Uncle Yukihira lifted his head.
"What? You didn't know yet?" he said, frowning at Eda. "You know we told you not to hide it, Kiyofumi! You can't cook safely when people don't know you can't taste or smell a thing."
Immediately, Eda leaped from his seat, "Wha-- wait! Wait, U- Uncle, I--" his head spun, from his uncle to the slack-jawed Shinomiya and right back to his uncle in hopes of some sort of salvation-- but alas, Uncle is the criminal, he won't get help from that monster.
So he bit his lip and-- and just completely short-circuits.
He couldn't say a thing. Didn't know what to say, what to do-- should he run? But what then, he'll have nowhere to run that Uncle Yukihira didn't know he could get to and argh! Why did he bring Shinomiya along? He brought this upon himself! He's so stupid. This sucks. This can't be happening. Let me just die. Oh crap.
"The food's going to go cold," he said, changing the subject in the most pathetic way possible. "C'mon. We need to eat."
He doesn't want to answer this. I don't want to answer this. He doesn't want to--
"Huh," Shinomiya said, and Eda completely froze up. "Yeah," he rests his chin in his palm, "shoe fits, I guess. You really shouldn't be hiding something that important."
Huh?
"What?" Shinomiya frowned, and Eda noticed his own expression-- slack jawed, horrified, confused-- just straight up bewildered-- and Shinomiya was the picture of undeterred. "You could seriously cause food poisoning, you know? Are you an idiot? When you work in a kitchen with a disability or whatevershit, you gotta tell us so we can look out for ya!"
Eda immediately felt the burn in the back of his eyes.
"Yeah," his grip tightens on his spoon. "I'm just being an idiot. I know."
He stuffed a spoonful of gratin into his mouth, turning away sharply so he doesn't need to come up with another response.
Shinomiya grumbled something inaudible, before taking another mouthful himself.
Uncle Yukihira smiled.
-
Miserably enough, they make it to Kiyo's bakery (it was closed) just like that. In silence, meeting no one else, and exceedingly awkward. Grandma Kiyo was still at the market with Tamako, so they still had some time to themselves to settle down.
"Why'd you hide it," Shinomiya asked.
Eda was clawing at his hair at this point, "don't ask. Use your head."
"Being taste-deaf ain't some groundbreaking discovery," Shinomiya muttered, "plenty of people lose their taste over time. Even my Baba--" he cleared his throat, face heating up, "I mean, my grandmother back home, can't taste much cause her taste buds got burned in an infection."
Well, that's true.
"I'm in a culinary school," he said. "A hyper competitive, 10% only, culinary school."
Shinomiya grimaced at that. "Right. What the fuck is up with that, really," Shinomiya said, "but you can cook, so who the fuck cares you can't taste?"
Eda froze at that.
Did he just-- say it like it was no big deal?
The kitchen is clean.
"Seriously, what the actual fuck," Shinomiya inspected the labels on the jars and packets, all spelling out how things taste and what to and not to put in which cake. "Sure it's weird to have someone like you in a culinary school, even weirder to have one that can make good food, but--"
Shinomiya trailed off.
Then, "--how the fuck do you make good food all the time? You even know how to improve and fine-tune flavours accordingly. Now that I think about it," and all of a sudden, the entire gravity of the revelation sank on him. "That makes no sense."
Oh no. Oh no.
"Yeah, I uh, had my taste before I lost it," he said, "but I still remember how things were... used to taste," yeah that was bullshit. "I just go with the flow, alright? People like things that taste like this, so I just guess the rest of my way based on what I think they used to taste like..."
"That makes no sense, how long ago was that?"
"...a couple years? Long time."
"If it was a long time ago, how do you still remember everything and how to match tastes? What are you, god's flavour profile?" Shinomiya challenges, "you were a kid back then, you're telling me your kid palate is making better dishes every day?"
Eda wanted, with all of his heart, to throw a microwave in his face.
He grabs the flour instead.
"Oh enough hounding me! I can do it because I can!" he snapped, and the bag of flour plunged right into Shinomiya's face, exploding in a cloud of white powder. "So what if I need people to taste test everything I do? What if I fail every ingredients class because I can't fucking tell if shit's rotten before putting it in my pot? Try beating me in a cooking battle and maybe you can talk!"
