Garlic Breath

Souma Interlude

Souma Interlude

I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.

Mr Darcy | Pride and Prejudice | Jane Austen

Souma's panic had never looked like the dramatic perfomance he'd played up Thursday afternoon, when it had first dawned on him that he had no idea how he was going to beat Atsui. Sobbing and shaking on the floor had never been his kind of style, because he'd never known anxiety to grip him like that.

In Souma's case, it had always been something muted, so quiet that he didn't even recognise it was there in the first place.

Until, the drop.

When the silence in his head got too loud. When a small sensation of tightness squeezed his heart. When a feeling of impending sunk into his stomach.

And a horrid truth lodged in the back of his head that time had finally, finally run out.

His kind of panic never came on time.

Maybe that was why on Thursday, watching all his friends drop their recipes off, he hadn't thought too much about the twist in his heart when none of the recipes caught his eye. Not even when Takumi, the last of them to show up and the quickest to leave, showed him his grandfather's recipe.

But that was no big deal. It wouldn't be the first time that every resource hadn't made the cut, and he had to rely on deeper intuition to pull him through another shokugeki.

Besides, he still had time.

And that was definitely why he didn't think twice about the alarm ringing in his head when he tasted the first soup he made for Takumi that evening—a disastrous first attempt at a garlic soup recipe he'd only suggested to get Takumi off his back. The recipe was Satoshi's, who had texted him late last night with his idea. Seeing as he hadn't narrowed down on anything else, Souma had randomly decided to focus on it, hoping that the process would trigger something.

It was no big deal anyway. It wouldn't be the first time that they literally had nothing to work with all night. Yo, inspiration sometimes came in the middle of midnight. What was one more weekend?

Besides, he still had time.

This was only the first batch of the night. There was time to improve. He still had time.

The shokugeki was tomorrow. They had all night to prepare. He still had time.

And if not tonight, it wouldn't be the first time that he rocked up to his shokugeki with nothing but his knife. There was no rushing genius, sometimes. One time, he'd gotten the idea of how to win minutes before the expulsion commenced.

Time was infinite. And he still had it.

He still had time. He still had time. He still—

Takumi took another sip of the first soup, and sighed. He put his spoon down, and took a deep breath. "Well."

Souma watched him, smiling nervously as he waited for the verdict. "Yeah?"

"Points for effort."

He blinked, not really expecting that. Takumi wasn't usually so nice, so maybe it wasn't all bad. "Really?"

"Well, maybe not effort. Courage."

Here it was. "Courage?"

"I suppose it takes a lot of courage to make a soup," Takumi said, "when you are a soup, Souma."