Asami Soto is gorgeous. Raven black hair, pale silky skin, huge golden eyes, and blood red lips that twitched through volumes of emotions, even as she tried to keep the rest of her face a mask. If I couldn't touch her, or smell her, or feel the heat her body radiated when I passed by too close I would have thought her to be a spirit. What grace, what strength, what beauty! All inside a single individual. It didn't seem fair. It felt like a misbalance of the forces of nature. Yet she was still there, the seasons changed, the earth continued it's dancing spin. And Asami, the name that reverberates through my skull, the name that's at the tip of my tongue at all moments, will never love me.
I remember the first time she said my name. It was a giggling admonishment for knocking over a row of statues in the garden while airbending. I was hoping to impress her with the strength of my wind blast, but as I jumped up to gather the flow of air, I glanced at her, watching me and anticipating the great feat I had promised to show her, and as my feet hit the ground my ankle rolled to the side reducing the strength of the blast and sending it off course into the statues.
"Meelo!" she giggled.
I was bombarded with emotions: dread at my blunder, embarrassment that I failed in front of her, delight of how she spoke my name, curious wonder at her light song-like giggle, and fear of what my father will say when he sees that I ruined seven or so historical artifacts.
"I, I'm sorry, Asami! I can do it again! It's just my foot, then my ankle and the air and then the blast and I. Let me try again! I can do it again!"
"No, no Meelo. That was great. Very impressive. You're going to be a very great airbender one day."
She was fawning, over ME. It may be a tad condescending, but it was happening. I'm just glad that I didn't start drooling in front of her.
Bashfully, I replied with my thanks.
That happened when I was eleven years old. She was seven years my senior and going out with that hothead Mako. A huge butthead, all moody and frowny. I don't know what she or Korra ever saw in that jerk. Bolin was at least fun and happy. I don't know how I could ever get her to think of me as more than a child. I'm seventeen now. I'm a man, I'm the kind of man that a woman of her caliber needs to cherish and love her. But why doesn't she see that?