Food Wars: Taste Reversal

"Hey, have you heard? In the morning class, it seems that almost all the students in the class got an E evaluation!"

"Really? It's only the first day of school, and which lecturer is so strict?"

"I heard it was Lecturer Roland Chapelle."

"Then it's no wonder! I heard that Lecturer Chapelle did something similar when he was in junior high, and it seems like this time it's the same. This is too strict!"

"Please, don't let me run into Lecturer Chapelle's class!"

Less than an hour after the end of the class, what happened in the training classroom where Shiraki was located this morning spread throughout the first grade of junior high school. It was the end of class by this time, and all the students were very well-informed. Many students were standing in the corridor, all of whom were frightened by this sudden news.

The people who can be promoted to high school are the top students in junior high, and this time everyone in the whole classroom received an E grade. This made the other students a little scared because there are only so many lecturers in the first grade of middle school at the beginning of the year, and everyone will meet Lecturer Chapelle's class sooner or later. If they get an E grade then...

Suddenly, two figures, a man and a woman, pushed the door out of a classroom, and the boy walking in front immediately attracted the attention of the students who were chatting in the hallway.

"Hey, isn't he the arrogant transfer student...?"

"I heard that he was the only person in Lecturer Chapelle's class who got an A..."

"Grade A?! Isn't it all E grades?"

"Where did you get the news? My friend who was in Lecturer Chapelle's class just told me that the transfer student used at least twenty or thirty kitchen knives when making food. All the knives were spinning around on the ceiling, and even Lecturer Chapelle was stunned!"

"Huh? Are you talking about a movie plot? How can kitchen knives spin on the ceiling?! How can one person operate twenty or thirty kitchen knives?"

"Wait, how did I hear there were hundreds of kitchen knives?"

Out of awe for all the E grades, these students didn't discuss loudly. They looked at Shiraki walking in front of them and the girls behind him, as though they were looking at monsters. Especially the students who had heard more exaggerated rumors, they were afraid Shiraki might suddenly throw a kitchen knife at them and treat them like ingredients. In short, in the mouths of the students who had been in the third cooking room (the room where Lecturer Chapelle's class was held), Shiraki was simply a machine that controlled knives and dismembered ingredients without emotion. All the ingredients would be chopped into pieces in an instant when they reached his hands, and his miraculous cooking skills were scary enough, if not exaggerated.

Of course, these were only a few people who looked at Shiraki with fear. As students of Totsuki Culinary School, raised in a superior environment, which one wasn't a little arrogant? At this time, there were many people who stared at the figure moving forward. Some clenched their fists, while others exuded fighting spirit. Surrounded by such sights, Megumi Tadokoro, walking behind Shiraki, naturally trembled again. As a student who had been at the bottom of the class for years, when had she ever experienced such a baptism of gazes? If it weren't for Shiraki in front of her, she would have already shrunk to the ground, shivering in fear.

"Oh, here it is."

Finally, after reaching the door of a cooking training room, Shiraki stopped and waved his hand to the two figures inside. Megumi Tadokoro cautiously poked her head out from behind Shiraki, just in time to see Yoshino Yuki and Ryoko Sakaki greeting them inside.

"Yo, Megumi, you're over here too?"

Yoshino and Ryoko were cleaning up the cooking table in front of them. When they saw Shiraki and Megumi walking in, they immediately said hello. Shiraki looked at the whiteboard in the classroom. The course in this classroom seemed to be a classic cod salad, which, if he remembered correctly, belonged to home cooking from Catalonia, Spain. It was also a classic dish. During his time at the Polar Star Dorm, Shiraki hadn't just eaten salted fish; he had read all the textbooks in junior high school. Though he had no experience with practical training, in theory, he was similar to the first-year high school students.

"Thanks to Shiraki-kun, we passed." Megumi Tadokoro ran over to Yoshino Yuki, her expression one of relief. It was hard to find familiar faces among so many provocative gazes, which moved Megumi Tadokoro deeply.

"Haha, you're in a group with Shiraki, so it must be an A, right?" Yoshino Yuki asked with a smile.

"Hmm... Hmm!" Megumi's expression froze for a moment before she nodded.

"Thanks to Shiraki-kun, we were able to pass Lecturer Chapelle's course..."

"Eh, Lecturer Chapelle?"

Suddenly hearing that familiar name, Yoshino and Ryoko glanced at each other. They then remembered Megumi Tadokoro's reaction from earlier and turned to her, a little stiffly.

"Y-You're the only one from the legendary group who passed Lecturer Chapelle's course?"

"Yes, it took a little effort," Shiraki nodded, then looked at Yoshino Yuki with curiosity. "What rank are you?"

"We... Just B+." Yoshino Yuki and Ryoko Sakaki looked at each other again, suddenly realizing they had been easily led off-topic. Yoshino Yuki hurriedly stepped forward and leaned in front of Shiraki, saying:

"This doesn't matter. Speaking of which, we just heard a very exaggerated rumor. I heard that there's a student in Lecturer Chapelle's class who uses dozens of kitchen knives to form a knife array that covers the entire training room. All the ingredients get chopped instantly under the knife array. The most exaggerated part is that the person also uses the kitchen knives to heat the ingredients, and the final dish is even praised by Lecturer Chapelle. That person can't be you, right?"

The more Yoshino Yuki spoke, the more excited she became, and in the end, she even mimed boxing movements, though her actions looked somewhat nondescript.

"Who are you listening to?" Shiraki interrupted Yoshino Yuki with black lines on his head. Although she was roughly correct, why did Yoshino Yuki's movements look so weird?

"Do you really need to hear about this? The whole story has already spread throughout the school. After all, it's a big event that almost the entire class got an E grade in the first exam of the school year! Maybe a large number of students will be dropped out soon, and everyone is now panicking."

Yoshino Yuki patted her chest, still feeling uneasy. "I was shocked when I first heard the news. I said, 'Don't let me meet Lecturer Chapelle!'"

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