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It was the tempura bowl that did it. At the buffet, beside the karaage and fermented cabbage it sprawled in unassuming ceramic adorned with painted, red suns. They sat huddled inside, nestling, healthily glowing with oil. Crumbs of breading bulged with the crusted skin in a pale, gilded tint. A prickly spiciness itched his nose.
Half the load had been snatched by attendees already, and if Zuko didn’t pick some now, he would come up short later. He had already chosen sticky rice and soy-glazed salmon, cradling the bowl in his hands with an anticipatory hunger – it was difficult, sometimes, to keep still at banquets and festivities; at the dining table in the evenings and mornings with Father and Azula he could never savour the flavours.
It was too difficult, to pretend that his stomach had never gnawed at him, that he hadn’t chewed on some herbs and flowers and glanced at the stars above, praying that sleep could quench hunger, or hunger be satisfied by sleep.
It was difficult, watching Azula listlessly abandon the drier ends of her cod for the simple dislike of their dryness; seeing the scandalised servants observing him as he returned a dropped piece of cabbage from the carpet back into his dish as if nothing had happened; explaining to the mortified cook that the sharp bone which had been forgotten in his brazed lamb had not bothered him. Zuko hadn’t even noticed its invasiveness. Lamb was meat; it came from an animal. What else would accompany it but the bone?
It was impossible to keep himself from stuffing his face with as much as possible in as little time as possible. He barely ate when with his family. He could not chew and breathe like them, in that civilised manner of theirs. If it had any civility at all. His personal attendees, often asked to fetch some stir-fry, miso soup or sashimi to compensate, had no time to retreat before the emptied dishes found their ways back to their hands. Out under the stars, his sleep had been stolen by hunger more than enough.
Zuko snatched a few tempura; one, two, three, or maybe five for good measure. He considered moving to the golden karaage to their left. His mouth had watered from the scent alone.
“Aren’t you shameless?” asked someone behind and he jolted. It was his sister. He had not noticed her approach.
“What?”
“It’s ‘pardon,’” said Azula. “And you make it look like we’re not feeding you.”
Zuko glanced at his bowl. Ends of the shrimp stuck into the air. He shifted sheepishly.
“I just like tempura,” he mumbled, a little dismayed.
“And so do other people, I’m– what do you think you’re doing? No, don’t put it back!” She snatched the chopsticks out of his hands. The tempura fell back into the bowl. “What is wrong with you? Don’t you have any shame?”
He paused before saying, “you said I took too many.”
Azula sneered at him. “Yes, but I didn’t tell you to put them back. You’ve touched them now. That’s disgusting. What are you, a toddler?”
“Well, why did you imply it then?” he snapped, reaching for another pair of chopsticks on the banquet table.
Behind him, Azula’s gaze was following his every move. He felt it in the sweat of his neck where his hairs stood prickly. She had no bowl to speak off; only a porcelain trinket of sake. Azula did not indulge, ever. She drank the reasonable amount of sake for a fourteen-year-old Princess – two servings –, ate the adequate amount of sashimi and kakuni – small, three bite-servings with a side of rice –, and did all these things at a discreet, tranquil pace that would leave whoever was seated next and opposite to her wonder when she had finished her dishes in the first place.
All of this she did with a straight back, complimenting the dish if necessary but never too much in case she appear a shallowly converser, while indulging some minister in his ramblings on his son’s fabulous Academy scores, like a cat toying with her prey. Zuko knew this because the same sort of minister had tried to divulge onto him that son’s exemplary performance, and Zuko had neither known how to pace himself dining so as to not speak with a mouthful of rice, nor been familiarised with the advanced grading system of fourteen and up’s, as was customary. Whatever a grade of fifteen meant, he would have never received such marks either way.
Zuko’s stomach growled. He hoped the band idly playing a soft nightly tune in the corner was enough to cover his shame but he wasn’t about to lie to himself when Azula’s eyelids fluttered in annoyance.
