Chapter Text
“C’mon Miss, let’s run!”
The biting cold should have been distractingly painful, but Shirayuki was barely aware of it in the face of her companion's infectious energy.
“To the woods, over there!”
He pointed to a cropping of pine trees that was so, so far away but they were already running; it felt as if she’d blinked, and in the next moment, they’d arrived.
“You –” she choked on cold air, trying to breathe, “ – you sure like running, don’t you?”
His laugh was boisterous and loud and she couldn’t help but smile, even knowing she was the punch line of this particular joke.
High on adrenaline and endorphins, they chased the quickly fading purple hues in the morning sky.
Golden eyes turned serious and he promised her that, this time, he was here to stay, to be her bodyguard, to stand by her side. When they reached the edge of the forest and watched the sun start its leisurely climb in the sky, it felt like a new dawn for the both of them.
“So, do you mind if I stick around?” He asked, as if they weren’t already a matched set, inseparable, as if she hadn’t specifically voiced her wish to see him here again in the hopes he'd pull through with a miracle.
The whole of their past was a bit fuzzy in her cold-addled brain, a picture she’d seen once before that now sat, unreachable, at the edges of her memory. Even so, Shirayuki could feel her affection for this man deep-set in her bones. She answered without a moment's hesitation.
“Please do.”
Bzzt bzzt bzzzt!
Huh?
Shirayuki awoke to numb fingers and a sniffly nose.
Bzzt bzzt bzz-!
“Shh,” she silenced her alarm with a tap of her finger, the touch screen bright in the inky darkness of her room.
Another dream.
She could tell it had been about him, from the lingering feeling of comfort in her chest that those dreams always left her with. She chased it, wishing that for once she could remember more than a tall, dark, vague outline of her mystery man, always calling her 'Miss'.
It never worked.
Kihal said these dreams were the product of too many regency romance novels. Shirayuki might've been inclined to agree, if she hadn't been having these dreams since before she'd even reached a high school reading level.
Bzzt bzzt bzzt!
She tapped her phone screen again, another alarm to break her from her waking thoughts and remind her that she had work to do.
She swung her legs off the bed and thwacked her foot on a box. Whoops .
Eventually she would finish moving in, but she hadn't had a moment to unpack since she'd arrived in town two days ago.
When her toes hit the ice-cold hardwood floors, she swore her next paycheck would be spent on a warm rug.
Long John's, jeans, thermals, sweater, down coat, earmuffs, muffler and gloves. This was her armor against the below-freezing winter temperatures of Lyrias, South Dakota.
Growing up near the mountains, she'd seen snow before, sure, but it was never this much, this consistently. And the wind, goodness, her nose was too frozen to sniffle, her eyes were leaking without her permission, and she feared that tear tracks would freeze in straight lines down her cheeks. She was pretty sure her lungs now knew what freezer burn felt like.
And that was all just the short trek through the parking lot.
The automatic sliding doors of the library felt like a homecoming, welcoming her into a new hub of knowledge to be mapped and explored. The corkboard at the entrance overflowed with event posters and wanted ads for local businesses. Ferns of all shapes and sizes dotted the walls for as far as she could see, and dated space heaters kept the place toasty and warm.
Shirayuki went and stood next to one, defrosting her extremities as she painstakingly peeled off each layer with red, wind-beaten hands.
“Go study the Phostyrias for Wistal Co.,” Garak said.
“It'll be groundbreaking herbology research,” she said.
And surely, it would be; the woman had never steered Shirayuki wrong before, but currently it felt like her boss maybe could have prepared her a bit better for her new living situation.
Shirayuki arrived at what would most certainly become her new home away from home with the intention of getting a library card (it had been the third stop on her to-do list after utilities and groceries), but the circulation desk was empty of employees, so she decided she may as well choose some books first.
She stuffed all her extras into her dedicated library tote bag and began her journey, an intrepid scholar in stacks unknown.
The main shelving area, adult fiction, took up a large part of the entrance; it was a bit of a walk to get through it all, and the bays went two whole shelves above her head. Past it, the road branched off, with the leftmost path leading towards the teen section, brightly colored and chock full of bean bag chairs, and on the rightmost path laid the sprawling children’s section. Their shelves were short, for easy access, and there were an abundance of rugs displaying little roads and cities, with tiny tables and chairs spread throughout the room. There was a wealth of board games and puzzles, and a treasure chest sat wide-open in the center of the room to reveal a bounty of well-loved stuffed animals. The walls were covered in kid’s coloring pages and drawings, displayed proudly with the artists’ names and golden star stickers.
