Tachibana Kei

Tachibana Kei is a second-year student in Shokusen's Culinary Department and is an expert on spices. His guardian is detective Shitara Kanau and he is currently staying with him.

Appearance
Kei has red hair and droopy eyes, often wearing a mask to protect his nose from surrounding bad smells.

Kei wears a black blazer over a plain crew-neck white shirt with the school tie, school pants and high-cut sneakers that are tied messily around his leg.

Moriya Satoru has mentioned that Kei's red hair and mask makes him stand out.

History
11 years ago from the start of the series, Kei was living with his mother in an apartment. His mother neglected him and always served him instant noodles or frozen food. Kanau describes Kei's mother as "a woman to whom 'cooking' was an absolute foreign idea". Kei's mother smoked in the house and almost never cleaned up the place.

Kei was fed instant noodles and frozen food 3 meals a day, 365 days a year, which resulted in Kei's body rejecting the same food. Kei then began learning of spices and ingredients that would change the taste of food.

After entering elementary school, one day, he was required to bring his parent's homemade bento. His mother prepared one and gave it to Kei, making Kei extremely happy and he skipped joyfully on his way to school. However, he stumbled and fell, spilling the food all over the ground. Although the food was ruined, Kei proceeded to still eat the food on the ground, not caring that he had fallen and thought that the bento was the most delicious thing he had in his life.

The school day ended and Kei opened the door to his home, noticing that his mother was talking on the phone again. He overheard his mother, revealing that his homemade bento was nothing more than the frozen food he got every day.

After this incident, he started not to trust his own tongue, not being able to feel or taste anything, and soon, Kei was devoted to spices.

His mother soon went missing and half a year had gone by before Kanau finally came and acted as the guardian of Kei. Upon entering the house Kei was in, Kanau found Kei surrounded with stacks of empty instant noodles packaging and spices in a dirty room.