#...hey im back to shinomiyas thought again

[nightfal1n]

with ep12 showing how much stress Mina can be put through and still keep calm I'm now thinking back to everytime Mina showed any expression on her face and like....all of them are either in front of / for Kafka or Hoshina

[takoyakitenchou]

masquerade ch.8

7? idk but this one isn’t on ff or ao3 yet i think

12:58 PM Nakiri Erina: Hi, it’s been a while. Are you free the day after tomorrow?

1:03 PM Yukihira Souma: how’d u get this #?

1:04 PM Nakiri Erina: Alice gave it to me. 

1:04 PM Yukihira Souma: sup

1:05 PM Nakiri Erina: I’m opening Kiralyno Haza. It’s not like I want you to show up or anything.

message opened

1:37 PM Nakiri Erina: Hello?

2:40 PM Yukihira Souma: hey sorry i just got on break. congrats nakiri!

2:41 PM Nakiri Erina: It was expected.

2:41 PM Yukihira Souma: surprised it took you so long to open. hurry up and get your 3 stars bubs then we’ll really see who’s the better chef

2:41 PM Yukihira Souma: and did you get tired of shinomiya or did he get tired of you?

2:42 PM Nakiri Erina: I got tired of him. Duh. Are you not coming?

2:42 PM Yukihira Souma: save 4 seats for me. i’ll be a balloon by the time im done w your food also i hope you have enough ingredients for a shokugeki after

“Ugh. You’re as shit at texting as ever,” Erina groaned, throwing down her phone, but then she picked it up again to stare at those four particular characters. Bubs. God, it had been so long since she’d seen that in her messages.

(under the cut to see souma and erina start to get their shit together lol)

To think that she had been the one to break the radio silence between them — good lord, that was fucking annoying. It was weird to think about. There had been plenty of opportunities for them to talk again, and yet they’d somehow managed to evade each other since they’d run into each other at Nakiri Mansion. Whether this was coincidence she had no idea, but Souma hadn’t been at the official Totsuki-sponsored 92nd gen alumni reunion, and Shinomiya had dragged Erina to some culinary conference that made her miss the freshman training camp where Souma threatened the living shits out of the poor first years but ended up not cutting anybody from the roster.

Erina had done her best not to linger on the fact that she had had to ask Alice for Souma’s new number, but goddamn would that remain at the forefront of her mind for the week following Kiralyno Haza’s debut until she got frustrated enough to the point where she damn near chucked her own phone out the window.

It was thanks to Alice that her condo was still in one piece.

The COO of the Nakiri-Totsuki Group was sitting next to her at a bar in Budapest, helping herself to her third shot of tequila, a few empty glasses and a growing tab between them. “Yukihira’s coming?”

Erina nodded, smiling despite herself. “Yeah. I guess he is.”

Taking sudden interest in her drink, Alice remained silent for a thoughtful moment before she said, “I haven’t seen you this happy since you two broke up.”

With a half-hearted huff, Erina scoffed, “Yeah, right.”

Alice gave her a long look. “I’m not kidding, Erina. Who was that other guy you were seeing? Darren?”

“Aaron. Darren was before him.”

“Doesn’t he have a 3000-seater concert hall named after him?”

“I couldn’t care less.” Erina said, and Alice knew it was 593% true. 

Whenever tolerating a guy got tedious, Erina had extinguished whatever spark he thought he had ignited, pretended to be hung up on it, and started over, systematically breaking hearts left and right, all the while building titanium defenses around her own.

And then, a year and half ago, she’d seen Yukihira Souma at Nakiri Mansion, and everything had changed. 

So. Much. Pining. Alice was more than a few years past sick of how long those two idiots were dragging their shit out.

Erina picked up her belongings. “We should probably stop day-drinking.”

“Sure,” Alice said, paying the tab before Erina could get her wallet out.

“I’ll pay you back for that,” Erina promised as they left the bar.

