Azalea had a bit of an accent when she was younger. She’d worked to get rid of it, but Maria said it was something interesting about her, so why try to change it?
The accent went away on its own— not intentionally, and not all the way, just naturally fading a bit from living and going to school in New Meli. But Maria was the first person to compliment how she spoke, instead of insulting it and calling it boorish.
Azalea never liked skirts, always wearing the boys' uniform pants.
“How can you fly anyway if you're worried about a skirt?”
“Well, we’re not supposed to be flying. It’s a rule.” Maria had said.
“It’s another mode of control, keeping us on the ground.”
Maria had her moments of trying to get Azalea to be a bit more feminine. Azalea wasn’t a fan of makeup, not liking how any of it looked on her. Covering her red cheeks just made it clearer how incredibly pale she was. She did, however, like experimenting with her hair. She used to pull it all back, but started leaving two sections in the front. Face-framing pieces, Maria called them. It was awkward at first; her hair constantly touching her face was uncomfortable, but she eventually got used to it.
Maria managed to get her to go to the spring dance one year. Only once. It was stuffy and boring, and she couldn’t stand wearing a dress for so long.
“My legs feel so exposed. And how do you walk in these shoes?”
Maria also joined the gardening club with her in their second year, even though she hated dirt and pulling weeds and pretty much everything that gardening entailed. But it was an excuse to spend more time with Azalea.
Azalea felt bad that she was taking up Maria’s time with something she didn’t enjoy, but Maria stayed with it anyway.
“You really like it. I can see it on your face,” Maria had said. “I don’t really get it, but I like seeing you happy.”
Someone who liked seeing you smile. To Azalea, that was almost a foreign concept. But she found she liked to see Maria smile, too.
“Do you think we’ll always hang out like this?” Maria had asked one night. Azalea was on her bedroom floor as Maria braided her hair.
“Yeah. Of course.” Azalea almost believed it.
But then there was Basil. Oh, what to say about him?
Azalea didn’t see him often, only having quick glimpses and what little information that Maria would divulge to go off of. The pair only knew each other because of being in the same top-level violin competitions. It was something to do with Maria’s parents. They are affluent, their family making their money in quartz mining. Not entirely respected by Silph's high society, being new money types, but enough money to buy their way into social clubs.
Basil was a Starton golden boy. Literally. Gold hair, gold eyes, golden ether witchling. A future military officer turned politician who is not at all qualified for a position in public office.
He was off to bigger and better things. A fish who’d grown too big for his pond. And while he was bound to be in for a rude awakening once he was in the open ocean, he'd certainly outgrown Maira.
He ended things with a letter. What exactly was in that letter was lost to time, as Maria tore it to pieces. Methodically shredding the paper into the tiniest bits of confetti before dousing it in water and tossing it into the compost bin. A bit dramatic, Azalea was quick to mention, but possibly a bit fitting for his words to be eaten by the earthworms.
It couldn’t possibly have been worth it. So Azalea couldn’t understand what it was about some guy that managed to take her best friend from her.
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Azalea had dropped gardening sometime in her fourth year to make time for her parents’ shop. Maria dropped the club too, not having much reason to stay if Azalea wasn’t there. But this was the same time she was going out with Basil, so it felt like she was dropping Azalea, too.
She hung around Dario and Woo-Jin because she didn’t have much else to do. Maria spent all her extra time on the violin, which included her lunch period now.
She knew that Dario and Maria were cousins. At least after quite some time of confusing them for siblings. They did look it. It didn’t help that they would sometimes joke about being twins.
“That’s because I’m the good twin,” Dario would say after getting a better score on their anatomy quiz.
Dario and Woo-Jin had that rapport of friends who'd known each other for a long time. They threw jabs at each other in a game of verbal tennis when all they were doing was discussing a book they both had read.
“Every character is just some mouthpiece that goes on and on, monologuing and over-explaining things like the reader is an idiot,” Dario said.
“Just because you think it’s boring doesn’t mean it doesn’t have something to say. It’s a classic for a reason,” Woo-Jin replied.
“Well, of course, you would like it. The author has that sense of self-aggrandizement you can only have when you think everyone else is an idiot by default.”
They’d have their arguments about these texts, then go back to talking about their day or plans to hang out later. It felt bizarre.
Azalea also came to notice how they were with money. Neither of them blinked at the cost of a hot meal. They didn’t think twice about where the money for their next semester of textbooks was coming from. And sure, they didn’t come from super wealthy families like Maria did, but they had enough to never actually have to think about money a day in their lives.