Shiraryuki was kind of jealous. Tanbarun's library had exactly one bay of picture books, and a librarian who’d shushed her whenever she'd laugh too loud at her Nana's reading voices.
Oh, to be a kid with a library like this. She'd have never gone home.
She continued on.
This place was a lot bigger on the inside, it seemed, and after some more walking she found her favorite part of every library. The reference section.
Dictionaries, Atlases, Almanacs, How-To guides - an assemblage of all the knowledge she could ever need. If something wasn’t listed here, there was an encyclopedia or bibliography that could point her in the right direction. She approached the shelves and grabbed some old favorites – comfort books, as it were, before she bounced to the next bay over, where the staff had conveniently placed a section on gardening, and grabbed some books on succulents. For fun, not research, though often enough, they were one and the same.
Thirty minutes later and eight books heavier she returned to the circulation desk, where a head of scruffy black hair peeked out from above a monitor.
“ Hello?” She tried, hoping that the faculty were as friendly as their welcome board suggested.
The man using the computer wheeled his chair in front of the counter, and she was greeted by the warmest golden eyes she'd ever seen.
"Hello, Miss. Did you-?"
His eyes widened and he stood slowly, carefully. Shirayuki imagined her face bore a similarly surprised expression.
They studied each other, Shirayuki feeling absolutely sure that she knew this man from somewhere. Somewhere important. He had a scar above his eyebrow, and she could see more lacing his forearms, proudly displayed by the rolled-up sleeves of his close-fitting black Henley. 'Miss', he'd said. Miss. Miss.....
He loudly cleared his throat, and she ripped her gaze away, trying hard not to appear any more suspicious to the man she'd been very obviously staring at for at least the last 30 seconds.
" Find everything you were looking for?" He prompted, eyebrows raised.
“Uh, yes.” She clumsily set her books on the desk, where they landed with a loud plop and tilted halfway over the desk before she saved them at the last moment. With extended arms and hands still on her books, defying physics to keep them from falling, she looked back up and saw the man’s cheeks were bloated, barely containing a laugh.
“Sorry,” she cringed. Day one, and she’d already almost assaulted a librarian.
“Let me take these.” He pulled the books from her precarious grasp and scanned each one.
Right. First order of business, “I was hoping you could set me up with a library card?”
“Ah, I thought you might ask that. You work over at Wistal, don’t you?” It was phrased like a question, but his tone was certain. Something about the way he stretched his vowels gave a slight southern twinge to his voice. Shirayuki wasn’t sure how it’d taken her so long to notice it; he sounded a lot like home.
She had to ask. “I’m sorry, but have we met before?”
“Not in this lifetime,” he muttered, to her confusion. The man chuckled abruptly, shaking his head and nodding at her tote bag.
‘Wistal 5K 2016’ in big block print. Yep, that’d do it.
“Ah,” she nodded. Then, “this lifetime?”
He shook his head again. “Bad joke.” He handed her a form and a pen, for the library card.
“So, you like running?”
"Oh- ah, no. Not really.” She looked at the form. Name, address, signature. Standard documentation.
“I was a volunteer. You know, set up tables, hand out water bottles, all the easy stuff. They gave us free merch for it.” Shirayuki bit her cheek to stop her own rambling and realized he was wearing a small gold, engraved name tag. Obi. A unique name, but not a particularly familiar one.
She attempted her most charming smile but probably achieved more of a grimace, “To be honest, I’d much rather run an experiment than a marathon.”
He laughed, a real laugh this time, and every muscle she hadn’t realized was tensed, instantly relaxed at the comforting sound.
“Spoken like a true Lyrian. We don’t have a football field in town, but our library is at least three times the size of one.” He scratched the back of his head, thinking. “Snowball fights around here do get awfully competitive, though.”
She handed back the form, hoping he could make out her scrawling for a proper card. “I take it most of the town works up at Wistal, then?” It made sense; the Wistal labs at Lyrias had the most acreage of all the facilities owned by the corporation and, consequently, the most greenhouses. “In a town full of academics, you probably know just about everyone, huh?”
