Like How Mc Ate Up Lethal Plants But Yk - Blog Posts
Mage x Menace || Jade Leech
You, a struggling mage-in-training, tried to summon a majestic beast to escape your cursed fate in the botany stream.
Instead, you got Jade Leech—chaos incarnate, collector of mysterious jars, and disturbingly enthusiastic about plants.
He now lives in your dorm, calls you "Master" with a straight face and might be seducing you via herbal tea.
this is a present for @hyperfixating-rn <3 I'm very late but happy belated birthday!!
You were going to be a great mage. A legendary one. The kind they wrote poems about—long, rhyming ones with unnecessarily dramatic metaphors. You had dreams. Ambitions. A Pinterest board titled "Epic Wizard Core." You practiced basic spells in your room, blew up your mirror once, and were 96% sure your magical aura was purple (which is obviously the most powerful one, everyone knows that).
So imagine your surprise when your entrance exam results came back and you were… sorted into the Botany stream.
Botany.
As in, plants.
As in, dirt and roots and sunlight and “communing with nature.”
You had never communed with nature. You had once tried to grow a cactus—the most resilient plant known to humankind—and it had withered in protest within a week. You had named that cactus Spiky. Its death was a tragedy. A murder, some said. By you.
So naturally, you stood there on orientation day, holding your shiny new textbook titled “Green is the Heart’s Color: Love and Magic in Leaves”, with the same vibe as someone who had been given a live grenade and told to hug it.
Your fellow classmates looked excited. Eager. Too green, in more ways than one. You watched one of them gently cradle a sproutling like it was a newborn. Another was crying over the “beautiful potential” of transpiration. Meanwhile, you were googling "can you accidentally poison poison ivy."
And then, of course, came your professor. You don’t remember much from the orientation speech because you were too busy having a silent breakdown about the phrase "the gentle whisper of chlorophyll." But you do remember one very important thing:
You’re in so much trouble.
You raised your hand at one point to ask if you were allowed to… switch majors. The professor smiled.
A warm, benevolent, lethal smile.
“Oh, dear. The plants have chosen you.”
What does that even mean???
You don’t know. But the tiny seedling on your desk keeps wiggling like it’s happy to see you. You don’t trust it. You name it Vermin and pray it doesn’t unionize with the moss on your windowsill.
You are a mage in training. A powerful wizard in the making.
And now you are at war… with horticulture.
After a week of trying to bond with leaves like they were long-lost family and nearly getting strangled by a particularly enthusiastic vine, you decided you’d had enough.
You needed a way out.
Not in the dramatic “storm out of class, set fire to the greenhouse, and flee into the mountains” way. (Though it was on the table.)
You needed a loophole. An escape clause. A forbidden back door in the curriculum forged in ancient times by other students who had also accidentally murdered cacti.
So you did what any desperate, dignity-depleted mage-in-training would do.
You found a senior.
Now, seniors in mage school are like cryptids. Powerful. Elusive. Sleep-deprived. And terrifying in the way only people who’ve once accidentally turned themselves into a plant can be. Your chosen senior was sitting under a tree, drinking coffee from a mug that said “I survived Magical Ecology II and all I got was this mug and lifelong trauma.”
You approached, clinging to your textbook like it was a lifeline. “Hi. I’m—uh. I’m not vibing with the flora.”
They looked up, eyes dark with knowledge and probably caffeine. “Botany stream?”
“Against my will.”
A pause. A long, sympathetic sip. Then: “You have two options.”
Your heart fluttered. Hope! Salvation! Maybe—
“One: Fail everything, get held back a year, reapply next cycle. Pray the plants forget your face.”
“I can’t afford that. Option two?”
“Summon a familiar so powerful, the faculty has to bump you into a combat-heavy stream for your own safety. And theirs.”
You blinked. “Like. A dragon?”
The senior shrugged. “Sure. Or a demon. Or a vengeful raccoon. Anything above ‘mildly homicidal housecat’ works.”
