"Do you know the biggest reason why people don't make desserts in competitions in this school? Yes, you at the back."

"Uhm... because it takes a lot more skill and has a much rougher judging criteria?"

"That's part of it," the teacher acquiesced, "but that's not the main reason, unfortunately. Any other guesses?"

Another hand went up. "Because some desserts are much easier and faster to make and don't compare to difficult main dishes like stews and all?"

Minase-sensei hummed, arms crossed. "You're getting closer," he nods. Then finally, he turns to the one that has the answer, "Eda-kun, if you'd enlighten the crowd?"

Eda winced. "Because for a competition-level dessert, it often takes days to start and finish a dessert dish from scratch..."

"Yes."

The biggest discrepancy between cooking competitions and dessert competitions is the time allotted for cooking. Dessert competitions can go from three to eight hours, or even longer. Days, in the really high level.

While there are exceptions and plenty of desserts with very short time constraints, a patissier's skills shine best with time on their side.

While most desserts are better eaten cold, main dishes are often better served fresh off the stove. A longer cooking time would also mean they'd also have much more time to retrace their steps if they messed up, and that makes the process much less fair in a competitive environment.

In other words, it's an uphill battle no one wants to take, and if you know what's good for you in a place like Tootsuki, it's a challenge you don't take unless you want to handicap yourself from the very beginning.

In all honesty, if you just want to be a patissier, a local college will give you enough skills to get you started, and you're better off apprenticing in patisseries instead.

Eda has many years of experience with heavy workloads and insane time constraints, so it's only a little bit of an issue. Though, competitions still stress him out.

"What Eda-kun can pull off is very impressive, even to us teachers," Minase-sensei acknowledged, "but right now, Tootsuki's environment is very disadvantageous for Dessert Food Fortes. That's not to say there won't be any challenge for it, though."

The teacher raised a hand to the projected screen.

"Your mid terms are in one month, yes, yes, I know it's very soon, yes it will be immediate expulsion if you lose—" he settled the crowd of frantic students like he's herding puppies. There's a moment of silence as everyone waited with bated breath.

Minase-sensei braced himself.

"It's a Dessert test."

Chaos.

-

"That's not fair! This test is basically a free pass for Eda!"

"That's just ridiculous! This is obviously some kind of favouritism!"

"And it's desserts with summer fruits?? We barely even touch fruits in the classroom except strawberries!"

"We haven't even learned many Desserts this year on Summer desserts, the classes have been on whipped cream and stuff like that, we haven't baked actual things yet!"

"I knew it was bad when the teachers just kept giving us sakura, matcha and strawberry assignments! It was sabotage!"

"I'm going to lodge a complaint! How the hell are we supposed to figure out summer desserts when no one's let us touch anything other than a strawberry in fruit assortments this whole damn year?!"

Shinomiya already figured the mayhem was coming when all their first classes announced that. Seriously, for a bunch of second years, they really loved whining. This must be the puberty age. This is the chuunibyou age, of course everyone's in their woe is me angst phase.

And while Shinomiya deeply understood and wanted to complain too, he knew this was exactly what Eda felt all year around when tests were always about appetisers and entrees. They're just getting the tables turned upon them, because this is the second year. This was when they're past the coddling newbie phase and now in the 'let's give you a slight taste of what high school's 1% graduation rate is going to be like' era. As they should.

(Heck, they're complaining about summer dishes when Sekimori and the rest of his year group had to do Spring Dishes to even get past the school gates to attend the entrance ceremony...)

Anyways. The entire grade was abuzz with complaints.

Hence, there's an Eda Kiyofumi under the goddamn table again.

Haruno was going pspspspsp on him with a stick of pocky. "Here kitty kitty," she whispers, "it's not scary out here."

"Ayu, stop that," Mizuhara warned.

Sena was opening another pack of pocky, "yeah, his favourite flavour is almond because it crunches. Try this."

"Both of you!" Mizuhara groaned.

"Just leave him down there," Shinomiya sighed, pulling a chair over to sit down. He opened up his notebook, leaning forward on the table, "we may as well get started on preparing for the test."

They're honestly very lucky they're getting a whole month to prepare for one dish.

And when the test day comes, they'll even get the entire day to cook it. The other years will not be around that day, so every kitchen will be reserved for the grade, and they can serve anytime they finish. They can also retry up to two times as long as it's before six in the evening. They can even help each other.

It's incredibly lenient. But it's still going to kick down a hulk of students who've let their guards down just because it's early in the year.

