Chapter Text
“Once an animal gets mean, Ama liked to say, there's no way to make it good again. You kill what can't be saved. All of her murders began as mercies.”
― K-Ming Chang, Bestiary
Mai's nails bit into her palms as she took down notes for the first class of her university experience. Her mom used to tell her that if she didn't practice her calligraphy, she would never make a good wife. Michi also used to tell Mai that if she didn't eat every grain of rice put before her, she'd never be a wife at all. Mai had given up on being a wife one day at this point, and she did not bother with notes taken in a calligraphy style, nor did she bother to eat every grain of rice put before her.
Michi had given up on Mai becoming a wife too.
“Who would want her?” Mai had heard her mom demand the night the investigation had been called off. “Who would ever marry that—that girl? Who will ever clear our family name of her dishonor?”
Mai didn't blame her. Not really. Not entirely. Not when she really had bled their family's honor dry.
She considered herself lucky that Ochanomizu University had still taken her after the whole affair had been stamped out like the first ember of a forest fire. Of course, there was no official reason they could rescind her admission. Her name had never come forth in reports save for as Tsutomu's owner and rider since she was still a minor. There was only the public's opinion formulated off of the way her dad had taken care of things, and that was a quiet thing, no matter how bitter the whispers got.
The whispers were, for now at least, just that. Cruel and bitten to the bone but whispers nonetheless.
So Mai lived in her dorm, and she went to her classes, and she made no friends. The girls that addressed her called her Nakatomi-san, and she returned their civility as if nothing had ever happened. As if nothing would ever happen again. All she had to do was keep her head down and she could work a respectable career. Even if she never found a man who would make her his wife, Mai could live with that.
Except that she might never feel anything other than this god-awful numbness again.
It took a full month of school for her childhood friend, Ty Lee, to convince Mai to go shopping in Shibuya-ku with her, but, in the end, Mai agreed to go. She almost always did. She knew that something as frivolous as shopping with Ty Lee wouldn't inspire much feeling within her, but neither would hurting Ty Lee by rejecting her invitation.
So Mai stood on the train, hip to hip with Ty Lee, and she listened to the younger girl talk about how her third year of high school was going so far and how two boys had already confessed to her. Vaguely, Mai wondered what it was like for Ty Lee now. If she believed that Mai had had nothing to do with Tsutomu's death. If her life was really still as normal as it seemed when so many people knew that Mai was her best friend.
“I turned him down, of course,” Ty Lee said. “I mean, we're in the same class, but we barely know each other. I don't think he's a reliable guy, anyway. He's always late to class, and he doesn't seem like he'd be very serious about a relationship. His aura's green, too. I can't date a guy like that.”
“That won't do,” Mai said flatly. “Boys should only confess to you if they're willing to die for you and they have bright pink auras.”
Ty Lee giggled, but her eyes lit up at the idea. Privately, Mai thought she would be a dangerous girl to love. She wanted devotion, and she'd take it however you gave it to her.
The train came to a halt, and Mai and Ty Lee exited together. They made their way through the station and to Shibuya Hikarie, Ty Lee's favorite mall. Their first stop, as always, was a boba tea shop where Ty Lee inhaled her drink before Mai had even opened her straw.
Their next stop was a photo booth. Ty Lee ducked into one and pulled Mai in after her by the wrist. Mai sat through each flash unsmilingly as Ty Lee changed poses for each photo, and neither of them commented on the other's condition. It was normal to them after all these years. Mai felt nothing, and Ty Lee felt more than enough for the two of them.
Sometimes, in their shared childhood, Mai had almost hated her for it.
“Oh, we look so cute!” Ty Lee said as she collected their photo strip.
“I'm almost smiling in this one,” Mai joked.
“You have such a pretty not-smile, but hold this, 'cause I've really gotta pee.” Ty Lee thrust the strip into Mai's hands and bolted.
Mai sighed. “She's got to stop drinking so much boba tea.” She took a closer look at the photo strip in her hands. Ty Lee looked happy and full of life in each photo while Mai herself looked as numb as she felt. She had the sudden urge to burn the photos. Tearing her eyes away from them, she felt her breath catch in her throat.
Walking alone through the shopping mall was a girl Mai wished she would never see in the flesh again, but there she was anyway. Unwanted and uninvited.
