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She makes a name for herself quickly.
The upperclassmen peer interestedly at the young first year student as she battles in her first Shokugeki against a third year.
"I'll show you! Your antiquated food is gonna get bowled over by modernity!" The third year, a chef focusing in modern style Japanese cuisine, says boastfully. "I expect you to kneel after I win!"
"I sincerely hope you can live up to those words," Hinako Inui says with a smile. Her eyes, however, are subzero in their frigidity.
The Shokugeki's theme: A quick homestyle Japanese lunch.
The freshman's dish consists of ochazuke, hot green tea poured over white rice with salted salmon, pickled plum, nori strips, and bonito flakes.
Her opponent's dish: omurice, an omelet filled with chicken fried rice and lightly coated with a tomato-based sauce.
The judges vote unanimously for Hinako Inui's ochazuke.
"It was a matter of principle. I don't need you to kneel, your defeat was enough," says Hinako. She places a bowl of ochazuke in front of them. "It's disrespectful to call yourself a Japanese chef, let alone a chef of modern Japanese cuisine, without respecting the flavors that came before it."
Her opponent breaks down in tears at the first bite and falls to their knees, their body hunched over the empty bowl.
"She's someone to watch," says Mizuhara to Shinomiya.
He scoffs.
---
Shinomiya meets Hinako in the test kitchens early one evening. He doesn't care about the other students, not really, they're competition and lousy ones at that.
He spots her grabbing a manual vegetable peeler. A large bin of washed potatoes sit beside her.
He rolls his eyes, but exasperatedly offers, "You know the kitchens have devices to efficiently peel potatoes, right?"
"I enjoy peeling potatoes myself," says Hinako, holding her vegetable peeler triumphantly. "I find it fun!"
Silly girl, he thinks.
Except, Hinako grabs a potato and with the flick of her wrist, smoothly twirls the potato and removes the skin in one long ribbon. In a matter of seconds, she places her clean potato, perfectly white and starchy, on her cutting board.
Shinomiya stares at her, his mouth slightly agape.
"I very much enjoy peeling potatoes," Hinako reiterates with a fond shrug as she proceeds to demolish the rest of her potatoes, humming while peeling ribbons of perfectly cut potatoes into the trash bowl.
"I can see that," he replies, oddly annoyed, before turning around towards his own station.
Eventually, they are both sitting quietly in front of their respective stoves, waiting for their food to finish cooking. They’re the last ones in the kitchen.
"You are Koujiro Shinomiya," Hinako comments out loud, just before the silence, except for the hiss of their stovetops, becomes deafening. "The first chair of the Elite Ten for the second years."
Shinomiya smirks, "Obviously.”
Hinako 'seyes narrow, and she replies blandly, “Narcissist.” She turns around to stare at her pot. It smells like meat and potatoes.
"You're the freshman from last week," he says finally. "The one who held the Shokugeki."
"I am." She peers into her pot, a look of happiness on her face.
Shinomiya sniffs the air. It smells...better than he expected.
“Pardon my manners.” She places the lid back on top of her pot with a satisfied expression. "I'm Hinako Inui. It's a pleasure to meet you."
"Same."
It is quiet again.
A timer rings.
Shinomiya grumbles slightly, placing his fork down. His coq au vin is delicious, that's no surprise. He's certain any average person would think of it as remarkable, but Shinomiya's scowl only deepens. He can do better.
He sighs, leaning back against his chair with the back of his hand pressed against his face.
"You sound like you need a change of taste." He hears the tap of a bowl being placed on the counter in front of him and the subtle smell of fresh water and potatoes.
He opens his eyes.
In front of him is a bowl of suimono, a clear and citrus-y broth with silky strands of lightly whipped egg, soft chunks of tofu, and thinly sliced mushroom floating in the transparent broth.
His stomach growls. "This better be palatable."
He understands why that third year cried.
The simplest of dishes, yet, he is left stupefied and nourished.
