Chapter 15 #2
“Hmm, so according to Amperian terms, I'm a coward,” I deduced with a nervous laugh.
“Yes, but today you won. I'd say anyone else sitting on this bench would have wiped the floor with you,” she said, gesturing at the group members and miming a scrubbing motion. “But what you did was still a good victory. Today, you stopped being zoozi and came close to being rassala.”
“Rassala?” I asked, intrigued.
“Rassala,” she explained proudly. “It refers to valiant souls.
Those who don't bow under the pressure of injustice, don't surrender under the sword of fear, and don't break under the weight of evil hearts. Souls that rise when all others hide.” Aish's eyes shone with emotion, and as she recited the phrase with a certain reverence, her love for its meaning was clear—she knew it so well it seemed memorized.
“Rassala is the ideal of the Amperian people. Courageous souls.”
“That's a beautiful meaning,” I said, still smiling. “So would a rassala be someone like you?”
“It's a life goal. Few are born that noble,” Aish replied with a broad smile. “But yes, one day I'll earn that title.”
“Then I think I like rassala.”
I felt like a fool for letting myself be happy around another student who wasn't Breno.
She could still be messing with me—that had happened plenty of times when I was new to Interion and couldn't tell that the honey in students' words was actually poison.
But despite my uncertainty, Aish's infectious smile kept me talking.
“I like rassala too,” Hiro said, setting his red headphones aside and craning his neck to be noticed.
The Amperian clicked her tongue in disapproval.
“Hiro's still worked up about getting beaten by someone thirty centimeters shorter.”
“Not worked up! I'm hopelessly in love with you,” Hiro said, pressing his enormous hands over his heart.
I'd noticed some things about Hiro during my solitary observations, and I'd come to realize that he put a lot of sincerity into every joke.
Aish rolled her eyes, ignoring him.
“Hey, Kyller,” he called to me. “It is Kyller, right?” he asked Adrian, who was beside him.
Adrian shrugged, ignoring me like he had all week—which was both baffling and strange.
Unable to get an answer, Hiro turned to me.
“I liked the headbutt. That was a really smart move for a hand-to-hand fight.
I swear I don't know how you didn't go down too.”
He ran his hand over his forehead, as if feeling the blow there.
“I think it was luck,” I said with a shrug.
I felt a flash of indignation that he didn't even know my name, but I understood that was just how Hiro was—sincere in a way that mixed friendliness with, perhaps, a light dusting of stupidity.
“Luck!” He snorted indignantly. “That wasn't luck at all. I don't even know if I could take a headbutt like that—I heard the skull crack from over here.”
“You could take it. You're the biggest hardhead in this class—I bet you'd handle it just fine,” Aish said, watching Breno's fight against Laura.
“It's not just my head that's hard, Aish. I hope you'll grant me the honor of showing you some other parts,” he said suggestively, gazing at her adoringly with those big eyes.
I just watched as Aish crossed her arms over her chest, turning her back to Hiro to face me. Seeing him act like this was unusual—he never showed interest in anything besides his headphones and the punching bag.
“If you ignore what he says and just focus on the physical, you'll find that Hiro's actually a nice guy.”
“I heard that!” Hiro called back, grinning in our direction.
Aish smiled mischievously and turned to me.
“So why do you go around ignoring everyone, like nobody in the world matters but you?”
I blinked a few times, confused by what she meant.
“I don't do that.”
“Yes, you do. I've tried to talk to you a couple of times. You just walked right past me without even noticing.”
I raised my eyebrows in surprise and stared at her, mouth agape. Maybe she had tried to approach me the day of the incident with Adele, or when we were running laps around campus, but I'd never thought she wanted to talk.
“Sorry, it's just that no one really talks to me, so I assumed you didn't want to either.”
“That's ridiculous—why wouldn't I? You seem like the most sensible person here.”
I frowned at her, a little shocked.
“Are you colorblind?”
“No,” Aish replied firmly.
“Okay, and your vision? Any problems with colors?”
“Also no. Should I?”
“In case you haven't noticed, my hair is red and my eyes are golden,” I whispered, afraid of drawing attention.
“So what?” she asked with a shrug.
“I'm a descendant.”
Aish gave me a mocking look.
“Yeah, obviously. If you're trying to convince me you're not a good person because of your hair color, maybe I should take back what I said about you being the most sensible person here.”
I was at a loss for words. It was the first time someone hadn't cared about that.
“It's just that I...”
“Relax, zoozi. You're a descendant, not a Drutes.
Where I come from, we don't care about that.
Ampér didn't go to war directly with Drutes until we were bought to fight alongside Interion.
The reds didn't stain our nation, and from the outside looking in, we can see this prejudice is nonsense.
Maybe if we were in Interion's place, things would be different, but that's what we believe.”
I blinked and looked at Aish's face, wondering if this was some kind of joke.
“You don't hate me for having red hair?” I asked, still unable to believe it.
She laughed and grabbed my braid. I pulled away instinctively, afraid of being hurt. Aish raised her hands in surrender.
“I think your hair is beautiful, zoozi. And if you look around, I'm the only Amperian here, so we're in the same boat.”
I stayed quiet, mulling over her words, and when I looked around the class, I had to admit she was right.
Aish was the only Amperian woman among the students, and her skin stood out against ours.
Ampér produced few elementals with a high enough level to enter the academy.
Besides, in the Tamyrah desert, they had an academy nearly as good as ours that trained excellent soldiers, most of whom ended up being hired by Interion's army.
Few managed to come here, and that year, only Aish and Isaac were part of our class.
She had a point, but still—her ancestry wasn't hated, just different.
“Are you saying you want to be my friend?” I didn't know how to make friends, so this seemed like the right question. However, I realized I was wrong when all the boys sitting nearby started laughing. Even Zion seemed to forget his act of ignoring us and stared openly.
“Depends,” she said, assessing me dramatically. “First, you have to convince me you're a good person. After your speech, I started to think you're not.”