Ari left the mansion for the second time in her afterlife, which, statistically, made this something of an event.
She wandered down toward the food street with her hands tucked into her sleeves, unhurried, mostly curious what all the fuss over three new restaurants actually amounted to.
She got about four steps into Baratie before all of that curiosity became somebody else’s problem entirely.
Sanji spotted her from across the deck-styled dining room, and the cigarette between his fingers simply forgot to keep burning.
“Whoa,” he breathed, already crossing the room with both hands pressed to his chest like a man approaching a shrine.
“You honor us.
You honor this entire establishment.
I would cook you the finest meal in any known dimension right now, this instant, free of charge, no — I insist, I absolutely insist—” “She hasn’t even sat down,” Nami said from the counter, not looking up from the ledger she was already three pages deep into.
“She doesn’t need to sit down.
Beauty like that transcends seating arrangements.” Ari raised one eyebrow, said nothing, and let him spiral.
He did.
Thoroughly.
By the time she’d made it two more steps into the restaurant, Sanji had already produced a chair from somewhere, pulled it out with a flourish, and was hovering close enough to catch her if she so much as swayed.
“I’m fine standing,” Ari said.
“Of course.
Whatever you prefer.
The chair will simply wait here.
Indefinitely.
In case you change your mind.” He did not put the chair away.
• • Gojo arrived roughly ninety seconds later, drawn by absolutely nothing except an apparently supernatural ability to sense exactly when another man was making a fool of himself in front of Ari.
He took one look at Sanji’s chair, Sanji’s cigarette, and Sanji’s expression, and draped himself against the nearest support beam with the deliberate, territorial ease of a cat marking furniture.
“Careful,” Gojo said, cheerfully, not moving from his spot a comfortable three feet closer to Ari than strictly necessary.
“You’re drooling.
It’s undignified.” “I am complimenting the City Lord,” Sanji said, drawing himself up.
“Something you clearly know nothing about, given the general lack of manners radiating off you.” “I have plenty of manners.
I’m choosing not to use them because you’re being weird about it.” “I’m being weird?
You’ve been standing there for a full minute doing absolutely nothing except existing near her.” “It’s a very effective strategy,” Gojo said, unbothered, and did not stop doing it.
Ari, sandwiched between an ownerless chair and two men now quietly squaring off over her like she was a particularly contested parking spot, said nothing at all.
She simply looked between them, slow and even, and took one polite step sideways to admire the menu board instead.
Neither of them noticed she’d moved for a full three seconds.
• • The kitchen staff had, by that point, entirely stopped pretending to work.
Komatsu, who’d wandered over from Gourmet Table under the reasonable pretense of borrowing salt, had frozen mid-step the moment he actually got a look at her, salt entirely forgotten in his hand.
“That’s her,” he said, quietly, to Toriko, who had followed him over for exactly the same reason and was now staring with the same helpless, thunderstruck expression.
“That’s the City Lord.
The card wasn’t exaggerating even slightly.” “Most beautiful,” Toriko murmured, nodding slowly, as though confirming a rumor he’d personally doubted until this exact moment.
“Yeah.
Yeah, that tracks.” Sunny, predictably, had the strongest reaction of all — pressing both hands to his own face and making a small, strangled noise of pure aesthetic devastation, the same sound he reserved exclusively for a perfectly plated dish or an exceptionally well-lit dining room.
“The symmetry,” he whispered.
Even Erina, arriving from Restaurant Yukihira with a tray she’d fully intended to deliver somewhere, stopped in the doorway and simply stared for a moment longer than her usual composure allowed, before catching herself and briskly pretending she hadn’t.
“It’s not that impressive,” she muttered, to absolutely no one, still staring.
Soma, beside her, hadn’t even attempted to pretend.
“It kind of is, though.” • • Mary and Ai, trailing a respectful distance behind their City Lord for exactly this kind of contingency, watched the entire scene unfold with the weary, long-suffering patience of women who had already seen this particular movie.
“Two new admirers,” Mary said, counting Sanji and the assembled kitchen staff with a small, resigned sigh.
“In one afternoon.” “At least none of them have offered to fight for her yet,” Ai said.