One of their “discussions” did end up being a fight. She’d gotten the play-by-play from Woo-Jin while they did revisions together in the lunchroom. Azalea didn’t follow on what exactly the disagreement was, and refused to get involved.
She didn’t feel he had the energy to get involved after looking over Woo-Jin’s transmutation assignments. Every time he asked her to quickly check his work, Azalea told him it would be better to redo the entire thing. It would honestly be a miracle if he managed to pass the class.
He was doing fine in other classes, great actually, so his doing so poorly with transmutations was starting to get to him. At some point, revisions turned into tutoring sessions, as Woo-Jin had a big gap in understanding of the material.
“You have your basic elements. Fire, water, life, and decay. Then you have ether in the middle. You could turn fire essence to ether and back again, but you couldn't turn it into life essence, for example. Ether is the sort of base that the other elements branch off of. But of course, the act of transmutation is always going to have some essence be lost, and it’s best to get these naturally whenever you can, but it’s still useful when you can’t get a certain type naturally.”
Azalea didn’t work for free, though, expecting something in exchange. She was quick to accept food items, desserts that Woo-Jin brought her.
The start of their actual relationship was more mortifying than anything else. He’d asked her right near the fountain if a kiss would substitute as payment for her troubles. It was the end of the school day. The students from the drama club were nearby, laughing amongst themselves as they waited for Woo-Jin to make his way back. Azalea couldn’t help but feel they were laughing at her.
“I kid, I kid,” he said with a smirk, holding out a sweet bun to her. “But there is the dance this weekend. We could go out, you know?”
Azalea shifted on her feet. “Is this your idea of a prank?”
He instantly lost what suave and composure he’d managed to muster. “What? No, I—”
“Well, it’s not very creative,” Azalea said as she took the bun before turning to walk. “Try to come up with your own material.”
He grabbed her arm. “No. I’m serious, really.”
“You think you’re so funny—” she started, turning quickly on her heel.
A bit too quickly. She lost her footing and tumbled backwards, dragging Woo-Jin down with her into the fountain.
The rest was a blur. Hands dragging her out and to her feet, voices jumbled together, coughing hard after getting a lungful of water. As soon as she had her bearings, she grabbed her dropped bag and scurried off.
Azalea changed out of her drenched uniform, making a pitiful attempt at patting herself dry over the sink. She’d gone from thinking she was the target of a prank from the other students to being pulled out of the fountain and getting the attention of everyone in the courtyard.
She finally gave up with the towel, staring herself down in the mirror. Her thin hair stuck to her face, which looked exceptionally red that day, maybe from the embarrassment of the whole ordeal. Her hair was brown. Not a chestnut brown or a dark auburn, but a dull mousy brown, a grayish look to it. She smelled like algae and wet clothes.
She’d gone from plain to a total mess. Who was asking her out, honestly?
Azalea tried to make the walk off campus unseen after spending a sufficient amount of time hiding in the bathroom. This proved difficult as she had to push through the same courtyard she’d run from earlier. She kept her head down and walked quickly, hoping that would be enough.
It wasn’t enough, clearly. Her shoulders were tense as she saw Woo-Jin coming towards her, still in his wet uniform as he apologized for the whole ordeal, clutching a bundle of cloth. It was a change of clothes he’d pinched from the costume closet. He said no one would notice they were gone and he’d hate for her to go home all wet, but it seemed she already had that problem covered.
Azalea brushed her wet hair out of her eyes. “It’s fine, it was an accident.” She wanted to push past him and pretend it never happened.
“I still feel bad. You look like a cat that’s been dunked.”
“I could say the same about you,” she said through a chuckle. She couldn’t help but laugh now. A snorting, ugly sound that she couldn’t stop.
His black hair almost blocked his eyes now. The way it clung to him had given him the appearance of a kitten who had gotten out of the bath. And then they were both laughing, tension suddenly melting away.
“I wasn’t messing with you before. About the dance. I mean, you could have just said no.”
Azalea paused. He’d proven to some degree he wasn’t asking her with malicious intentions, so what’s the worst that could happen?
“I still don’t want to go to the dance. Those things are beyond dull. But maybe we could bail on that and do something else. Anything else, really.”
His face lit up. “Alright then.”
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They stayed out way too late that night. “Anything else” ended up being the two of them sharing a slice of sticky pound cake while loitering on some apartment’s rooftop. Having already known each other, they mostly skipped the usual first date questions. What do you like to do in your free time? What pets have you had? What’s your favorite restaurant?
Something about being up on the roof, the stars above them on a cloudless night, made Azalea go straight to the sore spots. Something she’d much rather tell Maria, but Maria wasn’t around much
“I have this feeling,” she started. “Like, deep in my chest— that I’m always doing something wrong. And everyone knows what it is except me, and they won’t tell me.”
