Clove | 17 | Female | Half-shanshen | Mentions: Open
Clove dropped her belongings in her rooms with a loud sigh of relief.
She was here. She made it. She had a home now.
Without even look around her room or unpack her luggage, Clove walked over to the bed and belly flopped onto the mattress. Closing her eyes, she simply took a moment to enjoy the feeling of a bed that she could finally call hers.
She didn’t know how long her eyes stayed closed, or what time it was, or even whether she fell asleep or not, but when she finally decided to crawl out of bed, the only thing she could even think about was just how hungry she was.
Clove lumbered over to her scattered belongings and looked around the room. The floor was made of smooth, light colored, slightly rounded large chunks of stone, and a tree bough with lights hanging from the branches stretched across the ceiling, illuminating the room. There was one large window with a plant - a clove, of course. One of the walls was covered in shanshui paintings of various blue and green mountains, while the other wall had a built-in desk, countertop and stove, multiple cabinets, and a seasoning rack, as well as a pot and a… saucepan? Wok?
Wait… how did they know she enjoyed cooking? And how did they know how nostalgic shanshui mountain paintings were for her? And how… what… what the heck…?
Nevermind whatever wizardry occurred. She was comfortable. She loved the room that was all that mattered.
She slowly started to unpack her luggage. Slowly, very tediously slowly, the room didn’t look so empty anymore. Then, as she was unpacking, she decided to boil two pots of water for some noodles and edamame, because she’d somehow forgotten just how hungry she was to begin with. Listening to the sound of the water sizzling, she surveyed the room and - despite not having actually spent that much effort - felt a little proud of herself for once.
She waited for the water to boil, then added some salt and her classic star anise before deciding to throw in some chili powder as well. Once she’d finished choosing what seasonings to add, she dumped the frozen package of edamame she'd purchased, trying to avoid splashing water on herself in the process. She then moved on to the second pot of boiling water to add in some shirataki noodles and waited impatiently for both to boil - her ravenous stomach was calling, and she needed to hurry. After straining both the edamame and the noodles, she poured the noodles into a bowl and added the soup base that came with the package, before also scooping the edamame into a separate bowl.
Clove sat down, took out her chopsticks, and ate, washing everything down with the now-lukewarm leftover sweet tea she’d prepared for herself earlier that morning.
Mmm. Good stuff.
~
Professor Lantian Yu | Female | Rabbit spirit | Mentions: Clove, Professor Astrid Clover
A new school year, a new batch of students.
Brilliant. Here we go again.
And these first few days were either going to go super well, or turn into a catastrophic failure like it had seven years ago. That last particular incident had been so horrific that the school had to implement the rule “Do NOT fire explosives and fireworks at the air dorm. The hunting grounds are fine. The open areas of the campus are fine. NOT BENEATH THE AIR DORM”. And a few days later, they had to amend the rule to add “No fireworks in the water dorm, either! The fireworks are not so easily extinguished by the water”. And then a week later, “No. Fireworks. On. Campus. Anywhere. Please. For the last time.”
But then again, maybe the Great Garlic Disaster could compare. Or maybe it couldn’t. It depended on which was a more peaceful way to die - food poisoning or explosions.
Since the two incidents, Lantian had gained the odd habit of flipping a coin to determine the success of the first few weeks of school. Heads, everything was going to be fine. Tails, perhaps not so much.
She flipped the coin. It rolled for a little while, even bouncing off her desk, and then -
Tails.
Lantian sighed. Hopefully the coin was incorrect this time.
Suddenly, her ears picked up the sound of… footsteps… in the distance…? She immediately stood up, alerted, only to realize it was just students heading to the Secretary’s office for check-in. Lantian cursed her rabbit ears and sat back down, letting her long ears fall back down and droop. Sometimes she’d forget just how tiring it was to keep those darn ears standing upright for hours on end. Perhaps they needed cleaning, too… yes, cleaning. That would work well, considering that she wanted her ears to be lovely and shiny when meeting the students.
Lantian got up and fetched the cleaning solution that she'd been using for years now - it worked wonderfully well - and stood up in front of the mirror. She held her right ear upright to prevent herself from impulsively shaking her ears, and then gently placed a cotton ball in the entrance to the ear canal. She took a deep breath and poured in the liquid.
The sensation was odd to her, even though she’d been cleaning her ears for ages. She massaged the base of her ears for around half a minute, trying to resist the urge to shake her ear, and felt the solution sloshing around inside it. Then, after barely managing to tolerate the thirty long seconds, she started to use a gargantuan amount of cotton balls to gently clean the liquid out of her ear, getting rid of any excess earwax in the process. And then she shook her ears out. That feeling of finally getting the liquid out of her ears was heavenly.
