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THE next day, I was walking through the courtyard with my parasol when Ray called out to me from behind.
“Mayna! Going for a walk? The weather’s still really hot during the afternoons. You should try to stay indoors as much as possible.”
“It’s fine. I won’t be out here for long. Aren’t you still on the clock?”
“I’m on my lunch break.” As he spoke, he took my hand and led me over to a shady spot.
“But I wanted to look at the flowers... Oh well. You know, you’re really good at finding me. How’d you know I was here?”
“I just got lucky,” he replied hastily. “Anyway, after the incident with Kirion, it’s looking like we’ll have to hire a new apprentice, won’t we?”
“We don’t have to. I mean, if someone really wants to study under me for some reason, I’m more than happy to oblige, but there’s no real rush to find my replacement. You see, I was talking to Her Highness yesterday, and she said to me”—I paused to put on my most refined and ladylike voice—“‘I know I told you that you were free to go home once I acclimated to Vaxwald, but the thought of losing you pains me ever so much, especially after all that’s happened. It would mean a great deal to me if you’d agree to stay permanently!’”
I thrust out my chest proudly, but Ray simply scowled. “So you’re going to stay here? In Vaxwald? Forever?”
“I’m certainly thinking about it. Unlike Her Highness, I’m free to visit Myulan anytime, so I can just ask for some time off to take a trip whenever the mood strikes. Besides, when someone tells me they want me to stay, I’m inclined to listen. I just wish a certain someone would take a page out of the Princess’s book.”
“Who?” Ray quirked a brow as though he sincerely wasn’t sure who I meant.
I closed my parasol and pointed at him with it. “You, obviously! I know you’re only trying to get me to leave because you’re worried about my health! I admit, your erratic behavior really threw me for a loop at first, but now I’ve got you figured out. I’ve read Tales of Tribal Romance, you know.”
In the story I read, Dragonkin and Flowerfolk were depicted as polar opposites. Nevertheless, the protagonist discovered his Bondmate was a Flowerfolk, and the two fell in love.
After they moved in together, the Dragonkin’s strength proved to be a bit too much for the Flowerfolk, and he often inadvertently injured her. He couldn’t even hold her hand without being mindful of his grip; he had to handle her as though she were literally a flower. Not even flower fairies are that fragile.
But the biggest problem was the Flowerfolk’s sensitivity to extreme temperatures. Vaxwald’s four distinct seasons were very stressful for her; she often collapsed from heat exhaustion in summer and was practically bedridden in winter. In the story, Vaxwald suffered a record-breaking cold wave that buried the entire nation in a thick blanket of snow. The Dragonkin were all used to it and could leave their houses just fine, but the Flowerfolk wasn’t so lucky.
Worried for his Bondmate’s safety, the protagonist kept the fireplace blazing at all hours of the day and night. Each day, he cautioned the Flowerfolk to stay indoors while he went out to collect firewood. But one day, while he was out buying groceries, a sudden blizzard blew in, delaying his trek home. Having noticed that he was late, the Flowerfolk grew worried and left the house to find him...but the winter winds were so harsh that she quickly grew too cold to move.
By the time the protagonist finally returned home, he found his beloved Bondmate dead on the side of the road. The story concluded with him holding her corpse and sobbing openly. All told, it was a tragic tale.
“You don’t want me to be here when winter rolls around. You want me to go back to Myulan, where the weather is mild.” Framed in this context, Ray’s unfriendly behavior made total sense. “Look... Tales of Tribal Romance is fiction. It’s not real. I told myself, ‘He’s a Dragonkin; surely he knows that.’ And the idea of you actually believing that I’m going to freeze to death was just so ridiculous, I was convinced it had to be some kind of misunderstanding. But when I thought about how you acted back when I had heatstroke...or your behavior towards Kirion...it all started to point toward you being extremely overprotective of me. In which case, it was possible you had started to see Tales of Tribal Romance as a cautionary tale.”
I glanced up at him. It was kind of embarrassing, since I was basically accusing him of being in love with me, but it had to be done. I was sick of him jerking me around all the time; I needed to get to the bottom of this mystery.
“Mayna... I...” Ray hesitated, his expression conflicted.
“I’m not asking because I want you to date me or something,” I continued. “I just want you to know that if you think you can drive me out of Vaxwald over this, you’ve got another thing coming. I’m not as weak as the Flowerfolk from the story; I won’t freeze to death that easily. And for that matter, I can hold hands with anyone just fine. I mean, look at them! Do these hands look that fragile to you?” I held up my perfectly ordinary hands.
“Yes, they do,” Ray replied without hesitation.
“...You’re just saying that because of my injury!”
“Even if you weren’t injured, I bet I could break them if I squeezed hard enough. Besides, how can you say for certain you can endure our winters when you don’t even know what they’re like? I concede that this chapter from Tales of Tribal Romance was set in North Vaxwald, but we still get a decent amount of snowfall here in the capital...and flowers can’t bloom in the snow. But all that aside, I simply can’t take you at your word. Not after you’ve already succumbed to heatstroke once!”
Evidently it was his turn to go on an impassioned tangent. “I only got heatstroke because I was doing a lot of work with fire and curling irons for hours straight,” I muttered.
“Well, you never should’ve agreed to do it in the first place,” Ray snapped. “I don’t care if it was a request from the Queen—with your talent, you should’ve found some other way to meet her demands.”
“Nngh...”
“You have zero self-awareness when it comes to your own physical limits. You think you can do anything a human does. That’s what worries me. I can never trust you when you say you’ll be fine!”
I had no comeback to this.
“And it’s not just summer and winter you’ll have to worry about. A good eighty percent of the year will have temperatures in one extreme or the other. And you’ll have to endure it over and over. Every. Single. Year. Do you get that?”
With no way to defend myself, I sulked silently. How did this conversation turn into a lecture? What had I done to deserve it? This wasn’t what I wanted at all!
Finally, I just couldn’t take it anymore. “Oh, for crying out loud! I know the summers will be hot and the winters will be cold. I know that the seasons will keep repeating every year. I’m prepared for that! I’m going to take care of myself! And I know I’m not as strong as a human in some aspects. I’m not going to overestimate myself! Happy?!” Then I reiterated my point: “Like I said, if you think you can drive me out of Vaxwald ‘for my own safety,’ I’m sorry to say, it’s not going to work! I have a perfectly good reason to stay here!”
“To support Princess Patricia?”
“That’s part of it, but there’s more to it than that.” Summoning up all my hope and determination, I confided, “I want to style hair not just for Her Highness but commoners, too. Going forward, we’re going to see an increase in women who want to wear their hair short, and I want to give them all a nice cut...so I’m thinking about opening my own shop close to the castle. I want to ask each of my clients what they want, and then I want to make that happen for them. I want to help polish the women of Vaxwald until they shine!”
As I spoke, I could feel joy welling in my chest until I was practically gushing.
“And I know the job’s too big for just one person, so I want to train an apprentice or two, and I want to forge connections with other people in the industry—crafters that make hair ornaments as well as other barbers—and I want to create a handbook full of how-to instructions for cutting, braiding, and styling!”