Mai hadn't seen Minamoto Azula outside of the news or a Gakushūin corridor since she was fifteen, and the sight of the younger girl at the eye of a storm three years later sent her stomach plummeting. She should have run—fast. She should have gotten the hell away from Azula right now, but she couldn't. Her feet wouldn't move, and Azula was smiling that awful smile that always meant something more twisted than it appeared on her pretty face, and there was no way out now that Azula had seen her.
Azula quickly made her way over. “Mai,” she said as though nothing had changed at all. As though she still deserved to wrap her mouth around Mai's given name after all the damage she had done. “It's good to see you.” There was affection in her throat and malice between her sharpened teeth.
“Is it?” Mai said dryly. She was not afraid of Azula. Even when they were children and Azula would push Ty Lee down for doing a cartwheel better than her and set fire to her Kikipop dolls for offending her through their existence, Mai had never really been afraid of Azula. That had been the problem when they still called themselves friends. “Haven't you heard the rumors? I wouldn't be good press for you right now. Especially not with the Olympics next year.”
Golden eyes flashed dangerously for just a moment. “I heard you used a ¥60,000 kitchen knife to put poor old Tsutomu out of his misery, but that can't be right. The Mai I know would never be brave enough to do something so decisive.”
When she was fifteen, Mai had never known if she should kiss or kill Azula. Now, she thought she finally had her answer.
“I take it you're here with Hata?” Azula was eyeing her perfect manicure with disinterest. It looked disturbingly unpracticed.
Even now, Mai knew her well enough to know it was feigned, but she still blinked at the use of Ty Lee's family name. “Yes.” The answer came quickly. Mai had no desire to lose whatever upper hand she might have left with Azula.
“Cute,” Azula said, gesturing to the photo strip. “She always was dragging us into photo booths, I suppose.”
The photo strips that contained Azula, smiling and in the middle of them, were long gone at this point. At the end of their friendship with Azula, Mai had helped Ty Lee dispose of each of them as the tender-hearted girl had sniffled, her cheeks damp and her mascara smudged.
“I guess.” Mai shrugged.
“You used to have a lot more bite.” Azula hummed. “I miss it.”
It was strange to think of Azula missing anything. She had never been the type for sentimentality. Even her bedroom, as Mai remembered it, lacked anything to make it look lived in. To make it look as though Azula was loved or loved anyone. Then again, it was entirely possible Azula loved no one and had never been loved in her life, regardless of how Mai and Ty Lee had felt about her when they had been friends. It wasn't as if Azula's childhood had fostered a notion of love, to begin with. Not the way Ty Lee's and even Mai's had.
“You used to give me a reason to bite,” Mai said finally.
Azula took that, and she smiled for it. It looked beautiful on her; Mai hated it.
“Oh… hey, um—” Ty Lee said awkwardly.
“Hello, Hata.” Azula smiled. It looked pointedly polite.
“Hi, Minamoto.” Ty Lee smiled as naturally as she could. “It's, uh, nice to see you.”
Azula laughed short and sharp. “You don't have to lie. But if you're going to, we should catch up properly sometime since I'm not busy with figure skating right now and Mai's yabusame career is over.”
Mai didn't flinch, but Ty Lee did. Mai had once been a champion of yabusame tournaments, hitting bullseyes from Tsutomu's back with absolute precision. Now she had a dead horse and an untouched archery bow.
“Sounds great.” Mai could feel her shoulders tensing. She kept her voice blunt like a dulled knife. “We'll be sure to call you sometime.”
“Right,” Azula drawled, “well, I've got to go, but I like your whole gyaru thing, Hata. It's cute. Oh, and, Mai? My brother misses you. You should give him a call while you're at it. He's gotten much mopier since you two broke up.” With that final blow, Azula left. She didn't look back, and Mai didn't wish she would.
It was always better to be rid of Azula than it was to be in her presence.
Mai sighed. “That was terrible.”
“Do you wanna talk about it?” Ty Lee said.
Mai shook her head no. Never again would Mai want to give Azula the satisfaction of being discussed by the two of them. Not when she had finally burned out and into oblivion in their minds, as all suns must.
Except that Azula hadn't burned into oblivion. Not really. As long as she could pry emotions out of Mai like pearls from an oyster, Azula would never burn into oblivion in Mai's mind. Mai could never tell Ty Lee that, though. Ty Lee didn't understand what it was like to go through life feeling numb to anything other than boredom and mild amusement, even if she understood how addicting the agonizing lows and manic highs of Azula's attention were.
So Mai kept her mouth clamped shut, and she pretended not to think about Azula's cruelty for the rest of the day.