"I guess when it comes to summer desserts, you think about tropical fruits," Sena considered, eating his pocky and occasionally feeding some to the squirrel below. "We won't have a lot of ingredients to practice on..."

"Most of the grade will likely be using strawberries," Mizuhara supposed, "we used them a lot in spring already. But the flavour's sweeter when harvested in summer, so we'll have to consider that too."

"Strawberry ice cream," piped the squirrel under the table.

"Any type of ice cream would definitely be fun," Haruno said. "Do we have an ice cream machine?"

There's a moment of silence.

Then, all eyes turned to Eda.

-

It's a bright and peaceful day in Tootsuki, all things considered. Drama is happening in some buildings, competitions are sparked in others, and people are agonizing over lessons and recipes with each other. Expulsion is on no one's agenda yet this early into the school year, and everyone's just having their best fun right now.

Then the alarms in the Research Society building start blaring.

Mayhem ensues as the new first years freak out, startled by the alarm that was definitely louder and more ear-piercing than building code allowed.

Every other grade above them were scrambling in frantic unity like there was a fire. There were flashing lights and the entire building's shutters fluttered down noisily like a doomsday protocol.

Someone screamed, megaphones out, "EMERGENCY! EMERGENCY! POLAR STAR SIGHTED COMING IN THIS DIRECTION. ALL PLATOON STAY CALM!"

"O father in heaven have mercy on us—"

"GASTRONOMY ASSOCIATION, HIDE YOUR EQUIPMENT. HURRY!!"

"Someone! We need a peace envoy! Someone go negotiate! SOMEONE! PLEASE! I can't handle this anymore! I can't handle six years of this! WHY?! NO!"

"NO! The Candy Association did it last time! NOT US! NOT! US!"

"FATHER WHY HAST THOU FORSAKEN US?!?" they're on their hands and knees, head on the ground, "WHAT CRIMES HAVE I COMMITTED AGAINST YOU?!"

There was only one small group of people coming over the horizon. All of them seem to be chatting casually with each other, a harsh contrast to pandemonium within the walls.

"Crap, it's Eda!" with deep horror.

That one guy with the megaphone starts screeching in hyperventilation, "CODE RED! CODE RED! CODE RED, CODE RED!" and his partner makes ambulance noises while in a fetal position on the ground.

"DESSERT RS, TO THE BUNKERS!"

"Hush, those are first years!" a dramatic gasp, "Inui Hinako! Donato Gotouda! The two prospective talents of the newest batch!"

"WHAT? They're corrupting the youth oh my god—"

"We need to save those precious babies."

"Forget it. They're in Polar Star. It's too late."

"GAHH! They're here!!!"

Eda tapped on the door casually with two knocks, and then hollered casually like all the lockdown shutters weren't fully drawn and barricaded:

"Hello, is anyone in here? We have some new students here who are curious about the Research Societies."

Terrified silence in the rooms. Everyone's hiding out of sight from the windows, holding each other's mouths and breaths sucked all the way into their chests in pure school shooter fear in their very souls.

"He said the new kids wanna learn about us," one whispered, hopeful.

"No! It's a trap!" another hissed sharply. "It's a trojan horse! Trust no one!"

"It's a trojan squirrel..."

"I can't hear anything! I can't hear anything! Don't hear anything, these walls are soundproof from today onwards! We hear nothing!"

"EVERYONE STAY CALM!"

A loud gasp. "...It's Shinomiya!" someone screeched, terrified.

Megaphone panic attack guy was hyperventilating, "CALL THE BOMB SQUAD!"

Three knocks on the door.

-

"Uhm. Are they okay?"

"They're fine," Shinomiya groused, reading through the document where he's crossed out the word 'Mother Earth Appreciation Society' and emboldened the letters CULT beside it. "Dammit, there's no decent Vegetable or Farming Research Society."

Behind them in the Research Society Building, there were bodies sprawled dramatically all over, lifeless and broken. Donato hauled huge machines onto a wagon, and Eda was in a very, very chipper mood now.

"I can make pretty amezaiku now!" Eda celebrated giddily.

It seemed he'd cheered up already.

"Good for ya, because I still ain't seeing anything I want," Shinomiya sighed, counting the bills in his hand, "but with this much, we may as well build a private kitchen for just your equipment... we could ask Nakagawa-senpai. He's got one in the main building, but he was thinking of building one beside the dorms too."

"But Nakagawa-senpai's dairy kitchen feels too sacred..." Eda sighed, "Elite Ten privileges are so cool."

