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wishingforatypewriter · 7 years

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Fighting with Nakiris

Summary: In which Erina and Alice are angry because they care. Some spoilers for chapter 222. Fourth installment in my On the Road series.

This was becoming a bad habit, Erina realized as she made her way down to the main kitchen at three in the morning as she had almost every night for the last week and a half. And as was usually the case, Yukihira was already in there making something.

He grinned when he saw her. Erina swallowed thickly, suddenly hyper-aware of her short nightgown and messy ponytail. "Perfect timing, Nakiri."

"Hmm. What do you have for me today?" she asked, eyeing him and the large metal pot he was stirring with a blend of fascination and disdain. Considering the ordeal he'd just gone through to get the former third seat on their side, Erina assumed that he'd try to get a decent amount of sleep—but clearly she'd been wrong. He never did have any sense of self-preservation.

"Coq au vin ramen," he explained before ladling her out a serving. His insanity might have been rubbing off on her, but the French inspired dish actually sounded like a good idea.

Erina took a deep breath before sampling the rich soup, flavored with chicken bones and red wine. It tasted of summer nights in Paris—of walks along the Seine and stolen moments in the shade of the Musee d'Orsay. And that was only the broth.

"Have you ever even been to France?" she asked, breathless.

"Nope."

Damn him. Erina noted the subtle balance between the slightly acidic broth and the rich lardons. The flavors were beyond reproach. She had come to realize that in the kitchen after dark, her god tongue was entirely his creature—and oh how she hated him for it.

"So what do you think?" he asked her, grinning in that self-satisfied way of his.

"Passable," she said curtly, refusing to meet his eyes. He didn't seem completely bent on torturing her tonight, and she appreciated it. "Barely."

Usually he'd try to get a better response out of her, but Souma merely shrugged at her less than enthused reaction. Her hooded eyes and rapid breathing said all the words she refused to speak aloud. "Want me to try again? I had another idea for ramen using jerk pork."

Erina nibbled her lower lip; that sounded delicious. But she wasn't even done slurping up the contents of the bowl in front of her. Would she be able to survive another of his creations without losing her composure? "I won't be made into your guinea pig, Yukihira!" she snapped. "People pay absurd amounts of money to have me take even one bite of their dishes."

"You seem to be enjoying it, though," he pointed out. "Isn't that why you keep coming down here at night?"

"Absolutely not! Nothing would make me happier than to stop running into you down here," she said with a scoff and an exaggerated hair flip.

"Alright. Just pretend I'm not here." Then he took out another gargantuan pot and started mincing garlic with thyme and scotch bonnet peppers.

Erina frowned. He had let the argument go a lot faster than she expected, perhaps faster than she wanted. Was something wrong?

Deciding to take advantage of the reprieve he'd granted her, Erina was able ignore him for all of five minutes before she glanced his way. He looked more exhausted than she had ever seen him. "Why don't you just go to bed? Tadokoro-san said you collapsed earlier today."

"Well, technically that was yesterday."

"Not the point."

Souma merely shrugged, the tired expression gone now that he knew she was looking. "I bounced back," he explained. "But going against Megishima made me realize there are all types of ramen out there."

"Naturally he would." Erina knew that by their third year, each student chef at Tōtsuki settled into a specialization—and senior Elite Ten members held complete hegemony over their specialties. She could hardly fathom how the former third seat had been convinced by anything the likes of Yukihira had to say. "But that still doesn't change the fact that you need sleep to function...not that you were ever all that functional to begin with."

"Don't worry about it. I never needed much sleep." Then he flashed her an easy grin—one, she assumed, that was meant to convince her of his infallibility, that he had an easy solution stored away for every potential setback. It was the expression of a charismatic leader trying to assuage the worries of a subordinate, and she resented it immensely. He may have had all the other rebels—hell, everyone else in their graduating class—spellbound, but he could not fool her.

"Okay, let's get one thing straight between us," she said, her voice level, her expression made of steel. "In general, I'm clearly far above you. But in this one particular situation, you and I are equals. I am not one of your adoring fans—"

"Nakiri, what are you—"

"Let me finish," she said, meeting his eyes with a defiant amethyst stare. "You know that unwavering faith in your ability to fix things that everyone else seems to be depending on? I don't have it. At all. I see things the way they are. If you keep overworking yourself like this, you're going to end up in the hospital, and then my father will get everything he wants. It is so arrogant for you to think that despite everything Isshiki-senpai, and Takumi, and even Hisako and Alice and the others have been doing, the fate of the culinary world rests on whether you can perfect two or three extra dishes in the middle of the night!"

For a good minute afterwards, Souma only looked at her. For someone who rarely said what she meant, Nakiri could give a damn good lecture when she wanted to. "You're right. I'm sorry if that's how I came off."

"Really?" Erina blinked once. Twice. She hadn't expected it to be that easy. "I mean…just try to be reasonable—limit it to one or two all-nighters a week."