A week passed, and Mai did not call Azula. Neither did Ty Lee. Azula, for her part, didn't call Mai or Ty Lee either. Whether it was because she refused to give her attention without first getting theirs, or she had only been toying with them when she said they should catch up, Mai couldn't tell. The years of estrangement between them had only made reading Azula all the harder. Mai had no way of knowing if the awful girl was lying to her or what she really wanted anymore.
In her dorm room, Mai stared at her phone, and she wondered if she wanted to see its screen light up with Azula's number. If she would recognize it after all these years, after deleting Azula's contact information with no remorse.
She picked it up, letting the shape of it overtake her palm, and she considered what Azula had said. Zuko missed her. Did she miss him? He had been so angry at the end of their relationship, so jealous and moody. And he had hated that Mai was numb to the world. He had tried to rip forth feelings from her that they both knew only Azula could take from her. They were never going to work. It was a joke from the start to even try.
Still. Mai had loved Zuko once. Not just as a boyfriend but as a friend. It couldn't hurt to call him, and it wasn't like she had had a reason to delete his contact information the way she had with Azula.
Mai hit call, and she waited for three rings before he picked up. A good omen.
“Hello?” Zuko said. “Mai?”
“Hey, Zuko,” she said.
There was a rustling sound on his end of the call. “It's really you?”
“Yeah. I ran into your sister, and she said I should call you, so. Here I am.”
She could practically hear Zuko frown at the mention of his sister. Azula and Zuko hadn't gotten along in at least a decade the last time Mai had been close with the two of them, and she could barely remember them as anything even close to resembling the kind of sibling relationship you saw in pop culture. Azula was wretched at heart, and Zuko had always been too soft-hearted to survive her cruelty unscathed. Especially not when their father who had molded her in his image so encouraged them to be at odds. They had never been a family. Not in the traditional sense.
“Azula told you to call me?” He sounded skeptical. Mai couldn't blame him; Azula never did anything out of the goodness of her heart. Her whole heart had rotted when she was but a child.
“I think she brought it up to upset me. But enough about her. How are you?”
“I'm okay! I'm going to Keio University,” he said brightly. “I really like it there. I made some friends—they're international students, Sokka and Suki. Sokka's Inuit-Canadian, and he's really funny; he's always making everyone laugh, and Suki's Korean, and she's the toughest girl I've ever met.” As a boy, he had always struggled to make his own friends, and he had been encouraged by his mom to hang around Azula's friends as a result. It was nice to think he was coming into his own now that he was in university.
“That's great, Zuko.” Her cheeks pinched from the effort of smiling to make her words sound livelier. “Are you still doing kendō?”
“Yeah! I did pretty well at the All Japan Kendō Championship last year.” There was something off to his voice now. He was straining himself to sound happy still.
Mai knew the weight of her next question, but it slipped forth from her mouth anyway. “Did your father not come to support you?”
Zuko was silent for a long moment before he forced laughter. “Don't be ridiculous, Mai. I was competing at a national level. Of course, he came to support me.” Zuko was never a good liar, and he had never had a good relationship with his father, Ozai. Ozai had been the prime minister since Azula was eight and Zuko was ten, but he had been a horrible father as far back as Mai could remember.
She could say that knew he was lying. She could say that she knew Ozai was more monster than man. She could say that it wasn't his fault his father was so brutal. “I'm happy for you then,” she said instead.
“Thank you.” Zuko sounded stiff as a board.
“So why did you answer?” Mai said to spare his pride. “I mean, it's been three years, and it's not like you wouldn't have heard about what happened with Tsutomu.”
“I answered because I know you, Mai,” he said earnestly. Desperately. “You wouldn't do something awful like that. I don't know who would, but I know it wasn't you.”
Mai's nails bit into her palms, and she counted to three. “That means a lot, Zuko. I have to go. Okaa-san's cooking dinner and she wants me to set the table,” she said. It was a lie. Even if she hadn't been in her dorm, it was only six, and her family always ate at seven.
Zuko knew that, but he didn't say anything other than goodbye.
Mai went to her childhood home for dinner with her family, and she did not know if she should apologize for disturbing her parents and brother or announce her arrival home as she took her shoes off. In the end, she apologized. Michi seemed to approve, at least. Her dad, Ukano, was too distracted to notice Mai had even arrived yet, and her little brother was only five. All he thought was that he was happy to see her again.
“Onee-chan!” He tumbled forward to hug her.
