Seat Number Zero

Part 22

"Are you even listening to me!"

"Oh? Nakiri then you'll taste my dish too?" Soma laughed pointing at himself.

"I especially don't approve of your cooking." Nakiri glares. She finally gave in to the peer pressure and ordered them all to line up.

Hisako stood against the wall and watched them from a distance.

"Boo, damn that Nakiri that was kinda petty." Soma sulks as he approaches Hisako.

"Erina... is slowly changing," Hisako responds. "She's become gentler."

"How?" Soma asks. "She's acting all prickly."

"For me, it's plain to see," Hisako said warmly recalling a past memory. "When I first met her, amidst her beauty I could feel as if there were some deep darkness."

"Only someone close to her can tell something like that," Yumi said, joining the two in their conversation.

"Regardless, I can see that little by little she's changing."

"Arato, I think you've mellowed out quite a bit as well. Like compared to the start of the Stagiaire." Soma said.

"Is that so?" Hisako said flustered by the sudden words. "Let's not talk about me..."

From a distance, Nakiri noticed them standing idly in the far corner of the room. "Yukihira!" She called out to Soma. "It seems that you've become friends with Hisako during the Stagiaire period." She mumbles.

"Huh? What did you say?" Soma asked.

"Just what happened?" Nakiri asked again in a low voice.

Soma was about to ask her to speak a bit louder since he couldn't hear a word through her mumbling when a loud voice called out to them.

"Yukihira! You should make a dish too!" Yuki exclaims. "Make one of your famous dishes!"

"Sure! leave it to me." Soma immediately jumped at the chance to cook and tied his apron around his waist.

As Yumi watched her brother eagerly head up to his room to make another one of his many concoctions she sighed deep in thought. "I'm strangely jealous of my brother."

"Is that so," Isshiki said, appearing by her side seemingly from thin air.

Yumi smiled at him, delighted by his presence. "I wonder if I should also jump on this bandwagon and offer her to taste one of my dishes."

"Please, not that oxtail stew you cooked up yesterday." Isshiki grimaces at the thought, a smile on his face as always. "It has a particularly sour taste. Not the good kind."

"Yeah, I figured out the milk was spoiled the hard way." Yumi wrinkled her nose. "On second thought I don't wanna make anything today."

Yumi grasped onto his hand, her eyes glittered mischievously. "Feel like feeding me?"

"And what if I said no," Isshiki asked playfully, holding their joined hands up to his lips.

Yumi blinked, trying to withdraw her hand away from him. Blushing as he drags his lips slowly, tracing the lines of his knuckles. And although her hand was never touched by them she could easily picture her hand being butterfly kissed.

"What are you imagining?" She can hear the smirk laced into each syllable. Her eyes subconsciously darted to the subject of her imagination, then immediately back at her hand that's still laced between his. Yumi swallowed nervously, letting them rest on his adam's apple, feeling every slight tremble vibrating from his voice.