i actually made kuon and zenzo (whose name was different at the time) first, independently of each other, then made a universe where they could both live. the aspect about cooking demons came from kuon's inspiration, jaye from arknights. i thought it would be interesting for cooking to be a major part of the story, but its not treated the same as in dunmeshi for example, because of its place in the world. the world basically sprang up around those two

(zenzo's original incarnation was an arknights oc called cierzo, and kuon's original incarnation was a hypothetical jjk oc with a similar name.)