Right on cue, Sanji and Gojo’s increasingly loud disagreement over the ownerless chair escalated into something involving raised voices and at least one very pointed reference to whose cooking was objectively superior, which had, somehow, nothing at all to do with the original argument.
Ai closed her eyes briefly.
“I take that back.” • • Ari’s tour of the dessert case lasted exactly as long as it took her to notice Erina standing in the doorway of Restaurant Yukihira.
She teleported.
There was no warning, no gesture, no gathering light — one second she was six feet away contemplating a tart, and the next she was directly in front of Erina, close enough that Erina actually flinched.
“Yes,” Ari said, studying her with the calm, professional focus of an art critic encountering something genuinely worth the trip.
“A masterpiece.” Erina went rigid.
“I — what.” Ari didn’t elaborate.
She simply turned her head toward Soma instead, tilting it slightly, expression entirely unreadable.
“Do you like this type?” “Wh— I mean—” Soma’s face went a color that clashed badly with his hair.
“That’s not really—” “Mm.” Ari nodded once, filing the non-answer away as an answer anyway, and moved on before he could recover.
She found Nami next, still bent over her ledger, and circled her once with the slow, appraising walk of a woman inspecting livestock at a very upscale auction.
“Perfect body proportions,” Ari announced.
Nami blinked down at herself.
“…Thank you?” “You’re welcome.” Robin, arriving at that exact moment with a cup of tea and absolutely no idea what she was walking into, received the same treatment — Ari pausing in front of her, considering her with real, unhurried appreciation.
“An intellectual beauty,” Ari said.
“Rare.
I like that in a woman.” “How flattering,” Robin said, entirely delighted, not remotely fazed.
By now the whole street had gone quiet, every shop worker and half the guests within earshot watching their City Lord conduct what appeared to be a formal aesthetic assessment of every woman currently present.
Ari surveyed the assembled crowd once, satisfied, hands still tucked into her sleeves.
“If I were a man,” she announced, to the entire street, “every single one of you would already be part of my harem.” Dead silence followed.
Somewhere near the back, Sunny made the same strangled noise he’d made earlier, except louder.
Gojo, still mid-standoff with Sanji, turned his head so fast his neck audibly cracked.
“Wait…
Ari-chan, should I wear a dress?
And a wig?” “City Lord-sama to you, not Ari-chan, rude brute.” Mary and Ai said, in immediate, flawless unison, without looking up from whatever else they were doing.
“Excuse me,” Sanji said, voice climbing several registers, cigarette forgotten entirely on the floor, “Ari-sama just complimented multiple women and somehow that’s less alarming to me than it should be, why is that less alarming to me—” Ari, already three steps away and heading back toward the dessert case with the serene, unbothered gait of a woman who had said exactly what she meant to say and had zero intention of clarifying further, offered no response to either of them.
Mary watched with quiet, unwavering approval, already making a note in her ledger without being asked.
“Ari-sama’s taste is, as ever, impeccable.” “As it should be,” Ai said, eyes cutting sideways toward Gojo and Sanji with open disdain.
“Meanwhile, those two haven’t stopped posturing at each other for a full ten minutes.
Pathetic, really.” • • “Mary!” Mary appeared at Ari’s side within seconds, ledger already in hand, the particular speed of someone who had learned exactly how much trouble it caused to be slow about it.
“City Lord?” “Give these pretty ladies a thousand points each.” Ari gestured vaguely at Erina, Nami, and Robin in turn, entirely unbothered by the fact that half the street was still staring.
“As a betrothal gift—” cough —I mean.
A greeting gift.” “At once, Ari-sama.” Mary was already writing, not a flicker of hesitation in it, the words landing on her the same way a royal decree lands on someone who has never once considered questioning one.
Behind her, Gojo made a small, wounded noise.
“Wait, they get a thousand points just for existing near you, and I had to sell my entire cursed technique to earn mine?” “You weren’t pretty enough,” Ari said, without turning around.
“Excuse me—” “He wasn’t wrong to be upset,” Ai said, to no one, arms crossed, watching Gojo’s indignation with visible contempt.
“Just wrong to think it entitled him to anything.” Erina, still faintly pink and now also apparently a thousand Void Points richer, stared at the notification blooming in front of her with open bewilderment.
