Author's Note:
Look who decided to show her face again… Me (yay)
So, while I am still working on the upcoming chapter for "Shokugeki no Kimiko" (it's coming, I promise…), a recent little mental health crisis inspired me to get to work on a story idea that has been ghosting around in my head for several years now, in the form of loose headcanons and endless musings during my music saisons.
This story is, in fact, related to "Shokugeki no Kimiko" - as it takes place in the same verse.
You don't have to read this story to understand SnKimiko, however, it might make you appreciate later storybeats a lot more. Similarly, you don't have to read "Shokugeki no Kimiko" in order to understand this story! All you need to know is that the story you are about to read takes place post!Central arc, and in a canon divergent verse! Erina never became headmistress in this one, and so a lot of other things also did not happen.
My main aim with this story is to try and fill the big hole that the canon treatment of Nene Kinokuni, one of my favorite characters, had left me with.
I will try my best to bring what I have in mind onto the page. And even if it is a bit more personal, I hope that some might find liking to it as well.
At the beginning of her third year in high school, Nene learned to hate mirrors.
They reflected reality in all of its painful plainness. Showing her who she really was instead of what she should- wanted to be….
Just a few months ago, she had proudly and firmly walked on the right track. Student of the illustrious Totsuki Academy, nothing but the perfect grades, the highest seat of her grade in the Elite 10 council - all was as she and her parents had always intended.
But then… that man had to show up. Always dressed in nothing but black, always a polite yet eery smile on his lips and always so good with words.
He had pointed to all the flaws in Totsuki's system that had long inspired some ire in her, had identified the continuously nagging thought that despite all the blood, sweat and tears she sacrificed into the sixth seat- that…it still did not feel like it was rightfully hers.
"Isn't it tiring…?", he had asked, "Isn't it tiring to always work so hard, exhaust yourself beyond your limits, just to see people, who put in less, prosper just the same right beside you? To have your every step haunted by the knowledge that all you've worked so hard for - can be lost in just a heartbeat?"
He was a worldly man with big, interesting ideas - one that she just had to introduce to her parents because a good, little girl such as Nene Kinokuni would never stage an entire coup on Japan's most renowned culinary school without her parent's approval of course.
—
Nene's hand halted right as she was about to tie her hair into the usual braids…
Something didn't feel right.
When her fingertips brushed past one of the green, silky strands, a memory flashed before her inner eye:
'Mother, mother!' 4-year-old Nene proudly held up a mirror, for her mother to see the perfect braid that her hair had just been tied into. Tied by Nene, with her own little hands. 'I did it just like you told me to, Mother.'
Misao Kinokuni turned her head halfway, just the right amount for her to take a glance into the mirror that was offering her a look at the back of her head. 'Ah, it is indeed perfect.' She did not smile but gave an appreciative nod before fully turning around and patting little Nene lightly on the head. 'What a perfect, little girl you are.'
"Oh that's right.." Nene quietly said to no one but herself as she lowered her hand, leaving her hair untouched and unbraided. "I am not mother's perfect, little girl anymore."