After our classes and after having changed into our civilian clothes, the love interests and I were crowded in the deserted combo lab and greenhouse. Notes, potted plants, dustings of dirt, and Sylvain’s steaming cauldron crowded our polished stone table. Everyone had long retired to their dorms for the night, so we had the freedom to work on our project in private.

I cupped the ceramic flower pot before me.

Blue petals. Blue petals. Blue petals.

That’s what we needed to stabilize the basic foundation of our potions. Like the last ingredient for a cake batter of flour, sugar, eggs, so on, before we started getting funky with cinnamon, chocolate chips, sprinkles, and more than a few reality-bending magic plants. Made sense to me. (That definitely wasn’t how Sylvain explained it–Lou interrupted his high-level magic rant to give me the cake metaphor.)

The plant was out of season, so either one of us opened his pockets to buy a magically-propagated (and scarily pricey) pot or two, or I used my powers to help us out.

I closed my eyes and visualized the Eavredor dewdrops blooming into the adorable little blue flowers that Rémi had shown me in his textbook. They’d open like the flower that cradled Thumbelina in the Don Bluth movie, all perfect without a vein or a nick. I tried to funnel that image through my hands.

And my concentration burst with the sound of thunder bottled up in a glass jar. The guys cried out, chairs scraping, books dropping, and Rémi laughing.

Fearing the worst, I squinted open my eyes. The plant had grown…into a globe-shaped mass of squirming leaves the size of my head and a shower of fluffy dandelion-like seeds.

“At least the fluffs are blue,” I mumbled.

Rémi cheered, nudging Louis hard in the side. “Pay up, Chapelle.”

“You bet on her?” Étienne asked.

I dropped my head into the ball of leaves as the gold coins exchanged hands. “I’m never gonna get this. I’m sorry, guys.”

Étienne sighed, prodding at the leaves with his gloved hand. His sweater was stuck with a billion little seed puffs. “It’s alright. Maybe we’re pushing you too hard; it isn’t like any of us are magicians who can properly tutor you, after all. Rémi, I hope that money will be used to buy our next batch of dewdrops.”

“I wanted to be your secret weapon,” I moaned.

Étienne patted my shoulder and carefully took the leaves away from me, adding them to the pile of daisies I failed to bloom and carrots I failed to grow. It was probably the love interest film over all their eyes that made them want to give me the Eavredor dewdrops at all.

Love Blooming wasn’t an RPG, so it didn’t have any magical mechanics. Not even something as rudimentary as a spell list or a mana bar. Maybe I wrote tons of LB fanfic, re-re-read Harry Potter, and stacked my Final Fantasy teams with a clear bias towards mages (they always had the cutest designs), but I felt as prepared for spellcasting as, well…as any normal person would be.

Rémi flicked a clod of dirt at Sylvain, who was seated at the far end of the table beside his small cauldron (it looked like a portable, cast iron fondue pot), chopping up stems. Rémi asked, “Hey, join our pity party. Or are you planning on tackling this whole thing alone?”

“I’m just preparing the basic foundation for the potions.” He neatly cut through stem after stem, tidily peeling them open with a knife and putting them into the lightly-simmering cauldron.

I asked, “The cake batter?”

“Yes,” he said stiffly.

Lou peered over. “We don’t know when we’re gonna get the dewdrops, though. Shouldn’t you wait before boiling all that down?”

“No. I’m using saffron, not sunflower. It keeps much better and for much longer once boiled down. It also tastes far more mild.”

“Why the heck do we use sunflower in class, then?”

Rémi, who was helping Étienne and me peel off the leaves from my mutant plant like the layers of an onion, said, “‘Cause it costs half the price. Perfect for a class that’s gonna burn through it–literally, in some cases.”

“That was once! And why do you know all that, anyways? It’s not like they taught it.”

“Maybe you were asleep or daydreaming when they did.” Rémi blew away some dandelion-like fluffs that had floated up into his face. “Nah. I was chatting with Dupont about it last year; he told me all about it. Jeez, Lou, what’s that look for?”

Étienne’s smile had a rare, pleasant crookedness to it, like he was trying not to laugh. “You don’t seem like the type to learn more than he’s forced to, is all.”

“Come the hell on.” Rémi whacked Lou on the shoulder with a handful of leaves. “It’s a miracle you knew we used sunflowers in class at all. What else are you working so hard on in the study rooms? It’s not your class ranking, that’s for sure.”

I said through my fingers, “He’s making a fantasy world with his friends.”

Lou stared at me. Not offended, but surprised–so surprised that I realised I shouldn’t know that yet in this route. I added, “I heard, once, through the door… It’s really cool!”

Sylvain rolled his eyes. Rémi laughed his great bark of a laugh, but he said, squeezing the shoulder he’d just swatted, “Hey, world needs creative people more than it needs people who’ll follow the rules.”

I smiled as the guys continued to rib each other about their class rankings (something mentioned in passing in the game, with Sylvain dominating the top position). Rémi even tried to drag in Sylvain a couple times, but he clung to his cauldron instead.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

The air shifted hard, though, when Rémi said, “And the prince over here can’t tell a paragraph from a sentence but you wouldn’t know that from his pity grades. I just ignore wherever he ranks.”

Sylvain gave a little hm without looking up, packing that sound with so much clear disdain that it took me aback. Étienne brushed the last of the dirt and fluff off his hands into the compost bin, saying, “I know. It isn’t fair.”

“I’m sure you’re plenty smart, Étienne,” I said. Wasn’t he? I mean, the game focused so little on his academic exploits, having more fun with his sparkly princely affairs, so I didn’t know anything about his schoolwork.

