Five Years Post-Proposal

After studying the careers of culinary trailblazers like the Nakiri cousins and Arato Hisako, one might be tempted to ask how any of them had time to even think of raising children.

The answer, of course, was teamwork. You see, when Souma had to jet off to Paris and Erina to Vienna, they could always count on Alice to look after their son in Denmark. Likewise, when Alice and Ryo felt the sudden urge to go skiing and beer tasting up in the alps, their kid always had a second home at Akira and Hisako's London flat.

It was a convenient system, one that allowed them to keep their fast-paced lifestyle without constantly passing their kids off to strangers, but it wasn't without its drawbacks. For example, now, by some fluke of the child-rearing cooperative, Souma and Erina were going to have three four-year-olds for the next ten days.

They would object to the age grouping, she knew. There was a hierarchy. Erik was nearly five, Akane soundly four and a half. Even Raiden, whose birthday was just last month, would try to argue that he was still somehow more than just four.

Erina shook her head at the thought. Toddler logic exhausted her to no end.

"We can do this, right?" she asked her husband, glancing lazily at the spreadsheet in front of her.

"Of course," Souma said, lacing up his winter boots. In a few minutes he was going to get Erik from the airport. "Our kid's the bad one, remember?"

"Don't I know it," Erina said with a small laugh. Usually Akane was a little angel, and Erik was too lazy to try anything, but her son never failed to draw them both into some kind of mischief. "He gets that shit from you."

Souma shot her a sidelong glance. "Keep telling yourself that, Erina."

She met his gaze, eyebrows fractionally raised. "You can't be suggesting that it's me."

He shrugged. "I didn't have time to be bad as a kid. I had chores."

She rolled her eyes. "I bet you still managed."

It was uncanny, really, how after playing or watching TV or whatever he was doing for the past few hours, Raiden miraculously emerged from his room as soon as Hisako dropped Akane off.

Erina barely had enough time to get her goddaughter out of her tiny peacoat and boots before Raiden pulled her to the other side of the room, unfolding a piece of blue construction paper and whispering something to her. Suspicious.

Erina turned the Netflix original she had been watching down to catch wind of anything illegal or dangerous. The conversation seemed to go as follows:

whisperwhisperwhisper

"No way!"

"Shh!"

whisperwhisperwhisperwhisper

"Is it safe?"

"I think so."

whisperwhisperwhisperwhisperwhisper

"Should we wait for Erik?"

"Nah."

Then, simultaneously, they turned to look at her.

"Ma, we're gonna go play upstairs."

"Bye, auntie!"

Then they were off.

Something in Erina melted as she watched them scamper up the duplex's winding staircase. "Don't do anything too—" The door closed with a resounding clap "…crazy."

Erina sat halfway up the stairs for a few minutes, waiting for some telltale crash or scream, but all she heard was some early 00s cartoon playing in her son's bedroom. With a relieved sigh, she decided to let them be and went to answer a few emails in her home office.

About a half hour later, when she ventured back to Raiden's room to see what the kids wanted for lunch, Erina found that both of them were gone. She took a deep breath, trying to quell the anxiety rising within her.

They were probably playing hide and seek, right? They did that all the time. Calmly, but as quickly as she possibly could, Erina checked in all the closets and under all the beds in the apartment. Finding them nowhere, she tried the smarter hiding spaces—behind the shower curtains, in the cabinets, at the bottom of the hamper.

As the minutes ticked by, she started checking the taboo spots—the ovens, the edge of the balcony, the washing machine—even though she had told him a million and six times not to play in them.

She felt herself breathing faster and faster, and brought her right palm to her chest, trying not to panic. Where could those two have possibly gone? Should she call Souma? Hisako? The police? The national guard?

It was only when she found herself staring down into the vast blackness of the confectioner's oven, tears pricking at her eyes, that her son called out to her.

"Hey ma, what are you looking for?"

Erina blinked once. Twice. The voice sounded like it had come from above her. Strange, indeed. Wearily, she turned her gaze to the air vent, and there he was. He even had the audacity to wave at her.

"Wha…how the hell did you even…" She heaved a great sigh. From what she could tell he was utterly covered in dust, but fine.

"Look, ma. We found a tunnel that leads from my bathroom all the way to here. Isn't that cool?"

Erina shook her head. "Just come down from there, okay?"

"You mean now?"

"I mean five minutes ago," she said, a hint of a growl finding its way into her voice.

"Got it! About face, Hayama," he said to the pink haired girl who was always right behind him.

"Roger," she heard Akane reply.

Erina made her way back upstairs to make sure they didn't fall on their way down. Once she had them both safe and reasonably clean again, she sat them down on the couch.

"Do you know why what you just did is dangerous?"

They both shook their heads, and Erina smiled a little despite herself. Of course they didn't; the stunts in about a million and six Hollywood films suggested otherwise.

"The vent might look like a tunnel, but it's not. The only thing it's designed to carry is air. Because the two of you are both heavier than air"—though not by much, she thought— "it could collapse under your weight and you can fall and get seriously hurt. Understand?"

They both nodded emphatically, and Erina almost laughed at Akane's bright pink ponytail bobbing behind her.

"Good. Now, never do something like that again," she said, her voice stern. "You hear me?"

"Okay, ma."

"Yes, auntie."

"You guys in trouble already?" Souma asked as he came through the front door, their pale-haired nephew and his duffel bag in tow.

"Not really," Erina said. They seemed repentant enough. "Now what do you kids want for lunch?"

The three of them shared a long look, amethyst eyes to jade, jade to garnet. Then the children responded with one voice, "Shokugeki."

In the great December grilled cheese battle, Erina was defeated by her husband 3-0. It was only the second time in her life—the first being when he proposed to her—that she'd lost to him by such a large margin. Even when he took the first seat from her back in high school, he only beat her by a single vote.

Her decisive victory during the katsudon dinner card did nothing to help her wounded pride. How had the god tongue failed?

"I think you went a little overboard with the truffle oil," he said as they lay in bed that night, both of them utterly exhausted. "They're still just babies."

"Foodie babies!" she fired back. All three of them had more advanced palates than the average thirty-year-old. "But I think you're right," she sighed. Erina shrugged out of her robe, pinning him under her signature I-want-a-fucking-massage gaze.

"C'mon Nakiri, I'm tired."

"If you don't I'm going to be grumpy in the morning."

Souma opened his mouth, about to say something slick, but then he sighed and gave in to her wishes.

A few minutes later, as she found herself on the cusp of dreaming, a sharp rumbling that sounded suspiciously like a blender began downstairs, followed shortly by a splat, a flurry of muffled giggles, and an elongated shhhhhhhhh.

She groaned, put her robe back on.

Souma laughed a bit, shaking his head. "Nine more days."

"We can do this, right?" she asked again.

He smirked at her, leaving a brief kiss on her lips. "You know it."