“I don’t understand what I did to earn this.” “You existed correctly,” Robin said, already pocketing her own notification with the calm delight of a woman who had learned, long ago, never to question good fortune too closely.
Nami, meanwhile, had already moved past confusion entirely and into pure, gleeful arithmetic.
“A thousand points.
For free.
Does she do this often?
Can I bring more women?
I know several extremely pretty women.” “I’ll add you to the list personally,” Mary said, warmly, already making a note of that too.
• • Ari’s gaze swept the crowded street once, twice, with the slow, deliberate scan of someone conducting a headcount and coming up short.
“Where’s that other pretty boy,” she said.
“The short one.” A brief, pointed silence followed.
“…Levi?” Mary offered, carefully.
“Levi,” Ari confirmed, as though this had been obvious all along.
Gojo, still nursing his wounded pride from several feet away, perked up immediately at the chance to redirect attention anywhere but at himself.
“Oh, he’s around somewhere.
Maybe cleaning the bricks.” It didn’t take long.
Levi appeared a few seconds later at the edge of the crowd, arms crossed, entirely unbothered by the sudden attention of his City Lord, three shopkeepers, and roughly a dozen onlookers all turning to look at him at once.
“What,” he said.
Ari studied him for a long moment — the same slow, appraising once-over she’d given everyone else, though something in her expression settled rather than escalated, quieter than the reaction Erina or Nami had gotten.
“There you are,” she said.
No dramatic teleport this time.
No formal ranking read aloud to the street.
Just that.
Levi raised an eyebrow.
“That’s it?
No masterpiece?
No perfect proportions?” “Nothing much,” Ari said.
“I just needed to see your face.
I can eat a few more bowls now.” Something in his expression shifted — not quite a smile, but close enough to one that Gojo noticed immediately from across the street and looked personally offended by it.
“Oh, come ON,” Gojo said, throwing both hands up.
“That’s what gets a reaction out of him?
Something about bowls?
I’ve been saying way better lines than that all afternoon!” “He’s difficult,” Ari said, already turning to head back toward the mansion, entirely unbothered by having left half the food street in various states of chaos behind her.
“I like difficult.” Levi said nothing to that.
He didn’t have to.
Gojo’s expression alone was worth the walk home.
• • Somebody — nobody could later agree on exactly who — decided the three new shops deserved a proper opening night, and by the time anyone thought to ask Ari’s permission, half the food street was already dragging tables together into one long, uneven line down the middle of the road.
“I didn’t approve this,” Ari said, watching from the mansion window with mild interest.
[Would you like the System to intervene, host?] “No.
I want to see how this goes.” It went, predictably, like most things in Void City went — badly organized, loudly argued over, and somehow completely wonderful anyway.
• • By the time Ari actually wandered back down to join it, the long table was already half full and the noise had climbed to a pitch that made Mary wince on principle alone.
Sanji had commandeered one whole end of it for a rotating parade of dishes — a little of everything, Baratie’s opening menu unofficially expanded to include contributions from Gourmet Table and Restaurant Yukihira, since nobody had quite managed to agree on whose kitchen the food was technically supposed to come from.
“This is insane,” Soma said, mouth full, staring at a dish that had started as his father’s and ended up somewhere entirely different by the time Sunny got his hands on the garnish.
“This is genuinely insane, who does this—” “Everyone does this,” Toriko said cheerfully, already reaching for seconds of something Komatsu was still technically plating.
“Best way to cook.
More hands, more chaos, better food.” Joichiro, seated a few chairs down with his own plate balanced somewhere between his knees, laughed low and easy at that.
• • Ari took the seat that had, without anyone quite arranging it, ended up empty at the center of the table — flanked, as it turned out, by exactly the two people least capable of behaving themselves around her.
“You’re here,” Gojo said, delighted, immediately abandoning whatever conversation he’d been having.
“I saved you a seat.” “You didn’t,” Levi said, from her other side, not looking up from his plate.
“You just happened to be standing near an empty one.” “I was guarding it.” “You were arguing with Sanji about garlic.” “Multitasking.” Ari, sandwiched neatly between the two of them, said nothing, reached for the nearest dish, and let them keep going without her.