She sighed, dropping his stolen chopsticks onto the banquet table without care. “Come on, let’s go eat before I do start believing that we’re starving you.”
Zuko followed. He threw a quick glance back at the discarded chopsticks someone would have to clean up.
“Zuko! Azula!” Ty Lee waved at them cheerily as they made their way to the corner of the hall. Mai sat to her left. “Did you hear that they’re shipping the rebels back here? For execution?”
“Of course, we did,” said Azula flippantly, and slipped onto her chair. “Father wants to remind everyone that we’ve crushed the Earth Kingdom. It’s only natural he’s making an example of those brutes to prove it.”
Azula always lied. Zuko had had no idea. It was likely that few attendees did. What would some pompous nobles and ministers care for those details when there was festivities to be had in its name? They could have repainted the palace walls purple or potted over some plants in his Father’s bedroom and there would be a banquet held as a celebration.
“Well, not all of them are brutes,” said Ty Lee. “You like those Dai Li agents quite well, don’t you?”
Azula nipped her sake. “They are fine assets, yes. But they’re also just Earth-benders.”
“Earth-benders who helped you conquer Ba Sing Se,” said Mai.
“Indeed they did,” agreed Azula. “But they can’t do much on their own without someone to lead them. They had that advisor before me. They’re a bit like sheep. I was the one who got us victory.”
“Of course, of course,” mused Ty Lee enthusiastically.
Zuko stared down the tempura in his bowl. His appetite had grown dull.
He couldn’t remember a day where Azula hadn’t off-handedly mentioned Ba Sing Se. It had been hard to look at her that day, not long after the siege, and not wonder where this stranger who had stolen Father’s mannerism had come from. Three years must be eternity. With her impeccably applied foundation and lip-gloss she could pass for much older than she was – he felt that this had been her goal. It had taken a month but now he was certain of one truth: Azula had never changed.
“What’s wrong, Zuko?” asked Mai.
He blinked in surprise. “Huh? Nothing. I’m fine.”
“Zuko’s eyes must have been bigger than his appetite,” said Azula. “Didn’t you say you liked tempura?”
“I do,” he said waspishly, taking up his chopsticks. “I just haven’t had it in a while, okay?”
“Hm, yes, I can imagine they’re not easy to get in the Earth Kingdom.”
He shook his head, biting down on the shrimp. Juices trickled down his tongue, drenched in fat and spice. The meat was tender enough to melt buttery in his mouth. He tried not to gag.
“Oh yeah,” Ty Lee piped up, “I’d almost forgotten about that. Don’t they have tempura there, too?”
“They do,” mumbled Zuko. “Something similar at least. But I didn’t eat it.”
“Why not?”
He slowly lowered his hand, bite half-way to his mouth. “What?”
“If it’s similar why didn’t you eat it?”
“You’re kidding, right?”
Ty Lee deflated under his gaze. “I don’t know! I don’t know anything about the food there! What’s wrong with their tempura?”
“There’s nothing wrong with their tempura,” replied Zuko, returning his attention to his bowl. “I was just a fugitive.”
“So?”
He paused again. “What?”
“It’s ‘pardon,’ Zuzu,” chided Azula.
“I don’t give a shit if it’s pardon,” hissed Zuko, squinting at Ty Lee. “What do you mean ‘so’? I couldn’t have tempura because it’s not something you find in the mainland. It’s a sea animal.”
“We’re pretty deep inside the country right now, too,” said Mai. “We’ve got tempura.”
Zuko’s chopsticks grew hot in his palms. He could not keep his breathing evenly and carefully placed them on the bowl rim.
“We’re nobility,” he said, slowly. “Of course we have tempura. We could have an entire herd of sheep toasted if we asked for it. But I was a fugitive. I was lucky if I got any damn food at all.”
Azula took another swig of her sake. “Yes, yes, it was very hard for you, we get it. But you’re here now.”
“You didn’t get to eat?” asked Ty Lee with eyes the size of moons. “You were missing food?”
