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“She’s simply annoying.”
“You cannot be talking about someone like that, Agott.”
There are only two of them in the room. Qifrey is working on something; Agott is eating her breakfast-lunch-dinner after Qifrey had caught her missing all meals that day. He almost dragged her into the kitchen and sat her down by the table, quickly fixing her a simple meal that would keep her full and not make her feel weird at night after not eating for the whole day.
The rest of the girls are with Olruggio, testing some prototypes.
“But she is annoying,” Agott insists, although her voice gets quieter.
“It’s still not nice to talk about your friends like that,” Qifrey explains carefully. He is eating too, and Agott is almost sure that he is just trying to keep her company and making sure she finishes her meal. “She’s new, and learning. And she doesn’t have anyone but us,” he points out softly. “She’s still learning how to belong.”
For a moment, Agott doesn’t know what to do with her hands.
It’s unfair. Unfair, because all of them were like that—are like that—they are all learning how to belong. Here, there, nowhere at all, and Coco is just another addition to it. But she cannot voice it, because in a way, she still knows it’s so childish of her.
“I just need her to stop.”
“Talk to her,” Qifrey suggests. “That’s the best way not to build up resentments that will follow you two for a long time, Agott.”
Agott says nothing to him. When she is finally done with her meal, she bids Qifrey a quick goodnight and climbs the stairs to her (her! That room was hers, just before Coco came and took the half of it for herself!) room. Before she can even enter, she already hears soft sounds of Brushbuddy making a ruckus, and Coco laughing about it.
When Agott finally finds in herself courage to open the door, she almost immediately falls over the pillow that Coco had apparently left just by the doorway.
“Agott!” Coco says, and runs over towards her, as Agott barely keeps her balance. “Oh, I’m sorry, Brushbuddy was sleeping there—are you okay?!”
Agott closes her eyes. Be an adult, she thinks to herself. She’s also not even twelve yet, and that was not the age of an adult—and she really wants to just not be here right now, not in front of this silly girl that destroyed her shoes.
“You are very annoying,” she says to Coco’s face, and she sounds angrier than she wanted to sound.
Coco blinks. She makes a sound, something between ‘oh’ and ‘um’, and Brushbuddy hangs from her shirt, staring at Agott with its big, ink black eyes.
“Sorry,” Coco just mutters.
“You are leaving your stuff all over our shared space,” Agott starts immediately. She has reasons, obviously; she’s not a child that is throwing a tantrum, no way. She almost fell down! “And when you wake up first, you always talk to Brushbuddy so loudly I wake up too. And you keep stealing my paper.”
She can feel her face burning.
“I’m sorry,” Coco says softly. She blushes, and seems deeply embarrassed now too, her skin slowly turning more and more red. “I thought they were mine,” she tries to explain herself.
“They were not! I just—threw them in the middle, but they were mine!”
“I’ll give you mine—”
“I don’t need yours,” Agott blurs out. Coco's eyes go wider, as she stares at Agott. “Just stop stealing mine—and uh, whatever, okay! I—forget it!” Agott shouts suddenly, so loudly that Coco flinches and moves a step back. “Just steal it if you want!’
“I don’t want to steal anything from you, Agott—” Coco forces out.
Her reaction makes Agott regret everything. Master Qifrey is stupid, she thinks to herself. Everyone is just deeply foolish people, and Agott is a part of it. The fact that she even came here, started talking to Coco in the half-darkness of their shared space and thought to herself that everything will be just fine—oh, she’s probably even stupider than this idea from Master Qifrey.
And in all honesty, it takes her by surprise how hard it is to be cruel to Coco. Agott is not even cruel — she doesn’t think she is, at least, but the slightest idea of even expressing slight disapproval towards Coco seemed to Agott as cruelty at this point.
There is something about it that Agott cannot accept in herself.
“Forget it!” Agott snaps.
“No, if something annoys you, then—”
“I told you to forget it,” Agott cries out again, and she can feel her own eyes burning, feeling like she is just a few away words from crying. “It’s not important, I just—I just…”
“You what?” Coco asks, and she seems close to crying too. “I don’t want you to be mad at me!”
“I’m not mad!”
“You keep screaming at me,” Coco mutters shyly. She puts Brushbuddy on the ground and stares at Agott like she is a hurt puppy. “I really like you, I want us to be friends—”
“We are friends,” Agott forces out, and the words burn her throat. “But friends can get annoyed at each other too. And I can call you annoying when—you even destroyed my shoes!”
“Okay,” Coco says and the tears, the tears!, slowly start rolling down her cheeks. “I love you all a lot,” she says, her breath hitching. “I’m sorry—don’t like fighting.”