• • Down at the far end of the table, considerably less concerned with romantic rivalry and considerably more concerned with the sheer volume of food available, the kids had staged what could only be described as a coordinated assault on dessert.
“You can’t eat that many,” Harry said, watching Naruto stack a fourth bowl of something sweet precariously on top of the third.
“Watch me.” “He can,” Anya said, with the flat, certain authority of someone who had apparently done extensive research on the subject.
“Anya’s seen him eat six bowls of ramen.
This is nothing.” Luke, meanwhile, had discovered that Halcyon possessed an alarming taste for anything involving sugar, and was currently locked in a losing battle to keep his own dessert out of range of a small, determined silver snout.
“Hey — no.
That’s mine.” He lost the battle within seconds.
Halcyon made a pleased, chirping sound, entirely unbothered by the theft.
“You’re going to be sick.” “He’s fine,” Toriko called down the table, without even looking over, the easy confidence of a man who had clearly watched far stranger creatures eat far stranger things.
“Dragons have great stomachs.
Trust me.” “You don’t know that.” “I don’t.
But it sounded right.” Soma, drawn by the commotion, wandered down to their end of the table somewhere around Naruto’s fifth bowl and found himself, within minutes, thoroughly adopted.
“You eat like this every day?” he asked, half horrified, half deeply impressed.
“Only the good days,” Naruto said, entirely serious.
“This is a really good day, then.” “Yeah,” Naruto said, grinning around a mouthful.
“Yeah, it kind of is.” • • Erina, seated with rather more composure than her surroundings strictly warranted, found herself unexpectedly cornered by Mary somewhere around the second course.
“You carry yourself very properly,” Mary observed, not unkindly.
“It’s rare where I’m from.
Refreshing, actually.” Erina blinked, visibly thrown by the compliment landing from an unexpected direction.
“I was raised to.
My grandfather is…
particular.” Mary said.
“I understand the impulse to sit up straight regardless of the chaos around you.” Something in Erina’s shoulders eased, just slightly, at that — the first genuine, unguarded smile she’d allowed herself since arriving.
“It’s exhausting, being the only composed person in a room.” “Welcome to my daily life,” Mary said, and for the first time all evening, Erina laughed.
• • Robin and Sheldon had, somewhat inevitably, found each other by the far corner of the table, deep in a conversation neither of them showed any sign of wanting to end.
“So the crystal doesn’t merely assess value,” Robin was saying, turning her glass slowly between two fingers.
“It assesses access.
A rather elegant piece of design, if the rest of this city is any indication.” “Finally,” Sheldon said, with the visible relief of a man who had been waiting for someone, anyone, to engage with the actual mechanics of anything.
“Someone who wants to discuss the underlying framework instead of just eating the food.” “I can do both.” “That’s — yes.
Fine.
I’ll allow it.” Nami, listening in from two seats down while simultaneously calculating something involving the food street’s projected weekly revenue, glanced over at the pair of them and smiled to herself, saying nothing.
• • It was Sunny, of all people, who eventually climbed up onto his chair with a glass raised, silencing most of the table through sheer force of enthusiasm alone.
“To opening night!” he declared.
“To three kitchens, one very chaotic table, and the single most beautiful City Lord any of us has ever had the pleasure of feeding!” A ragged, enthusiastic cheer went up.
Somewhere in the noise, Gojo could be heard shouting something about being the one who’d said it first, and Levi’s flat “he didn’t,” and Sanji’s outraged insistence that he’d been the one feeding her, actually, if anyone cared to check.
Ari, caught in the middle of all of it with a glass she hadn’t quite finished raising, looked down the length of the table — Mary and Erina still laughing about something, Sheldon gesturing wildly at Robin, Naruto engineering what looked like a seventh bowl, Luke wrestling his dessert back from an unrepentant Halcyon, Anya asleep against Harry’s shoulder despite the noise, Cinderella already draping a blanket over her without being asked — and found, somewhat to her own surprise, that she didn’t want to be anywhere else.
“To opening night,” she said, quiet enough that only the two men on either side of her actually heard it.
Gojo grinned like she’d handed him something precious.
Levi just nodded, once, and went back to his plate.
Neither of them needed anything more than that.