After a particularly unfortunate month a few years back in which the entirety of Totsuki's student body had fallen into a complete slump — their GPAs had dropped so far that nin became the prevalent marking on a shu scale (essentially a D/F average) — the Elite Ten and Dean Hayama had taken it upon themselves to boost the morales of the depressed young chefs.

And so State of the Student was organized as an annual half-day event in which all students were excused from their classes to take a day off and participate in a slew of stress-free (well, it was supposed to be stress-free) activities to promote their mental wellbeing because Totsuki was stressful as hell. The highlight of SoS was the guest chefs that the council members brought from all over the world; somewhat reminiscent of the freshman hell camp, these chefs were Totsuki's diamonds and the zenith of the global culinary scene. At the end of the twelve hours, these alumni would prepare a full five-course meal for all the depressed, burned out kids in an attempt to return them to semi functionality. It usually worked.

But obviously, the aspiring chefs gave zero fucks about their mental health, because free time meant shokugekis. State of the Student turned into Challenge Day, during which all students in the high school section could take a crack at the Elite Ten over and over again without any stipulations on either side, and challenge requests could not be refused. For obvious reasons, Dean Hayama was averse to the idea, but the council members loved it. In the rare case that an Elite Ten member did happen to lose, the victor was guaranteed an official shokugeki after Challenge Day with the seat on the line.

When Tsukasa Akechi became fifth seat as a first year, he inevitably pissed all flying, walking, and swimming fucks out of the entire upperclassman population. What sucked the most was that he hadn't even wanted to be on the council in the first place; Arato-Hayama Hikari had literally appointed him the day she graduated.

And so, on the fine October morning of Totsuki's 119th gen Challenge Day, Tsukasa Akechi woke up to discover 114 challenge forms in his Elite Ten inbox.

It was going to be a long twelve hours.

After spending a year with the children of Yukihira Souma and Nakiri Erina's closest friends, Marui Sena had learned exactly one more thing about the girl named Yukihira Kaede, and it was that all she asked for in return for commissions was utter anonymity.

Tragic.

So when Kaede showed up in the first seat's office at Legislation on Challenge Day, Sena had no fucking clue.

The girl was wearing black Nike shorts and a navy Champion sweatshirt with the hood pulled up, her short strawberry blonde hair swept low to hide her left eye. Her right was a brilliant gold. Sena didn't get the chance to notice the flecks of purple that were unnaturally reminiscent of Nakiri Erina's fatal gaze, though, because Auden vaulted over his desk, jumped the hell on top of her, and knocked her flat.

"Holy shit!" he bellowed. "It's been way too long!"

When the girl finally got her feet under her, she laughed and said, "Hey, Kurokiba." Then she turned. "You're Marui Sena, aren't you?"

Sena was a tad disgruntled, but she shook the girl's hand. There was a plain silver band adorning her right ring finger. "And you are?"

She paused for a second. "I'm one of Auden's childhood friends. It's a pleasure to meet you, Marui-san."

This girl gave off the same powerful vibe as Arato-Hayama Hikari, and she hadn't given a name. Looking back on the moment later on, Sena would come to realize that those two facts had been the dead giveaway.

The sheer monstrosity with which Kurokiba Auden, Ibusaki Seijuro, Marui Sena, and Isshiki Tetsuko had risen to take the top four seats in the Elite Ten had rendered them as impossible to even try and hold a candle to; Tsukasa Akechi was the highest seat to be challenged on that year's CD.

As a result, when Akechi walked into the shokugeki stadium with his apron draped over his arm, seats one through four were sitting in the Nakiri VIP booth with a hooded stranger. He took one look at the dangerous gold eye cast in shadow and knew it was Kaede. She'd gotten a haircut since Helsinki but there was no mistaking the jagged contours of her face.

Now, being the boy in love that he was, Akechi decided that he had to impress the living hell out of the girl watching him with her arms crossed and a hint of a smirk pulling at her lips. He opened his knife case, examined the keen edge of his favorite blade with precision, then balanced it by the tip of the handle on his index finger.

"Let's start the rentai shokugeki, shall we, senpais?"