"Chill. Once he graduates in two years, you get the whole thing to yourself."

"I definitely want a huge refrigerated pantry as well," Sekimori considered. "I can make mine here, though... ah, Donato-kun, is the wagon too heavy?"

"Nope, it's fine!"

They'd also won a ramen yatai cart while they were at it. Something about how it'd be a fun little summer break activity or something, people at Polar Star were just weird like that.

Hinako cast another wary glance at the carnage they're leaving behind in the Research Society building. Her seniors walked on without even looking back.

One of the corpses reached a shaky hand in her direction, croaking out, "s-spare us..." before falling henceforth motionless on the ground.

They're so cool, she thought. Maybe to become on their level, I've gotta be cold and cool like that too. Unfazed by everything, cruel and merciless.

Yeah, it was a good plan. Her family always looked down on her for being meek and a pushover, so... watching her seniors like this, she felt they were so admirable.

(No one knew yet, but this was the beginning of the reign of the ice queen in the kitchen. But that wouldn't be a problem for another two years.)

-

To Eda, ice cream was... well, a bit of a mixed bag.

"The main differences between ice cream, sorbet, shaved ice, and other ice desserts is the texture," he said, "in all honesty, I don't think most people care much about the flavour balance, they just want something overpowering and indulgent."

"I want to agree with you, but something about the way you say it annoys me," Mizuhara sighed.

"And everyone likes their ice cream differently. Children would like it strong, but Adults would like the taste mellower..." Eda considered, "I like it when it's got marshmallows or chocolate chips or nuts in them."

"Of course you do."

"Now, now," Sena chuckled, "let's just start, shall we?"

While the Polar Star calamities hit the Research Society building, the rest of the group were harvesting fruit from the Polar Star farm.

"These mangoes are so sweet!!!" Haruno swooned, "I think I know what I want to make for my mid terms now..."

"The lemons and raspberries, too..." Mizuhara tasted them, amused, "I don't use fruits much, but I think I know what to do with these."

"Awesome, right?" Dorm Mother Fumio observed them from the sidelines, "we don't have a lot of people wanting fruits over vegetables, so all of these are from Nakagawa, our resident Dairy Specialist."

"Eh? Then is it fine that we take them?" Sena yiped.

"It's fine, he's an Elite Ten now so he can expand this field anytime he wants," Fumio waved her hand dismissively, "just don't take them all."

They gathered lots of fruit into the dessert kitchen (permission granted by Nakagawa, because he's currently away for Elite Ten duties or something,) and promptly started their projects.

"Sekimori-senpai seems to be busy recently too," Hinako pointed out. "The first years don't have mid terms, so..."

"Sekimori-senpai is preparing for Bootcamp," Shinomiya told her, "he got screwed over in it last year, so this time, he's doing extra prep. The Elite Ten are also making sure sabotage like this doesn't happen again."

"Sabotage?!" Donato gasped.

"But it's not as easy as it sounds," Dorm Mother Fumio sighed, "our golden generation just ended, so everyone is taking the chance to lunge at Polar Star to bring us down a peg, or something. Sorry you kids have to deal with that."

Eda couldn't help but chuckle at that. In every era, the envious will always jump for their targets only after they've weakened considerably. It's not to say that Polar Star is crumbling, but compared to the time when Saiba was around and the entirety of the Elite Ten came from this dormitory, they've surely fallen from grace.

"Enough of the depressing talk," Mizuhara sighed. "We'll figure out our mid terms after we've made ice every way known to man."

-

"Fumio-san, you're supposed to be their impulse control!" is what the Polar Star Highschoolers all walk in on, after the school day ended. Nakagawa is miserable into his hands and Sekimori honestly is more impressed than disappointed.

They step toward the living room and—

"Oh wow, what happened to the babies? Why are they knocked out??"

"Holy crap, look at the kitchen."

"WHEN DID WE GET AN ICE CREAM MACHINE?!"

"Ah, so that's why the main building guys were giving us dirty looks."

"Nothing I said would've helped," Fumio began defensively, "they were doing it as a Eda-kun cheer-up party. So they went wild. They can regret their actions when they're finally out of their sugar coma."

All their middle schoolers— well, Mizuhara and Sena technically weren't part of Polar Star, but honorary members were still their kids— were sprawled in separate parts of the living room.

A row of glasses— still sticky and syrupy from the aftermath of very colourful shaved ice, sherbets, and ice creams with fruits and crystal candy, were all cluttered on the table.