“Hi, Tom-Tom,” she said, returning his embrace. Mai had never been one for physical affection, but she would always make an exception for Tom-Tom. “I've got to help Okaa-san make dinner, but I promise we can color together after we eat.”
“Okay.” But he didn't budge from his hold on her.
“Tom-Tom, let your big sister come help me,” Michi said firmly.
He pouted but relented. “Okay, Kaa-chan.”
Michi didn't speak to Mai as they cooked together. She didn't even look at her daughter, really. Mai wasn't sure if it was worse this way or not. She just wanted dinner to be over so she could spend time with her little brother. He didn't know yet what had happened to Tsutomu, so he still loved her.
She couldn't say the same about either of her parents.
The difference between her dad and mom, however, was that Michi knew she didn't love her daughter. Ukano just blinked in surprise when he sat down to eat and saw her as if nothing had changed other than where Mai lived. “I didn't hear you come in,” he said.
“Otō-san, it's good to see you.”
He nodded, but he didn't comment any further.
“Itadakimasu,” they said together.
Mai ate her chicken cutlet curry quietly, listening to her parents ask her brother about his day. She hadn't expected them to ask her about her life anyway. It wasn't something they would find pleasant to hear about right now. They knew what a disappointment of a daughter she was. Tom-Tom, however, was another story.
“Onee-chan, what about you?” His eyes were wide and gleaming. “Is university exciting? Have you made new friends?”
Michi and Ukano both paled.
Mai's knuckles whitened, but she smiled anyway, and she lied, “Of course, I have, Tom-Tom. Tons of them. University is everything I hoped it'd be, and the girls are all really nice.”
“That's lovely, Mai. I'm glad you're doing so well,” Michi said, her voice strained and her eyes sharpened to a point. She knew her daughter was a liar, and she hated her for it.
Mai wondered if she should care about that, but she had given up on her mother's approval the minute Tom-Tom had been born. He was the son Michi had always wanted, and she was the daughter Michi had always resented. Now, Michi was just free to express that contempt because Mai had finally proven her right: her daughter was a sociopath.
“Yes, that's great.” Ukano nodded along dully. He never could recognize that his wife hated his daughter.
That was fine with Mai. She didn't need him trying to intervene. It would only make things worse.
Mai could remember Azula in childhood, tugging her along to hide behind corners so as to catch every word their parents spoke about them in secrecy. Mai could remember Azula's face the day her mother whispered that there was something wrong with her daughter. Azula had smiled, thin-lipped and awful with glaring teeth, and she had said that her mother was right, but her eyes had been so impossibly bright.
Mai had once thought she would never want to hear her mother say something like that, but she stood behind her parents' bedroom door anyway, waiting and listening. If Michi thought she was a sociopath, Mai wanted to hear her say it. She wondered if this had been how Azula felt, but she didn't dare linger on it as Michi's hushed voice cut through the air.
“It would be easier if she would just… just stop sitting there like nothing is wrong,” Michi hissed.
“I know,” Ukano said, but he didn't.
Michi sighed. “Do you?” she asked her husband. “Because you're just as bad as she is. The two of you act as though everything is fine just because you stopped the investigation before she could be indicted. You put your career at risk—you put us at risk for her.”
“I don't know what you want from me.” It was a concession of defeat.
“I don't want anything from you.” Michi's words were as sharp as Mai's favorite razor blade. “I just wish that Mai would—I wish she would commit seppuku. Something so I know she's not completely heartless.”
There was silence a moment as Mai considered her mother's request. An honor suicide; slicing herself open as Tsutomu had been. That's what Michi wanted from her. Mai almost wanted to laugh, but she couldn't find the humor in her throat as she listened to her parents' stunned silence. She had never expected her mother to admit how much she wished her dead.
“You don't mean that.” Ukano didn't sound very sure of his words. “That's—you love her. You do.”
Mai imagined her mother shaking her head in disagreement. “I meant it,” Michi said. A confession. “The Nakatomi name is ruined now thanks to our daughter slaughtering her horse, and you won't be re-elected governor at this rate. This is the only thing she could do to help restore our honor. I'm sure of it.”
It was the most honest Mai had heard her mother be in months. It was also the bluntest Michi had ever spoken about her daughter.
Mai almost couldn't believe Michi was brave enough to have said it.
She returned to her childhood bedroom, and she wondered why the confession hadn't wrenched anything out of her, why she couldn't feel anything other than numb at the revelation that her mother really did want her dead. Even Azula, the coldest person Mai had ever known, had been hurt by her mother saying she had come out all wrong, but Mai felt nothing as she lay on her shikibuton, and she hated herself for it. Michi was right. She was a sociopath.