“Ty Lee,” he said. “What do you think being a fugitive means?”
“I know what it means,” she said. “You were on the run, I get it. I’m not that stupid. But I just – you really couldn’t get any tempura? Nowhere?”
He stared. Momentarily, he felt like bursting into tears. Mai eyed him from her place by the pillar, narrowing her gaze contemplatively.
“You’re really thin,” she said after a while. “I thought it was because you weren’t eating enough with the stress.”
“He’s not,” said Azula. “He eats like a guinea pig-mouse.”
“I’m eating,” he bit back. “Do you see this bowl?”
“This is the first I’ve seen you eat so much.”
He shrugged, itching sweatily under Mai and Ty Lee’s scandalised gazes. “I’ve missed tempura. Why do you care?”
He turned back to his dish. The oil dripped from one of the fins onto his rice. The soy-glaze of his salmon reflected the lantern flicker in a slimy way and he was quite certain that taking a bite would have him retching.
“Well, why didn’t you order some at home?” asked Azula. “You could’ve had it at dinner.”
“I–” He frowned at the rice corns; he had hunched over many rice bowls with nothing but soy sauce to spice the taste over the past few months, if at all. “I guess it mustn’t have crossed my mind. I wasn’t used to having all this food around. I forgot I liked tempura.”
Azula snorted “You’re hopeless. But I guess it can’t be helped after having to eat Earth Kingdom dirt for months.”
Zuko frowned at her. “The food there is fine, Azula.”
“You just said it was so bad you forgot what dishes you liked.”
“I said I forgot what dishes I liked because I couldn’t have them. It wasn’t a possibility!” he hissed, feeling his cheeks heat up with a deep, gnawing shame he thought he had left behind in Ba Sing Se where he had kept his head down as he drifted from table to table, commandeered around as ‘tea boy,’ and only spoken when spoken to. Maybe it was the same shame as on that mountain. “I’d like to see you remember that you like something like tempura when you’ve spent weeks going to bed hungry because you can’t even afford rice.”
Silence settled over the table. Ty Lee’s hand had gone to her lips; Mai stared with something he would dare call concern; even Azula appeared stunned, her eyes narrowed tightly as if she was reconsidering him – for what he couldn’t tell. Maybe everything. Zuko inhaled heavily. The bile had crawled far enough to be palatable in the back of his mouth.
“You couldn’t afford rice?” repeated Ty Lee, almost in shock – and maybe it was just that. If it was, he didn’t want it; not her shock, her pity, Mai’s concern, Azula’s assessment of whatever crack she had found in his foundation now. Zuko scowled.
“You just said you knew what a fugitive was,” he grit through his teeth. “I was hiding among refugees.”
“I do!” insisted Ty Lee. “I do know–”
“Then why are you–”
“Zuko–” said Mai.
“I didn’t think you starved like them!” cried Ty Lee and then clasped her mouth together when multiple heads snapped their way.
“Be quiet!” shushed Azula. “You two–”
“Starve?” snarled Zuko. “Like them? Of course, I starved like them! I slept in the dirt like them, I was homeless like them, I was them!”
“I’m sorry, alright?” Ty Lee had shrunk back. “I didn’t think of you that way. You’re – you’re the Crown Prince! Even in banishment, you were you! This – this isn’t something that is normal! This isn’t supposed to happen to you!”
Zuko stood up abruptly. His chair scrapped against the wood floor with a deafening shriek.
“Zuko, calm down,” said Mai, but her voice lacked her usual apathy. She seemed uncomfortable. “People are staring. Don’t cause a scene.”
Let them stare, he wanted to stay, the whole lot of them can stare and gawk all they want at him! What did it matter? He had spent too much time on the road in the past few months, invisible to everyone. They could stare him down all day if they so pleased, and he would welcome it with open arms. Stare! Stare at the scene! What’s a scene, even?
