Chapter Text
Let's get this straight, Aqua isn’t the brightest, even she can admit to that. But even so, when all of her peers all say, “Stay away from Murasaki Shion, she’s a witch,” Aqua still knows to listen. Right?
Yeah, nope.
Aqua found herself in a dimly lit hallway after school hours. She forgot her bag at school because well, of course she did, she always forgot her bag and chose times most inconvenient to retrieve it. She walked through the school, the eerie silence scary, but comforting at the same time.
So.. you’re wondering what the catch is, right? Of course, today just had to be the day her usual route to her classroom was suddenly stopped by a roadblock. One white haired, amber eyed, clothed in all black and purple (Because for some reason she decided to wear some weird getup beneath the school uniform blazer? Don’t ask Aqua, she didn’t know either) roadblock whose name just happened to be Murasaki Shion. It wasn’t hard to recognize her.
And in the palm of Murasaki Shion’s hand was a sliver of a blue flame, dancing weakly before blinking away like it was never there to begin with. A loud yell of annoyance rang from the girl.
“M-Murasaki Shion! You.. you’re a witch.” Aqua couldn’t help but find herself voice her thoughts aloud. Of course she’d heard the rumors, but she didn’t think they were actually being real. Her hand clasped against her mouth the moment she heard herself, and unluckily for her, it seemed Shion heard her too, judging by the way she jumped and snapped her body around to face her in an instant.
“Who are you and what are you doing here?!” She questioned, obviously panicked. From the way she didn’t deny it, it was clear Aqua was correct on her presumption. But well, no normal human could just summon fire into the palms of their hands like that.
Witches were dangerous, everyone knew that. Every kid in town was taught from a young age to stay away from them and call authorities on them if they spotted one pretending to be human. In all the stories her mom told her, they had long noses and grotesque faces and crooked spines. And the magic they weld, well, it could kill in an instant.
But Shion just looked like any other teenage girl.
Nowadays witches weren’t very common, in many towns they had been hunted to presumed extinction - remaining only as an urban legend, but clearly that was wrong.
“Uh, M-Minato Aqua? And I was um, getting my bag. I forgot it.” Aqua smiled sheepishly, rubbing her neck awkwardly. She was already bad enough with regular people, crazy psycho witches? No way. But she had to admit, this was.. quite the position to find herself in, huh.
Shion stepped closer to her until the pink haired girl found her back against the wall of the hallway. The witch slammed a hand against the concrete just above Aqua’s head. If this were any other situation, it might have been a bit romantic.
“If you tell anyone about this, I will personally find you and burn you alive.”
“WHA— A-Are you serious?! I was just getting my bag, that’s- that’s way too far!” She yelped. Oh shit, is she serious?! The outcome of this might actually be quite bad, as much as she joked about it, Aqua didn’t actually want to die! That was way too permanent and probably painful too!
“Is this serious enough for you?” As she spoke, Shion raised her other hand near her face, and the same brilliant blue flame from before sparked again. Though luckily, like before, it died out as quickly as it came. “Wh— Goddamnit, why now?! I was trying to look cool!”
Her face flushed red, quite the contrast from the striking white of her hair, and Aqua could only blink at the sight that just took place before her. Whatever fear that filled her body before had completely gone now.
“So.. you’re not a witch?”
“What? No, I am a witch! I mean- uh, fuck, you’re not supposed to know that! Shit.” (Didn’t everyone basically already know though?) She pulled away from her pin on Aqua, and grabbed a book from the ground before furiously flipping through it. A small, “Aha!” signified that she’d found whatever she’d been looking for.
“L-Look, I’m just going to go now, and we can pretend this never h—“ But before she knew it, Shion was chanting words she’d never heard before and a purple aura began to surround the two of them. “Wh-What are you doing now?!”
A flash of white blinded her vision for a moment, and when she recalibrated herself, she had to hold onto the wall to steady her footing. This had to be the worst afternoon ever.
“Did it work?” She heard a voice call out in the brightness. When her vision finally came to, Shion’s face was about two centimeters away from hers. She couldn’t help but feel herself flush a little at the close proximity. ..Even if she was a witch and was just actively threatening her.
“D-Did what work?” Aqua’s head still felt woozy, the dizziness threatening to sweep her off her feet the moment she let go of the wall.
“I put a curse on you!” A what. She wanted to scream, but Shion just continued talking away, “Basically now you and I can never interact with each other again without a huge forcefield blocking u—“ She stopped midway through her words.
Well, certainly they were interacting right now, weren’t they? And if you could call the mildly annoying headache a curse or a forcefield then.. whatever the hell Shion did failed (In retrospect, what did she even want to accomplish with the forcefield thing? That wouldn't stop her from telling everyone her true identity. Maybe she was just stupid. Not that Aqua could say much in that regard). She seemed to realize this too.
“Fuck.”
Aqua silently spoke up, not wanting to anger the other girl too much. “So.. it didn’t work.”
“Fuck off! You try it! This- Magic is- Argh! It’s difficult, alright?” One thing she did notice for sure was that witches clearly didn’t shy away from swearing. Or maybe that was just a Shion thing.
“I can see that.” This only warranted another glare. “Look, like I was going to say, I-I’m just going to get my bag and we can pretend this whole exchange never even happened! I’d rather forget anyways, I have enough things to worry about already.”
“Wait, really?” She blinked, clearly surprised at the weirdly easy compromise.
“Yes! I was trying to tell you a-and then you went and did a weird magic thing!” Aqua will say, she’d never shouted this much or felt this exasperated in a conversation ever before. Maybe her lack of conversations ever explained that, but still, it was surprising to find herself so expressive and loud.
“Oh. Uh, my bad.” She scratched the back of her neck with a shy grin. “W-Well, anyways, go on your way already! And remember, if I catch you saying anything—“
“Okay, okay! I won’t, alright?” She jumped in. She didn’t need to hear the threat twice. Not that it seemed like Shion could summon any real fire for more than two seconds or anything, but she was too tired to go around spreading gossip (Everyone already thought she was crazy anyways). “Um.. see you then, I guess?”
“No, not ‘see you’, goodbye and goodbye forever!” Way to hold back.
But Aqua just nodded her head and walked on past the white haired witch. God, that was probably about fifteen minutes of talking, but it felt like an hour at least. This was exhausting. Once she made it to the classroom, she found her bag sitting there right where she left it. She pulled it over her shoulder and walked out the building and kept going until she reached home, not looking back once.
And she supposed, in her words, this was goodbye forever, Murasaki Shion.