“I don’t know about that.” He half-smiled, typing rapidly. “Lyrias isn’t exactly that small, but I guess it is a pretty tight-knit community.”
He handed her a small, freshly-printed plastic card and she held it with all the careful reverence one would a rare artifact or priceless heirloom.
On the front: Lyrias Public Library. Vines and flowers decorated the words.
On the back: Shirayuki Löwinberg. Spelled correctly. What a relief.
She was broken from her thoughts when he spoke again.
“Your books, Miss.” He held out the stack, and first Shirayuki noticed the receipt tucked inside the cover of the topmost book. She was then momentarily distracted by his forearms flexing with the weight of the stack, faint scars turning with the stretch.
For one strange moment, all she could see was gloved hands and a terracotta pot overflowing with plant life. She blinked, and the image was gone. Just her books and a very, very patient librarian.
She looked up at him, Obi , and squinted. The déjà vu poked at her brain like an unanswered trivia question. Could he be a retired child actor? One of those lifestyle vloggers Kihal kept up with?
She tried one more time, for her sanity. “Are you sure we’ve never met?”
He leaned his weight onto his arms over the counter, throwing her a secretive grin that made her feel like she was on the outside of an inside joke. “Only in my dreams, Miss.”
There were rumors circulating the Wistal greenhouses.
Rumors of a bright, sunny day amidst the winter snowstorms of Lyrias.
Shirayuki checked all her almanacs, and not a single one foretold of a weather anomaly such as that. They weren’t always accurate, she would concede that point, but surely, an occurrence that strange would at least be on the local news, right?
Her manager recommended a local magazine. “The local news is run by a bunch of hacks,” Shidan had scoffed, in another tirade about media coverage and fake news, “go pick up a copy of Lyrias Weekly, their forecast is usually pretty good.”
After three weeks together, she was beginning to understand that Shidan was a bit of a conspiracist. Apparently not without good reason, if the rumored sixty degree day would come to pass as promised.
Shirayuki never paid for magazines; why shell out 20 bucks for what was mostly ads anyway, when she could sift through it at the library for free?
(Well, at the cost of local tax dollars, but if they were going to take those anyway, then still .)
She was already halfway to home-sweet-reference section when she was stopped by a peculiar noise.
Kathunk.
It was loud and hollow. As always, she allowed her curiosity to be her guiding compass.
Kathunk.
She stepped into the colorfully-decorated teen room and saw two young men playing the Game of Life in some corner seats, arguing over whose Starter Home was the better choice.
Kathunk.
There was an office to her right, and she stepped closer to find a man with blonde, shaggy hair operating a button maker.
Oh, wow.
There were dozens of buttons, all decorated with a variation of young adult titles, movie quotes, and anime characters. She noted with some interest that a good third of them were Twilight-themed.
“Want one?” The blonde man startled her a bit, she’d been so focused on the buttons she didn’t notice he’d stopped operating the machine. “The Sailor Moon ones always go pretty quickly, so I'd grab one now before they're all taken at our viewing party tomorrow.”
Intrigued, she stepped closer. “Viewing party?”
One of the young men playing the Game of Life speaks up, a teen with long brown hair in a low ponytail and a baggy, red scarf.
“We’re gonna watch three decades of rom-coms because our ‘leader’ cares more about musical scores than an airtight plotline,” he heckles from his beanbag chair.
“Not everyone enjoys psychological thrillers, Mihaya.”
“Leader?” Shirayuki interrupted, having finally noticed the button-maker’s golden nametag; Suzu. “So, you're the teen librarian then?
“Yep.” Kathunk. Realizing Shirayuki probably wasn’t going to take a button, Suzu went back to his task. “Read just about every title in the section. And I've always been pretty on-trend, so the higher ups thought this would be a good specialization for me,” he gloated, super casual, very suave. At least, Suzu seemed to think so.
“I thought Miss Yuzuri said it was because of your maturity level?”
The other teen, a pretty-faced blonde boy with his hair in a high ponytail raised an eyebrow, but Suzu was clearly not amused.
“I was given the privilege of managing the teen section, Kazuki , because of my expertise in the media and its audience.”
“An expertise in the Twilight saga, you mean.” Mihaya mumbled out the side of his mouth with loud, annoying purpose.
“New Moon is a breathtaking piece on heartbreak and perseverance!” Suzu shouted, bringing the lever on the button maker down with the loudest kathunk yet, pulling back to reveal a button that read, “Team Bella”.
