Part Elf, All Elf

Chapter 3

I Am Not Alone

It is dinner time. I head to the cafeteria in search of Sargrim, the one person who seems to have taken a liking to me at Ruhi Magic Academy. I quickly get my meal of buttermilk drop dumplings and broccoli, and my journey to the table in the second room begins. It is easy enough to find, I soon discover, as most of the room is empty. Sargrim has a table all to himself, just like he said he would. I walk over and sit down, avoiding the eyes of one of the boys that is staring at me from across the room. He is a tall young man about Sargrim’s age. His eyes are a light gray, and his short hair is violet in color. When I look up again, he is still staring at me. This makes me nervous.

Sargrim looks up from the thick book he is reading. “Hello, Alaya.” He asks what is wrong when he catches a glimpse of my face. “What’s wrong?” He turns to see that the violet-haired boy is still staring at me, that is, until Sargrim looks at him. When the boy catches sight of Sargrim looking at him, he bows his head to his plate seeing as he wasn’t sitting with anyone either; he had no one to talk to and no way to get out of what was about to transpire.

“Yosaka-san?” I ask, curious.

“Do you have a problem?” Sargrim asks the other boy. When he doesn’t answer, Sargrim says again, “I said: do you have a problem?” His eyebrows are furrowed, and his voice is deeper and menacing. I am alarmed. What is going on? Why is Sargrim making such a big deal out of this violet-haired boy staring at me?

“My problem doesn’t involve you, Yosaka,” says the boy bitterly, finally meeting Sargrim’s eyes, and he sounds just as menacing—if not, more so. His brows are furrowed as well, and he glares at Sargrim with a genuine hatred in is icy gray eyes.

“You’re staring at my friend,” Sargrim begins, “which does, in fact, involve me in this situation. What’s the issue, Heights, do you not like elven girls?” I could not believe my ears. I had not been stood up for before, not here. Yet now Sargrim is doing just that. He was telling off Heights, the violet-haired boy.

“Bag it, Yosaka. I’ll leave you and your girlfriend alone.” With that, Heights leaves, taking his tray with him, but not before glaring at me. It sent shivers down my spine, and I resisted the instinctive urge to shudder and shake.

When he is gone, I sit there quietly, staring down at my plate. I am nervous to say anything, but I don’t know why. Nevertheless, my mouth betrays me. “Yosaka-san, who was that?” I ask him. This is a stupid question, I think, seeing as Sargrim referred to him as ‘Heights.’

“That’s Arid Heights. He’s one of the students that always poked fun at me, especially in primary school. Come to think of it, he poked fun at a lot of the students in his classes.” The way Sargrim said this made me wonder how he could possibly be so calm right after being so…venomous. I believed this was usually common among human girls, and I also believed they were called mood swings.

All I could say to this was a quiet, “Oh.” So he was a bully, I supposed. Then something else comes to my mind: What does Arid have against Sargrim? “Yosaka-san, why does he resent you so?” I ask, my tone a little louder this time. Perhaps Arid was jealous of something Sargrim had. I’d read this was a common reason for teasing or taunting someone.

Sargrim Yosaka looks down at the table, his eyes a little glazed over. “Alaya, I should have told you sooner, but I am part elf as well.” Do my ears deceive me?

When I soaked this all in, I began to wonder, Are Sargrim and I the only ones, or are there others here that are part elf? It seemed likely that there would be some person in the school like Sargrim—an elf without pointed ears. If there are, I don’t blame them for not coming forward about their heritage. Suddenly, I wished I didn’t have pointed ears that gave me away as an elf.

“O-oh,” I say, and then, “But you don’t have pointed ears, so why did you admit to being part elf?”

“I’m not going to pretend to be something I’m not, Alaya.”

--

What Sargrim had said to me really inspired me. I was not going to let anyone put me down; I would not let myself feel inferior to anyone, purebred human or no. From now on I was going to stand up for myself, and no one would tease me anymore.

