BiTTER (Shokugeki no Souma Fanfic)

28. Stepping Up and Higher.

AN: Since it's Merdeka, have another chapter.

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"There's a whole variety of cuisine, a whole variety of chefs— but only a handful of you will go on to become the top chefs of our era."

For the Junior High section, classes end with the Moon Festival, the last big Tootsuki Event in the bountiful autumn season. After that, they get to go home and spend half the winter with their families.

"The difference between all of you and the chefs in the High School division? Direction. In this festival, and until the next year— I want all of you to figure out what kind of chef you want to be. What kind of cooking you want to specialize in. A category unique to only you, that only you can bring to its full potential."

Eda huffed. He knew from the start that he wanted to be a patissier, but that... most likely isn't enough. Having a food specialty is different from knowing what kind of chef, what kind of flavours you want to bring.

Even a startup shop has a unique business objective outside of monetary reward. There are people who want to spread culture, or adapt culture into local flavours. There are people who want to appeal to those with niche tastes. There are those who wish to create franchises.

In the past... she wanted pastry to be an art form— sculpting, marbling, layering, icing— she used as many techniques as she could travel the world to learn, and put them all into a new dish each month. Her success was borne of passion.

"As you know, the Advancement exam from JH Third Year to HS First Year will be a test with the highest failure rate of your lives at that point," the teacher continues. "And your performance there is determined by how much potential you have as a chef. So unless you find your direction now, in your late first-year to early second year— you'll fall behind. This school is all about kicking down the ones that can't keep up."

Eda listened to their teacher, Minase-sensei, and concluded that this school's absolute bonkers, but what else is new?

"Now that that's out of the way..."

The teacher scribbled something on the board. MOON FESTIVAL.

And tapped at it, turning around.

"Ideas for what our class is doing. Shoot."

The entire class leapt up and started shouting food at him.

-

For the kids in Junior High, most classes would be holding a booth supervised by their homeroom teachers. This helps guide the inexperienced students toward the expectations, risks, and planning process of eventually hosting a limited-time stall of their own when High School comes by.

Otherwise, they would go with their research societies to host a booth with their seniors.

You don't necessarily have to be in the society to join a booth hosted by it— and you aren't mandated to host one, either. But why waste the opportunity to build connections during the biggest tourist event of the year? Where influential names, millionaires, politicians all come along for a taste of your cuisine?

Yeah.

"And so, we Polar Star kids will be buying up the booth spaces near Shiomi-senpai's restaurant on Central Street, and selling a whole variety of curry cuisine! We'll call it the exclusive Polaris Curry Street!"