Little Brat

"Come to think of it, your family was really rich, Emiya. These ingredients were all premium goods from the market!" Shiki said, leaning against the refrigerator with her arms crossed.

She was the only person in the kitchen besides Shirou. However, she had not come to help him. As for why she was here, in her own words, "I just couldn't believe a shrimp like you could be that good at cooking. I had to see it for myself."

Shirou had been depressed for a while after hearing that. I'm only small right now. In the future, I'll still be a one-eighty master.

Well, in Japan, one hundred and eighty centimeters was indeed very tall. But outside Japan... everyone understood. Japanese height was a sore spot; during World War II, Japanese soldiers' rifles without bayonets had been taller than they were!

"Because I can't stand that. You get what you pay for, so I just picked the expensive kind." Shirou handled the various ingredients with incredible skill, his movements flowing like clouds and water, dazzling to watch.

Trace On!

As he spoke, Shirou Projected another Chef's Knife that gleamed with cold light. Ever since mastering Projection Magecraft, Shirou had never sharpened a knife again. Magecraft was meant to be used, after all.

He turned the blade, and its smooth surface clearly reflected Shirou's face.

Swish, swish, swish!

Several flashes of cold light passed by, and the cucumbers, carrots, and potatoes on the chopping board were all cut into identical pieces.

"What's wrong?"

Seeing Shirou suddenly stop moving, Shiki asked.

"No, it's nothing. The star of tonight's dinner has just arrived."

"Huh?"

Shirou walked straight out of the kitchen and to the entrance. When he opened the door, just as he had said, the star of the meal had arrived.

A pure white Las Noches uniform, dark green eyes like Shirou's, pale skin, tear-like markings beneath his eyes, and a stark white half-helmet of bone with a horn attached to one side of his head.

In appearance, he looked exactly like Ulquiorra Cifer, the Cuarenta Espada from Bleach. In truth, he really was that Cuarenta Espada.

Slung across Ulquiorra's back was a bluefin tuna over one and a half meters long. That was the real star.

"Looks like you found it," Shirou said.

"Didn't you know that from the beginning?" Ulquiorra replied in his distinctive voice.

"Even so, seeing it with my own eyes and sensing it through our soul connection are completely different feelings!"

Ulquiorra said nothing more and directly tossed the bluefin tuna to Shirou. "This is enough, right?" he said.

"Indeed. And since we were originally one, I suppose there's no need to invite you to dinner, either?" Shirou said jokingly, but Ulquiorra did not seem to appreciate it.

"None of that matters. Hurry up and send me back."

"Got it, seriously. You were obviously split off from my soul, yet you're so boring!"

Ulquiorra's body gradually began to turn into spirit particles, the specks of Reishi all flowing into Shirou's body—or rather, his soul.

Ulquiorra's appearance had not been an accident. Shirou's soul power surpassed even that of other transmigrators by a wide margin. He possessed three times the soul of an ordinary person. To make better use of that power, Shirou had seriously studied Kirie's ability to exist in two places at once, then referred to the situation of Coyote Starrk, the Primera Espada, and his soul-splitting technique to divide his own soul into two parts that could be separated and recombined at will.

In terms of form, Shirou currently had three states in total.

The first was his ordinary state, which needed no explanation. The second was what had just happened: one person becoming two.

As for the third state, it was when Ulquiorra became a Zanpakuto. Only in that form could Shirou perform Resurrección.

"Shirou, was someone there?" Kiritsugu asked after seeing Shirou stand outside the entrance for quite some time.

"No. I had someone ship over a fish, and it just arrived."

He answered casually, then carried the absurdly huge tuna into the kitchen amid everyone else's stunned expressions.

An hour later, dinner at the Emiya Family home began. As expected, the meal developed in a direction that was unexpected, yet perfectly reasonable.

Shirou brought out more than thirty dishes in total. Cuisines from all over the world could be seen here, and over half of those dishes had been made from that enormous tuna.

Mikiya was utterly stunned. One fish could make more than a dozen dishes—was this kid even human? More importantly, not a single one was the same! Good lord, just how much could this brat eat?

Shiki did not have much of a reaction, but until the "battle" between Shirou and Touko Aozaki began, her chopsticks had never stopped moving.

Kirie was somewhat unnatural this time, though no one knew why. Fujino, as always, had a weak presence. No one knew why, either. Even without the tragic experiences of the original timeline, Fujino still had that slightly dazed, adorable air about her.

Shirou blamed it all on the Correction Force. After all, if something as ridiculous as the Counter Force existed, the existence of a Correction Force was hardly strange.

Among the eight people at the table, Illya made the biggest fuss, but she also ate the least. As a homunculus, Illya had no concept of being full. Her appetite had been set at that amount; once she reached it, she would not eat any more.

Kiritsugu brought down a bottle of red wine from the car, claiming that a business friend had given it to him. But Touko took one look at it and pointed out that the winery had not produced a single bottle that year because they considered it unlucky, so the bottle was fake...

Which was to say, Kiritsugu was Kiritsugu from beginning to end. He was not Tokiomi, much less some Magecraft Priest. Collecting wine was impossible for him—impossible in this lifetime.

At the end of the meal, Shirou and Touko began their eating contest again. The tuna had weighed over forty jin in total, and at least thirty of them had gone into those two stomachs. Only today did Mikiya learn that his boss could actually eat so much.

Touko lost to Shirou again, this time in speed. If she wanted to be full, she would need another entire table of food like this.

The last time they had gone to the barbecue restaurant, the two of them had eaten the equivalent of half a month's revenue for that place. Touko's terrifying appetite was obvious from that alone.

As for Shirou, there was something he had never told anyone. It was not that he had a large appetite; he simply digested food quickly. Ninety percent of what he ate was automatically converted into magical energy by his body and stored away. Not only that, even while breathing, Shirou absorbed magical energy from the atmosphere. Sometimes, Shirou himself wondered whether, if he kept absorbing it like this, he might gain a function similar to the Holy Grail of Heaven. Of course, if Touko found out, she would probably go insane!

After dinner, night had completely fallen. Kiritsugu escorted Touko and Shiki to the entrance.

What he did not know was that on top of a distant high-rise, a woman in a black trench coat lowered the sniper rifle that had been aimed at him just moments before. "That brat Kiritsugu seemed to be doing pretty well! I'll hurry up and finish this job, then go find him."