him in the reflection on the wall and glanced over his shoulder at the boy who'd walked in. "Ah, are you students already finished with your dinner task? Perhaps we should up the number required next year."

"Ah— no— that is—" Takumi stumbled for a second. "I was one of the first ones finished. The others were still in their thirties by the time I finished."

"Mm." Gin studied him for a moment longer before shaking his head. "I apologize if my presence bothers you. I assumed I'd have a little more time to myself while here."

"You're no bother." Takumi cursed his voice for coming out as a croak. He cleared his throat. "I— I actually wanted to ask you about being an alumnus, if it's no bother."

Gin smiled, rolled his shoulders back, and gestured for Takumi to sit beside him. "Ask away."

"I'm not worried about my cooking skill in the coming years," Takumi said. "I trust in my ability to grow and adapt. It's more— on a mental level—"

"Ah." Gin's expression cleared. "You're asking how to get to graduation without having a nervous breakdown?"

"Or at least the minimal amount," Takumi muttered. "It feels like everyone here is either a one-note background character or an incredibly competent, competitive person, and we're expected to throw ourselves at each other until someone finally breaks. I'm all for competition and honing your skills with experience, but it's getting ridiculous. Professional kitchens aren't a mess of head chefs battling it out over dinner prep every night. It's enough to make someone go crazy."

"You're far more astute than most of your classmates," Gin observed. "The past two years, two other boys have managed to catch me off-guard here by finishing early. Last year, we had a conversation about maintaining peak physical performance. The year before, our conversation orbited around the focus that every chef must have in order to excel. It sounds like you're uninterested in the former and already have the latter."

Unbidden, Takumi remembered the determined set of Isami's gaze as he firmly refused to cry when hugging him goodbye that spring.

"And so you wish to cultivate the most important part of a chef— nay, a person." Gin blew a breath out. "Aldini-san, I won't lie to you. I've seen the mightiest, strongest of chefs crack and throw away their aprons when the pressure became too much. It might seem like an exaggeration, but chefs must take their work incredibly seriously. The very best chefs live and breathe in this life. There's no other way to ensure that you remain in the cultural zeitgeist, that you rule the world of food. That's the lifestyle that Tōtsuki prepares you for, not work as a head chef in some big name kitchen." He gave an unexpected wink. "If that was the point, I wouldn't be at Tōtsuki Resort. I had many more lucrative and star-studded offers when I first graduated."

Takumi's throat was completely dry. Even if he wanted to interrupt the alum, he wouldn't be able to.

"But I chose to come here regardless because I knew it was what was best not for Chef Dōjima, but Gin. That's what you're looking for: the opportunity to be both the best chef you can be— and the best person that you want to be. That might mean cutting past your pride, leaning on the people in your life, and admitting that you need help. It might mean trusting someone to check in on you and listening when they tell you that they're worried for you. You seem to understand that you already have the seed of the chef you'll become buried somewhere inside of you. What you'll need next is both soil and a safety net that will help that seed grow to its fullest: mentors, friends, even rivals. And, of course, a tangible goal to reach for so that you don't find yourself stagnating as you try and figure out what to do next, as well as the grace to grant yourself breathing room and time to develop further. That's the answer to your query."

Takumi just nodded, taking a moment to fully analyze and absorb Gin's words.

"I think I've overstayed my welcome," he said. "Enjoy the peace of the bath, Aldini-san, and I look forward to hearing of your success from my colleagues."

It took Takumi ten minutes after Gin left for him to realize that he'd known his name the whole time.


I'm sure none of you would be silly enough to take the advice of a fic, but in case you do, the food preparation that Sōmei and Takumi use in their completion of Hinako's task is NOT food-safe by any means. Freshwater fish has to be blast-chilled for a few hours at least to kill off any latent parasites. I wanted the parallel of a rival using non-Japanese cooking techniques with a duck and the protagonist making an unconventional fish dish, and having Sōmei in Megumi's place in this retelling opened up an opportunity I really didn't want to pass up by doing the tempura cop-out, on top of this being a fic where I can decide that there are no consequences to the decisions made (and, truly, I don't think you all would want to be bogged down by food safety discussion in a fic for a cooking manga).

Cherry salmon (sakuramasu) is one of very few fish used for sushi that would be in rivers in late spring and is technically considered a saltwater fish, as salmon only come upstream to spawn. It still has the same parasite risk as mentioned earlier.

Miyoko and Madoka prepared a Japanese twist on Peking duck, as Miyoko was leading the preparation charge and Madoka was mostly providing her knowledge on ingredients from her work with the Miyazato Seminar.

Takumi's slowly becoming a far weirder perspective to write from than I thought he'd be. He's not as brash as Sōma is, especially without him as a direct rival, and he's a little more prone to nerves and anxiety. In a version of the story where Takumi's main worry is proving to his family that his going to Tōtsuki was worth all of the time and money they sacrificed to let him train halfway across the world, he's not exactly missing direction the way Sōma was at this point in canon. Finding a source of inner turmoil for him took a lot more consideration than I expected originally.

All that aside: I've started mirror-posting my oldest Shokugeki fic, Welcome to Hell: Devils' Edition on AO3 under the username sentraia. After I finish posting that one, I'll probably put this one up there as well. If you're an AO3 reader, feel free to switch to that website to enjoy either story! If you want to support my writing monetarily, I've got a ko-fi set up under this username (Shriayle).