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The air seemed clearer and the daylight seemed brighter today...it made Sucy wanna barf.
Instead of waking up in what would have been a familiar cold, clammy sweat, this morning she woke up from a sweet dream of all things. In her dream, she had been cuddling with Akko on her bed in their shared dorm, watching movies on Lotte's crystal ball and sharing butterfly kisses...and actual kisses.
What a nightmare.
She quietly slipped out of bed, not wanting to wake Lotte and Akko, not even wanting to think about Akko. Changing out of her sleeping gown, she figured a walk down to the greenhouse would make her feel better. And it wouldn't hurt to check in on her dark-room in there to see how the latest batch of phosphorum venenum were coming along.
On the way to the greenhouse, she passed Amanda and Constanze in the hall. Amanda waved nonchalantly. Sucy's attention was drawn to the fact that Constanze had a new bow in her hair. It looked.......nice.
Sucy stuck her pinkie finger in her ear and turned it once or twice, maybe to dislodge whatever dummy thoughts kept getting stuck in there.
What, you like bows now? What's next, Sucy, lip gloss? Heart stickers and rainbows? Keep it together.
All that came out her ear canal was a ball of wax though. She gave it a sniff, then flicked it at a nearby door.
The greenhouse was thankfully empty. She wandered past the plethora of magical plants and herbs for potions to a dark corner where she had been allowed to set up a small hutch shrouded with a blackout curtain. She stuck her head just inside the split in the drape and was pleased to see the blue glowing mushrooms had grown at least an inch since yesterday.
“Ah, right on schedule. Soon, my little mushrooms, you will be used in a diabolical concoction. Just you wait.”
It was at this point she would let out her cackliest witch laugh, in perfect imitation of Professor Lukic'...well, she would have. She tried. Only a weak wheeze came out and she found she just wasn't in the mood for monologuing.
Ugh...time for class I guess. Nothing better to do right now.
Weaving back through the greenhouse, a nasty-looking vine caught her eye. It was sickly green and twitching, culminating in a huge bulbous purple flower bud. The whole thing was surrounded by a spider's web of red tape, cautioning students not to go too near.
Sucy knew this plant very well. A Mandrake right here in school...what a specimen.
She reached out toward the huge bulb. It moved as if to sniff her hand, then recoiled slightly.
Everything is still okay.
She trudged dutifully to first period, where Akko and Lotte were predictably waiting anxiously.
“Sucy!” they squealed in unison. Akko unfortunately threw her rubber-like arms around her in an organ-rearranging hug. Sucy winced as she always did, but today it was because that warm hug was bringing memories of her dream back to the surface.
“Take it easy,” Sucy dead-panned, just wishing the hug would be over already.
“Where were you this morning?” asked Lotte. “We feared the worst!”
“Couldn't sleep,” she replied, not wanting to say the reason why.
“Are you okay?? It's not like you to not sleep!” said Akko with a furrowed brow.
“I'll be fine, let's just get through this school day,” she said, almost more to reassure herself than her friends.
Akko and Lotte knew better than to pry. They had already seen enough of the inside of Sucy's head and were reasonably sure she could handle one sleepless night.
Sucy, on the other hand, didn't feel so certain. Through each and every lecture that day, she caught herself daydreaming. About nothing in particular most of the time, but it was all cheery and sugary sweet. She doodled flowers in her notebook. She stared at the other girls, marveling at how pretty they all were, even Diana with her nose stuck up in the air.
At the end of the day's lessons, she slumped back to their dorm and face-planted dejectedly into her bed.
This day sucked.
Sucy tried all her favorite things to pull her out of this funk. She meditated, she experimented with her potions, she planned new pranks to pull on Akko...and none of it helped. None of it made her feel like herself. The hideous sunshine kept breaking through the cool, comfortable clouds of her mind.
Maybe a long sleep is what I need. Hit my reset button.
So she tentatively laid her head down for the night, trying to focus on gloomy thoughts. Mushrooms, graveyards, potions, kittens, zombies, kisses...wait, no.
