Silence once again descended upon Exam Hall B.
The echo of Erina’s footsteps and the protests of the fleeing applicants had long faded, leaving behind an empty void smelling of eggs, butter, and the remnants of shattered ambitions.
However, the room was not truly empty.
From the shadows of a marble pillar in the corner of the room, an old man stepped forward.
His footsteps were heavy and commanding, each clack of his geta on the floor seemingly affirming that he was the absolute ruler of this domain.
Nakiri Senzaemon, the Director of Totsuki Academy, dubbed the “Culinary Demon King”.
His stern face, marred by a scar near his right eye, betrayed no emotion.
Yet, beneath that piercing gaze lay a burning curiosity.
He had been watching everything.
Erina’s cruelty, the audacity of the red-haired Yukihira, and the unnatural composure of the youth named Emiya.
Senzaemon walked toward the kitchen station abandoned by Yukihira Soma.
There, a simple porcelain bowl sat.
It was still warm.
Wisps of thin steam continued to rise from it.
“Transforming Furikake Rice, huh?” Senzaemon muttered.
His deep voice echoed through the empty hall.
He inspected the leftover dish.
Visually, it was unfit for Totsuki’s standards.
Rice with scrambled eggs.
A commoner’s breakfast.
Erina had called it cat food, and based on the logic of culinary aristocrats, his granddaughter wasn’t wrong.
But Senzaemon’s trained eyes caught a peculiar glint on the grains of rice.
Without hesitation, he picked up the spoon resting nearby, scooped a generous portion, and placed it in his mouth.
In the first second, his tongue tasted the soft texture of the egg.
In the second, a miracle occurred.
BOOM!
An explosive savory flavor mercilessly battered his taste buds.
The rich chicken broth, previously hidden in the form of frozen aspic, had now completely melted from the heat of the rice, creating a natural umami sauce that coated every inch of his mouth.
What is this?!
Senzaemon’s mind roared.
This wasn’t just egg and rice.
It was a flavor bomb in disguise.
A wild and unbridled creativity.
That youth, Yukihira Soma, understood that the limitations of ingredients were not barriers, but rather challenges to be surpassed.
He had transformed a low-class meal into a dish that forced anyone to smile.
Senzaemon’s burly body tensed.
His muscles contracted in response to the surge of pure ecstasy coursing through his veins.
Riiip!
The upper half of his kimono could no longer withstand the pressure of the aura radiating from his body.
The right shoulder tore open, exposing muscles honed like those of a warrior, not an elderly man.
The Bare Chest of the Director.
The highest mark of recognition from the Culinary Demon King.
“Hah…
Hah…” Senzaemon let out a long breath, hot steam billowing from his mouth.
“Fascinating,” he hissed, staring at the empty bowl with a satisfied smirk.
“Erina, your judgment was clouded by your pride.
You refused to admit that a diamond could be found in the mud.”
Without a second thought, Senzaemon retrieved a pen from his inner pocket.
Over Yukihira Soma’s evaluation form, which Erina had previously stamped “FAILED”, he crossed it out decisively and affixed his own signature.
ACCEPTED.
“Welcome to Totsuki, son of the Asura,” he whispered.
However, his business wasn’t finished.
Senzaemon adjusted the remains of his disheveled kimono, then turned to the adjacent station.
Emiya Shirou’s table.
Unlike Soma’s table, which was slightly messy with the typical vigor of youth, Shirou’s table was clean.
Impeccably clean.
It was as if no cooking had taken place there at all.
The knife was placed perfectly parallel to the edge of the counter.
There were no oil splatters.
No stray eggshells scattered about.
And in the center of the white plate, half of a boiled egg remained.
Avalon’s Morning.
Senzaemon approached.
The closer he stepped, the more he felt a strange sensation.
If Soma’s dish radiated “passion”, Shirou’s dish exuded “silence”.
An absolute silence.
“Just a boiled egg…” Senzaemon observed the cross-section of the egg.
He saw three distinct layers of texture.
