Somewhere in Grissom Academy, a twelfth-year student's tending to the botanical garden, carefully watering the plants, monitoring growth, ensuring every plant received exceptional care, barely registering anything outside the botanical garden, her mind on auto-pilot.
Moving around, she gingerly checked every plant inside the quadrant, writing down their status, while making notes of her own on a separate piece of paper.
She got to the lychee plants, they've been doing exceptionally well once she got the soil to the correct pH levels, now they've begun producing fruit, and as she checked, she noticed handful of lychees gone.
Could've sworn there were thirty lychees on the plants combined, now she's down about six, twelve, and her fine brow raised as she sees the discrepancy.
No one else should've been through the botanical garden except her, this is her field, and the Dean made it abundantly clear the botanical garden's her responsibility.
She was the only one of the thirty students to pursue this, thus she's the sole gardener, botanist, whatever someone wanted to call her.
It's peculiar this happened, because the Dean would've said something had he came around, none of the other students cared for her botanical garden, except when it comes to the harvest, but those get taken to the kitchen.
Curious, the student went around the quadrant, not seeing anyone, before moving onto the next quadrant, searching, and this continued until she came across the red skin peeled from one of the lychees lying on the ground.
Going off by that, the student went ahead, finding small red bristles that rubbed off the skin, more peeled skins, pieces of the lychee flesh with parts of the skin from the seed stuck to them, and by the time the student found the last skin, she noticed she's in the quadrant with trees.
These ones were fruit trees, tropical, due to their needs, they couldn't be bundled with any other trees except those like them.
Her dark eyes slowly moved up the mango tree, seeing a student around her age, munching on a mango he plucked from the tree he sat in.
"Have you no shame?" Lydia called up to the young man as he stopped eating the mango in his hands for a moment, chewing and swallowing the bite in his mouth, before he answered, "I was hungry!"
Shaking her head disdainfully, Lydia crossed her arms as she asks him, "Why didn't you ask?"
Had he asked, she'd given him a basket worth of fruits, if it meant he'd keep away from her work.
Tilting his head, his dirty blond, slowly turning brown, hair stiffly moving, as he goes, "You were busy!"
Lydia's always busy with her garden, it's a miracle he sees her, at all!
Watching him eating the mango, Lydia exhaled sharply, muttering to herself, before asking him, "Does the Dean know you're here?"
Of course, the Dean doesn't know that Malcom's in her botanical garden, not that the Dean would've allowed this, given that Malcom's prone to delinquency more than not.
Something he took offense, pointing out that he has his moments.
"Get down here, now!" Lydia demanded Malcom to come down from the mango tree.
He argued, but she forced him, and while gripping onto his half-eaten mango in his mouth, Malcom climbed down the tree.
Taking the mango out of his mouth, he then asks her, "Have you eaten, yet?"
Noticing the time on the large clock on the wall, it's lunchtime, but Lydia says that she still has more to do before she gets a chance to eat lunch.
Scornfully, Malcom goes, "You said that the last time you caught me!"
Not the first time this happened, for both, and it frustrated Malcom to know end, seeing how Lydia had a habit of skipping meals.
Everything in the garden of hers and she hardly ate anything from it on top of missing meals, made him worry to the point he argued with her about it.
"I'm not getting into another argument with you," Lydia shook her head, her curly hair stiffly moving as she turned away from Malcom, content on checking the rest of her plants, writing down what their statuses were on the clipboard.
Holding his mango as he caught up to her, Malcom narrowed his blue eyes as he brought up a previous conversation they had, "You promised!"
Many arguments ago, Lydia promised that she'll start eating more, Malcom making her cross her heart, everything, and now he's reigning in on that promise.
Sighing as she remembered her promise, Lydia gritted her teeth before telling him, "Can I just… check the mangosteens?"
They're fickle bunches and she'd finally gotten them to take after experimenting ways of growing them in the botanical garden.
Now, they're flowering, and she wanted to see if there's any signs of fruiting.
"Fine. Just, the mangosteens," Malcom raised his finger as he allowed Lydia the chance to check the fruits before he took her to lunch.
With her clipboard in hand and Malcom trailing her, making sure she followed through with her promise, Lydia walked through the aisles of plants of different types, from flowers to herbs, to vegetables and fruits, from all over the world and beyond.