"Kakigoori! They had kakigoori without us!" one senior gasped in betrayal.

"Where did they get all those fancy glasses?" another leaned over the back of the couch to count, "I only remember like, two of them."

"Oh man! Those are Hanazono-senpai's glass collection!"

"For real?! Someone finally humbled that rich heiress?!"

"Awesome!" Kishinuma-senpai beamed, "that bitch owns all those with Shokugeki, so she probably lost them to Eda-chan the same way. Do you see a whale-shaped one anywhere? That's someone's family heirloom, I might as well go return it in exchange for some ingredients or something."

"Yeah, it's here. Go on, I don't think the babies will notice. They didn't use it."

Eda had his arms curled around Hinako in front of the couch. Mizuhara laid on the couch behind them, asleep the most peacefully. On the single-seat couch, Shinomiya was knocked right out on one side of it, his feet up on Sena's shoulder as the latter rested in front of the couch with his head on the table between his arms.

Haruno was squished onto the little space left between the couch and Shinomiya's side, curled into a ball with her face smushed on Shinomiya's knee. She was hugging Donato's foot, the boy completely sprawled upside down on the floor around the couch as if he had been on the armrest but fell.

The seniors' eyes met from the doorway. The place was an utter mess, there's sugar and melted ice cream residue all over the counters, and cut fruit scraps piling up the trash. It's horrible kitchen etiquette, but...

"You go wake them."

"No, you go."

"I don't want to, though, they're so cute."

-

Everyone keeps telling Eda it's a free pass for him, but he knew better than to believe that. Even in French classes, everyone's extra strict on Shinomiya— the top students always get scrutinized far stricter.

And while this test may be in his comfort zone, he's always been out of it. He feels uneasy that this is supposed to be easy for him for once.

"This really is pretty hard," Sena sighed, sitting in front of the oven as he watched his pie bake in the oven. "I just can't get the timing right... I'm so worried the cream cheese filling won't set in time on the day of."

"That's what we're practicing for," Mizuhara huffed, waiting in front of the fridge like that'll make the wait for her tiramisu any easier.

That's truly what this term's test is all about— time management, and how well you handle yourself in the time leading up to it. They've had ample warning, and plenty of time to try again. They even have free hours on the day itself to submit whenever they're done.

"The only catch this time is that we truly have to start from scratch," Haruno had her eyes fixed on a steamer, "meanwhile I've decided to make something difficult so I'm stressed out— I've never made this before. Why do I do this to myself? I don't even like science. Why am I doing chemistry?"

"It's just gelatin, stop freaking out," Shinomiya groaned. He'd been glaring at the basket of fruits for the past ten minutes trying to figure out where to start. "At least you don't have to cut and slice and then arrange fruits."

"It's not just gelatin, I have agar-agar, gypsum, nigari, citrus, gluconolactone—"

"Stop speaking latin to me!" Shinomiya whined in defeat.

"It's SCIENCE!" she wailed, "I asked for help from the gastronomy club and they gave me a three-hour lecture and all these options, I can't unlearn how to pronounce gluconolactone anymore!"

Sena chuckled in sympathy. "You could've just asked Nakagawa-senpai what to use for soybean pudding..."

"But it is turning out better each time, so all the options were definitely a good thing even if tedious to go through," Mizuhara said. "The aesthetics are important in desserts, so we have to think of presentation too..."

"Good thing we got all those fancy glasses," Haruno chuckled, "I'm gonna use those."

"Hmm, probably me too," Mizuhara supposed. "You've gotta see the pretty layers in a tiramisu. You two are doing tarts and pies, so you're stuck with plates."

Sena sighed stressfully.

Shinomiya glanced to the side, "I'd ask the dunce, but he's busy."

And now all attention is on Eda, who's scampering across his kitchen space. Two timers go off at the same time, and he hurries to switch them off before dashing for the oven. And then he's going toward the fridge, and back to the chocolate he's been tempering. A rich syrup is set to boil in the pot, and he glances at it every interval.

"What's he making?"

"Beats me."

Sena hummed, "he can afford to go for something much more high levelled. He's definitely going to ace the test," he said. Then with a sigh, "I'm envious."

-

I'm envious.

Somehow, that line was stuck now in Eda's head, even though he'd only peripherally heard it. He'd heard it a lot too, in his past life— it was pasted, all over every article— a prodigy, a genius, a talent that comes once every ten years, silly exaggerations like those that drew in crowds and critics like nothing else.

