When I’d returned to Siele’s office, she didn’t even bat an eye or ask me where I’d been. She’d waited until I’d taken a seat and told me to tell her when I was ready to get back to work. I put the leftover snacks and water in my bag and told her I was ready.

We managed to clean up the files that were strewn all over her desk and she commended the focus I’d had while we’d done so. I could have sworn I’d been more distracted seeing as I still couldn’t get Aubyn’s kiss out of my head.

“Do you want to call it a day? I’m not sure I have any more in-office tasks to give you,” Siele said after a few hours.

“I’ll just go home then,” I said. If there was nothing left for me to do, sticking around the office would be counterproductive. “I’ll be working tomorrow too.”

“I’ll have some tasks ready for you. How did you think you did today?”

“I think I did okay today but I’m sure it’ll be an uphill battle until I’m settled in.” Some things I learned that had never thought about or considered that Sang and Aubyn did as a team pleasantly surprised me. “I’m learning a lot.”

“You did well today. You helped me so much that I’m leaving work earlier than I anticipated. Don’t stress too much. See you tomorrow?”

“See you tomorrow.” I began to pack up my things, all the while trying not to focus on what it would be like going home alone. I’d never gotten on the bus alone before. Milan should be right down the street at his job but I didn’t want to count on that.

I bowed my head as I left Siele’s office and went to find the nearest bathroom. I set out afterwards for home, eating my leftover snacks as I waited for the bus to arrive. When I had to get off, I was a stop too late, but I found a toy store on the way back and had time to stop in for a few minutes before going on to find the train station.

Othanai had longer days than Earth did and I always found myself getting tired often in the evening as if it was past my bedtime. I wasn’t really tired, but I ended up dozing off on the short train ride. Once I got off, I got on my last bus home.

I texted Aubyn as I got off the bus that stopped in front of our building. Getting home on my own wasn’t as scary as I thought it would be. I had been worried about getting lost but the map on my phone and on public transportation helped me out tremendously.

I made it home in one piece by myself – Zedikai

I knew you would – Aubyn

I still hadn’t tried cooking so convenience store food was going to have to suffice. Before going home, I picked up a meal. It was only after I’d gotten back to my dorm did I took a closer look at what I had picked up to eat. Sang had told me once that if I was ever sceptical about the food I was getting, I should look for something with a green leaf next to it. Those foods didn’t contain any animal-derived ingredients. I used to hate vegetables, but the ones I’d had recently didn’t taste like the boiled-to-shit ones I’d had back on Earth.

I was home. All that was left to do was take a shower and find something to feed the monster growling in my stomach before I needed to tune into my language class. As I sat watching videos on my phone and eating my meal, it clicked. When I first met Aubyn and Sang, I’d asked them to help me get a normal life with a normal job and an apartment I could call my home. I had finally achieved that.

The next few days of work were a lot like the first. I’d start off organizing and updating files in Siele’s office and then visit Aubyn and Sang if they were in the office when I had a break. They were always with Don and Af’fy in the lunch room, at the snack bar, or at their desks. If they weren’t available, I’d join Matis who was very welcoming to me.

Af’fy wasn’t particularly rude to me like she had been on the first day we met. She was polite, but never asked me any questions or bothered to acknowledge my existence aside from greetings when others were around. She spoke to everyone else just fine. As she’d said, it didn’t matter if I found pleasure in meeting her. Not that I planned to become her best friend or anything, but it irked me that she obviously didn’t like me even though she didn’t know me.

Another thing that irked me was her blatant flirting with Aubyn. I almost lost my shit when I thought she was reaching to touch his hair. Nobody could touch his hair. Not even me and we locked lips every day. Her flirting was getting under my skin but I knew I didn’t have the authority to tell her to stop. I wasn’t Aubyn’s… anything. Not even his boyfriend. That title was still eluding me and I didn’t want to overstep.

“You look bothered,” Sang noted one afternoon when we had gotten to the table with our food first. “Like you’re about to throw something or punch someone.”

“I’m too much of a weakling and a coward to do anything with my spindly arms and legs. Fighting a vacura, female or not, will result in another hospital stay. I fucking hate hospitals,” I replied through clenched teeth as I ripped open my snack. I’d been trying new foods every day and I hadn’t found anything I didn’t like.

“Does she bother you that much?”

“Yes, she does. Aubyn is mine. At least I think so. I want it to be so. Only I can’t say so because it hasn’t been confirmed by him and I don’t want to be an ass and shove him out of the closet in front of his friends.”

“As far as I’m concerned, you two are pretty much a done deal. Is it him you don’t trust, or her?”

“Her, of course! Aubyn is too righteous to do anything like what I did to him. I believe him when he says his relationship with her is in the past, but she’s behaving like it’s still in the present and it annoys the shit outta me.” I took an aggressive bite out of one of my biscuits.

“Easy there, tiger. It’s just her personality. Easy-going and unintentionally flirtatious.”

“Then she can ‘unintentionally’ flirt with you or Don.”

“We are both taken by two…” Sang paused, searching for a polite way to describe his and his coworker’s partners. “Unique individuals,” he finished safely. “Don’s wife might seem like a quiet and submissive housewife on the outside, but she really isn’t. And, well, Milan…”

“I thought you said Milan doesn’t get jealous.”