"Why you--!!" Shinomiya grabs the nearest object-- a roll of parchment paper-- and chucked it in Eda's direction. "Of course it fucking matters in a damn kitchen! You need to tell the people around you so they damn well understand! It's common sense!"
"It's also common sense that--" a juice carton from the fridge breaks against an arm, "--if I tell the teachers they'll just expel me for being incompetent! Didn't you hear Chef Gonzales? Every chef for himself!"
"We all know Chef Gonzales talks out of his fucking ass! Listen to Chef Chapelle instead!"
"I don't wanna, he's fucking scary!"
"How is that a problem with your palate! Stop throwing things!"
"Put the fucking baking tray down!"
"I draw the line at fucking gelatin powder! This is gonna be hell to get out of my hair, you monster!"
"It's agar powder, there's a DIFFERENCE!"
"Who the fuck cares STOP THROWING IT!"
The kitchen door eventually opens, and Yukihira Tamako walks in to inspect the mess. There was half-done batter and eggs on the wall, some stuck to kitchen appliances and lots of tools everywhere-- and the two kids, who are half powder at this point, are still yelling at each other.
Neither of the kids even noticed her there. So she closed the door and stepped back out to shake her head at Grandma Kiyo.
"Looks like they'll take a while longer. Wanna drop by the candy store, Auntie?"
"Oh, you're not going to stop them?" Kiyo wondered, a little concerned. "It's Fumi-pon's dear kitchen, too. I'm worried."
"It'll be fine," Tamako assured her, "we'll make them clean up later on. Now they just gotta fight it out! It's youth!"
"Ah, if you say so then..."
-
(They eventually do stop.)
"Geez, just admit you're too much of a scaredy cat," Shinomiya groaned, swabbing the floors and trying to get a particularly stubborn clump of wet flour off the tiles, "you have the skills to tell 'em to fuck off. You've got nothing to fear."
"Says you after spending the last months telling me how I'm shit at everything," Eda sneered back, incredibly bitter about everything.
Shinomiya had to catch himself. "Urk. Okay, you got me there. I've been a dick. My bad."
"Fuck you."
"Don't start," Shinomiya threatened, and Eda complied.
Eda wrung out the cloth before gathering the salvageable ingredients back to their proper storage spaces. They destroyed quite a bit, including eggs, but there was no helping that.
"I can't taste it," Eda admitted, "but I remember how to make them. I remember what ingredients go well with which combination," he said. "The rest of it, I go on everything the taste-testers tell me. It's guesswork."
For a moment, Shinomiya said nothing.
Then, "do you really think you can make it through Tootsuki with that kind of handicap?" he said. "It's like archery by a blind man. Fundamentally, people believe it's not feasible. Not even worth the challenge."
It's not an insult, but it still hurts to hear, because it was true.
Eda scoffed at that. "I'm doing it right now, aren't I?" he turned to him. What is he doing right now? Failing every other class, acing a few, and trudging on. It doesn't matter, because he's-- "I'm doing my best to prove them wrong."
(A visually-impaired archer does exist in this world.)
(A taste-deaf cook can become the best patissier in this world, too. It's feasible.)
"If I never tried-- I'd regret it," Eda told him. "That goes for you, too, right? That's why you came all the way here, from the countryside," he turned to Shinomiya, "it's the same for everyone in the school. We're no different."
(We all bring an array of personal handicaps.)
(Some people are allergic to the most basic foods, but they still have to handle it in a meal. Some people have learning disorders, but they still bring their food to the table to be judged the same way as everyone else.)
(Some people have never cooked outside of their homes in their lives. Some, like SHinomiya-- barely had a full kitchen array before they came here. And yet-- they were competing now, on equal grounds.)
(Visible or invisible-- small or big-- those handicaps were there.)
(Eda just had a slightly steeper one than most, and that was no one's problem but his own, right?)
Shinomiya set a dirty pot in the sink, creating a loud, clattering noise.
Eda eyed him warily-- and Shinomiya sighed, his shoulders sagging visibly as the tensions eased in them.
"You said it's all guesswork--" he knocked on the fridge door-- gesturing toward a neatly-written recipe that was pinned there by a magnet. "You're calling this guesswork? What a joke. These recipes are fucking genius and you know it."
Eda didn't really understand why he felt so offended there. He was being complimented, but it didn't feel like it at all.
He massaged the burn scar on his wrist, and looked away.