Alice put a hand on Erina’s shoulder. “You can pay me back by not fucking up your confession again.”

At this, Erina frowned. A withering counter should’ve been second nature, but she found herself incapable. She wanted to believe that whatever piece of her heart that had clung to the hope that Yukihira Souma would come back to her was nothing more than a memory. More than anything, she wished the voice at the back of her head telling her to move on and forget him and their past would finally win out, because there were people in her present waiting for her, and it would be a sin to ignore that.

But she couldn’t say the words; her heart belonged to Yukihira Souma — would always belong to him — and all broken promises and relationships notwithstanding, that was something she could not deny.

-

Although Souma technically hadn’t been invited to the kitchen for shift drinks when the front doors closed, he had taken the liberty of bringing a bottle of cab sauv that he and Erina finished in like ten seconds flat, to hell with sharing with staff, family, and friends.

The second she felt the words wanna come over? slip out of her atmosphere-drunk mouth, she knew it was going to take more self-control than she had not to demand he stay with her forever. 

“So, Yukihira,” she said like they hadn’t been catching up for the last two hours when they were sitting on the couch in her living room with pinot noir. “How’ve you been?”

The corners of Souma’s lips twitched. “Not bad,” he replied. “Mostly cooking. A few interviews and shit. I’ve been keeping up with all your stuff, by the way. Three tastings in twelve hours next Monday seems like too much, Nakiri.”

Erina frowned. “Even if you were as talented a stalker as Mimasaka Subaru, how the fuck would you know that?”

He held up his phone. “You were signed into my calendar app when I last downloaded a backup copy four years ago. So every time I get a new phone, I transfer all the old data.”

Erina stared at him, horrified. “Holy shit. You’ve seen everything?”

Shrugging, Souma said, “Not everything. Just… your dates with Darren. And Aaron. Also, I knew about Kiralyno opening before you texted me so I’d already cleared out my schedule by then.”

Erina had stopped listening halfway through. “Wait, Yukihira…”

“It’s okay, Nakiri.” Souma waved it off. “You’re here with me now. All that matters. Let’s not look too far into our past, yeah?”

“Don’t look into my future either, idiot! Sign out of my Google calendar right now!”

Souma shook his head seriously. “Sorry, Nakiri, I don’t think that’s possible.”

“Why the fuck not?”

He gazed at her intently and rested his chin on his fist. “I need to make sure I’ll still be in it.”

Erina rolled her eyes. “Don’t say sappy shit like that. It doesn’t suit you.”

“What if I just stayed?” he asked.

She sighed. “I think the question is, would I even let you? I thought we’re putting the past behind us? Don’t you want this back?” She pointed at the white cloth she was wearing on her wrist. His white cloth.

Souma ignored the second question and pulled Erina to him by her waist, close enough that she could feel his warm breath as he spoke, forehead brushing hers. “Another thing we both know is that you and I could never be just friends.”

“Take your hands off me or I swear I’m either going to spill my wine or kiss you, and I seriously do not care which.”

He leaned back with a sad smile. “You wouldn’t let me stay, would you, Nakiri?”

“I couldn’t,” she said helplessly. “We don’t even know where our lines are.”

“Do we need lines?” Souma asked, finishing his glass and balancing it on his knee. “You and I are beyond this dimension.”

Erina stared at him, memorizing every last square centimeter of his features — the way his hair seemed to get shorter every time they met until he somewhat resembled someone of his culinary pedigree; the way the creases formed on his sleeves along the contours of his toned arms.

“You know, Nakiri, if you let me stay, you wouldn’t have to stare so much.”

She tore her gaze from his collarbone, her whole face turning red. In all her twenty-one years, that had to be the most embarrassing moment of her life. “Shut up! I’m not staring!”

He was watching her with wistful eyes. “I wouldn’t mind if you were…” 

And they both heard it.

I wouldn’t mind if you were mine.