The controlled temperatures changed as they entered different quadrants until it subtly warmed, there they see the mangosteens and the flowers sprouting.
Her hand reaching out and touching them, Lydia sees how they faired, before writing down the results, her dark eyes reflecting her pen as she wrote everything down.
When she finished, she searched with Malcom's help for any signs of fruiting, and found several fruiting mangosteens, tiny, missable, but slowly growing by the day.
Finishing her daily report, Lydia sighs, as she noticed Malcom eying her, he waited with mango juice dripping down the side of his chin as he wiped it away with the sleeve of his school uniform, she had a habit of making up a reason not to follow with her promises.
"I have to turn this in, anyway," Lydia pointed out that she still needed to turn in her daily report and Malcom accompanied her to the front of the botanic garden, finishing the rest of the mango and disposing the inedible parts into the compost pile, before washing his hands with one of the detached sinks while Lydia turned in her clipboard.
His arm around her waist, Malcom led Lydia out of the botanic garden, going through the sterile hallways towards the cafeteria.
"Will you be in your dorm, tonight?" Malcom asks Lydia as they walked together.
Pondering his question, Lydia thought about the schedule for today, having completed her task in the botanical garden, she would've been in class for the rest of the day. The last class of the day being physics, before it was time for dinner, and bed.
"I should," Lydia thoughtfully said as she went over the schedule in her mind, before seeing an impish smile on Malcom's face as he pulled her close.
He impishly said to her, "I've been naughty, my little butterfly."
"What do you mean?" Lydia said, feeling herself smile in return,
"You know what I mean," Malcom smirked as he pulled Lydia closer to him.
Referring to him naughtily getting into her botanic garden like a rabbit, going through it, eating his belly worth of various grown fruits and vegetables.
He leaned over and stole kisses from her, Lydia giggling before panic came over her as she warned him that the Dean might catch them.
Malcom's already in a bit of trouble, the last thing Lydia wanted was for the Dean catching them together, a staple of their time together, watching out for the Dean.
An unintended side effect by the school, of course Malcom had a different opinion, with the students far from home, rarely leaving the school grounds except for sanctioned trips and when they sometimes visit their families, of course the students would naturally gravitate towards each other.
Doesn't mean the school endorses this, trying to keep up the façade of being a prestigious school, it enforces the handbook where it doesn't condone "inappropriate" behaviours among the students.
Malcom chuckled at her reaction, but pulled her into his arms as he spoke, "Don't worry, it's all good. I have a plan."
He knows the Dean's schedule better than he does, wherever the Dean crops up, Malcom knows, and the Dean's too busied checking the dorms, what with that black thing in one of the labs.
"I like the sound of that," Lydia said as Malcom began nuzzling his face in the nook of her neck, making her giggle and feel warm inside.
Pulling away, Malcom said with a warm smile, "Come, my little butterfly, let's fly, fly, away!"
Their private moment ruined when Lydia caught sight of a figure in the distance, a jolt as she broke away from Malcom, believing it was their Dean, having coming through to check on the botanic garden.
Instinctively, she patted down her clothes, fixing the starchy white collar, wiping down her face, as Malcom crossed his arms, annoyed.
Dean Buzzkill.
Only, it wasn't the Dean.
It was someone else.
A man, in his fifties, staring at them, he had black eyes, darker than Lydia's, like two coals, pale skin, a neatly cut black beard with a black hair carefully combed and shined under the soft light, complete with a prim black suit.
"Who's that?" Lydia wondered.
Wasn't anyone they knew.
Blinking, Malcom says, "Didn't the Dean say he called… what was his… the Doctor?"
Didn't catch a name, only knew it was the Doctor.
Confused, Lydia asked, "Why wouldn't the Dean be with him?"
Doubted the Doctor knows his way around the school, causing Malcom to respond with, "Mayhaps we help him?"
Maybe the Doctor got lost, it happens, Grissom Academy's larger than life than most people knew, if not for the stringent requirements getting in, there'd be more than thirty students present in the school at a given time, roughly a thousand and more.
Walking together, the two went towards the man quietly staring at them, and Malcom put on a smile as he asked, "Hello, Doctor, are you perhaps lost?"