She welcomed the weight of the razor stowed in her bag, and she dismantled it in silence.
Mai's phone lit up, a familiar number flashing across the screen. The message underneath Azula's phone number read: I heard Zuzu on the phone earlier. You should come over sometime. Okaa-san is upset I'm not socializing again. You know how hysterical she gets.
Mai stared at it, her mahogany eyes sharpening. She typed out a response. Leave me alone, you psychopath. She deleted it, and she sent nothing back instead.
In the privacy of a bathroom stall, Mai stared at Azula's message once more and ignored the coldness of the toilet bowl against her legs.
She considered what she could say now that it had been a day, and Azula had not messaged her again. She wondered if Azula had kept her number all these years, or if she had stolen it from Zuko like the mochi of their childhoods. She would put neither past the red-lipped girl; Azula was not sentimental, but she held grudges pressed to her ribs for lifetimes.
The bathroom door creaked open, and Mai caught the tail end of a conversation. “Is it true that one of our classmates killed a horse?” one girl said.
“Yeah, the governor's daughter did,” another said.
“Nakatomi-san?”
“Mhm.”
“No way! I have classes with that psychopath.”
Mai laughed. She couldn't help it. It ripped forth from her throat before she could even process what made it funny. In response, the girls both said something apologetic for disturbing whoever was in here, and they shuffled out quickly. Mai's hysterical laughter only increased, blossoming in the confines of the stall. She laid her forehead to the metal door, willing her stomach to stop aching from the effort.
If Azula was a psychopath, Mai was worse than that. Much worse. The people of Japan certainly thought so; Azula was adored by the nation, and Mai disgusted them all now. Azula was a gold medalist, and Mai was a horse killer. It didn't matter if Mai knew how cruel Azula was in private.
Once her laughter had subsided, and she was left alone with her reality, Mai typed out a new message. I could come over Sunday if you aren't busy.
She waited a long nine minutes for Azula's response, but it came. My weekend is open. You could come over whenever.
That was new. While Azula had always breezed through her school work, even at Gakushūin, her figure skating schedule was always a rigorous thing that demanded her full attention. Even during her off-season, Azula wouldn't attend cram school so she could train until she bled. She hadn't even stopped to let herself bleed in peace from what Mai remembered. Azula always pushed herself beyond the breaking point.
Azula was the kind of girl who had sacrificed her childhood on the altar of her prodigy, and Mai couldn't fathom why that would change for her on the precipice of her next winter Olympics.
Why aren't you busy with figure skating? she messaged Azula.
Three dots appeared for a long while before Azula finally sent her response. Otō-san said I was spending too much time training with Zhao. He's not letting me compete next year.
Mai blinked at the message. Of all the things she had expected Azula to say, this was not one of them. Ozai had been the driving force behind Azula's ambition for so much of her life, demanding nothing short of perfection from her the moment she took to the ice, and he had been so pleased with her three years earlier. Mai couldn't imagine him ever denying Azula the right to defend her gold medal.
I'm sorry. Mai wrote back because she didn't know what else she could say.
It's fine. Azula replied, but Mai could imagine her teeth grit tight and her eyes cold as death. I'll see you Sunday.
The week crawled by, and Mai felt knives in her stomach. She wondered if she should just comply with her mom's wishes and rip herself open, but every time the thought crossed her mind, she felt her fists close around nothing and her nails bite into her palms. The pain would have to be enough to get by on.
And it was. Mai survived until Sunday, and she made her way from her dorm to the Kantei for the first time since she stood on the wrong end of an ice skate blade as Azula glared at her with her nostrils flared, her eyes wild, and her teeth glaring. Mai suppressed the memory, and she knocked on the front door.
After a moment, Azula's mother, Ursa, appeared in its opening.
Ursa gasped. “Mai! It's so good to see you.”
“Hello, Minamoto-san.” Mai bowed politely.
Ursa shook her head. “Please, please. You can call me Oba-san.”
The thought of calling Azula's mother by something so familiar and kind made Mai's stomach curl, but she nodded and relented anyway as she had in her childhood. “All right, Oba-san.” It felt horribly plastic in her mouth like licking at Tupperware, and Mai almost grimaced despite herself.
“Are you here to see…?” Ursa trailed off. She was fidgeting with her hands as she ushered Mai inside to remove her shoes.
