guess we update on Tuesdays now
I ended up cutting this chapter in half when it threatened to sprawl for twice as long as the typical chapter. I suppose that means you can look forward to another update next week, though, so I'm not complaining.
Politicking complete, Takumi redirected his focus towards actually cooking for the Election. Extracting a promise from Akira was one thing; developing an entirely new curry dish within a week was another.
"Sheesh, one week?" Fumio muttered to herself as Polar Star's kitchen turned into a testing ground bolstered by Shōji and Daigo's cheering. "Back in Polar Star's golden age, students were told what they'd be making before summer even started."
"That change was implemented a while ago," Satoshi said, watching the first-years frantically running back and forth. "Students raised a concern that splitting potential competitors into blocks A and B meant it was luck of the draw whether or not you were placed with frontrunners of your year. To compensate, the administration added an additional elimination round and raised the number of initial competitors to sixteen, but adding that layer of organization means that Election preparations run into the middle of summer, when students have dispersed to either train or relax, and Director Nakiri doesn't want the Autumn Election to run so far into the semester."
Fumio snorted. "Sounds like the old windbag," she grumbled.
"Does anyone have eyes on my rice?" Yūki called over from where she was frying something on a stovetop.
Takumi glanced at it. "It's almost done," he replied. "I'd give it a stir in a couple of minutes."
"Thank you, Aldini-cchi!"
"Did someone move my natto?" Ryōko fretted. "It's not on my usual fridge shelf."
"You finished that batch during dinner yesterday," Shun said, not looking up from his own pot. "You said you had more that would be ready for the Election in the steamer."
"Right!" She hurried out of the room to find the missing ingredient.
"This is mayhem," Fumio said.
"Welcome mayhem," Satoshi said. "It's wonderful to see how seriously all of Polar Star's competitors are taking their chance to shine."
"Where are my potatoes?!" Zenji shouted from the pantry. "What happened to them?"
"Oops," Shōji said, not sounding particularly guilty as he got up. "Sorry, Marui-kun, we had them during breakfast this morning. I'll go pick up some more if we have any."
"There should be some in the storage shed, Satō-kun," Satoshi confirmed, waving the first-year off on the chore.
"Mayhem," Fumio repeated, nodding to herself.
"What're you working on, Aldini-kun?" Daigo asked, leaning towards him. "All I've seen you do is test the same curry over and over again."
"Hmm? Oh, I'm coming up with my curry roux," Takumi said. "I suppose I could just add the curry seasoning, but I want to see if I can bring in more sweetness like in a typical Naporitan sauce." Part of him wished he could set up four stations to test like he would have in Ristorante F, but that was a luxury he wistfully longed for rather than one he could indulge.
"Can I try?" Takumi handed Ryōko a spoon to sample his work. "Ooh, you're pretty close. If sweetness is your concern, maybe you could just add more carrots when making the actual curry?"
Takumi grunted. "I suppose. I'd like to incorporate the full flavor profile in the curry from the start, though."
"Can you believe our luck, being put in the same group as Hayama and Akanegakubo?" Yūki wilted as she halfheartedly stirred her rice. "I bet they're going to make something crazy good. D'you think anything we make will outscore them?"
"Don't worry about those two," Takumi said, tasting his roux again. He winced at the flavor of the concentrated spices and added another tablespoon of butter. "It doesn't matter if we outscore them. We just need to outscore everyone else."
"You seem confident that we can do that," Zenji muttered. "I already feel like I'm going to faint; what on earth am I to do during the first round?"
"Just focus on cooking," Ryōko suggested. "Aldini-san's right. No one can control how well you do but yourself. All we can do is make the best dish for the judges and earn our places in the Election."
The first round came far sooner than Takumi would've liked, even if he had nailed down a concept he liked within a few hours of hearing the theme. He now found himself milling with the other fifty-nine hopefuls, waiting backstage of a Shokugeki arena he remembered sitting in the audience of earlier in the year.
"Aldini-san." Sōmei found him in the crowd somehow. Takumi wasn't surprised; the other boy had promised as much when they met up the previous day to compare and critique each other's dishes. "Do you think you're ready?"
"Of course not," Takumi said, drumming his fingers on his mezzaluna case. "But I'm as ready as I can be, so there's no purpose in panicking over it." His eyes slid over a small group of students whose names he didn't know huddled together in a worried cluster. As he watched, their collective anxiety seemed to peak with each person's stuttering words of encouragement.
Sōmei followed his gaze and scoffed at the group. "What nonsense. Why whip yourself into a froth mere moments before we're meant to be in the kitchen?"