The boys erupted into laughter, and Suzu continued angrily cranking out buttons.
“The whole saga is a masterpiece and I'm tired of everyone dragging me for it,” Suzu mumbled, shaggy hair falling over his face, looking a bit more unhinged with every button stamped.
Shirayuki suspected his… endless patience might be the real reason Suzu was chosen as the teen lead.
“Well, it was nice to meet you, Mr. Suzu.” Shirayuki looked at the buttons once more, and saw one for the Magic School Bus. She clipped it to her library tote, tickled with nostalgia.
“Mhmm.” He kept cranking.
She slipped out, keen to find the magazine that she'd temporarily forgotten.
Shirayuki did not attend the viewing party.
“I’ve been summoned to Tanbarun. I’ll be back in one month.” She watched her young supervisor take in the news, his hand stilling over his notes. Something like shock flashed over cobalt eyes, but in a moment, his stoic expression was back.
“Oh.”
“I wasn’t planning to, but the King ordered me to go.” He probably didn’t need the explanation, but Shirayuki felt like she needed to give one anyway. They’d been together long enough, her and Ryuu.
“Okay.” He went back to his notes, nonplussed, and Shirayuki breathed a sigh of relief. The last thing she wanted was to worry him, but she should’ve known he would take it in stride.
She turned back to her own task, cataloging the herbs from that day’s harvest, worry gnawing at her mind. There was still so much to get done before her leave, and etiquette lessons were scheduled to start the next day, along with dancing lessons, fittings, and with this strange, pretty-boy on the loose –
“Do your best.”
She spun around, thinking she’d missed something, but it was just Ryuu, looking at her like he did when he asked her opinion on experimental medicine, or requested her help on days when inventory seemed too formidable a task for just one person. Like she went off to smooth over diplomatic relations with rude princes every other tuesday.
She smiled, totally refreshed. What had she been worried about anyway? If she could befriend one prince, surely she could do it again.
“I will.”
The next time Shirayuki stopped by her home-sweet-reference section, it was for the desks.
There was a particularly nice one there with plenty of legroom and lots of surface area for all the books on moss she'd collected during the spontaneous, late-night library visit.
She went to take a seat and realized her desk was already occupied.
A small child sat underneath it, with a tall stack of chemistry books, studiously taking notes.
"Hello." She greeted him without really thinking, more surprised than anything else.
"Hello." He never looked up from his notes.
She looked around for an adult, but the reference section looked as barren as it had been when she’d entered it.
He couldn't be more than eight years old. Maybe his parents were perusing a different section.
There weren't any more desks nearby, so Shirayuki decided the floor looked comfortable after all. She folded her legs on the ground about a foot away from the desk and cracked open one of her books.
Irish moss was an exciting topic, one of her favorite varieties, but she couldn't help glancing over at the quiet boy sketching in his notebook. She resolved herself to one little peek, because surely it couldn't hurt, and was shocked at the familiar little circles and letters in his drawings.
Her voice was an awed whisper. “Are those... Covalent bonds?”
The answer was yes, of course, but she asked more in surprise that he knew.
The boy finally looked up from his notepad, and big blue eyes regarded her with blunt curiosity.
“Yes. That's the chapter I’m on.”
She looked at his textbook. The Fundamentals of Chemistry.
“That’s amazing. That’s… high school level. I didn’t learn about covalent bonds until I was a sophomore.” Shirayuki could only wish she had been able to study this sort of thing when she was that young.
She leaned back and pushed her hair behind her ear, so she could ask more questions of the kid prodigy she’d been lucky enough to meet. They could be coworkers, one day.
The boy tracked her movement, serious eyes laser-focused on her untamed bangs.
“Do you know the periodic table already?”
“...Red phosphorus” he mumbled so softly, Shirayuki almost didn’t catch it.
She smiled, his quiet response surely answered her question, but he seemed a bit shy about it. “Is that your favorite element?”
The boy slow-blinked a few times, before his eyebrows furrowed, and Shirayuki wasn’t sure what to make of his expression. Maybe she'd misunderstood?
His wide gaze moved from her hair to the ground. “Um–”
A shift in the air and tingles on her neck were the only warning Shirayuki got before a very, very familiar voice called to her from behind.