“He doesn’t.” Sang’s eyebrows furrowed. “I wish he did though. At least once in a while. Even so, you and I know he doesn’t have a filter.” He took up a napkin and wiped crumbs from the corner of my mouth. “Relax. Af’fy has always been fond of Aubyn but they’ve been apart for a few years now. I’m sure she means no harm.”

“But I will if she doesn’t back off,” I mumbled. The biscuit was so good but it was doing nothing to decrease the annoyance I felt watching her with Aubyn.

Af’fy was pretty. Not drop-dead gorgeous or beautiful, but pretty. She had a nice smile and her downturned eyes, oval-shaped face, and the way her eyes closed when she laughed made her look like she’d be easy to get along with. Af’fy was also really friendly, speaking easily with everyone, even those passing by. Why was it then, that she disliked me?

When the others joined the table, I was glad Aubyn sat beside me. Sitting between him and Sang made me feel a tad squished between their broad shoulders but safe at the same time.

Aubyn was about to take a bite of his food but then paused and sighed. “I’ll be right back. I forgot to get a drink.”

“I’ll get you one,” I said quickly. I had to get a different one for myself anyway. “Which one do you want?”

“Anything chilled is fine. Thanks.”

“I forgot to get a drink too,” Af’fy said just as I was getting up.

I left the table to go to the snack bar, Af’fy walking behind me with shorter strides. I picked up Aubyn’s drink first, a bottle I’d seen on his desk a few times. I wasn’t sure what it was, but he had to like it if he bought it more than once, right? Then, I got my own drink. The one I had chosen before was a kind of unsweetened tea. It was alright, but the roasted, bitter flavour was too strong without a sweet accompaniment.

“I can get yours too,” I said as I scanned the bar codes of the drinks.

Af’fy had hers in hand but was standing a few feet away waiting on her turn to pay. She closed the distance and handed over her drink for me to scan and pay. “You aren’t trying to be pointlessly friendly with me, are you?”

What? “Uh… no, I guess.”

“Good,” she said. “Because I don’t like you. It would be a waste of your time to try to be friends with me."

I almost wanted to be petty and remove her drink from my item list before paying, but I didn’t. Instead, I paid like I said I would and asked “Why don’t you like me?” as I handed back her drink. I hated going around in circles and it was going to eat away at me if I didn’t figure it out. If she was willing to be so straightforward, I was sure she’d have no issue telling me why she didn’t like me.

“I don’t like humans,” she said, taking her drink. “Thanks.”

I would have loved to say that what she said didn’t bother me at all. I was never very well-liked no matter where I went. My mother had abandoned me as a child, my father hated my guts so much that he beat the shit out of me and collected money from his friends to sexually assault me, and not all of my clients, while I was a prostitute, were friendly and nice. It bothered me so much that I couldn’t finish my lunch and ended up leaving to bury myself in whatever work Siele had ready for me to accomplish.

Af’fy’s words bothered me because she’d said she didn’t like humans. Humans. As in my race. I’d thought discrimination didn’t exist on Othanai with how much diversity there was compared to Earth. I thought the people were completely different from Earthlings especially since Aubyn didn’t understand me when I told him that if I had lived in the twentieth to the early twenty-first century, I would have been killed just for having dark skin and kinky hair.

Over a thousand years ago on Earth, the concept of race was invented. It categorized people into different groups based on their physical attributes and ethnic backgrounds and was used to justify slavery, discrimination, and oppression. People with similar features to my own were treated like shit.

That dangerous, social and cultural concept spread to the rest of the world, leading many people to think that those who didn’t fit a specific, narrow image weren’t worthy of basic necessities, safety, and even life. It took hundreds of years to debunk this fictional belief and spread the truth that all human beings were the same no matter how we appeared on the outside and that there was no biological basis for this made-up reason to hate one another. Filling different coloured cups with water only changed the vessel. They all still held water.

Despite that, some people – who preferred to hold on to hatred and any reason to make themselves feel better than everyone else – created religions, cults, movements, and groups that still exist on present-day Earth who held tightly onto the belief that the baseless race system needed to be in place to maintain a social and political hierarchy. They believed in pure bloodlines, due order, and traditions so strict and full of bullshit that I could never truly wrap my head around any of it.

Thankfully, I’d never met any of those kinds of people. I’d never experienced hate because of my skin or hair and I thought it had been horrible when Aubyn had to encounter humans who hated him simply because he was from another planet. I never thought I’d meet someone who hated me simply because I was human.

On Earth, the idea of race didn’t make sense. It didn’t exist. Humans were simply diverse in appearance. But on Othanai, race did exist. I was a human. Sang was a vacura. Aubyn was a purka. For all I knew, there was a hierarchy that I’d yet to be taught about.

Af’fy’s words had disturbed me but they hadn’t affected my work. I was shocked at first, then confused, but then sudden anger burst through like a geyser. What had I ever done to her? Even if she’d had an unfortunate encounter with a shitty human being, how dare she generalize? If I were to generalize, I’d think all vacuras were intimidating and cold like Sang could be, not friendly-looking and bubbly like Af’fy. How could she hate an entire race of people she didn’t know?