He glanced back at Sōmei, whose hand tightened on the hilt of his knife. Whatever his words, anxiety was steadily pulsing from his friend. "You better make it to the next round yourself," Takumi said.
Sōmei stilled. Then, his grip relaxed. "Same to you," he retorted. "I intend to compete against you in this arena one day. Let's make it this month."
The two boys shook hands as attendants finally opened the doors and ushered all of the students onstage.
Chandra's Room was just as breathtaking as it was the first time Takumi had been in it, but there's something that swelled in his chest as he walked onto its actual stage, staring up at the audience that would soon be filled with Tōtsuki students not lucky (or skilled) enough to be in his shoes. He looked at the others he'd be cooking against. Basically everyone he'd met was milling about with him. He hadn't realized just how skilled the people he was acquainted with were; who exactly was it that made up the rest of the school, and were they really so untalented that they never stood out to him?
…he was beginning to think he might be picking up more than cooking tips from the Elite Ten trainees he surrounded himself with. Some of their arrogance was leaking into him, too.
A door at the back of the stage opened, and steady footsteps approached a microphone that had been set up there. The man preparing to speak was older, his face creased with age and his long hair already silvery white. A long scar ran down his face, across one of his eyes, and his expression looked carefully blank.
Nakiri Senzaemon, the director of Tōtsuki himself, quietly cleared his throat to get everyone's attention. The throat clearing turned into a coughing fit that he took almost a minute to control. Takumi felt more than he saw Sōmei's eyes rolling at that.
After he regained himself, he began to speak. "The atmosphere in this place… when I breathe in here, I can feel the vitality in the air.
"As you all should be aware of by now, this is Chandra's Room. It is by far Tōtsuki's most prestigious arena, and typically it is only used for Shokugeki between those of the Elite Ten. Indeed, those who have carved their place in our school, the long lineage of First Seats, find themselves immortalized among their peers."
He gestured at a series of framed photographs that lined the wall behind the audience seating. Sure enough, Takumi could see a photo of the boy who grew up to be Dōjima Gin, and in the row below him he could see a younger Shinomiya Kojirō staring arrogantly out at them.
Is that why Mizuhara seemed so irritated at losing First to him…?
"Many battles have been fought here. Chefs have been born and broken here. Specialties were unveiled that have since dazzled the public with their flair and singular flavors. The memories of those moments of conquest, the desperation your forebears felt striving to be their best… that's all still here, charging the air that we breathe.
"It's the opportunity to fight where those shining few have fought that you are cooking to win, now."
Takumi looked around. His classmates' eyes were glued on Director Nakiri, hanging onto his every word. They desired that greatness that he promised the handful that catapulted Tōtsuki's reputation as high as it was held, no matter if it felt like little more than a pipe dream right now.
But that's not what he cared about. Takumi looked past them, past their seeds of ambition, and imagined those past battles. He wondered where Fuyumi had fought for herself. He wondered if she had found Ristorante F's agrodolce here, if she had experimented mid-Shokugeki here. He wondered how many victories she claimed over those daring enough to challenge her here.
He sensed that atmosphere Director Nakiri emphasized, now. The idea of securing excellence where his former mentor had seized it for herself… It was enough to make his head feel almost dissociative, floaty where he previously felt grounded.
"This is where the main tournament of the Autumn Election will be held," Director Nakiri said. "Those chosen from both Blocks A and B will be entered into a single-elimination tournament that will be fought on the very stage you stand on. Only those brilliant enough to stand out in the preliminaries will get that opportunity.
"I wish you luck, students. Let's make history here, together."
A raucous applause sprang up after his words as students loudly cheered. The anxiety of the room suddenly flipped to anticipation. Takumi felt his heart speed up in excitement.
A voice began speaking on the loudspeaker. It sounded like a younger man, perhaps even another student.
"Thank you for your words, Director Nakiri. Hello, students of the 92nd Generation! We will briefly go over the regulations of the preliminary rounds, and then you will be sent to your blocks to cook. You each have three hours to prepare your dish for your panel of judges. A standard set of ingredients are available in each venue, but you may bring in whatever additional ingredients you need for your dish to excel. The top eight students of each block will advance to the true first round of the Autumn Election."
Takumi wasn't surprised by how few students would proceed. For some reason, many of his classmates were. He wondered if they had just skimmed the regulation paperwork given to them upon accepting their place in the preliminaries for the theme.
"Please take this time to go to your assigned hall and find your station. Preliminaries start exactly at 11:00, which gives you just under an hour to do so. Thank you, and good luck!"
The voice paused before sighing. "Finally, that's over. Why did you make me do this, Kobayashi-san? I have ten thousand other things I need to get done before next week."