Seventeen half-hour waves and a lot of specialty level dishes later, Akechi had beaten all 114 challengers again and again, but holy fuck was he tired. Cooking for eight and a half hours straight with nothing but an hour's lunch break in between was a drain; if it weren't for Kaede, who had been sitting motionlessly for since the beginning, and the thought of the 92nd gen's cooking he'd get to try in four hours, he would've probably sacrificed a few wins for the sake of his physical health.

He took a long sip from his seventh water bottle and wiped the sweat from his brow. Kaede or no Kaede, Akechi wasn't too sure how much longer he could keep this up.

"Next wave," he called, his voice husky from fatigue. "Come at me."

In the brief lull while he waited for whoever had already had his ass kicked at least ten times but had no clue when to give up, Akechi chanced another glance up at the booth. The gathered senpais were grinning with pride. Isshiki Tetsuko flashed him a thumbs up.

There's our little Five.

Kaede was nowhere to be found, but Akechi had little time to wonder where she'd gone because the third year who had been ousted from the Elite Ten roster due to Akechi's assumption of the fifth seat — a buff, good-looking fellow named Okazaki Kento with a faux hawk fade and stamina exceeding that of most triathletes — took the stage, accompanied by the rest of his research society. Chinese? Something like that.

This thirty-member tag team was the only group that had come close to beating Akechi, and they were all completely refreshed while Akechi could probably be knocked over if he was blown on.

Even the mc looked a little sympathetic as she announced, "Tsukasa Akechi, your challengers for wave eighteen are the members of the Hong Kongese Research Society."

"How many hours left until CD is over?" Akechi asked weakly.

"Three," she replied primly.

Oh fuck.

"Let's wrap this up here, shall we?" said another voice, and they all whipped around in unison as if under a spell.

A figure emerged from the shadows through the entrance gate to Chandra's stadium bearing what resembled Kurokiba Auden's knife case — wait, that was Auden's knife case. A certain red bandana was tied over her mouth and nose, masking all her features save for that gold eye. She'd discarded her hoodie, revealing the choppy half-bobbed hair that seemed to shift between red and gold depending on the angle of light and the white tank she was wearing underneath as she glided over.

"Bring all the challengers out," she said, and the words rang through the hall with all the omnipotent intensity of a fucking war, even through the bandana. "Every single goddamn one of them."

Before long, 114 disgruntled students were assembled around the stage.

"Your next opponent will be me," she announced.

At this, all of them burst into laughter. "The fuck do you think you are?" The president of the HKRS crowed. "You're not a Totsuki chef."

Kaede scratched the back of her head. "I guess that's true. If they'll let us bend the rules, let's make this an official shokugeki even if I'm not a student. One wave, 114-to-2. If Tsukasa and I win, we'll end this bullshit here."

Kento moved and leaned down so that his face was less than an inch from Kaede's. She stared up at him with an unyielding squint. "You're the real dish here, aren't you? I bet you'd look better without this on." He deliberately put his index finger on her lips over the Kurokiba bandana, but she remained impassive. Akechi bristled. "If we win, I get to do whatever I want with you tonight."

Kaede shrugged indifferently.

Akechi frowned. This was not the type of stipulation a girl usually agreed to with someone else in front of her boyfriend (well, they weren't actually dating… but still). And it was true — Kaede wasn't a chef; how the fuck was she planning to hold her own against 114 of Totsuki's best?

Then she pulled off the bandana. She ran a hand through her hair, sweeping it off her forehead and exposing her face for the first time, and Akechi's worries and the arrogant smirks on one hundred and fourteen faces promptly vanished.

Holy fuck. Those eyes.

Is that the daughter of…

"No backing out," she said easily, pulling the ring off her finger and sliding it into her pocket. "My name is Kaede, but you all probably know me as the daughter of Yukihira Souma and Nakiri Erina. I'll redesign that sorry lump of a building you call Legislation soon enough. Any questions?"

Pindrop silence.

She beckoned the challengers with a rigid hand. "Hurry up. I came here to see Hikari and my parents, not cook. We'll destroy you all at once."