Erina Nakiri could not sleep. The moonlight spilled across her room, painting the walls in pale silver, but her mind was restless, caught in a loop of memory and sensation.
She lay on her back, staring at the ceiling, replaying the events of the day over and over.
Kaoru Yukishima's face hovered in her thoughts, his eyes cold and unreadable, his words echoing in the silence. She could still taste his food on her tongue, the strange, haunting flavors that refused to fade.
She sat up, pushing the covers aside. The room felt too small, too confining. She needed air, needed space to think.
Pulling on a robe, she slipped out of her room and padded down the hallway, her footsteps muffled by the thick carpet.
The dormitory was quiet, the other students lost in dreams, but Erina was wide awake, her senses sharpened by obsession.
She found herself outside before she realized it, the night air cool against her skin. The campus was peaceful, the cherry trees swaying gently in the breeze.
Erina walked without purpose, letting her feet carry her wherever they wished. She tried to clear her mind, but every thought circled back to Kaoru. His food had unsettled her, challenged her, made her question everything she thought she knew about taste.
She remembered the way he had looked at her during their mock Shokugeki, not with arrogance, but with a kind of quiet intensity. It was as if he could see straight through her, past her defenses and pride, to the vulnerable girl beneath.
She hated that feeling, hated the way he made her feel exposed. And yet, she craved it. She wanted to understand him, to unravel the mystery of his cooking, to taste that thrill again.
The next day, Erina could barely focus in class. She found herself doodling Kaoru's name in the margins of her notes, her mind wandering to the memory of his dish.
She caught herself staring out the window, lost in thought, while the instructor's voice faded into the background. Even during lunch, the food tasted bland, dull, compared to the memory of Kaoru's creations.
By evening, she could not resist any longer. She made her way to the dormitory where Kaoru was staying, her heart pounding with anticipation and dread.
She told herself it was just a professional visit, an evaluation of talent, but she knew it was more than that. She needed answers, needed to confront the feelings that had taken root inside her.
She found Kaoru in his room, sitting at a small table, surrounded by notebooks and jars of fermenting ingredients.
He looked up as she entered, his expression unreadable. For a moment, neither of them spoke. The silence stretched, heavy with unspoken tension.
Erina forced herself to speak. "I want to understand your food. I want to know what drives you."
Kaoru regarded her for a long moment, then gestured to the chair across from him. "Sit."
She sat, folding her hands in her lap. The room was filled with strange scents, sharp and earthy, a reminder of the world Kaoru inhabited.
He poured her a small cup of something dark and pungent, the aroma making her eyes water. She sipped it, the flavor intense and unfamiliar, but not unpleasant.
"Why do you cook this way?" she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
Kaoru looked down at his hands. "Because food is truth. It reveals who we are, what we fear, what we desire. Most people hide behind flavors they know, but I want to strip all that away. I want to see what's left when there's nothing to hide behind."
Erina shivered, both from the cold and from the raw honesty in his words. She realized, with a start, that she was afraid. Not of Kaoru, but of what he might reveal about her.
They talked late into the night, their conversation shifting from food to philosophy to the secrets they kept hidden from the world.
Erina found herself opening up in ways she never had before, sharing fears and dreams she had never voiced aloud. Kaoru listened, his silence comforting, his presence steady.
When she finally left, the sky was beginning to lighten, the first hints of dawn coloring the horizon. Erina felt changed, as if something inside her had shifted.
She knew she would never be the same.
As she walked back to her room, she realized that Kaoru's aftertaste lingered, not just on her tongue, but in her heart. And she was no longer sure if she wanted it to fade.
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Please gimme your power stones tehee.
Leave some reviews to let me know what went wrong in the writings and I'll try to fix it when I have time, or you can comment it down below.
P.S English is not my first language, it should be the third or fourth if I remember my languages correctly. xD