“He spells like he grew up in a laundry with the rats.”

I huffed at Rémi. “Don’t be a jerk. How would you even know?”

“We’ve been stuck in classes together since he showed up.” Rémi swung an arm around Étienne’s shoulders, yanking the prince off-balance. “We took a creative nonfic class together. Had to share our work all ‘round. Of course, any prof was so thrilled to hear what His Highness had to say about fucking anything…”

Étienne repeated, firmer, “I know. I don’t like it either.”

“What can I expect, though? He's a hooligan. Been smoking and drinking since he was fifteen!"

Étienne shrugged Rémi off. Oops. A sore spot, for sure. The kind of sore spot that built a whole character arc, actually.

Rémi turned to me. "I guess you don't know about that, do you? That'd make you the only person on the continent who hasn't heard about the prince's rock and roll reputation."

“That doesn’t sound like him.”

“Don’t worry; next week, Étienne’s speaking at the opening of the newest orphanage for sick children–”

Étienne sighed, “It’s a children’s ward at the hospital, R–”

“–so the papers will be plastered with that old drawing of when he got caught smoking at the horse races. You know, so we don’t forget that deep down, he’s a mess who’s gonna turn Eavredor into a country of beer flowing through the streets and prostitutes on every corner.”

“What is all this yammering?”

All of us, even Étienne, whirled to the greenhouse doorway. There was one of the botany professors, half-changed into his civilian clothes and red in the face.

“Don’t you know what time it is? All of you should have cleared out of this building hours ago, not gotten started with your homework!”

Lou squeaked, “Uh, sorry, sir–”

“And what is all this mess?”

Rémi held up his hands. “We’re dealing with it, right?”

“I don’t see a broom in your hands! Must I write you up for being out of bounds and working with school property without a slip?”

Sylvain rolled his eyes, turning his back to the professor. Lou looked freaked. Étienne said, “We apologize, sir.”

The professor paled. There really was something about Étienne in civilian clothes that made him disappear, but his voice must have made everything snap back into focus.

“We’ll tidy up immediately. We weren’t aware that so much time had passed.”

The professor nodded jerkily and muttered, “Right, well, I’d hope so,” before vanishing out the door.

Rémi cuffed Étienne's shoulder. However, he must have noticed what I did, because he didn’t deliver another jab: Étienne had deflated and darkened a little. In the quiet, we all started to pack up.

~*~

The evening halls of the class buildings kinda creeped me out and reminded me of wandering the halls of Resident Evil, so I eagerly took Rémi’s offer to walk me to my dorm. I was happy to have his company–

Until he tugged me by the sleeve into a hall I’d never seen before. Each door had a plaque and a name.

These were the professors’ offices!

“What are you doing?” I hissed.

“St-Guillaume was pretty rude to His Highness, huh?” Rémi said casually as he peered at each plaque in the dark hallway.

I, meanwhile, was looking through the frosted office windows to make sure the lights were off and no one would catch us sneaking around. It seemed deserted…not like that was much comfort when Rémi found the door he wanted and immediately started fiddling with the lock with his tie clip.

He pushed the office door open and swung out his arm, like how Étienne's footman invited me out of the royal carriage.

I hesitated.

…Who cared? I wasn’t Hanna, after all. What did consequences matter, if they didn’t end in my head being lopped off my shoulders or my new friends slammed in jail? (Actually, don’t think about that, I don’t want to freak out.)

I scurried into the office.

Rémi flicked on the lights. He ushered me to the back wall with its honeycomb shelves full of books, knick knacks, and little potted herbs that made the place smell pleasantly earthy. I admired what seemed to be regency-era tools: looking glasses and needle threaders, pocket watches and hand-drills, all perfectly dusted and under protective glass that reflected my yellow eyes.

“You know what you should do, right?”

“Use my powers for evil?”

“Not evil. Just give him a little shock tomorrow morning.”

I was one of maybe three dozen students with magic powers at La Belle Lavande. I’d totally get caught. But Rémi’s grin made that knowledge seem inconsequential.

"You're right. What can they do to me? I have the prince in my corner, after all."

"See, that's the spirit."

I picked up the nearest plant pot and activated my power. I didn't even know what described it best. A faucet? A force? Either way, once it was nudged, I had no way to stop it.

The herbs all spilled out of their pots and down their shelves, looking more like ferns and brambles and spidery tangles of roots when I was done with them. Once I set down the last pot, I realised that technically, I’d sort of been controlling my powers right there. Not like there were many situations where my chaos was the goal.

“Hey, Rémi, I’m–” I turned and spotted him writing on a pack of paper on the desk. “What are you doing?”

Rémi showed me the paper. It was an essay or something, its pages full of handwriting interspersed with marks in the same red as Rémi’s pen. “Étienne will appreciate it, promise.”

Once Rémi was done, we hurried out of the office. Rémi shrugged at the now-unlocked door. “Think you can teach one of those vines to lock it for us?”

“Dream on.”

“Hey, maybe one day.”

I giggled, but the implications rattled uncomfortably in my brain as we snuck out of the hall of offices. Would I ever be good enough to do that?

Would I be here long enough to become good enough?

Rémi snapped me out of it (something he was getting pretty good at). "Hey, do you have anything going on tomorrow night?"

"Nope."

"You wanna come to trivia night at the campus tavern? I promise it’s not as lame as it sounds. Plus I've got lots of friends I can introduce you to, so you'll never be alone on a Friday again."

Tavern? Trivia? A pack of strangers, all as loud and outgoing as Rémi? That’d be a nightmare to Hanna.

“Sure thing. Mind if I invite a friend too?”