This I was thinking on my way to the newspaper club the following morning before classes began. We had a designated room to go to during breakfast so we would not be disturbed, and when I got there, I discovered I was the first person, save one girl. She was short in stature, but thin and toned—like a gymnast that these humans have. Her hair, which fell to her mid back, was black in color, and her eyes were a startling royal blue hue.

She was putting name tags and a packet of papers at each place at the long, narrow table. When I came in though, she looked up.

“Hello,” she said pleasantly, “You must be Alaya.”

I gave a small, shy nod and said in return, “What’s your name?” It came out a little too quiet for her to hear.

“I’m sorry—what was that?”

“What’s your name?” I said again, a little louder this time. Come on, I thought, don’t be a peasimmer and speak up! Be proud of who you are!

“I’m Izzia McDowell,” was her friendly reply. “So how do you like the school so far?” What? Why was she being so kind to me? Wasn’t she going to treat me like some sort of scum like everyone else did?

Unsure of what would happen next, I said, “I like my classes.” That much was true, I figured, and this way I would not be lying. I hated to lie, even to people I barely knew. Feeling a bit more confident, I added, “The professors are good at explaining things to me.” Oops. Now I just put the fact that I was an outsider right out there in the open. Perhaps now she would notice who I truly was—after all, my ears hardly protruded from my lilac locks; it was a distinct possibility that she had not noticed them.

This was not so, I knew, when Izzia replied sadly, “I know the other students here aren’t the nicest to elves.” She shrugged and went on, “It’s a shame, but there’s nothing anyone can do about it, you know? People don’t change.”

I nodded dumbly. Only then did I realize what she had said. People don’t change? That was the biggest, fattest lie I had ever heard! People changed all the time—even in their personality. How did Izzia think children grew up to live by themselves? How did she think these same children became something professional: something different from what their parents had been? When I opened my mouth to say something, it was as though the floodgates had opened.

A group of students—four in all—sauntered into the room. They were talking and laughing about something neither Izzia nor I had heard. They greeted Izzia, all ignoring me, and took their seats at their designated spots, setting down their breakfast trays.

“Alright, everyone,” Izzia said loudly to signal the others to quiet down, “We all know each other, yet we have a new member this year. Her name is Alaya.” She gestured to me.

This was it. I was going to set the stage for how this group saw me. Heart thumping, throwing itself against my ribcage, I stepped forward and put on the friendliest smile I could muster. "Hello, it's nice to meet all of you." I looked at them one at a time—eye contact with humans is crucial—and I recognized one of them from my classes.

Her name was Misa Osaka. With auburn hair that cascaded down to the middle of her back, she was tall with a more full-bodied, curvaceous figure that she tended to try and hide; she was a shy girl from what I'd seen, but somehow she seemed more outgoing now. Perhaps it was because she was so close with this group of students: the newspaper club. I hoped this club would do for me what it did for Misa.

One by one, they all introduced themselves.

"It's nice to meet you, too. I'm Aoi Hashara," said one of the boys. Tall and thin to the point of being scrawny, he had blue eyes and streaked blonde hair. He was dressed in the usual school uniform for boys: Navy suit pants, a white button-down shirt, a camel colored sweater-vest, a solid navy tie, and black dress shoes. His smile seemed genuine.

"You already know me. I'm Misa," Misa said with a smile.

"I'm also known as 'Photy,' but you can call me Ruhi," said another boy. He was on the short side—I assumed him younger than the rest—with brown locks and red eyes, not unlike the headmaster's. I knew immediately that the two were related.

"I'm Sakura Bei. I edit photos for the paper," a girl with spring green hair told me. She seemed more serious than the rest, but was friendly nonetheless; I could tell by the small spark in her blue eyes.

With renewed confidence, I gave a nod and sat down at my assigned seat. The first newspaper club meeting had begun.

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A/N: Yay new friends! Hope you enjoyed, read, and review! Thanks for looking.