"Why, hello Miss." Obi crouched next to her on the ground; the golden glint of his nametag caught her eyes just before the glint in his golden eyes did the exact same.
“Oh, hey Obi.”
He knew her name, scanned her library card almost weekly, yet he still called her Miss . It should’ve felt formal, cold even, considering she’d heard him refer to other visitors by their first names with casual confidence.
She didn’t mind it.
“I see you've met little Ryuu.” He nodded under the table, a faint smile tracing his lips.
“Ah, yes –” she turned, realizing she knew his name now, but –
Ryuu had utilized the distraction to retreat further under the desk, nose now buried in his textbook.
“Ha!” Obi’s hearty laugh made Shirayuki smile, even through her surprise.
He set an elbow on his knee, propping his head on his fist. The sleeves on his black button-down were rolled up, showcasing his scar-laced forearms, once again.
“Looks like he's a bit worn out. Talking can be tiring, yeah?” He shrugged at Shirayuki and she nodded, realizing she had probably been a bit nosy in her curiosity, and Ryuu was just a boy. A boy that… happened to be studying high school level chemistry.
Obi sighed, dramatic and put-upon. “But I guess that's just the cost of being the smartest ten-year-old this side of the Missouri river.”
Ryuu peeked out from behind his book, just enough to see azure sky through fluffy, brown hair.
“That's unverified.”
“Only because he won't take the IQ test,” Obi stage-whispered past the back of his hand.
“They're not an accurate measure of intelligence.”
Ryuu sunk back behind his book, a turtle retreating to the safety of its shell, so Obi stood and offered Shirayuki a hand. She took it, grateful; the floor wasn’t quite as comfortable as Ryuu had made it look.
“C’mon Miss, let’s get those books settled for you.” He set a hand on her back and attempted to guide her out into the hallway.
She realized, after a few steps, he meant to check her out, but she hadn’t even returned last week’s haul yet. The current visit was for fun only . “Oh, ah, I was just going to-”
Her words halted at Obi's stare. He tipped his head at her, golden eyes entreating her to keep walking.
Huh. Maybe, she could pick a new reading spot for a while.
They walked in silence through the long hallway between the reference section and the other rooms.
She was still a little wowed. It’s not every day one meets someone so young and so hungry for knowledge. “That was high school level stuff he was studying, Obi. His parents must be-”
“Little Ryuu's parents treat this place like a daycare.” He was still smiling, but his expression had a sharper edge to it now.
Crestfallen, her steps slowed. “That… must be lonely.”
Obi’s face softened immediately, and gone was the pressure of his hand at her back.
“There’s other kids here, but usually, little Ryuu would rather play with lab kits over legos. He's been reading all sorts of textbooks since he learned how to read.” He tilted his head in thought; an allowance, if not a total agreement. Something Shirayuki couldn’t place sparkled in his eyes, and it reminded her of when… of when…
When what?
“That's amazing.” She commented offhandedly, trying to pin down the memory shifting around in her brain.
He held out an elbow, like gentlemen in the movies. “Let’s keep going, Miss.”
Sliding her books to her other arm, she took it.
The Palace hall stretched before them, opulent and softly lit. Shirayuki had never been so relieved to be attending anything that required she wear a dress worth more than her entire wardrobe combined, but with him at her arm and their promise made, she felt more safe than -
“Here we are.” Obi stopped them just outside the kids’ section, jolting Shirayuki from her disturbingly vivid daydream.
“Woah, you alright there?” He swiftly removed himself from her grasp, looking spooked himself.
“Sorry! I was just thinking of… something.” She shook her head, jostling her thoughts back into place until she remembered what startled her in the first place. She looked around; they stood at the entrance to the kids’ section.“Why did we stop here?”
“Ah, well -” he kneaded at his shoulder with one hand, contrite and anxious, but Shirayuki was stuck; Obi’s fidgeting shifted his collar, and she could just barely see the faint line of a scar at his sternum. What really had her fixated, though, was the absolute surety she had that that scar in particular ran lengthwise across his whole chest. There wasn’t even a shadow of a doubt in her mind.
But that was silly, wasn’t it? She couldn’t know that, Shirayuki wasn’t even sure what had made her think of it. She gripped her books to her chest, face warming with mild self-consciousness.
He grimaced. “Could I ask for your help with something?”
Honest gold called to her like a beacon. “Anything,” she assured, no hesitation.