“Azula.” Mai was testing the weight of the wretched-hearted girl's name in the air. “She didn't tell you?”
“You know how she is. She never tells me anything,” Ursa said, and there was a bitterness to it. As if it were Azula's fault that there was so much distance between them now.
Mai knew Azula was deeply flawed with jagged edges cut to kill, but she had never been able to blame Azula for her fragmented relationship with her mother. Not when Mai had watched in uncomfortable silence as Azula sobbed almost violently about how the woman who birthed her only had love in her heart for her firstborn son.
“I'll go get her.” Ursa and Mai entered the living room. “Ozai, will you keep Mai company in the meanwhile?”
Mai almost flinched openly at the notion, but she steadied herself in time.
“Fine,” Ozai said.
“Thank you, Minamoto-san.” Mai bowed her head.
Ozai nodded at her as Ursa left the room. “How is your father?” he said. “I heard the horrible news about your horse, and I see his popularity is dwindling now.”
“He's as well as can be expected. He'll be all right if he's not re-elected.”
Ozai nodded. “He won't be, so that's good.”
Mai wanted to laugh. She wished Ozai would come outright and tell her she had ruined her father's chances at re-election, but she didn't know why she expected such mercy from him when she had heard him speak to his son, and he had only ever liked her for her family's status and her quiet subservience to her parents.
Instead of laughing, Mai said, calm and dry as ever, “Azula said she won't be competing in the Olympics again.”
For the first time, Ozai looked at Mai. There was something awful in his gaze; it was as if she was something he wanted to strangle. “Is she still whining about that? It's for her own good.”
“It was very stressful for her last time, Minamoto-san.” That was an understatement. Azula had been at her cruelest during her first Olympics. So cruel that she had lost the only friends she had ever known. “You're probably right to not let her compete, but I wonder how people will react.”
“They'll be upset, but they'll get over it. Tokugawa Chan is supposed to compete again next year. The lineup should make up for Azula's absence.”
It was bullshit if you asked Mai. Tokugawa Chan was beloved, sure, maybe even more so than Azula, but she was twice the skater he was, and she had been the youngest, male or female, to ever take home the gold for singles figure skating.
“Hopefully it will,” Mai said obediently.
“I'm fine, Okaa-san; leave me alone, you useless woman,” Azula's familiar voice snarled from the entrance if the room.
Ursa flinched away from fixing her daughter's ponytail, and she smiled reluctantly at Mai and Ozai.
“Hello, Mai.” Mai's name came out in a drawl, and Azula was not quite looking at her.
“Azula,” Ozai said. Somehow, it sounded haughty.
Azula's spine straightened out, and her gaze snapped forward. She looked more like the girl Mai remembered from childhood this way. “Good afternoon, Otō-san. I didn't realize you were here. My apologies.” In most of Mai's childhood memories, Azula called him Tō-san, but that was years ago. Azula was seventeen now, and she probably thought it was too childish to call him without the prefix.
Ozai nodded at her in acknowledgment and went back to his work.
“Come on, Mai. Let's go to my room,” Azula said, practically hissing as she latched onto Mai's wrist to tug her away. Mai would have followed without the physical prompting, but Azula was always one to be sure she'd get her way.
“Is Zuko home?” Mai said.
Azula smiled that plastic red-lipped smile of hers. “Didn't you come to see me?”
“You know I didn't.” Mai made it sound simple in her mouth as they rounded the corner.
“That hurts my feelings.”
Mai half-snorted. “You'll get over it. You always do.”
“We can't close the bedroom door. Otō-san doesn't like for me to hide things.” Azula sat down on her bed.
Her bedroom was still made up in the western style, but it was red-themed now, as Azula had wanted it to the dismay of her mother, and it was still clinically barren. There was little to no sign that Azula enjoyed anything at all other than her figure skating trophies and medals and the bookshelf filled with classical literature and books about politics and war. There was one strange book on the shelf, though. It looked horribly out of place with its English text and childish appearance.
“What's that?” Mai plucked the book off the shelf. The Giving Tree, the title read.
Azula tore it out of Mai's hands. “It's just an American children's book Okaa-san used to read to Zuzu and me when we were too stupid to know better.” She glared sharply. “It's about a foolish tree that gives everything to an ungrateful little boy.”
Mai blinked, and she decided that it wasn't worth prying into further. Anyway, she could vaguely recall Azula mentioning something like that to her when they were children. There was no point in starting a fight over a glimmer of a memory. If anything, it was a good thing that Azula was at least pretending to be something akin to normal by having a keepsake from her childhood.