The night brought sleep at last, but with it, more sweet dreams. This time, she was softly padding through the halls of the school in her nightgown, bathed in the glow of the moon. It was cool, clear and relieving, but the little hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. She wasn't alone...someone was coming toward her in the opposite direction.
Who?
“Suuuuucy,” a soft voice called her name. It sent shivers down her spine. She couldn't even tell if they were from horror or pleasure.
The moonlight shifted instantly to a warm afternoon sun, and instead of being a distant figure, Akko had appeared right in Sucy's face, with half lidded eyes and a suggestive smile. Sucy flinched from the sudden change.
“What do you want, dummy?” Sucy said, not at all liking that look on Akko's face.
“Just to tell you I have the sweetest girlfriend everrrrrr,” Akko simpered.
“Good for you,” Sucy replied, not really getting the hint.
To Sucy's horror, Akko was leaning toward her with eyes closed, lips at the ready for her “girlfriend”.
Wake up. Wake up!
Sucy shot up out of her bed in a second, gasping for air. She instinctively covered her mouth to stop herself from being kissed, even though Akko was snoring lightly 6 feet away in her own bed. Sucy realized her face felt warm.
A fever maybe?
But what she saw in the mirror was no fever...it was much worse. Her complexion had improved, her dark circles were gone and her face had a blushy, rosy glow. She could swear even her hair was a deeper shade of pink.
What is happening to me?!
Enough was enough. It was time to do something drastic.
She threw on the first thing she could grab and ran down to the greenhouse. Flinging the door open, she made a beeline for the Mandrake plant, ducking underneath the red tape. Once in range of the great bud, she waited for the pivotal moment.
Am I still sour enough to you?
It lowered itself to her level and sniffed at her hair. She stood, frozen to the spot. In one fell swoop, the bud opened into a gaping maw and all Sucy saw were teeth and eyes until it swallowed her whole.
Being cradled in the icky gooey mouth of the plant was somewhat comforting. It reminded Sucy of traveling through Vajarois's digestive tract and for one fleeting moment, she felt like herself again in the viscous coating of slime.
That one moment was just enough for the Mandrake as well. Just a sour enough note for it to spit Sucy back out onto the unforgiving greenhouse floor with a wet 'plop'.
All she could do was lay there and stare at the ceiling feeling hopeless.
What am I going to do? Before I know it I'll be gossiping about nothing with Akko and reading Nightfall and generally being unbearable.
A crackly voice broke through her reverie.
“Sweet enough for the Mandrake to taste test you eh? Heh heh heh. You're lucky it didn't digest you and liquify your bones.”
Sucy didn't even make the effort to move. The brim of Professor Lukic's hat and her grizzled face slowly came into view as she loomed overhead. “Something troubling you, dearie?”
“How'd you guess?” Sucy said, trying to keep the sarcasm out of her voice.
“Oh, call it a hunch but when one of my students tries to commit hari kari by plant, it really gets me thinking.”
She extended a hand, helping Sucy to her feet and carefully wiping the slime off on her robes. “Now, maybe you should tell me what's going on, hm?”
“I'm not in trouble?” asked Sucy.
“Looks to me like you're in enough trouble as it is. Would trouble make you feel better? How about hanging by your toes in the dungeon for a week?” Lukic' cackled hectically.
For now anyway, it seemed to Sucy that Lukic' was serious about letting her off the hook. Maybe she could use someone to talk to...someone who spoke her language.
“I guess I haven't been feeling myself lately,” she admitted. “I've been having...ugh...cheerful, sweet thoughts and daydreams. None of the usual stuff is working and it's getting worse.”
“So that's why you wanted to see if the Mandrake would take a bite out of you,” said Lukic' sagely.
“Exactly...it didn't even used to want to smell me.”
“Let me guess, you're having sweet dreams too?”
Now Lukic' had Sucy's attention. “How did you know that?”