The white, the custard yolk, and the ruby-red core.
Technically speaking, rendering a single egg with three different levels of doneness without bisecting it was an impossibility for an ordinary chef.
It required precise temperature control down to the decimal, or molecular manipulation.
Senzaemon picked up a fork, cut the remaining egg, and ate it.
There was no explosion.
There were no torn clothes.
What happened was Senzaemon froze.
His eyes widened, his pupils shrinking.
The world around him seemed to fade away, replaced by an endless expanse of a grassy field under a peaceful yet melancholic twilight sky.
The flavor was…
eternal.
The spices used in the red core tasted ancient, as though the recipe had been lost thousands of years ago.
The doneness of the egg white was so perfect it felt as if it were embracing his tongue.
There was not a single flaw.
Not a single micron of error.
This wasn’t the cooking of a student.
This wasn’t the cooking of a genius.
“This is the cooking of a veteran,” Senzaemon whispered, his voice trembling.
He couldn’t tear his clothes.
The reverence evoked by this dish was far too profound for such a wild response.
This dish demanded submission.
Senzaemon had tasted the cooking of Michelin three-star chefs all over the world.
He had eaten the dishes of his own son, Nakiri Soe, and even the living legend, Saiba Joichiro.
But this was different.
Within this small egg, Senzaemon felt “weight”.
The weight of experience.
The weight of sorrow.
The weight of someone who had cooked not for praise, but to survive, to protect, to remember.
“Emiya Shirou…” Senzaemon invoked the name like a mantra.
“Who are you, really?
Your background check says you’re just an ordinary orphan.
But the hands that made this…
are hands that have grasped the world.”
Senzaemon’s thoughts drifted to his granddaughter, Erina.
And to his daughter, Nakiri Mana.
The Nakiri bloodline carried a terrifying curse.
The “God’s Tongue” was both a blessing and a poison.
The older its possessor grew, the more the tongue demanded perfection.
Ordinary food would taste like garbage.
Delicious food would taste bland.
In the end, the possessor of the God’s Tongue would starve to death, as not a single dish in the world would be worthy of passing their throat.
Such was the fate of Nakiri Mana, who was now isolating herself, unable to swallow anything but intravenous nutrients.
And Senzaemon was afraid…
terrified that Erina would share the exact same fate.
That was why he had initiated the “Jade Generation” project.
He gathered the finest young talents from all corners of the globe—chefs from Italy, Scandinavia, China, India—hoping that among them, one chef would rise capable of creating dishes that transcended human limits.
A chef who could satisfy the God’s Tongue.
Up until now, he had merely hoped.
But today, as his tongue savored the lingering taste of Avalon’s Morning, that hope had transformed into conviction.
Emiya Shirou possessed something no other chef did.
He had “Eyes” that saw beyond the recipe.
He saw the structure, the essence, and the very soul of the food itself.
“This boy…” Senzaemon gripped the edge of the kitchen counter until his knuckles turned white.
“This boy might be the only one who can save Erina.”
If Erina was a storm that destroyed everything with her critiques, then Shirou was an immovable iron fortress.
Only such a fortress could withstand the storm and offer sanctuary.
Senzaemon picked up Emiya Shirou’s evaluation form.
On it, Erina hadn’t even bothered to stamp it with a fail.
The paper had been practically crumpled.
Senzaemon smoothed out the paper on the table with the utmost gentleness.
He took his pen once more.
In the decision column, he wrote large kanji characters with deep, heavy strokes of ink, as if carving out a new destiny for the culinary world.
ABSOLUTE PASS.
“This year’s Jade Generation…” Senzaemon turned around, his kimono billowing as he walked out of the room.
A wide smile, a sight rarely seen, now adorned his fierce, aged face.
“…will be a battlefield of monsters.”
Outside the window, the sun began to set, bathing the gates of Totsuki in blood-red hues.
A new era had begun.
And the key to breaking the Nakiri family’s curse now lay in the hands of a youth carrying the memories of a ruined future.
“Like my work?