Lol wtf is this speculation
Azami is obvious villan. He wants to shut down every sub-par restaurant in Japan, and turn Totsuki into a goon factory, sparing none of Totsuki's brightest except his daughter and Soma because J-Rou.
But this is cute, playful Erina is playful. She's already...
He's challenging in the one thing he has a fighting chance at. Calm down. Eishi is overworked and probably only the 1st Seat because Rindou is lazy too.
There's no real heated enemies in Shokugeki, but they were rivals. Soma turns rivals into friends for the most part, and that's the good part. Soma has a new person to subdue and turn to an ally every arc. Nikumi, Takumi, Alice, and soon Erina.
She's no longer an obstacle to Soma at the end of the day though. I see Hayama as a far larger hype shokugeki than Erina, she's pushed to the side whenever convenient TBH. She isn't a threat to his progress in my eyes.
I think thaf after the Central arc, she won't be Soma's nemesis in any...
That's later on, and probably won't be the case. She's basically a completely different character after the revelation and no doubt the damsel, and useless for a while longer. She's glued together by Hisako more or less. I can even imagine Soma getting a higher E10 seat that she can't even...
He can suck it up and deal with it, we've seen this once or twice already. Soma is just really reckless and needs somebody close to put him in check. Eishi won't be that person, but working under him will let him use it against Central later on.
TBH Erina surrendered all the way back in 151 when she went into moeblob mode. She began to secretly acknowledge his potential all the way back in the Moon Banquet festival. Soma is going to play along with Eishi until Erina or Isshiki throws him a lifeboat and it's back to normal by Spring...