Lukic' nodded knowingly and pulled a root out of her cauldron full of herbs. “Open wide and say 'ah'.”
“Ah.”
Lukic' poked at Sucy's tongue with the tip of the root and inspected the inside of her mouth, nodding and muttering little 'mhm's' and 'aha's'.
“Am I sick or something? Please say 'yes' and that there's a cure.”
“Yes. And there's a cure,” said Lukic' with a chuckle.
Sucy was finally starting to feel like there was some hope. She relaxed her tensed shoulders into her familiar slouch, breathing out a long sigh.
“You have a common disease. In witches circles, we call it “The Sickly Sweet.” Symptoms are intrusive sweet dreams and thoughts, rosy pallor and of course...erratic behaviors,” Lukic's face suddenly turned dark and foreboding.
“I haven't had any erratic behaviors yet though...” said Sucy, worry unfurling itself in the pit of her stomach. Her shoulders tensed back up again.
“Oh, there's no telling what you might do, dearie,” said Lukic' ominously. “I remember I had The Sickly Sweet once when I was a young witch. I had become so sweet and lovely, I had convinced the local priest's son to elope with me.”
“No offense, professor, but I'm not buying it,” Sucy tried to sound confident, but thoughts of her and Akko running away together in white gowns began creeping into the theater of her mind.
“Believe it, kid, I was quite the charmer back then,” Lukic' reminisced. Then she tapped her chin thoughtfully. “Of course, I got the marriage annulled the next day after I had been cured. Then I turned the priest's son into a badger, just for good measure. Heh heh heh.”
Sucy highly doubted the badger part of Lukic's story, but pressed on, “How do I get cured? A special potion or spell? I'll do anything.”
“There's only one known cure for the Sickly Sweet,” Lukic loomed over Sucy, eyes wide and seeing into another realm of knowledge and horrors Sucy had only dreamt of. “You must throw yourself headlong into the quagmire of sweetness until it's out of your system. Sacrifice your body and soul to its awful...diabolical...sunny warmth and rosy whims.”
Lukic's words hung in the air like a bad stench. That was the last thing Sucy wanted...she would almost prefer another round with the Mandrake and having her bones liquified. On the other hand, she couldn't bear the thought of staying this way forever. If she got it out of her system fast, she could return to herself and that was all she wanted. She missed herself terribly.
“Okay...” she finally said. “But I'm gonna need some help. Tell me what to do to speed this up.”
Lukic' scratched her chin, pondering. “Well, you could start with helping me with the plants. They need watering and tending. They grow better when you say sweet things to them. Compliment their leaves and such, you know. I find that doing some small kindnesses keeps the Sickly Sweet at bay.”
Sucy groaned.
“Oh, and wear this.” Lukic tossed her a yellow apron with bright sunflowers embroidered on it.
Just looking at it made Sucy's stomach do a queasy flip-flop.
“It'll help?”
“It'll help,” reassured Lukic', chuckling.
Sucy sighed and slipped the apron over her head.
Okay, how bad could this be? Just get through it
As per Lukic's instructions, Sucy watered every plant in the greenhouse, stopping to say nice things about each one. It was easier with the herbs and mushrooms...but the pretty feminine flowers reminded her too much of the ones she doodled in her notebook yesterday. She struggled to compliment them through gritted teeth.
“What...lovely...pink petals you have there,” she said to the roses. When Lukic' turned her back, Sucy leaned in close to one of the blooms and whispered angrily, “Wither and die, you monster!”
If flowers had faces, this one would have looked reproachful and hurt, wondering what it had ever done wrong to this pink-haired girl.
After all the plants had been tended to, Lukic' suggested she scrub out the student cauldrons and scrape the gum off from underneath the desks in the Magical Pharmaceuticals classroom.
“Cleaning is like candy for the soul, and you're doing a kindness for your fellow students,” Lukic' said in almost a sing-song voice.
Sucy had to wear the horrible yellow apron the whole time.