That stupid girl — who even liked fighting?!
Agott feels her cheeks beginning burning, just as her throat is, and she really wants to push Coco away and run. Just run, maybe hide somewhere; because those are not words that should be just thrown like that in the middle of whatever this is. It’s not even a fight—it’s just a friendly squabble. Agott is almost sure that she heard worse things said to her on a daily basis most of her life.
And maybe Coco never did.
“I—what does it have to do with love…” Agott mutters, but she reaches into her pocket and gives Coco a tissue.
“My mom always told me it’s important to say I love you after every fight,” Coco insists, and takes a tissue.
“But you say it to your family, not me—”
“But we are friends, and we are family, you all are the only family I have now” Coco says. “And I love you all. Tetia, Master Qifrey, Master Olruggio, Richeh, and you, Agott, I love you all.”
It’s weird to hear.
Are they family? Probably the closest thing that they all have to it, sure. But family doesn’t require love to exist, and Agott never understood why so many people insisted that love is truly required in anything. Food, family, magic, friendship — Agott could never accept that people just feel like love needs to be a part of everything.
But as she stares at Coco, and she sees her crying, it tugs her heart in the strangest ways.
“We do too” Agott finally forces out and words taste bitter in her mouth. “I’m sorry, why are you—stop crying,” she begs Coco. Brushbuddy softly beeps and mews by Coco’s legs. “It’s—It’s not that important.”
“I never shared a room with anyone,” Coco admits, and blows her nose into the tissue. “And I never lived with anyone but my mom. Just me and my mom, all my life.”
Agott just stands there, feeling more awkward than ever. Oh, how she hates Master Qifrey now. She should’ve just kept her mouth shut and kept her childish anger boiling inside of her.
Look at them now. Agott tried to act like and grown up, and Coco ended up crying.
“It wasn’t easy for any of us,” she says quietly, “at, um, the beginning. It’s fine.”
“I will stop leaving my stuff everywhere and stealing yours,” Coco promises to her anyway, and Agott doesn’t even need that anymore, she just needs Coco to stop crying.
“Thanks,” Agott mutters. “Stop crying,” she begs again, and repeats herself.
Agott gets another tissue from her pocket and comes closer to Coco. Brushbuddy is now holding onto her leg too, one of its paws on Coco’s leg, another one on Agott’s foot. While Coco is blowing her nose, Agott starts wiping her face.
Coco is a pretty crier, crosses Agott's mind. She gets mad at herself for even thinking that, but maybe that’s another part of the annoying quirks of Coco — her eyes glimmer when she cries, and she doesn’t get puffy at all. Instead, there is a soft blush that is painted all over her cheeks and on the tip of her nose.
Coco hiccups slightly and allows Agott to help her.
“I’m sorry for getting mad.”
“You should be able to get mad. I shouldn’t be crying over it—”
“No, I—calling you annoying was mean, I’m sorry.”
“No, don’t be sorry—”
“Coco,” Agott says quietly, as she leans closer to her. Coco raises her head and allows Agott to wipe all the tears from her face. “Do you want something sweet?” Agott asks her.
Sweets are the answer to everything, Agott has noticed. Master Qifrey would always have some on hand, handing them to his students when they needed a bit of comfort; Agott never really thought much about it, nor did she ever need it, but she also knew that Coco always gladly accepted anything that Qifrey would hand her.
Coco seems to be taken aback, but after a short consideration, she nods.
“I know where our masters are hiding their secret sweets stash,” Agott says, and gives Coco a smile. “We can steal some.”
“Can we?” Coco asks, surprised. “Won’t they get mad?”
Agott shrugs.
“Tetia steals so much from them. At this point, it’s an open secret — I’m almost sure they hide sweets we like just because it’s fun for them too.”
“Oh, I hope they have something with caramel—”
Agott nods.
“Let’s check, okay? Just don’t cry, please. I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
Coco nods, and smiles awkwardly.
“I’ll go wash my face before,” she decides, and runs out the room so quickly that Agott can barely register what is happening.
Agott presses her lips together and looks down. Brushbuddy is staring at her too, attached to her leg.
“I didn’t mean to make her cry,” she says.
“Bii.”
“Mhm. I’ll apologize properly with some sweets, alright?”
Brushbuddy just climbs onto her leg, and Agott helps it to get on her back. It’s annoying — not the Brushbuddy — that she feels like this. Maybe Coco should be considered annoying just because she keeps on making sure that Agott cannot exist like she did before, in the darkness, in the quietness.