“Are you excited to be a third-year?” Mai knew it was a stupid question, but she asked it anyway.
Azula tilted her head curiously and seemingly made up her mind to play along. “Not particularly. I'm still at the top of my class, and it never seems to get any more challenging.”
Mai disagreed. She had found her third year of high school to be a nightmare, but that had also been when Tsutomu had died, and her mom had started wishing she would commit seppuku, apparently.
“Is anything challenging for you these days?” Mai said.
Azula's golden eyes lit up. “There is one thing. I was working on landing a quad axle before Otō-san pulled me from training.” No one had ever landed a quad axel in all of figure skating history, but Azula was already landing every other kind of quad jump possible, and she had more than perfected the triple axle. If there was anyone who would land the quad axle, it was her. Mai hated to admit it, but it was true. Azula was every bit as good at figure skating as her ego implied.
“Were you close?” Mai thought she must have been, but she wanted to prod a bit.
“Very. Lo and Li were choreographing a routine that would let me unveil it at the Olympics, but…” There was a bitterness to her that was new somehow. It was not something that Azula had directed at her father before, at the very least. Mai almost wanted to hear more of it. “How about you?” Azula said instead of continuing.
“I'm going to Ochanomizu University. I haven't made any friends since everyone thinks I killed my horse, but I'm doing well in my classes. My mom wants me to commit seppuku, and my dad won't be re-elected because I've ruined our family name, but other than that, I'm perfectly fine.” It was a well-rehearsed answer.
Azula didn't give Mai an inch. “Sounds awful,” she said indifferently. “Maybe you shouldn't have killed Tsutomu.”
Mai laughed at that. “Maybe,” she said, and Azula smiled back at her. It was nice for a moment. Only a moment, though. Everything good that came out of Azula came at the cost of your suffering, whether it was imminent or lying in wait, it was sure to come. “Why did you invite me? We haven't spoken in three years, and the last time we did, you threatened to kill me.”
Azula smiled as earnestly as she could. It meant nothing to Mai; she had always dealt in lies and doublespeak. “Is it so wrong to want to catch up with an old friend?”
“... Whatever you say, Azula.” Mai's shoulders were still tense.
“Do you want to see Zuzu now?” Azula was saccharine like that.
Mai sighed. “Yes.”
Azula's smile stretched wider, crueler. “What a shame. He won't be back until dinner, but you're more than welcome to stay.”
Mai grit her teeth, and she obliged; Azula put on an old film on her laptop, and she sat straight-backed and open-palmed on her bed.
Zuko got home in time for dinner as Azula promised; he smiled when he saw Mai, and he forgot himself and hugged her too. Mai still hated hugs, and she barely tolerated them from Ty Lee, but she gave him this much.
“It's good to see you,” she said.
“You too, Mai,” he said breathlessly. “What are you doing here?”
“I invited her over. She always was my friend; not yours, Zuzu.” It was a giddy reminder, no matter how bored it sounded. “It's your turn to set the table, by the way.”
Zuko glared at her. “Azula. Fine. I'll set the table for Kaa-san.”
“I'll help you.” Mai left with him before Azula could protest. She waited until they had the cover of the dining room to speak again. “She never changes.”
Zuko almost snorted. “You have no idea. She's taking out not competing in the Olympics on me.” He finished setting his side of the table. “You're staying for dinner, right?”
She nodded as she finished setting her side of the table, and he smiled for it.
Dinner began with Azula reminding Ozai that Zuko was struggling with his classes, and it would only get worse from there.
“Your sister never struggles in her classes, and she's never had the luxury of cram school or tutors like you have,” Ozai said. “Maybe you should examine how she approaches education. She's always had a better work ethic than you.”
“You're right, Otō-san.” Zuko was gritting teeth. “Azula has always been better than me.”
Ozai chuckled. “Are you talking back to me, Zuko?”
“No, he would never,” Ursa said hurriedly.
Zuko gripped his chopsticks tighter, his knuckles turning a sickly white. “I'm sorry, Otō-san. I didn't mean to disrespect you.” Grains of rice were falling from his chopsticks, and Mai thought of Michi and weddings, and she wondered if boys who didn't finish every grain of rice before them were never going to be husbands as well, or if it was only girls who were cursed.
“It's not only me you've disrespected,” Ozai said, sounding vaguely annoyed. “It's your sister as well. Apologize to her, won't you?” He seemed as amused by Zuko's compliance as he was irritated by Zuko's insolence.
