Kitchen Princess, Volumes 7 and 8

Volume 7

Seiya is to replace Najika as the academy spokesperson. He thinks Najika's deserts don't taste good. He depends on science totally, reducing cooking to mathematics and science while Najika holds that cooking also involves love.

She's also really nasty to Najika. The end up deciding to have a cooking competition. The judges taste their cooking and judge Najika's to be best but Seiya won't accept that, so he has a professional food critic make the call. She also judges Najika's to be the best. Najika cooked her deserts to fit the individual tastes of the judges which is why she won.

Seiya is a really bad loser. The director is mad at Seiya for losing and wants him to crush her in front of everyone in another competition. Akane makes a desert for Daiichi, but he tells her he likes Najika. Najika wins an eating contest to raise money for the orphanage she came from and Seiya gets mad at her for disturbing his dinner.

Najika is ill. She now thinks Seiya might be her flan prince.

Volume 8

Seiya makes fun of Lavendar House, the orphanage, and Najika slaps him. The director wants Najika to participate in something special for guests. It doesn't dawn on her that it could be a trap of some sort. Najika is told that Lavendar House is being shut down. It also turns out the high tea for the guests was a trap after all.

The director wants her to lose to Seiya. If she does, he'll save Lavendar House. Daichi finds out about the trap and confronts Najika. The director's effort is blocked, though, so it becomes an honest competition. The director keeps trying to put down Najika's efforts, but the contest is judged a tie.

Daichi and Najika are becoming closer and closer while Seiya gets madder and madder about all the attention she's been getting. Seiya starts working at the diner to keep an eye on Najika but he continues to demonstrate that he has no people skills at all.

Then it turns out that Seiya seems to be interested personally in Najika.