“Like, feeling guilty for something?” Woo-Jin between bites.
She snorted. “I’m Orlian. I always feel guilty. Isn’t the whole religion based on guilt? No, this is more— It’s more like everyone else got a manual on how to act normal. But I never got mine.”
He wiped his hands with a napkin. “You’re probably just too in your head. I mean, who cares what other people think?”
“That's easy for you to say. You’re incapable of being embarrassed. ‘Would a kiss suffice as payment next time?’ Could you get any cornier?”
“That’s the first thing they beat into your head in theater. You can’t commit to the performance if you're afraid of making a fool of yourself. And putting yourself out there means not being afraid to embarrass yourself.”
“Maybe that's why I don’t do theater. If I could act, I'd be able to at least act normal in my everyday life.”
“Well, normal’s a little overrated, isn’t it? It’s boring, honestly.”
“Is that why you’re here? Because I’m so not normal.”
“It’s because you’re not boring. At least when you leave your own head.”
“How so? How am I not boring?” She honestly didn’t know. She’d always thought of herself as rather plain, uninteresting, blending into the background. Maria certainly seemed bored with her.
“You said once you associate people with flowers.”
“Yeah?”
“What flower would you be then? I would guess azaleas, but that’s a little on the nose, isn’t it?”
“Very on the nose,” she laughed. “No, I’d be a dandelion.”
He seemed confused. “What, like the weed?”
“They didn’t used to be considered weed. The whole flower is edible, and they grow everywhere. They’ll even grow through concrete. My grandmother used to have a patch of them in her garden so we could pick them without worrying about pesticides, and she’d make soup with the greens. I think that’s why I like them.”
“See, that’s something not boring. Other girls would choose a flower that just looks pretty.”
“Well, I still think dandelions are pretty.
“So what flower would I be?” Woo-Jin asked.
Azalea took a moment to answer, as if he had to think about it and didn’t already have an answer. “You’re an iris. Kingdoms miles away from each other and hundreds of years apart use the same flower as a symbol. Feels like there's something inherently regal about it, you know?”
“You think I’m regal?”
“I think you’re cocky. A peacock preening itself.”
He smiled. “Aw, you think I’m pretty.”
Azalea didn’t admit to that. But there was something about the way he closes his eyes when deep in thought. The way his nose scrunches when he’s confused. The way his jewel beetle markings match his eyes.
The night ended with a kiss before they parted ways. A kiss that tasted like honey and cardamom, crumbs of pastry still on his lips. It was her first. Azalea didn’t admit it.
The kiss wasn’t an all-encompassing, overwhelming thing described in novels and poems. But it was warm. Being that close to someone, feeling their body heat radiating from their skin, felt nice.
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She only really started the relationship because she realized she was lonely, as it felt like Maria didn’t have any time for her. Just chatting in the park was more than enough to push away the lonely feeling, and who was she to deny romance when it fell out of the sky? And maybe she’d just been curious. Curious about how a romantic relationship could get you to drop all the other things in your life. If it was really this unavoidable whirlpool of emotions that swept you away and out to sea.
Azalea didn’t feel that with Woo-Jin, not exactly, but she liked having someone around to talk to. She liked seeing him and talking to him, and getting him to admit things that were deeper, more personal. Like admitting that he was wrong in his fight with Dario and wanted to fix things. Or talking about his parents.
“They aren’t really my parents,” he said.
They shared a pollen pipe. Azalea didn’t take him for the type, thinking an actor would care a little more about their voice. The two had fallen into the habit of smoking together in their corner of Roslin’s. Roslin could stop them from drinking by refusing to sell to them, but couldn’t stop them smoking the pollen they’d brought themselves. This was the good stuff, it didn’t burn pink or leave a bad taste in your mouth. Your innermost thoughts tumble out more easily when it gots to your head.
“But they took care of you,” Azalea said. “Raised you.”
“I’m more like a novelty to them. Some trinkets in their collection. And they won’t tell me anything about my birth parents or where I’m from, because they honestly don’t know. The way that private adoption operates is pretty shady. They couldn’t have been bothered to find out.”
But that had been months before. The warmth of summer had long since given way to the dead of winter, and with that came overthinking. The problem was now Woo-Jin was the one who seemed not to have time for her. She felt as though she didn’t have any room to complain. The two of them danced around the subject of what exactly their relationship was. And she didn’t want to sound needy, oh, pay attention to me, please. But that is what she wanted. Attention. Just a bit.