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If anyone were to ever bother asking, Konan would best describe herself as an orange lily.
With all its beauty and brightness, an orange lily lasts but a few weeks before wilting away to nothing. Much like Konan’s own happiness.
For every joyful time in her life, there are prolonged periods of despair that have convinced her she is not meant to be happy for long. If not for the tragedy surrounding her past, the disdain and contempt of others has weighed heavy in Konan’s heart. How could anyone believe in good when there's a pit in their chest? How does one do that with a smile on their face?
Maybe that’s why she insists on keeping paper flowers in her office. Rather than anything alive, able to wither away and die, Konan keeps complex bouquets of paper in vases of all shapes and sizes; big, beautiful arrangements, each with their own message, a unique purpose. Since each bouquet is a project in and of itself, she folds her free time in half between actual research and doing these intricate origami ornaments to destress and keep her mind off everything .
Success rates may vary, however. Even paper can turn brittle and perish. It all comes down to how many extra dents one leaves in their canvas. Which is why Konan decides it best to be as distant as she can in her professional space. Work-life balance and all that shit. Never allowing herself to get too attached, too close. Aware enough to be present but not enough to care. Another graduating year class, another batch of new faces. The same old uninspired nonsense every year eventually becomes static in her head.
It’s seen her pass through ten years of her tenure, and though she gives the lectures and coursework her all, she is never one to personally guide her students like a guardian angel. Maybe if she had started teaching before the accident, before she believed everything was her fault, everything she places her faith in condemned for misfortune. Yahiko would’ve definitely teased her to no end about her little proteges, and she would have reminded him about what happens when you mess with flowers bearing thorns (affectionately, of course).
But this life sees the wings of a happy future clipped away, her present plummeting to an existence of purgatory. She’s accepted few things since would ever remain a constant in her life, and even fewer still would hold her interest for long. Just the way things are, and will be.
Or so she thought.
Until Yamanaka Ino knocks on her office door.
Student number M000923. A marketing and biology double major. Trust fund princess of the Yamanaka agricultural fortune. A last-minute join for Konan’s biyearly seminar Botany and Philosophy: A Discussion Denouncing Heidegger’s Omission .
And the mysterious little shit with the audacity to leave without adding to the Discussion part at the end of the seminar.
It’s common for students to leave her seminars early, eyes tightened thinner than their running patience, and at a loss for words. Be it from fear, boredom, monetary loss (no refunds, by the way), or an overwhelming sensation of dread at their own lack of brain cells to rub together. Konan couldn’t care less if someone paid her for it.
Well, they do. But still.
What’s uncommon is for students to stay the whole two hours (plus intermission), baby blue eyes staring with open possibility, only to leave without so much as a peep at the actual part where everyone, y’know, talks.
Imagine Konan’s surprise when, a whole week later, Yamanaka shows up, right at the start of her office hours. Her eyes are solid and sure, with questions shining on her glossy red lips.
“Professor Konan?”
Konan hides any flicker of emotion behind a neutral mask, only cocking an eyebrow. “Um. Yes? Did Dei send you through?”
Her secretary would never do something so moronic. Letting someone through without so much as a heads-up. The nerve... But any delay gives Konan time to collect her thoughts. She glances both ways down an empty hall. That poor girl’s face almost makes Konan double-check the nametag on her door to ensure she’s still in her office. A smile quirks Yamanaka’s lips, and it makes Konan warm behind the ears.
“Is this a bad time? He said you were available.”
That little traitor…what happened to easy mornings? So much for that. Konan chews the inside of her lip before tightening it into a paper-cut smile. “Not at all. After you.”
The door makes way for Yamanaka but she needs no invitation, instead shuffling to where Konan keeps her plants with the most amazed squeal Konan has ever heard. Konan swears those blue eyes will pop out of Yamanaka’s skull from how wide they go.
Yamanaka stares around the potted plans in her office before lasering in on its centerpiece, a large arrangement of purple flowers. She strokes one of the flowers with such care, as if it were alive, before turning to Konan with a quirked brow and half a smile still playing across those lips. “Did…did you make all of these bouquets by hand? I’m in love with these… larkspurs? Larkspurs...larkspurs no, delphiniums! This blue and purple is as rich as the real deal.”
“That’s actually the first one I ever finished. Darn thing took me three weeks and change,” Konan says with a little smile of her own. “That was quick for an ID, though. Are you one of my botany students, Miss…?”
“Oh, jeez, my bad! My manners? Wow. I’m Ino,” she extends a manicured hand, “Ino Yamanaka. Nice to finally meet you, Professor. I’m not a botany major, I just uh… really love plants.”
“A pleasure.” Konan shakes the offered hand and keeps Ino’s gaze. “I also ‘really love plants’. Which one’s your favorite?”
“I’m the biggest fan of daisies. I think they're lovely.” Ino giggles and it makes Konan’s chest do something weird and fluttery. “Is it just Konan? I didn’t see a surname on the door or on the Heidegger pamphlet eiither…”
“A woman can keep her fair share of secrets, no? And we’ve only just met.” Konan chooses not to hide a smirk. “I take it you enjoyed the seminar then?”