Azula smiled, smug and beautiful, and Mai wanted to hit her for it.
“I'm sorry, Azula,” Zuko mumbled.
“What was that, Zuzu?”
“I said I'm sorry!”
Ozai's eyes sharpened like knives at that. “No yelling at the dinner table, Zuko. You know that.” His demeanor was calm and poised, but his golden eyes were glinting dangerously. It was a reflection of Zuko's own face, but it was so much colder than Mai had ever seen Zuko. “Especially not in front of our guest.”
Mai felt herself shrinking. She didn't want to be witness to this. She didn't want to be part of this. She could sit there and listen to her mom berate her, and she could tolerate her dad watching silently and her brother smiling without knowing, but she could not sit there silently for Ozai's silky cruelties. She could not speak out to condemn them either.
Sit still, be quiet, Michi had told her over and over until it was embedded into Mai's essence. There was no part of her not conditioned for subservience to her superiors, and Ozai was her superior, whether she hated him or not.
“I'm sorry, Otō-san,” Zuko said. “My apologies to you as well, Mai. That was improper of me.” It didn't even sound like Zuko anymore. It sounded like the lines had been drilled into his head, a script to follow whenever he needed discipline.
Ursa took a deep breath. “Ozai, do you want some umeshu with your meal?”
He waved off her offer. “I can't drink tonight. I have a meeting in the morning. You know that, Ursa.”
“Right. It must have slipped my mind. My apologies.” She smiled flimsily.
Azula tsked at the sight. “You're getting more and more pathetic with age, Okaa-san.”
“Do not speak to your mother that way, Azula. It's disgraceful,” Ozai said.
Red lips curled upwards into a wide smile. It looked painful on her face. “I'm sorry,” she said, each word chewed to the bone. Mai got the distinct impression she was not apologizing to Ursa, but Ozai did not demand she amend her apology.
They ate in silence until Azula placed her chopsticks neatly in their holder and folded her hands in her lap. Her meal was not even halfway finished, but she made no move to hold her chopsticks again.
Ursa glanced at her, tentative and unsure. “Are you full?”
“Yes.”
“But you've barely touched your meal…”
“Believe it or not, Okaa-san, my stomach has shrunken from being on a meticulous diet for figure skating since I was four years old, and even though Otō-san decided to end my career at seventeen, that hasn't gone away, so, yes, I am full now.” Azula was harsh as ever, her teeth glaring each time they peeked out from between her lips.
Ursa flinched, and Zuko trembled. Ozai sat there in silence, his expression giving nothing away.
Mai broke their silence quietly. “Will your career really be over just because you don't compete this year?”
Azula smiled, and it was an awful, thin-lipped smile. “It was over the second Otō-san pulled me from training.”
Ozai sighed deeply. “Where do you get off being such a brat, Azula? Did I raise you wrong, or did your mother and I not discipline you well enough? I thought you were more mature than this.”
Azula's smile only tightened at his words. “I'm sorry, Otō-san.”
Really, Mai should never have agreed to have dinner with the Minamoto family as if it could ever go well. It was always going to end badly. She knew that from the start, and she was a fool for pretending not to.
Mai was about to leave when Azula half-embraced her, her hands on Mai's shoulders and the distance between them almost closing completely. She blinked in surprise for a moment; even at their closest, even when they had spent half their lives slow-dancing around intimacy, they had never been the touchy-feely type. Still, Mai returned the gesture, her hands finding Azula's waist.
“Don't be a stranger,” Azula said, and Mai wondered if it was an order or not.
“I'll text you.” She might have been lying. It was hard even for her to know.
Zuko shuffled. “I’'ll call you sometime, Mai. If you want to hang out, at least.”
Mai almost laughed at his insecurity, but Azula cut the moment short. “She'll never want to get back together with you if you can't even admit she killed Tsutomu,” she sing-songed
He laughed awkwardly at that. “You should stop lying, Azula. You're not a kid anymore; it's not funny. Anyway, who said anything about getting back together? I just want to be friends again.”
“Don't say I didn't warn you.”
Mai almost couldn't believe that this was the girl Michi would be so pleased with Mai reacquainting herself with. Especially not after how badly things had ended the last time the two of them were close. She could only imagine what kind of disaster awaited her if she texted Azula after this. Still, Mai went home miserable and told her mom dutifully who she had eaten dinner with.
She didn't know how much she would regret it yet.