Woah.
That sounded desperate, even to her own ears. Obi's widened eyes only sped up the rate at which her face turned scarlet, but all she could do was hold her ground and wait.
She wasn't going to take it back. Oddly enough, it was the truth.
He laughed, soft and teasing, pulling her gaze back to his glowing smile.
“Understood. In that case, come with me.” He walked towards the short, colorful kids’ tables.
“O-oh.”
She trailed after him, a bit nervous that he’d forgone any explanation in lieu of her… clear enthusiasm. He led her to a table where two small children, one boy and one girl, sat with plastic, flower-patterned tea cups in hand. They couldn’t have been that much younger than Ryuu, and they both were dressed for a much finer venue than the library could really live up to.
Little bowls of oreos and trail mix accompanied each setting, and a centerpiece of glass flowers in a clear vase added a little extra elegance to the whole setup.
Obi gestured to the children with a sweeping hand and bowed deeply. “May I present Princess Rona and Prince Eugena of the Shenazard royal family.”
Three sets of eyes looked up at her expectantly, and Shirayuki realized it was her turn to roleplay.
“Right! Uh – it's a pleasure to make your acquaintances.” She curtsied as best she could in jeans and a thick wool sweater, but it must have been properly done because 'Princess’ Rona took a dainty sip of her tea, continuing the act of royal countenance, while Eugena took it as an opportunity to swap his empty oreo bowl with the next one over.
Obi pulled out a chair, smirking at Shirayuki. “My Lady.”
“Sir Obi,” she nodded in return, setting her books down on the ground next to her.
“A Lady?” Rona finally deigned to address them. “I have not seen you among the court. Pray tell, what is thy name?”
“Shirayuki, Your Highness,” she bowed, trying not to look at Obi, who was clearly hiding his amusement behind his tea cup.
Rona tipped her head, “It is wonderful to meet you, Lady Shirayuki.” Shirayuki thought back to Ryuu and wondered if all the children at this library were reading way above their respective grade levels.
As she watched Rona pour her a perfect cup of chamomile, Shirayuki also wondered if teatime might be a weekly affair, and she was just never there late enough at night to witness it.
The magic of late-night library visits.
The tea was more fragrant than expected, and when Shirayuki took a sip, she realized there were definitely more ingredients added than just chamomile flowers.
“So, Lady Shirayuki, let's get right down to business then.”
Another sip, she tasted rosehips with notes of vanilla, caramel and... Something nutty perhaps? Maybe almond or-
“Do you currently have any suitors?”
“Ack-” she choked on her third sip and glared at Obi, who rapidly shoved an oreo in his mouth as an excuse to cover up his wild grin and trembling shoulders.
“I -I don't believe so? My occupation doesn't leave much time for ah, courting.”
“And what is your occupation?”
“I’m a botanist. I research plants.” She explained at seeing their confused little faces, remembering that this was teatime in the kids’ section, not an afternoon with Jane Austen.
“But it's late at night, and you're here right now.”
…’Princess’ Rona had a point.
“That’s true, but -”
“Flowers are plants, do you study flowers?” Rona interrupted, lightning fast.
Shirayuki sighed with relief to be asked a science question, plants she could chat about all night without hesitation. “Sometimes, it depends on -”
Rona plucked a glass flower from the delicately-arranged centerpiece. “Do you like these?”
Shirayuki accepted the gift with a light touch, not wanting to break the glass, only to realize the flowers weren't made of glass at all.
“They're beautiful.”
They were typical paper chrysanthemums many kids make in primary school, but these were painted sunset orange with red at the center, finished with some sort of gloss that had made them look like glass rather than paper. They were wonderful.
“ Sir Obi made them.” Rona’s smug smile heavily reminded Shirayuki of her boss. Something told her Garak would’ve taken ‘Her Royal Highness’ under her wing pretty quickly.
Shirayuki looked at the flower with new eyes. The petalwork in the middle was so carefully done, not a spec out of place, and the whole thing glittered under the light as she turned it this way and that.
She felt like, if the stem was a touch shorter, it might make for a cute hairpin.
She looked up to ask its maker if he sold them, like at a craft market or online because they were really quite pretty –
But Obi was already watching her, and he quickly looked away when she turned to him. He rubbed a thumb at the rim of his teacup, and Shirayuki could feel him bouncing his leg in the next chair over from the vibrations on the ground.