As soon as she left the kitchen, Erina ran into Kuga-senpai loitering in the hallway. She could tell from the smirk on his face that he had heard everything.

"Is there something you need, senpai?" she asked.

"My snack time is right after yours," he explained. "But maybe I should just head back upstairs."

"Do as you see fit," the Nakiri heiress said, nonplussed, before continuing down the hall.

"You know, Nakiri-kun," he said to her retreating back. "You have a really strange way of letting your feelings show. You should be more honest."

"Good night, Kuga-senpai." Erina continued until she reached the staircase, back straight, head held high. And then, in the comfort of her own bedroom, she buried her face in a thick down pillow and screamed.

It was well past four when they came back from their late night mission, this one to break the Azami faction's monopoly over the ingredient supply chains in Hokkaido. Usually Yuki and Ryouko and the others slept through the clandestine departures and early arrivals. But this time they were all disturbed by the sounds of a largely one-sided argument.

"You guys are so stupid. Insanely stupid!" Alice said.

"Okay," Kurokiba replied, set on appeasing her.

"But it's not okay. You could have gotten yourselves killed!"

"Do you understand how much money that was?" Hayama inserted.

"It wasn't even that much money!" Alice shouted. "Back me up here, Hishoko."

"It actually was a lot of money, Alice," Hisako told her, and since Alice was paying these bribes out of her checking account, she was very glad that it hadn't been stolen. "I'm going to go get some ice."

When the Arato heiress went up to the breakfast nook to retrieve said ice, she happened upon the usual eavesdropping crowd. Ikumi, Yuki, and Ryouko were joined by Marui and Ibusaki. All five of them were sipping tea—Hisako's tea, mind you—and wearing intrigued expressions. The sounds of the argument were still wafting up, loud and clear.

"But what if they had been armed?"

"They weren't."

"But what if they had been? You would be dead, Ryo-kun!"

“You’re exaggerating.”

“In what way am I exaggerating?”

Hisako grabbed an ice bucket and a few dish rags, sighing. "You guys have until this bucket is full to ask your questions." She pushed the button on the fridge. "Go."

"What the hell happened?" Ikumi asked.

"The person we were supposed to make a deal with actually set us up to get robbed."

"Are you alright, secretary-chi?" Yuki questioned, raising her hand like a child in school.

"Alice and I stayed in the car the whole time," she explained. "We didn't even know what happened until it was over."

"But Kurokiba and Hayama…" Ryouko let the question hang in the air.

"Were stupid enough to try and fight their way out? Yes."

"Boys are so dumb," Yuki said. "I definitely agree with Alice-chi now."

"Yoshino-san, that's a lot of money to just lose," Ibusaki interjected.

"What happened to the money, anyway?" Mauri asked.

"We still have it somehow." Hisako finished her tale just as the ice bucket reached its capacity. "But naturally Alice is not happy."

"And you?" Ikumi asked.

Hisako sighed. She really hadn't had a chance to react with Alice barely letting anyone get a word in edgewise. She supposed she was just glad nothing really bad happened. "Honestly, I'm just ready for bed at this point. Goodnight, all."

She descended the stairs to a chorus of 'goodnight Hishoko' and was surprised to find the living room silent.

"Alice decided to take the argument back to her room so she could get comfortable," Hayama told her.

"Typical." Hisako rolled her eyes at the revelation. "How'd you manage to escape?"

"She has tunnel vision when she's mad, and you know how she is with Kurokiba. All I had to do was stand on the other side of the room."

Hisako actually laughed a little. "You're the worst." Wordlessly she wrapped some of the ice up in dishrags and handed it to him. "She's right, you know. Dramatic, but right."

"Probably." He took the DIY ice pack from her, thanked her. "Luckily none of those gentlemen in the pub hit as hard as you do."

"Oh, shut up." She had to admit, there might have been some truth to it. She had spent years taking self-defense classes so she would be able to protect Erina in case of an emergency. However, she would have never guessed that her right hook packed such a punch while she was sleeping. "Where'd you learn how to fight, anyway?" she asked. While Kurokiba had always served as Alice's enforcer, she didn't imagine that Hayama got much practice in ass kicking while watering the plants in Professor Shiomi's greenhouse.

"Here and there," he said with a sigh, and Hisako knew that she wouldn't get a more detailed response out of him. Not tonight, anyway.

"Wanna do me a favor?" she asked before realizing that the question made her sound a bit too much like Alice.

"Depends on what."

"Go give Alice and Kurokiba the rest of this ice before it melts." She, for one, was not getting drawn into her tirade again.

"Not happening," he told her. "Ask for something else."

Hisako smirked. He should not have said that. "You know that dish you made for the finals of the autumn elections…"

Two hours, several cups of expensive tea, and a plate of pacific saury carpaccio later, they were found asleep on the living room couch. This time, at least, nobody was punched.

#sorina #soueri #ryoali #hayama x hisako #shokugeki no soma #on the road #nakiri erina #nakiri alice #arato hisako #spoilers

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