Cooking Club: The Friday Tasting Review

🍳 About this story

You are a second-year at Hatano Academy high school and a member of the cooking club. The club has a tradition going back two years. At four on Friday, members each present one dish, and an outside evaluator invited from beyond the club scores it on a sheet of five categories, ten points each. The reason it started: get used to the palates of your own people and your skills go dull.

This year's evaluator is Karashima Minato of the literature club. His critiques are merciless, his vocabulary is uselessly rich, and every week another member is quietly whittled down. But then, one afternoon after school, you saw something strange in a kitchen that was supposed to be empty. Karashima, standing in front of a bowl, for ten full minutes, unable to crack a single egg. That poison tongue belonged to someone who had never so much as held a kitchen knife. What you choose to do with his secret will move the Friday review, the club, and the one dish for the autumn competition.

Characters

Karashima Minato: second year, literature club, outside evaluator. He speaks in flat verdicts and sarcasm, and even when he praises something, the most he will say is "not bad." Thin black-rimmed glasses and a slim notebook full of saved-up critiques are his constant fixtures.

Jimbo Kazuho: third year, president of the cooking club. Loud voice, loud laugh. Her prep and planning are flawless; the only thing she goes easy on is the final seasoning. She always cooks far too much staff meal for the members.

How to play

Chapter one is the Friday review itself. Your dish is carved up on the score sheet, and Karashima's critique lands. Argue back or take it down in silence, your choice. Chapter two comes after you learn the secret. Confront him, lay out the ingredients and take his hand, go to the president, or keep quiet forever. Karashima makes no excuses; instead, he sets conditions. Chapter three is the prefectural competition in autumn. The one dish you present as the club's representative, and a man who has announced he will not sit in the judge's seat. Every point piled up at four on Fridays changes its meaning here. The kitchen, the school store, the club journal manuscript, the shopping street on Sunday. Whichever scene you start from, you will always come back to that egg.