Flowers and Weeds, Stars and Light, Lead and Follow

Chapter 1: Akaze

A girl smiled at her.

Akaze was instantly acquainted with Cherryton students glancing her way, their stares lingering once they recognized her face from paper print. One truly brave group of rabbits didn't bother hushing their giggles like the rest. It was up to her to quiet them down with a glare that they instantly avoided their gaze from.

She'd witnessed this reaction upon her arrival enough times to know that those murmurs, laughs, and wondering glances, would follow her for the rest of the day.

But the moment she stepped in the gardening club, she was met with serene silence and the smell of wild flowers and soil. Akaze, blinking the sunlight out of her eyes as she stepped further into the garden, suspected for a moment that she might have misjudged this place.

Then, footsteps cracked through the momentary piece.

"Hello. Welcome to the gardening club. May I help you?," a girl asked, and Akaze looked down at the source of the voice. A rabbit girl- a dwarf rabbit, she suspected since she was much smaller than the other rabbits she's seen- was giving her a friendly smile. A genuine one, not forced like the one's Akaze gave strangers.

"Are you Haru?," Akaze asked, and the girl nodded, she noticed, with some weary hesitation. She wasn't aware that when someone looked for Haru, it usually involved an excited man or a woman scorned.

"Someone said that you'd know where the drama club is. I'm looking for Louis, and heard he'd likely be there," Akaze explained, hoping context would bring back a smile again. It didn't, but she'd have to settle for the curious head tilt Haru gave her instead.

"You know Louis?," Haru asked, and with that, Akaze realised why this girl wasn't scowling from afar along with the rest. She had no idea who she was. She wished she could keep it that way.

"Yes. I'm his fiance." Did she imagine Haru's fists clench around the basket in her hands? Or her eyes widening, revealing some white in pools of deep brown?

"Y-you are? Oh, well...," this girl seemed to fumble for words now, her hands behind her back, her small silhouette unable to hide the basket full of red and white lillies. "The fiance of the future beastar? You're a..lucky girl."

"If you say so," she answered, because the loud halls of this school has taken the energy she stores for fake smiles when pretending to swoon over her fiance.

Haru blinked at the cryptic answer, but sensibly decided not to pry. She instead changed the subject. "I can show you to the drama club. I was planning to bring these to them anyway."

Akaze's senses were assaulted by the strong smell of something rotten and sweet, and instantly covered her snout with her hand.

"What is that?," she asked, stepping further away from the strong smell coming from the basket of flower's Haru fully presented now.

"What you're smelling would be the red spider lily's," Haru confirmed, a small smirk of amusement playing at her lips. Annoyingly, she seemed unaffected by the smell, apart from a nose twitch as she hugged the basket closer to her when passing Akaze. "They're meant for a play. "

Akaze stumbled up the steps after Haru, no longer knowing the meaning of grace after walking in high heels for longer than an hour.

"What awful play would involve those flowers?"

"I think they're rather lovely," Haru claimed, waiting by the door for Akaze to catch up. "They're a rare flower."

"I can see why. Anything that has spider in it, I don't trust," Akaze retorted.

Haru chuckled, and the soft sound echoed through the hallway they turned to from the main entrance. "In that case, I hope you're not going into botany like me. You kind of have to have a tolerance for insects if you work around plants."

Akaze's disgust slowly turned to interest as Haru talked. "So I guessed right. You are planning to major in botany. "

"What gave me away?," Haru asked jokingly, but Akaze took it seriously.

"Well, for one, I hardly think someone would put in that much effort into a club if you're the only member if it's just meant to be a hobby. And it seems that you really did put your heart and soul into it, despite how lonely it is-,"

"It does," Haru asked in a haste to stop the deer from getting a little too personal in her analysis. "But I enjoy it."

"What are you planning to do with that degree?," Akaze asked, her hands pressed together and leaning a little closer to Haru, as if conspiring with her smaller acquaintance.

"There's a group called Real Life. It's meant to restore life to habitats and gardens that aren't doing well due to pollution," Haru stated, and Akaze's arms dropped.

"Oh, that's an organisation that my father funds!," she explaimed, voice rising an octave high. "It's not that successful of one so far. But, it's slowly growing, and judging based off of the garden you have, it would help to have you there. "

Haru looked down, shielding Akaze's gaze from the soft blush that coloured her cheeks now. Luckily, the double doors of the drama club came into view.

"Here we are!," Haru announced, and then stepped back as Akaze murmured her thanks and placed her hand on the knob. "I...hope to see you again."

"And the same to you." With a polite nod that Akaze found unexplainably endearing, the rabbit began to retreat down the hallway where they came from.

Akaze wasn't sure what made Haru turn around and run back to her; the shout she let out, or the sound of the plate that hit her face as soon as she opened the door, shattering on the floor, with Akaze following suit.