Of course, the title was yet again inevitable in this life. He was much younger, with much less education in the field, so of course, anyone that laid eyes on the small bakery owner would obviously call him a talented child.

(What else could explain such wisdom at such a young age?)

He found himself sneaking out of his room and onto the roof, to watch the stars. The night was silent and dark— up here in the Polar Star Dormitory, the surrounding forest was dark enough for the moon and stars to light up his view.

Here, he felt small. He liked feeling small in the world— small, insignificant, merely a single dim glow in the sea of great wonders— he liked it. Not being in the spotlight— it was comforting.

"You're going to catch a cold out here."

He turned to find Dorm Mother Fumio, a shawl around her shoulders and another in her hand. When she draped it around his shoulders— he felt safe, in a way that warm layers shouldn't be capable of. Maybe it was Fumio that had the magic.

"You know, Kiyofumi," she said his name in a way that felt so personal, he needed a moment to remember that was his name at all. "You're not the first in this dorm with eyes like those."

Eyes like what? Eda felt as if he knew the answer.

Sometimes he looked in the mirror, and wondered what his eyes used to look like. She didn't have time to look in the mirror often enough, so there's no way he could remember her features after the world became a permanent blur.

"Eyes that shine with more passion for food than anyone else— but they dim over time, because the world keeps trying to cloud your brightness," she then chuckled to herself, "or is that too sappy from an old granny like me?"

No, that sounded right.

This was Polar Star, after all. The place where the brightest stars live.

"...Fumio-san," he spoke up, "am I... talented?"

It wasn't like he hated that phrase. Talent. He loved the way everyone called him that in Sumiredoori, he owned that title, proud of how much he could do for Granny Kiyo, for Tamako-neesan, for everyone in the shopping district.

But now in Tootsuki, the title weighs on him like a punishment.

You're talented, they would say, and expect more of him. He didn't think so— maybe at home, he was. No one else could make sweets. But in Tootsuki, not only was he surrounded by skilled people, he was also only barely keeping up with everything. The talented emblem was like a weight he had to drag around against his will.

You're expected to excel, that's what it meant. So you'll have to, or you'll be wasting it. You'll be a disappointment. You'll be a hopeful child prodigy that fell from grace.

(Again.)

He feared being put in that spot again. He feared losing everything again.

(It shattered her. What will it do to Eda Kiyofumi?)

Why couldn't he climb the staircase at the same pace as everyone? He'd even be happy being two steps behind the rest. He just didn't want to be shoved to the front of the pack, when he was the most afraid of what lay ahead.

"Talent, huh," Fumio mused, like that word was a funny little hex in this building. "Kiyofumi, you work harder than anyone else, and maybe they'll never see that. But the people that truly care about you— they'll see your efforts one day. Would you trust them to do that for you?"

Will you trust them to see you for who you really are?

(But did Saiba Jouichirou's generation see him?)

Eda didn't know if he wanted to say that. They tried, they really did— and they never managed to get there. They drove him to a point where he could no longer stay in the country, and they only had themselves to blame.

Will you trust them, even then?

Eda knew it was stupid to have hope. He always had to hide himself from them on purpose, for one reason or another. It's not like they know him for real— even if they know he didn't have his sense of taste or smell anymore, they still don't understand him fully. And he was afraid, more than anything else, or what would happen if they figured out more.

It must be nice to be so talented.

It's not like you'll understand how the tastes work.

Well, that makes sense. I'll handle the things you can't do, then.

He liked being understood, but he was afraid of what being understood meant. They've accepted him so easily thus far, he already knows— if they do find out about his past life, they'd accept him too. Maybe they'll not believe it, but if they do, they wouldn't hold anything against him.

But they will know about his unfair advantages, and feel envious of them. They'll understand his weaknesses, and perhaps they'll step up to take his place in troubles.

All this means is that Eda will be a burden for them in the kitchen, and the key to all their problems— he will need help and they will have to do more to aid him, but in return— Eda had to be useful to them with his experiences. It's a give-and-take, so of course, that just made sense.

(He just wanted to be their equal. He didn't want his weaknesses highlighted. What if one day he didn't have a solution? What if one day his experiences run dry? How will he contribute, then, to their teamwork?)

(If the transactional part of this relationship ceases to be fair trades, would they still stay by his side?)

Life wouldn't be life if it easily gave him an answer.

Alas, it always just goes on, and there's no sense in lingering on problems that may or may not occur in the future.