"All the flavours you come up with-- the techniques, the ingredients, even the freshness, ripening, cultivator, down to the very grams..." he grinded his teeth, and whirled on Eda, explosive. "This is all hard, bone-breaking effort, you moron! Effort! Anyone can tell you spent hours thinking and tuning them! Why are you underselling yourself? If your brain as dead as your tastebuds?"
Eda squeaked when Shinomiya marched up to him, apprehensive, furious, and cornering him until Eda tripped back and fell, upturning the bowl of the salvaged flour over his head.
Eda lifted the bowl away from his eyes-- and he found himself staring right at Shinomiya's face, his own eyes blown wide.
Shinomiya's eyes are just a little bloodshot, his lips bitten and his expressions-- scrunched up, in a sort of genuine hurt.
"Don't you dare call them fucking guesswork when you put in hundreds of hours to get this far for everything you do!" Shinomiya raises his voice. "You think we don't see you spend every waking hour practicing? It's because you don't have your sense of fucking taste and you don't even ask for our help!"
He trails off there. Shinomiya finally turns away, out of words.
He grabs the bowl from the ground and drops it in the sink with everything else.
"I-" Eda tried to say something-- but the words were stuck in his throat. "Sorry," it comes out weakly. Sorry for what. "For never telling you. I didn't trust you."
And that was what really hurt.
Eda trusted no one.
Were they not friends?
"I spend hours trying to fine-tune recipes because I only find out after lots of judging and calculations that the flavours are either too spicy or not flavourful enough," he says, that's the truth. "I try a lot of things, until I get it right by elimination. I don't know what I'm doing half the time because I don't know if the flavours make sense. And I didn't know how to ask anyone."
He's speaking. He's speaking so much and every word hurts.
"I threw away that tomato the upperclassmen gave me," he didn't know why he was admitting this. He's curled up now, arms over his head and a hand over his burn mark, "it wasn't good. The texture of some things are weird and I hate it. I don't know how to use it in a meal either. I'm bad at vegetables because the flavours change from the littlest things."
He sniffled.
"I want to cook but I can't taste anything," he said. "So I spend twice the amount of time instead. I like doing that. But I'm needing to spend more and more time now and I'm always half sure about everything except sweets. It fucking sucks. It's fucking stupid. Sometimes the teacher compliments me and I understand absolutely nothing."
Finally-- he takes a breath.
Is he crying? No, there aren't any tears. But everything sure burns like it.
"I'm envious. Of you. And everyone," it's the first time in a long time that he's ever admitted that he wanted to go back to those days. "Because you all have what I don't."
Shinomiya stood before him, arms crossed.
"And you have the knowledge and cooking sense that I don't. What else is new, genius? Wanna talk about hair colours and height and any other thing that make us different people?"
Eda lifted his head to face a steaming glare.
"I'm not here to hear you fucking sob like a baby for fucking hours," Shinomiya snapped. "Get out of the fucking table."
And oh.
This happened before, didn't it?
Every time Eda would fail a class without Shinomiya-- he would hide under a table in an empty classroom, and waited until Shinomiya came by to fetch him. And then he'd pick a fight. And after the argument escalates into their shouting match, Eda would leave the classroom after him, feeling much better about everything.
Eda has honestly never cried, any of those times.
But this time, he did. He buried his face into his arms, into his knees, and let the tears fall.
"You're an asshole," Eda told him through sniffles and choked sobs.
Shinomiya scoffed sitting down at the stool of the kitchen island. "Ah, whatever you say then, fucking crybaby. I bet I can make a better cake than you."
"Never," Eda sharply retorted, not even missing a fucking beat. "Fucking. Ever."
Shinomiya snarked at that, standing up and gathering ingredients from the cabinets. "If you're so eager to prove me wrong, come out here and make it with me, you little coward."
Eda curled a little tighter into himself, wiping away the tears with his arm before resting his palms on his face, warming it up with a few deep breaths.
"Yeah. Be there in a sec," he said.
Shinomiya smiled.
-
"Next time," Shinomiya told him, as Eda poured the batter into the cake tin, "if you want advice from someone with a tongue, just ask."
Eda didn't look at him. He was still mad.
Shinomiya put the tin into the oven. "You build the concepts. I fix the flavours," he said. "And then when I make my own dishes, you can come in with new ideas," he turned on the oven before turning to Eda. "That sound good to you?"
Eda's eyes met his for only a moment, and then he turned away, defiant.
"Yeah. Sure, why not."