Kotori Iida is a high school student who appears as a central supporting character. She is the only daughter of Megumi Iida, a professional chef who owns and operates the restaurant Megumi. Her parents are divorced, and because her mother’s work as a television personality frequently keeps her away from home, Kotori spends much of her time alone. This loneliness is compounded by a significant personal obstacle: Kotori is deeply afraid of knives. The phobia stems from a childhood accident in which she cut herself badly, and it severely limits her ability to cook despite growing up in a culinary household.

In terms of personality, Kotori is shy, soft-spoken, and reserved. She is genuinely polite and considerate, and she derives a quiet satisfaction from helping others. Although she can be timid, she possesses a strong desire to support the people around her, especially when food is involved. Her disposition is gentle and earnest, and she tends to be introspective. When she is preparing and sharing meals, her demeanor brightens noticeably, revealing a deep-seated need for connection and the joy of communal eating.

Kotori’s primary motivation revolves around overcoming her isolation and reclaiming a sense of family and belonging through cooking. By inviting her mathematics teacher, Kouhei Inuzuka, and his young daughter, Tsumugi, to use her mother’s restaurant kitchen for cooking sessions, she creates a surrogate family environment. She wants to learn to cook not just to master a skill but to nurture others and to fill the emotional emptiness left by her mother’s frequent absence. Her actions are driven by a longing for the warmth and togetherness that shared meals can bring.

Her role in the story is that of a catalyst and a cooking partner. Kotori is the one who enables Kouhei, a widowed single father struggling to provide proper home-cooked meals for Tsumugi, to begin learning how to cook. She provides access to her mother’s restaurant, shares recipes from Megumi’s collection, and gradually participates more actively in the cooking process. While she starts as someone who can only assist due to her knife phobia, she becomes an essential part of the trio’s regular cooking gatherings. Her presence turns the act of preparing dinner into a ritual of healing for both the Inuzukas and herself.

Kotori’s key relationships define much of her narrative. With Kouhei, she forms a bond that is both respectful of the teacher-student boundary and deeply supportive. She is in love with him but understands the impropriety of pursuing those feelings while she is his student, so she keeps them private, confiding only in her best friend Shinobu Kojika. Her love is not possessive; rather, she wants to remain present in both his and Tsumugi’s lives. With Tsumugi, Kotori develops a warm, sisterly affection, often looking after the child and delighting in her enthusiastic reactions to food. Shinobu is her closest friend and confidante, and Shinobu’s observant, sometimes teasing support helps Kotori navigate her emotions and gain confidence. Kotori’s relationship with her mother Megumi is marked by distance but also by shared culinary heritage; her mother’s recipes are the foundation of their cooking sessions, and as the story progresses, Megumi becomes more present, leading to a gradual reconciliation.

Kotori’s development centers on overcoming her knife phobia and her loneliness. Through the regular cooking gatherings, she slowly confronts her fear, moving from a helper who cannot touch a knife to someone who can assist more directly and eventually cook more independently. This personal growth is intertwined with her finding a place where she feels needed and valued. She learns that her capacity to care for others through food is not hindered by her fear, and her confidence builds as she sees the Inuzukas enjoy the dishes she helps create. By the end of the series, she has regained a connection to her family’s culinary tradition and has built a meaningful, lasting bond with Kouhei and Tsumugi, securing a sense of belonging that she lacked at the start.

Her notable abilities include a strong theoretical knowledge of cooking, inherited from her mother’s recipes and the restaurant environment, and a meticulous, careful approach in the kitchen once she begins to overcome her fear. She has a good memory for ingredients and techniques, and she is diligent in planning meals that suit Tsumugi’s tastes. While she is not a natural cook in the beginning due to her phobia, her persistence and keen observation allow her to become increasingly competent. She also demonstrates emotional intelligence, picking up on the needs of others and adjusting her support accordingly. Her driving talent lies in using food as a medium to express care and to create a nurturing space for the people she has come to see as her extended family.