After Ino recovers from her perceived presumptuousness, she nods four times, lightning quick as if it’ll make her embarrassment evaporate. “You made Heidegger sound like such a stand-up guy from his work, you’d almost forget–”
“—that he’s a fucking Nazi? Yeah, it happens. Irredeemable political beliefs aside, I’ll never forgive him for leaving the problem of the being of plants as a muddied mess left to retrospective interpretation.” Konan sits on the edge of her desk, on the one corner free of any picture frames or desk plants. What can she say? Let her have her succulents and her little cacti. She doubts they'll kill anyone.
Ino laughs, the sound soothing music to Konan’s tired ears. Be it from enthusiasm in the subject or from the fact that it really is a sweet, lilting laugh, it almost makes waking up at dawn to meet office hours in presentable fashion worth the trouble.
“Well… what does he know, anyway? Plants deserve their respect in any argument involving anything alive!”
Did she say almost? Definitely almost.
“It’s a great shame he never showed them that respect, considering how sound his arguments are when applied to the domain of the living. They’re just as befitting a plant as they are with man. Hell, plants are among the few things that are even more than man. More adaptable. More patient.”
“Oh yeah? What else is up there as more than man?” Ino walks over to another pot of origami, a tall arrangement of pink flowers. She tilts her head back as she studies the layers of petals, squinting. “Maybe these…snapdragons?”
Konan maintains silence, instead watching with narrow eyes as Ino takes particular interest in a mass of snapdragons. “Close. Paper is also more patient than man. Just as well—”
“—ohmygosh, no, wait! These aren’t your run-of-the-mill garden snapdragons. Not antirrhinum majus, no way. You made…” Ino takes a step, then another, squinting, before she squeals and turns on her heels to Konan. “Summer snapdragons?!”
Konan smiles. A real one this time. Maybe Ino isn’t just a bubblegum blonde with daddy’s money backing her up. No one’s ever been able to tell them apart–smiles and snapdragons be damned. She keeps her composure, keeps herself firmer than a palm tree. Steady. “What gave it away?”
“Snapdragon blossoms have a hinged-style opening for a mouth and a squarish stem. Summer snapdragon blossoms are more of the stationary kind, like a beardtongue’s blossom. It’s in the slight differences between their flower’s shapes. Not to mention the climates they grow in.”
“Remind me again why you’re not in botany?”
“My, uh… father actually. He’s paying for my schooling so I have to study business administration to eventually take over for him, and marketing just makes sense as a backup. I got in through biology but switched majors in my first semester.” Ino actually glances down for once. Poor thing. The iron grip of a father has no painless escape. Not that Konan would know.
“But is that what you want?”
“I’ve brought up wanting to study botany but… he insists I’d be wasting my time.”
“With all due respect to your father, fuck what he insists.” That earns Konan another song of laughter, a giggle under Ino’s breath. A few strands of platinum blonde loosen from her pretty high ponytail and frame her face. Konan would say the messiness makes her look even better than before.
“He’s actually why I had to leave your seminar early. Called me in for work right when you were getting to the good part too. No ifs, ands or buts about it.”
“So you’d rather have a private discussion in my office at nine in the morning?” Konan gives Ino a pointed look one could interpret as a weary stare. Konan is tired alright, but it sure as hell isn’t from working mornings. Though she completely understands the stage fright, one of the tougher hurdles she had to overcome in her first few years teaching.
“I meaaaan, wasn’t going to wait another god-knows-how-long for the next seminar,” Ino cocks a hand on her hip, “and I have SO many questions for you that I couldn’t get out then. But hey, better late than never, right?”
“Is your father really the only reason you fled so soon?” Konan narrows her eyes with mirth on her lips. “You looked like you had so much to say, you even sat up front.”
“Well…” Ino freezes with an awkward grin like a bug pinned in a collection. She’d probably squirm if Konan wasn’t staring at her like she can see right through her. Ino gestures vaguely with her hands and her bracelets do a cute little clink. “What if I said something silly in front of all those people? Philosophy isn’t exactly my thing, y’know.”
“Ino… A flower does not think of competing with the flower next to it. It just blooms. If you wanted a discussion about last Friday’s panel, all you need to do is ask." What is she even saying? Why care so much? Konan closes the distance between them with a calculated strut. An angel descending on an acolyte.
But Ino’s eyes gleam as if Konan has just granted her the sweet relief of wisdom like a baptism.
“And I wouldn’t mind at all.”
Ino wastes no time in gathering herself back up, prim and proper with a lovely smile. “How about over lunch today? Say... one-thirty?”
Konan wants to let herself believe in something going right for once, wants to believe she deserves good in her life. Is it too much to ask for?
Only one way to find out, no?
“I’d like that.”
How long would it take her to make a bouquet of daisies?