Hinako is packing up when he finally walks over to her station.
"Done?"
"Almost! Meat and potatoes always taste better on the second day." She grins, "You sounded happier after you ate."
"Try it.” He ignores her statement and thrusts a plate of his coq au vin 2.0 in front of her.
"So I get the honor of trying Shinomiya-sempai's famous food?" Hinako looks honestly delighted as she takes the first bite.
He smiles triumphantly as her eyes glaze over at her first taste, "So good!" She takes another bite, "The addition of thinly sliced shallots really complement the onions. The bay leaves were a great twist, it really does add an amazing depth of flavor to the overall dish."
Shinomiya's brow furrows. "You could tell?"
"The smell is different, more pungent." She raises her clean plate, “More!”
He pinches her cheek. “Greedy thing, aren’t you? Just like feeding a dog, give them a little and they’ll obstinately come back.”
“What a miser of an upperclassman,” Hinako pouts.
Shinomiya rolls his eyes but he refills her plate.
She happily digs in. “What a delicious taste for such an ornery man! I’ll definitely share my meat and potato stew after it’s finished as a thanks for seconds.” She carefully eyes his pot with his earlier work, "Although I would be happy to taste the first coq au vin you made. It smells absolutely amazing!"
"That boring dish?"
"Of course," Hinako says, motioning toward her already empty plate, "You learned to make a better coq au vin because of that one. It doesn't mean that dish is any less delicious, just different."
Shinomiya rolls his eyes but he motions toward the pot. "If you want it, have it."
She claps her hands, overjoyed.
The next day, he spots Mizuhara outside in the patio. She's eating beside a tall blonde man, the corners of her lips twitched upward – when smiling, she actually looks cute. He turns the corner, and sitting between his classmate and the blonde student is Hinako. He spots his coq au vin in front of her in large canisters.
Mizuhara bristles when he sits beside her. She is clutching her fork angrily, "You call this a boring dish?"
"Of course." He leans over to look at her pate. Underneath the coq au vin are mashed potatoes. He frowns as he swipes a spoonful of mashed potatoes with some of the coq au vin from Mizuhara’s plate. She punches him in the arm as he tastes.
Shinomiya glares at Hinako.
She motions toward the tall blonde man, "My classmate, Donato Gotoda. I added the rosemary, but he was the one who suggested the thyme and the garlic."
"It's...good," says Shinomiya reluctantly as he takes another bite.
"Of course." Hinako says, a breezy smile on her face. She prepares him his own plate of the coq au vin and mashed potatoes after Mizuhara soundly punches him in the arm again when he tries to take more from her plate. "It's your dish after all. Also, like meat and potatoes, if you let it rest, the flavors will muddle together beautifully. You should have more confidence in yourself."
Mizuhara sighs.
Shinomiya explodes. "I have plenty of confidence in myself!"
The whole courtyard can hear Shinomiya yelling and Hinako's subsequent whining as he roughly pinches her cheeks.
Their relationship, frenetic and teasing and slightly violent – like siblings, nearly precedes their culinary reputations.
---
He is leaving for Paris.
Hinako is still crying.
Shinomiya faintly taps her shoulder, "I'll keep in touch."
"You better mean it!"
No one hears from him for months.
She carefully cuts the newspaper clippings regarding the Japanese chef rocking the Parisian culinary scene and places them in a scrapbook.
---
Shinomiya’s fifth year abroad, he finally comes back to Japan for vacation.
One of his last stops is at a high-rise hotel’s famous restaurant, Kozu. The staff only needs to look at his name before he is seated in a more secluded area.
He is served dish after dish of perfectly sublime and flavorful traditional Japanese food. It is a taste that cannot be replicated in France and rarely in even Japan.
"I would like to give my regards to the chef," Shinomiya says to a server.
"The chef is grateful for your kinds words," says a soft behind him. He turns his head, and sees Hinako standing nearby, her hands folded in front of her, flushed from working in the kitchen, and a soft smile on her face.
