86i dont own sns
Nakiri Erina stood fuming in the center of the Polar Star Dormitory's kitchen as the rest of the students nervously backed away, putting as much distance as possible between themselves and the potent anger radiating from her. Clutched in the Totsuki queen's left hand was a piece of paper and her right seized at the air manically as if she could feel his stupid neck under her fingers.
I'm going to go train, probably overseas or something. It'll be a couple months.
She wondered why it bothered her so much that he'd gone abroad. Without telling her, dammit. After all, she'd spent the better part of two years ridiculing him for his plebeian background, assuring him that the day he was expelled from Totsuki would be the happiest in her life, even after finding out about his lineage. But she knew and he knew that she didn't mean it as much as she used to, but nonetheless she never failed to exercise her royal prerogative in his presence. Now that he was actually gone, though, his absence didn't fail to upset her.
His last words to her prior to his abrupt departure rang in her head and she realized she was stupid not to instantly understand what he meant.
"I'll make you say it's delicious. I'll walk the far corners of the Earth if I have to."
"When did he leave?" Erina asked, and her voice was deadly.
The others circled around her hesitantly opened their mouths but remained silent. It took a dangerous glare from Erina's amethyst eyes and a hint at a resurgence of her sensei aura for Isshiki-senpai to rub the back of his neck and speak. "We don't know for sure. Probably in the middle of the night. This is all he left behind." He pointed at the scrunched paper in Erina's hand. "None of us got to say goodbye."
"He's not planning to graduate!?" Erina demanded. She knew that Yukihira Soma's high school diploma was far from being what was infuriating her but it was hard to place the ulterior reason. For some reason, she was afraid to acknowledge the feelings that, for the last few months with increasing intensity, had been bubbling within her caged heart. Caged? No longer, because he set her free. Erina knew she had the emotional capacity of a brick — Alice's words, not hers — and it was difficult for her to recognize the turmoil of new emotions Yukihira had caused her to experience. She'd never felt this way before, and never felt the need to. Thanks to the redhead, Erina was finally beginning to understand what it means to speak a language of thoughts. Damn that brat.
"We know nothing more than you do, Nakiri-san," Tadokoro Megumi said. Her voice was soft, like honey, and Erina's bristling demeanor immediately started to settle back into her typical imperious frigidity.
Erina growled. "Thank you all for letting me know." She whirled out of Polar Star where her chauffeur waited with a pleasant smile on his face. He helped her into the limo and drove off in the direction of Nakiri Mansion.
Sitting alone in the backseat, Erina wondered just why the hell she was so profoundly affected by Yukihira's disappearance. I mean, it's not like she cared about him, right? Her mind wandered and came to rest on a particular night.
Following Nakiri Asahi's continued attempts to hit on her by calling her "princess" and bringing her bouquets no matter how adamantly she refused – even now she shuddered at the thought that she might've been engaged to her half brother, holy fuck that was weird – the Polar Star girls had practically dragged her into their dorm to have a girls' night, where they questioned her supposed relationship with Suzuki-sensei. Under their pressure, she had been forced to consider every detail in her practically nonexistent love life. Love was something Erina was extremely unfamiliar with but with the girls – and her cousin, Alice – Erina had begun to explore this entirely new dimension that not even her god tongue could quite place.
Erina had confessed her image of the ideal man that she wouldn't mind sharing her journey in said dimension with, and immediately the Polar Star girls had drawn connections, not to the debonair prince charming as many assumed, but to none other than Yukihira Soma. Naturally she had denied everything and promptly turned a brilliant shade of red comparable to Rindo-senpai's hair.
As the car slowed down in Nakiri Mansion's expansive parking garage, Erina remembered the way her heart skipped a beat whenever her eyes met those endless amber gemstones. The annoying thrill she felt when he stopped by in her director's office during lunch to shove food in her mouth while she managed the academy. The way he always made her laugh without even trying.
His dedication to his cooking. His promise.
I'll make you say it's delicious.
Erina walked into her mansion, down long hallways until she found herself sitting on her bed, head in her hands, willing the waves of emotions to subside. This only augmented them and she gave up, lying back, letting her thoughts come and go. She stared at the ceiling for hours, not bothering to undress or finish any of the work that had accumulated in her briefcase. Which, mind, included all of his ignored First Seat paperwork. Damn that brat!
In the end she only came up with one feasible explanation for why she was so distressed. She'd thought she and Soma would get to cook next to each other as rivals, as friends on a good day, forever. But now he was gone and she was terrified that when he came back he'd be a different person.
For the first time, Erina permitted her heart, rather than her mind, to control her voice. It was a perplexing, obscure subject she was trying to address, somewhat arduous to put into words, but the essence of the answer couldn't be clearer.
Yukihira Soma was her first love. Fuck.