He shook his head. “I'm just the painter, don’t let them fool you. See the stem?”
She looked once more. The stem was twisted neatly, with tiny little leaves sprouting at the base of the flower.
“Eugena did those. And the paper petals were all Rona.”
Rona harrumphed at the disclosure, but as Obi looked at both kids, that soft sparkle from earlier returned, and this time Shirayuki knew exactly what it was.
Pride.
He took pride in the kids that came to the library, that he’d been charged with taking care of, for however long the duration of their visit. He cared for them all equally, and if the drawings taped up on the walls addressed to “ Sir /Mr. Obi” were any indication, they cared about him, too.
How adorable, Shirayuki thought, happy that she’d come to the library at such an odd time. As such, she had the privilege of seeing a whole new side of her favorite librarian.
Shirayuki generally did not smirk. But if her knowing smile is a bit more impish than usual, Her Highness did not notice.
Obi certainly did.
“You’ve tended them well.” His leg went still. “The flowers, I mean.”
Rona saw her opening and she took it. “Yes! See, you both like flowers, and –”
Obi’s red ears counteracted the stern tone of his voice. “Your Highness, what did I say about playing ‘matchmaker’?”
“Ugh,” Rona rolled her eyes in a very un-princess-like manner, “But I'm really good at it! Now, Miss Yuzuri and Mr. Suzu are –”
“Tell me what Mr. Sakaki said.”
Rona groaned, as if the weight of the world, or at least all the romance in Lyrias, rested on her teeny tiny shoulders. “Worrying about other peoples’ business will give you premature wrinkles. But – !”
“No buts! Enjoy your tea, before it gets cold and you try to tell me it 'no longer suits your tastes',” he mocked in falsetto. Shirayuki had no doubt Obi spoke from experience.
“That's not how you speak to a princess,” Rona muttered.
As the only other adult in the room, Shirayuki did her best to settle things down. “In any case, isn't it getting late for you two to be out and about?”
Rona picked her teacup back up, pinky out. “The King and Queen are taxed with many duties typical of their station –“
“Mom and Dad are working late.” Eugena’s first words since their little teatime began were blunt and scenebreaking.
According to Rona, they were the wrong words. “Eugena! You're ruining teatime!”
“We ran out of oreos forever ago, and this is boring ,” the poor boy whined.
“I'll get you some more snacks kiddo. You two, play nice,” he eyed Rona pointedly and nodded at Shirayuki to get his point across.
“I’ve been very nice!” Rona shouted, folding her arms and swinging her legs madly under her chair.
As soon as he cleared the door, Shirayuki grabbed her own tea, wondering what she could ask to keep them occupied, questions like “so, you like dress-up?” or “watch any cartoons?”, but Rona was still on a mission and not even ‘Sir Obi’ could stop her.
Shirayuki sipped her tea while Rona set the groundwork for her persuasive argument. “Sir Obi is very kind, you know. He hosts tea for us every thursday because he knows we can't go home till late –“
Ah. So Ryuu's parents aren't the only ones using this place as a daycare, then, Shirayuki surmised. Must be because the lab is so close.
“– And he made Eugena this special tea because my brother won’t drink bitter things –”
“Ronaaaa!”
Rona shushed him.
She then whispered, very loudly, “And he's single. ”
Shirayuki had to wonder where the ‘Princess’ sourced her information from. Regardless, she played it cool, sipping her tea and aiming for her own iconic regency moment. Shirayuki was starting to like this teatime, very much.
“Oh?”
Given an inch, Rona nearly exploded. “You two would be so cute together!” Her heart eyes were almost too shiny to look at, and it was a struggle not to break down and agree, if only to boost her excitement. Not that Shirayuki agreed. Well, not that she didn’t not agree, but –
Shirayuki cleared her throat, one teensy little cough that sounded like a true Lady. Obi was a good friend, and Rona was getting a little carried away. “Your Highness, a truly discerning noblewoman has to maintain a bit of mystery. Do you understand?”
Rona’s eyes grew impossibly wider, and they both grinned.
“Why, Lady Shirayuki, I understand completely.” She eagerly took hold of Shirayuki’s free hand, practically vibrating with excitement. “I’ve changed my mind, I think you would be a much better match for our big brother –”
Eugena’s head hit the table with a groan.
Faintly, he grumbled, "Here we go again."