Work Text:
Long, magenta hair, the color of the first blush of a budding rose—was tied into a neat ponytail with delicate braids woven throughout. And her eyes? Chocolate. As saccharine and delicate as the bonbons in his family’s patisserie, but not overly sweet, no. Just enough that when you tasted it, the cocoa had a crumbling texture.
A fashionably worn College of International and Public Affairs uniform with a white button-up blouse, navy skirt, and an orange neckerchief in a stylistic knot. An intriguing purplish-black tattoo that peeked beneath the white of her sleeve…
Ashe sighed, his chin sinking into the palm of his hand. Oh, Petra Macneary was stunning.
“Hey!” Dorothea waved her hand in front of Ashe’s face. When all he did was smile—like a buffoon, he admitted—she slapped his arm. “Wake up! Are you going to keep staring, or what? Honestly.”
Startled, he dropped his arm. “I–I was trying to pay attention to the lecture.”
Dorothea gave him a pointed stare, her mouth curling into a grimace. “International Hospitality Management is over, Ashe.” With a casual flick of her wrist, she swept her brunette curls over one shoulder. She wore the College of Business Administration’s uniform—a yellow monstrosity she never stopped complaining about, yet somehow managed to pull off with effortless grace.
Next to her, Ashe’s cream polo and optional olive-green tie expected of the College of Hospitality and Tourism, looked practically elegant. Not that he’d ever admit that to her.
“Besides,” Dorothea went on, “I took notes. If I’m going to run an opera house that actually caters to the masses one day, I’d better be ready.”
He smiled. “You truly are diligent.”
She shook her head. “I’m forward thinking,” she corrected. She pushed her laptop toward him and tapped the keyboard. The screen opened to the document for today’s lecture. “I knew you would be too distracted to listen. Again.”
“Again?!” he sputtered.
She groaned and swiveled her laptop back around, typing furiously. “I’m just going to email this to you.”
Ashe beamed at her appreciatively. He snapped his own laptop shut and slid it into his backpack. “I guess it’s time for lunch?”
Dorothea sighed as if giving up on whatever it was she was frustrated about and glanced at him. “That’s right,” she agreed. “Let’s walk over together. Our other friends from the World Cultures Club are mostly done with classes for the day, I think.”
Ashe nodded, standing up to walk into the hall. “Dedue has Language Lab later with Dimitri and Edelgard, though.”
“A shame,” said Dorothea through a laugh and a touch of sarcasm. “Must be difficult to be part of rich families running big-time conglomerates.” She shook her head, concentrating next on a text she had started on her phone.
Truly, Ashe felt that he should be grateful for having the opportunity to study abroad at the University of Brigid for a year—starting summer semester, he might add. It was not every day that a scholarship student working on a hospitality major from Fhirdiad University made it into the same spaces as students with more impressive pedigrees. And taking classes and making friends with peers from all walks of life, including Faerghus, Adrestia, and Brigid? This was a dream come true.
The fact that so many of his friends had decided to join the World Cultures Club upon their arrival on campus was another stroke of luck. The exchange program had encouraged it.
When they reached the cafeteria halfway across campus, Ashe was happy that their friends had already picked a group of tables in the corner to sit at because he was starving. Unfortunately, he only ate a piece of toast for breakfast. (Perks of rushing out the door after a late-night studying session.)
He and Dorothea set their bags down. As he was about to dig into his backpack’s front pocket where he kept his student ID, Sylvain bumped into him.
“Oops, my bad!” Sylvain exclaimed. He scrambled to help Ashe straighten himself out. His ginger hair blinded him, especially when he smiled like that. He winked at someone behind Ashe, which only bewildered him.
“Dorothea and Ferdinand here were distracting me, honest,” continued Sylvain. “What with their kissy faces.”
“How dare you!” Ashe heard Ferdinand huff from behind him, and he stifled his laugh.
On the other side of the table, Petra sat down across from Ashe’s spot, appearing concerned with the goings-on at the table. “Oh, but what faces are they kissing?” she asked.
Though most of the international students came from the Fόdlan mainland and therefore spoke a common language, Brigid had its own language, and so most everyone in the island country spoke both their native tongue and Fόdlan’s. Ashe struggled with getting used to the language barrier in the months he’d been in Brigid, but he knew enough to get by. In some ways, he was jealous of the others mastering multiple languages. Petra was one of those students.
