At BLUE, Nakiri Erina had chosen her pride.

In the face of a dish that had been so profoundly delicious she swore the ground started quaking beneath her, she had once again looked Yukihira Souma in the face and said, "Disgusting."

And even as she pulled together a plate that would be superior to his eggs benedict don in her mother's eyes, her body, soul, and every conscious thought was consumed with the desire to taste it again.

She could hear it from her office, the sound of Hisako and Alice and Tadokoro-san moaning and squealing over the second seat's newest creation. She released a quiet, wistful sigh before returning to the pile of work on her desk and the lunch she'd packed that morning.

Before the competition and the beach and the arrival of that ignoramus Saiba Asahi, she would never have dreamed of bringing lunch from home. Every day during the noon hour, Yukihira-kun would knock on her door with an agenda to distract her and some new creation he was dying for her to try.

And though she'd fuss and flip her hair, complaining about what a bother it was to keep enduring his pedestrian fare, she always looked forward to what he would make. The cooking ranged from good to near miraculous; he always spared her palate his crudest experiments. And though she only realized it in retrospect, it was his company she enjoyed best of all.

But after BLUE, he stopped coming.

For the first week, the second, the third she assumed that he was still just pissy about losing to her. But when she finally confronted him about it after an Elite Ten meeting during which she'd gotten so goddamn hungry waiting for him that she actually contemplated ordering a pizza, she realized the gravity of what she had done.

"I finally got the message," he'd told her, wearing a grin that didn't warm his honey eyes the way a genuine one would. "You're not interested in my cooking the way it is now. I promise I'll get way better before I bother you again."

The response had left her uncharacteristically speechless, so far was it from anything she had expected. And as she always did when he knocked her off balance, Erina took refuge in her haughtiness.

"See that you do," she'd replied with an indifferent hair flip even though it had been the very farthest thing from what she'd meant, from I want to eat your cooking again.

Nakiri Erina had chosen her pride and now she was paying for it.

Souma-kun was distracted. Actually, preoccupied would probably be a better word to describe it.

When they had all come home from BLUE, they fell back into their regular routines — their meetings and shokugekis and parties and arguments. But Megumi always had a creeping suspicion that his mind was elsewhere.

Today at lunch —when after months of Alice's begging, he finally recreated his dish from the final round at BLUE — she became certain. Interlaced with the delicate textures and complex umami was the taste of longing, of affections unreturned.

What a poor best friend she must have been, taking this long to notice that Nakiri-san had broken his heart.

She was sitting at the kitchen table of the Polar Star, thinking over the day's events when he came in from the latest shokugeki marathon he'd gotten himself roped into.

"How's it going, Tadokoro?"

"I'm good," she said. "Just thinking about when I'll finish that paper for Chapelle-sensei's seminar."

"Shit! When's that due?"

Megumi chuckled, smiling a bit more than she should. "It's due on Friday, and it's been on the syllabus since the beginning of the semester," she said. "You've always got your head up in the clouds."

"Maybe," he replied, putting his knife case down on the table. "Can I borrow your notes if I make you dinner?"

"You can borrow my notes regardless," she told him. "And you probably need the extra time to start writing."

He cooked for her anyway — boeuf bourguignon tacos awash with memories of the day they met. The honey chili sauce he topped them with brought a nostalgic smile to her lips.

"So what do you think?" he asked after she spent enough time staring into space with her mouth wide open. Megumi swore that boy's cooking would be the death of her.

"It's delicious, Souma-kun," she told him, because he deserved it, because it was true. But she knew it would never mean enough coming from her.

She reached into her messenger bag and handed him the notes she'd taken with extra care because she knew he'd end up borrowing them. She hoped that she'd remembered to erase the hearts she doodled in the margins.

Author's Notes: Thanks for reading, everyone! This fic is the result of a request I got on tumblr asking for a post-series sorina fic. I definitely felt like chapter 315 left quite a bit to be desired, so this is my take on filling in the gaps between the finale and the epilogue chapters (and maybe a little beyond that). Almost everything in this fic is based on canon, but I've chosen to make Erina the first seat and Souma the second seat (rather than Erina being headmaster of the academy). Please review to let me know what you think, and have a great day!