But she found none of it was improving her condition. Every time she let her mind wander, it inevitably wandered back to her dreams. Having experienced plenty of Akko's crushing hugs, she idly wondered what a kiss would be like.
They had almost shared one when Akko so rudely intruded on Sucy's subconscious. Part of her sometimes imagined what would have happened if she hadn't stopped her.
She shook her head, trying to clear those thoughts away. She let out a frustrated sigh, having reached the last desk in the classroom and showing no progress towards the relief she was promised.
“Professor Lukic',” she finally said. “I'm not feeling any different. I don't think this is working.”
Lukic' looked up from her lesson plan with a sly smirk. “Well, of course it's not working, I made the whole thing up!”
“..........What?” said Sucy in the most dead voice a living person ever had. “I don't have the Sickly Sweet?”
“By the old nine, no!” cackled Lukic'. “I just needed some chores done around here. There's no such thing as The Sickly Sweet.”
It blew Sucy's mind. She had been royally had...done chores for nothing! And felt no better for it.
“Then...what's wrong with me?”
“I dunno, sounds like you have a crush or something. Heh heh heh. The most treacherous torture imaginable...” she got that far-off look in her eyes again, the one where she pictured horrors beyond the power of words.
No
But yes, it all made too much sense. Why she couldn't stop thinking of Akko and dreaming of Akko. Why she couldn't stop wondering about the almost-kiss that she so vehemently resisted.
“What do I do now?” she said aloud.
“Eh, I think you know the answer already, kid,” said Lukic' sagely, going back to her lesson plan.
Sucy took off the hideous apron and left it on Lukic's desk. Despite being had like a total rube, Sucy couldn't help but have a deepened begrudging respect for her favorite teacher. She would have to remember the fake disease bit to use on someone else later.
“Professor...thanks,” she said.
Lukic' gave her a conspiratorial wink as she left the classroom, onward into the unknown.
Lukic' was right...Sucy knew what she had to do now. Resolute and eager to just get it over with, she stalked up to the dorms.
Classes should be over by now. Jeez I was cleaning a long time. Goody-two-shoes Diana should be the one scraping gum off the desks...
“Where were you today?” asked Lotte immediately as Sucy stepped through the door.
“Seriously, Sucy, what's going on with you? We're worried! You can tell us anything, we're your friends!!” Akko said frantically.
Without a word, Sucy just crossed over, clapped her hands on Akko's cheeks and pulled her into a kiss.
“Mmmph,” came the surprised noise from Akko, eyes wide as dinner plates.
Sucy's eyes were closed and her cheeks were blushy. If she was going to go for it, she might as well go for it all the way. She moved her lips a little against Akko's.
Soft. Squishy. A little slobbery. So this is what it's like.
Finally, Sucy pulled away, hands still clamped on either side of Akko's face. Lotte's jaw was practically on the floor. “Sucy, what-”
But Sucy had already let go and started walking to her own bed, the tiniest of smiles on her face. The intruding thoughts had gone as quickly and mysteriously as they came. The tension was broken, her curiosity satisfied, and she was finally able to meet herself again in the labyrinth of her subconscious.
There you are. And here I am.
“What was that?” Akko demanded incredulously. “You've been acting so weird and then there's that!”
“You answered a question for me Akko. Thank you,” said Sucy simply, with the small smile still in place.
“Well I have questions now!” said Akko. She suddenly turned very blushy herself and got all wiggly in the hips as she sometimes did when she talked about Andrew. “Does this mean you want to be my girlfriend?” she asked.
“Nope,” said Sucy. “It just means I'm me again. Maybe something will change later, but for now it's good to be back.”
Akko huffed, a little disappointed.
“Glad you got it sorted out,” Lotte giggled.
Akko perked back up. “Yeah, we're just happy you feel better! We love you Sucyyyyy!” She went in for another bone-mashing hug.
“Get off,” said Sucy.
Deep down though...like way deep down, she was glad to have her friends who so obviously loved her.
That night, thankfully, she dreamed of zombies.