He wished he could speak more than just a few simple phrases in the Brigid tongue, so that he could speak with her on the same level. He was lucky classes were in Fόdlan’s language.
Ashe stared at Petra, trapped in the way her gaze seemed to lock onto his, and his mouth opening and closing stupidly with some useless answer that he could not think of until—
Grrrrrrrgle...
The entire table erupted into laughter when his stomach gave him away.
Heat rose from his neck to face, and he was sure that he was redder than a too-ripe strawberry. “I–I just…!” He bowed his head and dug through his bag for his ID again. He paused, scrunching his eyebrows together. He was coming up with nothing. “Oh no!”
“What is the matter, Ashe?” Petra inquired.
He snapped up to look at her, eyes wide with panic. “I can’t seem to find my ID, and if I don’t have my ID…”
“You can’t eat in the cafeteria,” Dorothea finished for him. He saw her shaking her head, looking like she had just witnessed someone kicking her puppy. “What a disaster.”
“You can use some of my food credits,” Ferdinand offered, holding out his own ID. “I’ll buy the food for you. I hear they have fish and bean soup, which Petra said you like—and we can look for yours later—” Dorothea nudged him in the ribs. He turned to her, his carrot-orange locks swinging behind him like a school of clownfish dodging a shark. “Ow! What was that for?”
Dorothea leaned forward on her elbows, smiling. She had a predatory look in her eyes. “Speaking of Petra…why, doesn’t your family run that variety store? It’s popular, isn’t it?”
Petra perked up. “You are right!” She glanced at Ashe, glowing far more than was fair, because the more she looked at him like that, the more he felt his heart would burst. She got up and ran to the other side of the table and latched onto his arm, tugging him along in one go. “Let us eat there! It will be the treat!”
So, after a whirlwind, Ashe found himself arm-in-arm with his friend—the girl with the most gorgeous hair—on their way to have lunch together.
Just the two of them.
In Faerghus, summer was a fleeting moment. In Brigid, it was year-round. He learned that the archipelago had three seasons: dry, rainy, and typhoon season. Now, as Verdant Rain Moon ended, the heavy rains became less frequent. Though he was not looking forward to finding out what a typhoon was like.
The heat was constant, and the humidity made walking outside feel like wading through stew. However, the tropical climate made everything appear vibrant, too. Colorful triangular flags flapped in the wind as shopkeepers set up for a local neighborhood festival. Children breaking from school dashed onto side roads, playing kick-the-can.
The streets of Brigid’s capital zoomed by as they walked past peddlers selling sweet tofu from pails and other fellow students rushing to classes. Then, only a few more blocks away, Petra exclaimed, “There it is!” in a joyous voice.
In sparkling golden calligraphy on wood nailed above a striped awning were the words, Royal Variety Store. The storefront was painted eye-catching red, and the awning lifted to reveal a countertop organized with all kinds of products—boxes of fabric softener, packages of sponges, gum, cookies, containers of corn nuts dusted with garlic and salt, toothpaste, tissue packets, and toilet paper rolls. Affixed to the awning were columns of hooks with chip bags clipped to them—potato chips, shrimp chips, banana chips. Another two hooks had house slippers and rubber flip-flops swaying from them.
Through the chaos of all the mismatched items, Ashe spotted a cooler in the back packed with soda, and a basket full of bread bags.
“Grandfather!” exclaimed Petra. She rushed forward, and Ashe tried to match her pace.
A hulking man with a greying beard that reached his chest, a rather fierce-looking jawline, and piercing eyes stared at him from between the stacks of snacks. He wore a loose, sleeveless shirt that revealed muscular arms inked with dark tattoos patterned in geometric shapes. They matched the smaller version tattooed onto Petra’s arm.
He hissed in Brigid’s native language to his granddaughter.
Petra waved. “This is my good friend!” She grabbed Ashe’s hand and raised it above her head. Ashe didn’t have time to blush before she dropped it. “We are on the outing for lunch!”
With a raised eyebrow, Petra’s grandfather gave Ashe a glance that felt more like an appraisal. He then grunted, shuffled for a few minutes in the back, and shoved two cans of soda at them. He lifted a hand as if to say wait. Then he whipped out two plastic bags, flicked the soda can tabs open, poured each into a bag, and thrust straws into them.