"'Cause it's boring!" a feminine voice further away from the unseen microphone said. "Also, you should really keep an eye on that, Tsukasa. You're still talking to the first-years."
The microphone finally cut off, but not before everyone in Chandra's Room heard the first voice let out a wordless surprised wail.
Takumi blinked. Kobayashi… that was Momo's mentor's last name. Was the other person another Elite Ten member, then?
"This school continues to be a farce," Sōmei said with a contemptuous huff. "Good luck, Aldini-san. I'll see you after the preliminaries end."
"Of course." He nodded to him. "I don't think you need luck, but in case you want it: good luck."
Sōmei smirked. "Perhaps you're right, but it's appreciated, nonetheless."
"Isn't this boring, Isshiki-kun?"
Satoshi fixed a perfect sweet smile on his face the way Megumi taught him to when he was still a round-faced child desperate to escape the yoke of his family's legacy. They think we're porcelain, she'd whispered, guiding the tension from his cheeks and coaxing a pleasant neutrality where his forehead furrowed. Let them think so. Let them be fooled by your beauty until the day you choose to break and make them bleed.
He calmly extricated the arm the woman pouting up at him from the judges' table tried to wrap around herself. "Boring? I find it quite the opposite, Sendawara-san."
Her bottom lip poked out further. "Why won't you call me Orie-chan?" she said, clasping her hands together in a way that shoved her cleavage further in his face. "Didn't I tell you I want you to work for me? You could be my personal aide, you know. I'd take you around the world with me." She twirls a lock of her hair around her finger. "Doesn't that sound fun? Better than being in school, no?"
He's not here. He's out in the fields behind Polar Star, and she just came up to him to ask after the harvest.
"Maybe," he said to the blue sky in his mind, "but I enjoy it at Tōtsuki. I'm still a student, after all, and I'd love it if you could direct your interest to the dishes my younger peers present." He imagined his hands running across stalks of corn and allowed himself a soft grin.
"Eh." Orie finally gave up trying to cajole him to her. "It looks like a lot of boring kids here, though. Are we supposed to be interested in them?"
Satoshi let her words flow off of him. "You'd be surprised, Sendawara-san. For example…"
Just as he suspected, Yūki's seemingly plain boredom burned away in favor of excited passion, and she quickly turned up her heat as she threw in a handful of her prepared spice mix. Her duck fat must have finally melted, he mused to himself, enjoying the rich fattiness that perfumed the air as she cooked.
Orie perked up. "Oh…? This smell?"
As if on cue, another flurry of motion sparked across the room, punctuated by a rich, bittersweet smell. Momo appeared generally unconcerned by the girls who screamed encouragement for her, ignoring the world around her as she kneaded butter into her dough. A pot on her stove bubbled merrily with a creamy orange sauce she periodically stirred, and when she set her dough aside to rest she promptly began separating eggs into whites and yolks.
"Chocolate in a round for curry!" One of the other judges, a severe man named Andou Shingo mused. "Tōtsuki students never cease to impress me. Isshiki-kun, tell us about that girl."
"Akanegakubo Momo. Her specialty is baked goods and desserts," he promptly said. "Currently under the wing of Kobayashi Rindō. She's as skilled as one can expect in all areas of food, don't get me wrong, but we all have our favorite things to prepare, right?"
"I've never heard a truer statement," Andou declared, nodding to himself.
Momo scowled as a girl a few stations down from her began cackling over her pot. Sadatsuka Nao had impressed at least one of the alumni with her unorthodox choice of cooking style, and the dark roux she boasted only cemented her particular idiosyncrasy. Publicly, Satoshi wondered what kind of chef she'd grow up to be. Privately, he had the feeling she would get along far too well with at least one of the underclassmen he lived with, if Ryōko's latest fermentation-caused explosion was proof of anything.
"Just you wait, Erina-sama," Nao muttered to herself, fixing another student with a harsh glare through the steam bubbling up from her pot. "After this is over, you'll see that I'm a far superior crony to keep around than that infernal girl."
Hisako ignored the dark looks and snide whispers, carefully removing the spices floating at the top of her broth. Speculation had always surrounded her and her devotion to the person she chose to serve, but she didn't care enough to address it. Erina knew who she was to her, and that was all she'd ever needed.
That didn't mean Hisako wasn't her own person. Her personality had nothing to do with her cooking ability. If she were discontent with her lot in life, she'd put her all into destroying the burden she chose to take on. Besides, everyone belittling Hisako tended to forget that she served Nakiri Erina, a girl who demanded excellence from even passing acquaintances. There was no way she wouldn't have high expectations for the girl who worked as her aide.