Lantian took a towel and dried the area around the ear, fluffing up the fur a bit in the process, and then repeated the same steps for the other side. When she was finally finished, she looked at her ivory white ears in the pristine mirror and proudly flicked them a bit before allowing them to droop down. Gosh, they were so tense all the time. She massaged them a bit again, just to feel the fur beneath her fingers.
After finishing her slightly tedious ear-cleaning session, Lantian turned to her schedule, full of things she was supposed to prioritize hours ago. Thank the heavens she hadn’t been too groggy when waking up in the morning, otherwise she wouldn’t have gotten so much done earlier. Or, actually, it was only a few tasks, and only some of them were actually necessary, but of course organizing her essential oils was so important that it should be done first.
She set off to setting aside every genuinely important task and organizing her oils, only to realize, upon opening her essential oils collection, that they’d been organized hours ago. Huh. Interesting. This memory loss was really giving her some surprises.
She decided to move on to marking the maps of the hunting grounds - the recent trails of the prey, the locations of the sightings of any abnormal creatures you wouldn’t find in the human world, the odd landmarks scattered across the grounds, any new herbs for her oils - only to find that those had mostly been done as well, except for a small portion by the dorms. Whatever. That area had never been good for prey, anyway. That could be put off until much later.
Weird. It wasn’t usual for so much of her to-do list to be completed without her remembering any of it. Of course, her memory loss liked to act up sometimes, but today was strange. Polish the nail-claws? Check. Contact Professor Clover for any new herbs for her to turn into oils? Check (Astrid was probably too busy to respond, she presumed). Clean the office? Lantian looked around. Check. Perhaps go one meal today without eating meat and having to deal with her allergic reactions? Check. Survey the incoming students for any trespassers trying to sneak into the school? …Oh, wait. She hadn’t done that yet.
Lantian stepped outside of her office and - making sure no one could see her - turned into her rabbit spirit form. Everything seemed so oddly tall when she was in this form, yet… she sort of enjoyed it. She languidly hopped around a bit, watching a variety of students, both new and returning, walking into the Secretary’s office. Nothing smelled off so far. Earlier, she thought she’d smelled a student whose scent didn’t match any species she had ever smelled before, so… perhaps she ought to go check that out? Or maybe not. The Headmaster was adding new species to the school’s list every year, so it wasn’t abnormal for some surprises to emerge from the student body every now and then. But this one… hmm. It smelled so foreign yet so familiar…
Lantian followed the scent trail past the Secretary’s office, and then realized that if this student had made it past the secretary, then chances are they weren’t hiding any malicious intent. Secretary Marjorie wasn’t easily fooled, after all. Nevermind, then. Time to head into the woods that she hadn’t marked on the hunting maps yet.
On the way to the hunting grounds, Lantian seized the opportunity to pass by the earth dorm - her favorite dorm. After all, there was technically no rule against teachers briefly passing by the dorms, and certainly none against rabbits. The earthy scent mixed with petrichor and the pine fragrance was soothing enough already, not to mention the natural decorations on the walls, and she couldn’t skip the visit. Except, as she walked into the dorm… she smelled something else.
Noodles? Edamame?
Was someone cooking in here?
She sniffed again, and then caught whiff of another scent - the one that had puzzled her back at the Secretary’s office. Perhaps… it was that same odd student cooking in here?
Anyway. It probably wasn’t good for her to linger in the dorms for too long when she was supposed to be surveying the woods. Lantian decided to move on for now -
“Why… is there a rabbit outside of my room?”
Lantian jolted at the voice of the student and bolted, before coming to a halt and stopping. She turned around and saw the curious student - a girl, no older than seventeen, poking her head out of the dorm in curiosity, as the smell of noodles and edamame wafted into the hallway. And suddenly she could see why it was this girl who carried the abnormal scent - her brown hair flowed in the air like clouds, and the strands radiated a minty viridian color under the light. She could smell a whiff of human blood, yet… she also smelled like something else. Something she was sure her past self had encountered before, but had forgotten it by now thanks to that oblivion potion.
“Oh, sorry, sorry!” the girl whispers. “I didn’t meant to scare you away!” Then she softly adds, “I didn’t know there were rabbits in here…”
Well, not anymore, Lantian thought as she bounded away.
Even though there’s no rule against teachers being in the dorms, the Headmaster certainly won’t be happy when that girl mentions seeing me here.