"Long time no see, Hinako." He hands her a postcard. It's a typical postcard with the Eiffel Tower. There is no stamp. She tucks it into her apron.
Shinomiya waits until closing, slowly sipping sake while staring at the skyline. Tokyo is much brighter than Paris.
They wait until they're out of the establishment before they start to bicker.
"I can't believe you would give me a postcard after all this time!" She, nevertheless, protectively clutches the postcard to her chest as if it were to disappear before her eyes.
"I was busy!" Shinomiya retorts. "Technically, I still am since I'm opening my restaurant in a few months."
"Your own restaurant?"
And they end up talking and catching up until the wee hours of the morning. Shino serves her fricasee de poulet a l'ancience, slow braised chicken in white wine with onions and mushrooms, and Hinako prepares soba noodles with her homemade soy sauce based broth. He sleeps on her couch, stomach full and mind restful for the first time in years. He wakes up to the smell of green tea and a traditional Japanese breakfast, the pungent and nostalgic smell of natto wafting in the air.
Hinako introduces him to her boyfriend, an office worker, later that afternoon. The gentlest of smiles grace her face when she introduces him to Shinomiya.
Shinomiya leaves after lunch.
He has other people to see.
Doujima and Donato spend the better part of the night trudging in and out of bars with him.
He is still halfway drunk when he telephones for a cab.
"Going back already?” Doujima says, sitting up and staring at him as if he didn’t drink his weight in sake and beer.
Shinomiya nods, his mouth bitter and stale. “Yeah, I have important business to take care of.”
Hinako is waiting for him at the airport. Doujima called her, the traitor.
“Always leaving without telling me." Instead of tears, she looks at him with exasperation and disappointment.
He shrugs, “You’re a crybaby.”
Her eyes are shiny and wet but she only smiles when pressing a carefully wrapped package into his hands, “Good luck with your restaurant, Shinomiya-sempai.”
He opens it once he lands back in Paris. The inside is packed with handmade wagashi, sweet and delicate Japanese sweets pressed into flowers. Tucked in the corner is a good luck charm for future success.
Shinomiya sends her a postcard a week later.
---
Six years since he left for Japan and he finally opens Shino's doors. The praise for his cooking is, as expected for a Totsuki graduate, tremendous.
He is in the dining area, thanking one of France's esteemed statesmen, when he pauses.
"I'm sorry, but we are booked for the next seven months."
"That's unfortunate."
Shinomiya scares a server witless when he bolts toward the front. Hinako is turning around to leave the door, but he manages to grab her hand and pulls her into the back. "You can't just walk in here without a reservation, dumbass!"
Hinako smiles when he pinches her cheeks. "I wanted to surprise you!"
He personally cooks for her. Everything he makes, he hasn't allowed anyone else to try. She weeps when taking her first bite of his pot-au-feu, and he feels more satisfied than any of the reviews he's read.
She is visiting Paris for two days for a conference.
She is leaving tomorrow.
He immediately takes a day off; his manager's mouth is gaping. Shinomiya does not take days off.
They visit the typical Parisian landmarks, and when they are walking down the Seine River, she carefully slips her arm around his.
"When in Rome, do as the Romans do, right?"
There are only couples around them, Shinomiya realizes belatedly. Paris is the city of love for a reason, and all of them are walking close, hands clasped with one another's, arms around waists, and some more forward ones have their hands tucked in the back pocket of their significant other's.
She starts to pull away except he more firmly tucks her against his side.
"What else do you want to see?" He says gruffly.
She beams.
"Thank you for for showing me your city," Hinako says as they face each other. She is about to leave to board her plane.
"You should visit properly," he says. "And I'll show you more."
"We'll see."
She leans up and places a chaste kiss against his cheek, just the barest of contact of her soft lips against the sensitive skin of his face, and it burns like hot, bubbling oil.