Was it the scarred war children on the ferry? Was it watching those destitute faces on the street in Ba Sing Se? Was it that boy whose name he had stolen, whose brother never would come home? Was it the fear in his eyes when Zuko lit the air on fire? Was it a nation drowning in cheers at a twelve-year-old boy’s demise? Was it that Water-bender who watched her mother die so that, somewhere down the line, Zuko could enjoy his beloved tempura whenever he so fancied?
Was it a scene when he threw himself to the ground before his father, begging for the love of his only remaining parent? They had all stared at him then. Shamelessly. But had it been a scene?
“Zuko,” said Mai again. Was it a scene? he almost asked her. To her it must be, raised in a stuffy house with no room to breathe. Everything must be a scene; nothing must also be a scene.
He was ill, deeply ill, down to his gut, and his knees trembled. Sweat trickled down his temples. He feared he would buckle any second and he heavily dropped into his chair. It was true; he had been like them, in his hunger, his desperation, in his exhaustion, in his want to claw himself up to the ladder, whatever ladder, in delusions that there had been a ladder.
But he had also been nothing like them; he felt dirty, thinking about himself among them with a scar they thought united them. How they had allowed him to dine at their table, take from them their sparse food, and shared with him a compassion he could never have reciprocated. He hadn't even properly understood its extend back then. He had never known kindness like that. If he washed himself a hundred times down to the gap between his toes he wouldn’t be truly clean, sullied as he was by a dirt much filthier than whatever stench he had collected on the run.
He stared at his tempura with disgust.
“Zuko?” asked Mai. He must have fallen silent for too long. He blinked the tears away, evading her face from the opposite side of the table.
She had suggested earlier he order around servants; it would make him feel better because what else could you possibly desire, Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation? He wondered if he had truly once been like that. He must have been. It was a long, faded dream where Mai had known him once and he her.
And maybe she had been right about it, and maybe she did know him. A few months ago, she would have. It had felt like rebirth, upon arrival, the back-breaking bows and never-ending titles, the ease with which he could suddenly navigate his day now that there were no bills to pay, no laundry to wash and dry, no budget for the market, no dinner to cook, no water to fetch from the well out on the street.
Now there were other people to serve him tea, and they were the ones invisible. Even tonight it was easy to indulge in a habit so ingrained into his bones he hadn’t noticed the girl sweeping by their table to refill Azula’s sake. Now, he was seen. He could pretend that this was the way of things, that he had always been supposed to be seen and that those months with the apron, down-turned gazes, observing his aching feet idle along the plastered floor of a miniscule, mundane tea shop with a tray precariously balanced in his arms was nothing but an oddity he could laugh about in a few years.
It was not supposed to be this. It was not supposed to be him. It didn’t happen to him. Maybe that was what Ty Lee was asking for. When he had stepped off that boat a month ago it had felt so good, for a second, to be on the other side again, but now he had taken a proper look at the girl their age with the sake bottle in her arms, standing by the pillar to Mai’s right, rigid, silent, and who would only speak when spoken to. He had never felt dirtier.
“I’m fine,” he said, twitching under the table. Azula had returned to her sake, as if nothing had occurred. It was a sign. “It’s fine. Forget it.”
“You can talk about it,” said Mai. “If you want.”
“I don’t.”
Mai didn’t reply. He continued staring at his tempura. He was no longer hungry but he would rather wallow in the dirt again than let it go waste.
He picked up his chopsticks.
There had been tempura at the table, the next morning. Azula had arched both eye brows as he took his place across from her, a platter of crispy shrimp to his left, snuggled in spice, drowned in oil, smelling faintly of dirt and blood. Won’t you eat? she seemed to ask. He couldn’t tell if it was out of misplaced goodwill or malicious provocation. He had never known, not with Azula. It was easier to pretend she was only doing the latter.
He ate every single one without a word, a comportment so unusual even his father had commented. It was the first conversation held at the table. Zuko spoke only when spoken to.
There had been tempura in the evening, too. And the next day and the day after. And he knew that next week, when the day would darken, he would never sit at that table with them again.