It's not the approval of any of the judges that Hisako prepared her dish for, though she's not so modest that she doesn't expect it. Her true prize will be bringing a bowl of her dish to Erina afterwards and earning that soft, warm smile that she saved specially for her.
At that precise moment, Shun lifted a glass cloche filled with dense smoke, releasing bitter-smelling plumes that hijacked all of the wonderful smells floating through the air and made the students next to him cough and glare at him. He ignored them, as he always did, choosing to focus on the hardboiled eggs he'd been carefully marinating in mesquite.
When Satoshi staked his claim on Shun, the others in his year hadn't protested. He's sure they all thought he was being crazy; after all, as the frontrunner of his year, he technically had first dibs on the generation of students that included Nakiri Erina. Etsuya already had his eyes on a prodigy he could easily twist into yet another well-paying investment, Nene snapped up the girl he seemingly overlooked, and Terunori had tracked down a student who could keep up with his particular culinary focus. They all saw Shun as a decent enough chef but one who would most likely wash out at the end of his second year, drawn by the siren call of apprenticeships and non-Tōtsuki experience. Shun himself had been shocked when Satoshi gave him his offer.
Satoshi knew what he saw in Shun, though, and his intuition bore the greatest fruits as he watched the boy stack more wood chips on his kitchen counter and set them ablaze. The other trainees in his year were firmly set in stone: Ikumi and the corporation she would inherit, Erina and the reputation she'd earned with her palate and family name, Momo and her stellar social media numbers, Akira and his carefully nurtured nose. No matter who trained them, they'd be exactly who they currently were.
None of them were raw material in the way he'd been when Megumi had chosen him herself. None of them were the very kindling that had to be taught how to set himself ablaze. And none of them would know what to do with the smoke that came afterwards better than the boy who had already earned himself a moniker declaring his royal standing over his chosen focus.
Satoshi glanced over to where Akira quietly finished his preparations. It was odd to see the boy so apparently subdued; in all of his interactions with Terunori's trainee, he'd been a quiet sort of passionate, the kind that felt like a geyser ready to explode at any given notice rather than the roiling noise his mentor tended to display.
He'd never seemed placid before. He did now, even as fragrant steam billowed around him.
Satoshi watched him more carefully.
Akira was glancing at something out of the corner of his eye, something on the other side of the room.
Satoshi quietly followed his gaze to the final cluster of stations. The first student he noticed was Ikumi, who had foregone her typical top-quality beef for a similarly decadent cut of pork belly that she was carefully stewing in a large pot with aromatics, Shaoxing wine, and a whole bevy of sauces that she poured in without measurement. She made a spectacle of herself, laughing loudly at some of the more salacious comments thrown at her (she even tried to bounce a spare piece of onion off of her chest as a collection of male students cheered her on) and threatening those whose comments were a little too pointed with one of her many knives.
The most interesting student in the 92nd Generation was right beside her, rolling his eyes at her antics even as he hid his laughter. Aldini Takumi was still a mystery to Satoshi, though not due to anything the boy himself did. Really, he was far less closed-off than the standard Tōtsuki student was; it would've seemed shockingly naive if he didn't have the talent and nerve to back himself up. Many other students had scoffed and written him off when he transferred in and spoke of disinterest in working with the established Tōtsuki system. Those same students had to watch as he easily kept up with Ikumi's sarcastic jeers and sent some of his own right back at her.
It seemed Satoshi looked over at just the right time. Right as he turned his attention on the boy, the lighthearted amusement that had just colored his expression dropped, leaving an intense focus Satoshi had only seen before on the boy's professional mentor. He raised his mezzaluna and effortlessly sliced a ball of dough into perfectly uniform pasta with a practiced flourish, the chore taking mere seconds. He'd barely even had to watch himself work.
It's no wonder the other frontrunners of his generation knew he'd join them, even without Sōma's blatant interest in him.
"One hour left," the Koume student working this half of the preliminaries called out. "Once your dish is finished, don't forget to ring the bell at your station to determine the order in which our esteemed panel of judges will taste your food. Good luck, everyone!"
"Who needs luck?" Ikumi called out to the commentator, winking at the startled girl. "We already know who's gonna go on here; it's more a matter of showing these other dorks that they never stood a chance!"
"Oh yeah?!" Yūki yelled back, brandishing a dripping ladle back at her. "We'll see just who gets out on top, Mito-chan!"
"You're getting curry everywhere, Yoshino-san," Shun said at a normal volume, though his words still carried through the arena.
"Oops!"
"I–I love the enthusiasm!" To her credit, the commentator seemed determined to match their energy. "Let's see if your dishes match your energy!"
No food notes! Those are all saved for next time :)