“We recycle cans,” Grandfather explained. He gestured at the plastic now in each of their hands instead of cans.
Ashe blinked, then drank from the straw and its bag without a second thought.
Grandfather nodded. He offered another few words to Petra, then tossed a bag of bread to her that she caught. She tucked it into her messenger bag. Petra held Ashe’s hand again, swinging it between them as if it were the most natural thing to do.
Right next to the variety store was a line of wheeled food carts parked under the shade, each with its umbrella open as customers queued for their midday meal. They fell behind an elderly woman waiting at a cart painted in lemon yellow and blue with the words fish balls on the side. A sweaty man labored over a wok popping with oil. He tossed the fried ingredients and stuck them onto bamboo skewers.
When it was their turn, Petra let go of Ashe’s hand, and the spots where their fingers had brushed tingled.
“Sid, two fish ball sticks, if you are being pleased.” Petra grinned.
A moment later, the man gave her a small, folded paper plate with their skewers slathered in a gooey sauce.
Petra led Ashe out of line and into another one, somehow balancing the plate between them. “Take one,” she said.
He held the skewer up to his face, stepping forward as the line moved, and squinted at the pillowy fish balls on a stick. “These aren’t balls,” he pondered with a frown. “They’re flat.”
Petra tilted her head. “But they are called fish balls.”
“Balls are round?” Ashe said as a confused question. “Is this…supposed to be…a semantics thing or—”
With a mischievous smirk, Petra pushed the skewer into Ashe’s mouth and watched with a morbid kind of fascination as he chewed with surprise.
“Oh,” he squeaked, “ish good.”
An explosion of spicy-sweet flavor filled his mouth as the mackerel flaked onto his tongue.
“I guessh it doesn’t matter if ish a ball…”
Just when he and Petra finished their savory meal, they reached the front of the line at the second cart.
Draped in a red checkered cloth and crowned with a rainbow sign, the cart stood out among the others. Behind the counter, a plump, jittery woman clutched an ice cream scoop, humming a tune Ashe couldn’t quite catch.
She sang out something unintelligible, and Petra cheerfully replied, “Ice cream sandwiches with ube flavor, please!” Digging into her messenger bag, she pulled out the bag of bread.
Ashe opened his mouth to ask what she was doing, but before he could, the woman nodded in understanding, reached into the bag, and retrieved two soft buns. With practiced ease, she scooped heaping mounds of brilliant purple ice cream onto each bun.
Luckily, he had finished his bagged soda, because Ashe wasn’t so sure he’d be able to hold the ice cream sandwich in one hand. The edges oozed with velvety purple. A strong, sugary scent curled around his nose.
“An ice cream sandwich,” he said with a laugh, then bit into one end. He hummed with delight.
He’d seen ube sold in dessert shops and restaurants all over Brigid’s capital. The beautiful natural color of purple yams always fascinated him. But for some reason, he had not tried it yet. The sweet, earthy, and nutty flavor was unlike anything he had ever tasted. Buttery bread improved it.
Petra laughed. She led him toward the public beach a little further away from the main street, all the while licking off the ice cream from the corners of her lips. She looked radiant in the summer sun, the rays limning her face like light refracting below ocean waves.
Somehow, it felt perfect that his first taste of ube ice cream happened like this.
They passed a stall where women sold carved cowrie shells etched with mermaids, coconut palms, and dugongs. Ashe leaned in, drawn by the smooth shells glinting with violet-brown speckles. Before he could get any closer, Petra caught his hand, her fingers coiling gently around his wrist.
“Better shells are hiding in the sand,” she said, “and they are being free!”
Ashe did not know how long they spent on the shore after that. They kicked off their shoes and even managed to pilfer two pairs of flip-flops from the Royal Variety Store, giggling all the way back to their piles of collected shells.
His toes vanished into the powdery white sand, the sunset dripping pink where the sky met the sea, and he watched Petra run through the little waves, holding her skirt, toward him.
“This was fun,” Ashe said, right as she returned to his side.
She smiled, and it was brighter than morning. “Tomorrow again?”
He wondered how she could ask so easily, but then again, talking to her was easy.
Ashe wanted to date this girl, even when he returned to Fódlan.
So what if later that night, he found out that Dorothea had stolen his student ID? He couldn’t be angry. (He couldn’t be angry forever, anyway.)
