Ichigo knew Lucas was joking, so he answered in the same playful tone.
But what he said was the plain truth.
Never mind his current self.
Even later, once the story began and he became a Shinigami, he still would not be a match for Lucas.
“Sado-nii, you’re here!”
Seeing him arrive, Karin and Yuzu both called out.
Ichigo’s two younger sisters were quite different from each other.
One was flat-faced and boyish, the other the very picture of a sweet girl next door.
In the manga, Chad awakened his Fullbring specifically in order to protect Karin.
“Karin, Yuzu, hello. I brought gifts for both of you.”
Lucas lifted the bag he was carrying.
Yuzu immediately dashed over.
Karin was curious too, but her personality held her back, so she offered a polite thank you without rushing in.
While Yuzu was busy inspecting the gifts and putting them away, Ichigo and Lucas started up a video game, talking about the tournament as they played.
Lucas explained the whole situation to him.
By the end of it, Ichigo’s mouth was twitching.
There was no helping it.
Lucas always managed to say the most outrageous things in the calmest, most matter-of-fact tone.
Things like mastering a martial art after watching it once.
Or spotting the flaws in a technique and improving on it after a single spar.
If he did not know the man so well, he would have suspected him of showing off.
Soon after, Tatsuki arrived as well.
The group played for over two hours, and by then it was nearly time for dinner.
“It’s about time to eat. I’ll go help out in the kitchen.”
Lucas stood up and headed that way.
Meals at the Kurosaki house were usually prepared by Yuzu. The source of this chapter is novelping.com.
Young as she was, she was already seasoned in a kitchen.
As for Lucas, he had visited many times before, and living alone had naturally given him decent cooking skills, so he often helped out when he came by.
Which meant nobody thought anything of it when he went in.
What they did notice, a little while later, was Yuzu walking back out with an expression of pure disbelief on her face.
“Yuzu, what’s wrong?”
“N-nothing. I’m just a bit stunned. Sado-nii’s cooking has gotten to a point where I can’t even help him.”
Just thinking about the scene in there was hard for her to believe.
“What’s going on? Cooking?”
Still confused, Ichigo walked to the kitchen doorway, and what he saw left him staring.
Lucas was busy in the kitchen.
No, busy was the wrong word.
Relaxed was closer to it.
He had three pots going on the stove at once, stir-frying and simmering at the same time, and in the gaps between he was chopping vegetables and handling the rest of the prep.
With that much happening at once, he looked completely at ease.
Not a trace of panic anywhere.
“No wonder you said you couldn’t help, Yuzu. It’s not that you can’t. He’s already done all of it.”
Karin watched the kitchen in disbelief.
It was the first time she had ever felt someone turn cooking into an art form.
“His knife work is ridiculous. The speed is one thing, but how is he chopping and landing the pieces straight onto the plate at the same time?”
The way Lucas cooked now made it look like he had been possessed by some legendary master chef.
Nobody wanted to interrupt, so they simply watched from the doorway until he finished.
And then the whole group went quiet at the sight of the table, covered end to end in Chinese dishes.
This was a fictional world where every culinary tradition existed, but it was the first time any of them had seen that many dishes produced at once, with an aroma alone that was enough to make a person’s mouth water.
Kurosaki Isshin, having closed up the clinic downstairs for the evening, had come up for dinner.
And the smell was one he did not recognize.
“Yuzu didn’t make today’s dinner. Sado made all of it.”
“Sado made this? These cooking skills are unbelievable.”
Isshin’s eyes went wide at the spread on the table.
“Sado, when did you get this good at cooking? I never noticed before.”
Ichigo looked genuinely lost.
His friend’s cooking had definitely not been at this level in the past.
“Probably the combat techniques. They let me control my body’s strength precisely, and that carries over into cooking.”
It was not a lie, though it was not the whole truth either.
His cooking had improved partly because of the fine physical control the techniques gave him, but that was not the only reason.
The other half of it was his sheer physical constitution.
His body was improving constantly, and his five senses were sharpening right along with it.
If you dropped him into the world of Food Wars in his current state, he would undoubtedly have the God’s Five Senses, able to judge the quality of any ingredient at a glance.
So it goes without saying that what he cooked now tasted extraordinary.
“Is that right? Being able to apply all that to cooking. You keep getting more impressive.”
Ichigo could not help giving him a thumbs-up.
Standing off to the side, Isshin also thought the young man’s talent was genuinely remarkable.
If a prodigy like that ever attended the Spirit Arts Academy, then regardless of his spiritual power level, he would be a top-tier candidate for mastering all four Shinigami arts.
Unfortunately, Isshin could never return to the Soul Society himself.
Transferring one’s power to another person is a grave crime there, and he had left his power inside Kurosaki Masaki in order to save her.
If he went back, he would face imprisonment, and it would drag Masaki down with him.
“All right, that’s enough praise. Let’s eat.”
Lucas waved it off, and everyone sat down at once.
After the first bite, every set of eyes at the table lit up, and the pace of the grabbing picked up considerably.
Everyone except Lucas, who had, after all, already tasted his own cooking.