He overnight ships her the delicate jams and jellies she was so fond of during their walk around the farmer's market. Another postcard, this time with the Seine River.
She emails him a photo of her new recipe: delicate, Japanese desserts with a Parisian twist, the fruit preserves sparkling like rubies and sapphires against the soft white rice cakes.
---
A year later, his restaurant is slammed with negative reviews.
It takes Shinomiya a week to clean house - throwing out the chefs who won't cook to his exact instructions.
It takes a half year for him to restore Shino's good name.
The reviews still a stinging memory, especially when customers compare his dishes now to back then.
Shinomiya ignores the phone calls and deletes the emails from his former classmates.
---
A tremendous amount of blood, sweat, tears, and a staff that quakes at the sound of his voice, and Shinomiya receives the Pluspol award half a year later.
His classmates arrive a week later for an impromptu surprise despite the fact that they're all busy. They have all more or less opened their own restaurants.
Doujima claps him on the shoulders, "Not bad for a kid."
“You’ll bloat his head,” says Mizuhara while rolling her eyes.
Hinako prepared osekihan, celebratory sweet red beans and rice.
"Congratulations," she says with a grin as she presents him a bowl of the congratulatory rice. There is a plain gold band on her left hand, and it takes him a tremendous effort not to look at it.
After they've all left for the airport, while lying on the couch, still pleasantly numb from copious amounts of wine and beer, that Shinomiya scrolls to a news article on his phone.
Hinako's restaurant, Kirinoya, has sent Japan in a frenzy with her food. Restaurants critics rave about her food - that she is a genius with traditional Japanese food while maintaining its relevancy in the wake of a surge of Western food popularity. He opens his contacts list, his thumb millimeters from her name, but he scoffs and turns off his phone.
-
Shino finally attends Doujima’s training camp that same year after a hiatus.
He’s curious if the students there are even marginally good enough to scrub the floors of his kitchen.
Various alumni are there as well. He greets Mizuhara and Donato. He frowns.
"Hinako called earlier saying she would be arriving late," explains Donato.
Shinomiya snorts, it's not like he was looking for her in particular.
She arrives in the evening, her eyes red and face ashen.
"Do you think you can handle running camp?" Doujima asks her when she walks up to him to apologize for her tardiness.
"I’ll be fine." She stares at him, body straight and eyes forward and honest.
Doujima slowly nods. Despite his gruff expression, he presses a large hand onto her shoulder, "If you need time for yourself, take it."
She smiles, her fingers gently rubbing across her knuckles. There is a noticeably pale patch of skin where a ring was once situated.
Mizuhara sticks to her like glue, a stare as cold as nitrogen at any and all curious students and staff.
"Her fiancé broke off the engagement," says Donato sympathetically during dinner. Hinako and Mizuhara are absent. "It's tough being a chef, but to be the significant other of an owner chef, it can be a very isolating experience for both."
Shinomiya thinks about his own apartment, sparsely decorated. The only pictures visible are the ones of his family and some from his days at Totsuki Academy. He has very few people he can call his friends in Paris, and his love life has not been serious for a while.
He prepares cassoulet, a casserole made of white beans and various cuts of beef, and leaves it in front of Hinako’s villa room door with a knock.
In the morning, the dish is empty and clean in front of his door, a note stuck to the handle.
Thank you.
Hinako smiles pleasantly to the new students, her cheeks flushed with renewed motivation, in great contrast to her stringent difficulty level when grading her students' dishes. There are dozens of students openly devastated around her.
There is some potential, the alumni all agree at the end of the camp.
"Congratulations," Shinomiya tells her finally. "For Kirinoya’s successful opening."
Hinako looks at him, and for a second, he almost thinks she looks normal - happy and fun loving, but her hands touch the third finger from her thumb and he wants to beat the living daylights out of that pencil pusher.
"It's an achievement," she says evenly.
