"The story's finally starting... I wonder if I actually have some kind of System."
Outside the Yukihira Family Diner, a young man watched everything unfolding inside.
The young man's name was Ethan, a transmigrator. Before arriving here, he'd run a small eatery by himself. As for how he crossed over? Pure, rotten luck.
The gas supplier he'd been working with went out of business, so Ethan was forced to switch. Turns out, the new place was shady, and their propane tanks were faulty.
Ethan's last memory before transmigration was a propane tank suddenly exploding—and then nothing. When he regained consciousness, Ethan found he'd become an infant.
Before Ethan could even fully accept his new identity, the parents he'd barely known in this life passed away one after another due to accidents.
It reminded Ethan of a common saying from the novels he used to read: being the parent of a transmigrator is a high-risk profession. Looking back, that statement seemed pretty accurate.
From then on, Ethan was an orphan. Fortunately for him, his parents in this life had worked at the Totsuki Resort—and in fairly high positions, too—so they left him a substantial amount of assets.
Furthermore, his parents had been good friends with Gin Dojima. When Ethan was born, Dojima was only 23 years old.
At that time, while Dojima held a respectable position, he hadn't yet become the Head Chef of the Totsuki Resort, nor was he a member of the board.
Ethan's parents had helped Dojima quite a bit when he first joined the resort. So, after their passing, Dojima looked after Ethan quite well.
And once Ethan was a bit older, Dojima arranged for him to enroll in Totsuki Culinary Academy.
Ethan was quite familiar with the world of Food Wars. After all, besides running his eatery, his biggest hobbies had been reading novels, manga, and watching movies.
So, he knew Food Wars very well. Realizing this was that world, Ethan worked extremely hard to improve his cooking skills—especially since chefs in this world could even awaken special abilities.
Before crossing over, Ethan had run that small eatery. While he wouldn't claim his skills were amazing, his fundamentals were decent.
So, after entering Totsuki, Ethan's cooking improved rapidly. Because of this, his skills now ranked among the top students in his year.
Of course, he couldn't compare to the truly overpowered ones, like Erina Nakiri. Although the God Tongue had significant drawbacks, before it went out of control, it was indeed an incredible ability for a chef.
A recipe you spent ages developing could be completely analyzed by the God Tongue in just one bite.
Finding flaws in dishes and constantly refining them—this takes an enormous amount of time for ordinary chefs.
But for Erina Nakiri, with her God Tongue, identifying flaws took only a single taste. Afterward, she could focus all her energy on how to fix them, saving a massive amount of time and effort.
Besides her, many other students in their year possessed special talents—like Ikumi Mito's sense of touch or Akira Hayama's sense of smell.
While these talents hadn't quite reached the level of true special abilities, they were still far superior to those of the average person.
So, even though Ethan had lived a whole extra life and deliberately honed his cooking skills from a young age, he was currently just one of the top students in his year.
His current skill level was roughly equivalent to students like Yuki Yoshino and Ryoko Sakaki in the Polar Star Dormitory.
Incidentally, Ethan was also a resident of the Polar Star Dormitory now. It wasn't something he intentionally sought out; Gin Dojima had arranged it.
Dojima himself was an alumnus of Polar Star, so naturally, he'd send a promising talent like Ethan there.
Thus, Ethan became one of the earliest members of his generation to join the dorm.
Over the years, besides constantly improving his cooking, Ethan had also been searching for his own "System"—the standard equipment for any transmigrator, after all.
But after more than a decade, his System still hadn't appeared, which left Ethan somewhat disappointed.
Despite the disappointment, he hadn't given up. Today, he was here at the Yukihira Diner specifically to see if his System might require the main storyline to begin before activating.
After all, the activation methods for Systems in the novels he'd read were wildly varied. Besides activating immediately, needing the plot to start was one of the more common triggers.
Of course, Ethan wasn't entirely sure. So, just in case, he'd spent basically every day of this break watching the Yukihira Diner, planning to witness the story's beginning firsthand and see if he truly had a System.
And so, he now witnessed Soma Yukihira dealing with Yaeko Minegasaki using his cooking. This world did have some differences from the Food Wars Ethan knew.
The biggest selling point of Food Wars was supposed to be the almost drug-like effects of the food, but Ethan hadn't seen anything like that happen since he arrived.
Even Soma Yukihira, the "Medicine King" himself, couldn't produce dishes like that here. Additionally, the Nakiri family's "Transfer" ability didn't exist either.
Ethan actually thought it was good these things were gone. He didn't plan on dying alone; he was a normal guy, after all.
Over the years at Polar Star, Ethan's relationship with Megumi Tadokoro had warmed up quickly. He had helped her a lot, even managing to fix her tendency to get nervous.
They were boyfriend and girlfriend now. So, Ethan was quite relieved that the "Transfer" and "drugging" effects were gone.
Those things were impossible to defend against, especially the Nakiri's Transfer—a totally cheap move. He didn't want to be watching a match only to get inexplicably stripped, nor did he want anyone close to him experiencing that.
However, the Nakiri family did retain one special ability: Clothes Burst.
Ethan didn't really have a problem with this ability existing. If clothes were bursting, it was their own clothes, which had absolutely nothing to do with him or anyone else.
[Detected Story Commencement. Fishing System Activating. Transmitting System Information...]
Just as Ethan witnessed the beginning of the story, a mechanical voice suddenly sounded in his mind, followed by a virtual screen appearing before his eyes.
The voice startled Ethan for a moment, but when he snapped back to reality, his face lit up with joy. Finally—the System had activated!
"It really exists! I knew it! As a transmigrator, you've gotta get at least one cheat, right?"
Ethan silently remarked while looking at the virtual screen, then focused his full attention on the System.
===
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