Marika's father was the Commissioner General of the National Police Agency, the man who held complete authority over every matter of public safety in Japan.
The moment he learned his beloved daughter had fallen for a stranger, he had the young man investigated down to his roots. Family lineage going back eighteen generations, traced and documented. For someone in his position, looking into one young man was hardly a challenge.
That was why the scene in the previous chapter had unfolded the way it did. The Commissioner had asked his daughter plainly whether she truly had feelings for this boy, and if she did, he would personally pull him out of the underworld's grip.
He already knew that Ryunosuke owed the yakuza tens of millions of yen. For a man of his standing, that was loose change. He could have pressed a gun to a mafia boss's forehead and bellowed something entirely unrelated, just to make the point of who held the real power here.
Meanwhile, Ryunosuke was somewhere in the middle of the ocean, rowing a tiny boat. In his desperation to escape the debt collectors, he had done something truly reckless. The boat fit two people at most, and he had been drifting on open water for nearly half a month before washing up on a remote island.
The island turned out to be Totsuki Academy. He had rowed toward it because he caught the scent of something extraordinarily good on the wind.
Totsuki Academy was a prestigious culinary institution, a paradise for anyone who lived for food. The moment he reached shore, however, Ryunosuke collapsed from starvation. After nearly half a month without eating, that was hardly surprising.
Elsewhere, at a lavish dinner gathering. Nakiri Erina, dressed in an elegant purple gown fit for royalty, was being held in place by a female attendant who was trying to force coarse salt into her mouth.
"I won't! It's disgusting! Get that away from me!" Erina struggled with everything she had.
The attendant held her firm and said with weary patience, "Ojou-sama, this is for your own good. It will help your God's Tongue function at a higher level. It is also your father's wish."
Eyes glistening, Erina swallowed the salt with a look of complete humiliation. She possessed an almost mythical sense of taste, capable of detecting the slightest flaw in any dish. Her father intended to use this gift to dominate the culinary world. He had already exploited her mother the same way, driving her to anorexia until she could only be sustained through liquid nutrition.
Now he was setting out to break his own daughter by the same method. Erina's grandfather, Senzaemon, had no idea any of this was happening.
Forced to eat salt every day to sharpen her palate, Erina retreated to her room and cried alone.
One afternoon she slipped outside for a breath of air and stumbled across Ryunosuke, half-dead from hunger on the doorstep. She took one look at him, dragged him inside her room, fed him, and kept him there like a stray she had decided to adopt.
That was how they met. Erina hid Ryunosuke in her private room for some time, until the boy had filled out properly. The food he had eaten before was nothing compared to what came out of Erina's kitchen, and the difference showed quickly.
She cooked for him herself every day, and found that her life had taken on a meaning it hadn't had before. This stray, this human she had taken in, was genuinely remarkable.
Beyond simply relieving her boredom, Erina found she could pour everything out to him, every frustration, every hidden hurt. The relief was immense. She even began cooking with a smile on her face.
Ryunosuke became something like an emotional dumping ground for Erina, and through it all, he learned exactly what her father had been putting her through. Between bites of a strawberry tart she had made, he offered a thought.
"Why not tell your grandfather? He'd help you, wouldn't he? He runs this whole academy. His authority is higher than your father's."
Erina's expression dimmed. "I can't get to him. Father always blocks the way. I never have a chance to speak."
Ryunosuke licked the last of the cream from his finger. He had been fed and looked after until he was properly healthy again, and he felt he owed her something for that. He made a decision: he would dress up in one of Erina's gowns, wig and all, so that she could slip away and reach her grandfather. Having grown up on the kindness of strangers, he knew exactly how to be grateful.
Shortly after, Azami, Erina's father, came to his daughter's room as he did every day to conduct her training. When repeated knocking produced no answer, suspicion overtook him and he pushed the door open. He spotted a blonde figure from behind and let out a slow breath of relief.
"Erina. It's time to train." His voice flat and cold.
The figure said nothing and kept its back to him. Azami, running out of patience, reached out and turned it by the shoulder. He stumbled backward in shock.
"Who are you?!"
Standing before him was Ryunosuke in a blonde wig and the purple princess gown, who calmly picked his nose, flicked it in the direction of Azami's face, a gesture of spectacularly casual contempt, and said in the most unbothered voice imaginable:
"Ah. Caught."
Azami: 😐
Meanwhile, Erina, dressed in Ryunosuke's grimy clothes with a cap pulled low to hide her blonde hair, slipped out of the villa and made her way to the heart of the academy to find her grandfather, Senzaemon.
Back in the room, Ryunosuke was beaten thoroughly by Azami and thrown out of the building.
Azami had no interest in dealing further with some vagrant child. Soiling his hands over someone like that was beneath him.
Ryunosuke, airborne briefly and then very much not, was grateful to still be breathing. He limped into the woods, one hand pressed to his aching backside.
"I think that just about covers all the food she made me."
Not long after, Senzaemon came to settle things with his son-in-law. Azami was expelled from Totsuki Academy and stripped of every position he held.
Erina searched everywhere for her stray, but Ryunosuke had vanished without a trace. From that day on, she grew quiet and lost her appetite for years. To her grandfather's eyes, she had every appearance of a girl nursing a broken heart.
*(Could my granddaughter actually be in love?)* Senzaemon thought. *(This is a problem.)*
Fearing what that might lead to, he quietly sealed away all records relating to Ryunosuke, hoping Erina would forget him and return her focus to developing her God's Tongue.
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