Shinomiya browses the newspaper stand while waiting for his flight.
He reads a magazine. There is a cover story regarding Hinako Inui and her quickly growing international recognition as a master of traditional Japanese cuisine.
He mails her the magazine, a copy tucked carefully in his drawer, with a note.
Don't get cocky, in big bold letters.
---
He has Shino's and the Pluspol award. He is at the top of his game.
One day, he jolts.
He has started stagnating, he realizes one evening as one of his sous chef fearfully scurry away.
The bonfire that is his love for cooking is still there, but the waves of confusion, despair, and frustration lap at it.
What does he do now?
-
The international culinary world quakes.
For the first time, a female restaurant owner chef in Japan is set to receive three Michelin stars.
Hinako does not accept the award.
-
“Why?!”
Hinako is silent over the phone, their breathing the only sound over the static-y reception. Her voice is sleepy when she responds. “The recognition is enough. I just want people to enjoy my cooking. Everything else is a garnish."
Garnish, while not the primary component of the dish, subtly lends itself to enhance and enliven the flavors of said dish.
"That's stupid." Shinomiya clicks the phone off.
---
Megumi and Souma remind him of one of the reasons why he even started cooking.
Later, Shinomiya tells them his new goal. "I'll make Shino's Paris' most famous restaurant and get three stars."
Hinako saddles up by his side as the two aspiring chefs rush to their buses. She grins up at him. "So, you're aiming for three stars?"
"You heard me..."
She smiles up at him, teasingly sweet, "Then, should I go help you?"
Shinomiya doesn't say yes. He wants to though.
"I'll hire you as a servant then."
"Hey!"
They bicker all the way up to his departure.
-
He earns his second star that same year.
He comes back to Japan and stops by Kirinoya.
"Welcome," Hinako says warmly as she greets him at his table. She’s carrying a magazine with his profile on front. "Still only at two stars, huh?"
Shinomiya pinches her cheek, "I'm getting there."
---
Totsuki better not have lackluster students this year, Shinomiya thinks with a yawn.
He is flipping through a stack of profiles of future apprentices for his restaurant during breakfast; that Souma brat and the little dunce are going to be graduating this year. He is abruptly interrupted.
"You know," says Mizuhara casually across from him, stirring her latte. "I only ended my crush on you primarily because I could do better. That, and you were obviously head over heels in love with Hinako."
Shinomiya nearly chokes on his coffee.
"I thought Shinomiya did a splendid job covering up the fact that he was in love with her for the longest," says Donato with a waggle of his eyebrows. "So much so, that even he didn't realize it." The unhelpful bastard.
Hinako soon after arrives at their table. "Why is Shinomiya even more irate than usual?" She laughs with Doujima and Mizuhara, "Did another girl break up with him because of his narcissistic behavior?"
If Shinomiya grades the first year students extra hard, some of them crying when he first announces that he will grade as discriminately as possible, then it's none of their business.
-
They are watching the first years enthusiastically eat their food. The students are sleep deprived, exhausted, and cuts and burns litter their skin. However, they eat with the same ferocity and passion as when they cook. This new generation is as dedicated as the ones before it, the alumni think nostalgically.
Shinomiya is sitting next to Hinako, enjoying their own breakfast after the students have been served. Donato and Mizuhara are conveniently absent from the table, talking to Doujima and the other alumni at his table.
Shinomiya abruptly blurts, "If I had asked you out when we were in school..."
"You wouldn't have," says Hinako. "You were too focused on improving your skills, and to a less self-absorbed extent, so was I. Besides," a playful smile is on his face, and yeah, he may have been in love with her for a while. "If you were any less absurdly focused, you wouldn't be the Shinomiya that I fell in love with."
"Brat," Shinomiya utters fondly. He blinks, his heart in his throat, when she slips her hand into his underneath the tablecloth.
“Bonehead,” replies Hinako, smile widening when he twines their fingers together.