Serenedipity

Chapter 26

"You all have the recette, I hope?" the coral-haired man raised the paper.

All of the students, including Hana, raised the paper and read the instructions.

"Shit. It's Chef Shinomiya." one of the students whispered and Hana leaned in to listen to what they were talking about.

"I heard he already expelled more than thirty students yesterday." a student to your right whispered to his partner. Hana looked back at the coral-haired male, she was well aware that he was strict but this is next level.

"He assigned us a recipe he came up with, too." his partner said, terrified.

Terrine of Nine Vegetables. Though visually arresting with its nine vibrant vegetables, each vegetable requires specific preparation and cooking times, and none must overwhelm or underwhelm its counterparts. It is a Herculean task to bring all the flavours together. Hana's eyes sparkled with interest, this wasn't going to be easy, this requires a lot of concentration and delicacy but this will be the first time making something like this and working alone is something that she seemed to be getting used to.

"I chose the easiest of my recettes." the coral-haired male smirked, waving his paper. Hana looked at him, 'showoff' she thought to herself.

"Would you prefer a more difficult challenge?"

The unspoken thoughts that seemed to be going in many student's minds.

" 'Recettes'?" Soma eyed the piece of paper confusingly.

"It means recipes. Recette is French for recipe. After all, Shinomiya-senpai owns a restaurant in France." Hana muttered without looking at Soma.

"Oh." Soma said in response.

"Also....." hearing the man's voice again, everyone shifted their eyes towards the coral-haired male.

".....you are not allowed to form teams for this task. I will have each of you prepare the dish." Shinomiya added. Megumi visibly paled at his word while Hana simply stood there, unaffected. 'At least I have a recipe to follow and not run around a mountain while coming up with a recipe' Hana shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. Hana glanced at Megumi worried, giving her an encouraging smile trying to ease the blue-haired girl who seemed to be still in shock.

"You may not share information or help each other during this process. You will each select ingredients from the piles at the back of the kitchen. Lastly, a word of advice: you would do better to think of everyone else as your enemies." Shinomiya stated. The students grew shocked. He was treating the kitchen as a battlefield. The strongest survive, was the hidden meaning behind his words. Hana looked at him frowning, 'who hurt you, man..'

"The time limit is three hours. Now....." he raised his right hand.

".....begin."

Hana immediately grabbed a tray and ran towards the ingredients being one of the first to get there and started picking out the best ingredients, she glanced towards Soma who seemed to be collecting his ingredients as well but Megumi, on the other hand, was having a hard time and was being pushed around struggling.

 Like greedy people, they hastily picked the ingredients and quickly moved on the another. Some were pushing and struggling to reach for the ingredients. Megumi didn't have much strength but still pushed forwards and stretched out her hand. Hana wanted to help out, securing her ingredients carefully, she went to secretly pass ingredients to Megumi, just as she was about to-

"You may not share information or help each other during this process."

Hana looked up at the coral-haired chef who seemed to be looking straight at her, she swallowed before walking back to her workstation, avoiding looking at the monitoring gaze. Everyone continued to work on their own while Shinomiya sat back, watching as they worked in silence. Usually, it would be filled with chatting with one another. It was too silent and not the comfortable kind.