“And then they’ll just… change my stream?”
“If your familiar is terrifying enough, yes. Preferably something with fire. Fire fixes everything. Except greenhouses.”
You nodded slowly, feeling the stirrings of a Plan™. A terrible, beautiful, questionable plan.
"How hard is it to summon a familiar?" you asked.
They smiled, and it was not comforting.
“Not hard. Doing it without summoning something that wants to eat you is the tricky part.”
You thanked them and walked off into the distance, muttering under your breath and already flipping through your grimoires.
You were going to get out of this stream or die trying.
Hopefully neither.
But if a hellbeast had to be involved, well…
You were prepared to negotiate.
You had one job.
Just one.
Summon a powerful familiar. Save your future career path. Escape the dreaded Botany Stream before you're eaten alive by carnivorous radishes with anger issues and questionable ethics.
You’d studied forbidden texts. You’d drawn your summoning circle to perfect mathematical proportions using a protractor, three compasses, and something called “Manifestation Oil” you bought off a sketchy alchemy influencer.
You even lit candles by hand like a peasant. That’s how serious this was.
You had one last step: focus your intent. Picture what you wanted. Channel all your magic and will into the ritual. A dragon, perhaps. A fearsome spirit. A beast of legend. Maybe even a war general.
Instead, the unagi you were saving for dinner—your actual, literal eel—slid off the table mid-chant and splat landed right in the center of the summoning circle.
The summoning circle hissed.
You had precisely one second to scream “NO, YOU STUPID SLIPPERY FISH—” before the circle detonated.
There was light. Screaming wind. Something smelled vaguely of seaweed and crime.
When your retinas finally stopped sizzling and your ears recovered from their astral slapping, you looked up.
And there he was.
A tall, elegant man standing in the still-smoking circle, dusting off his sleeves like he hadn’t just been yanked across the realms by an overcooked eel. His teal hair shimmered like deep water. Heterochromatic eyes. He looked like a minor sea god and a professional tax evader all rolled into one.
He tilted his head. Smiled. “That was… dramatic.”
You stared. Still holding the empty microwave-safe eel tray like a sacrificial relic.
“I was trying to summon a dragon,” you croaked.
“Ah,” he said, eyeing the smear of soy sauce in the center of the runes. “Then why the seafood?”
You didn’t have an answer. Mostly because you were too busy silently screaming.
“I suppose I’m what happens when your spell gets rerouted mid-delivery,” he continued, delight practically oozing off him. “Fascinating. I'm Jade. Jade Leech.”
You, a mage of great ambition and even greater regret, took a deep breath and said the only thing that made sense.
“…Are you allergic to plants?”
Jade Leech, freshly yanked from the dark, swirling depths of somewhere much cooler than here, watched with the amused detachment of a man who had just witnessed his summoner go through all five stages of grief in under forty seconds.
You cursed the gods.
You cursed the stars.
You cursed your entrance exam, your cactus, your birth, and at one point—yourself in third person.
He said nothing. Simply folded his hands behind his back and watched with the kind of serene interest normally reserved for people observing an exotic animal fling itself against glass.
Eventually, once your vocal cords began to shred from impassioned screaming (and possibly mild sobbing), you whirled toward him, red-eyed and wild-haired, and gestured at him in disbelief.
“Are you—” you wheezed, dragging a sleeve across your face, “perchance a dragon?”
He blinked slowly. His smile widened.
“Perchance?”
“I don’t know!” you shouted. “You’re tall! You appeared in a bunch of smoke! Your hair defies gravity! That could be dragon behavior!”
“Hm.” He tapped his chin thoughtfully. “And if I say yes?”
You squinted. “...Do you breathe fire?”
“I’m more of a ‘poison your tea and watch what happens’ sort of creature,” he replied, pleasantly.
You screamed again—this time in cosmic betrayal—and stomped your foot so hard the candles trembled.
He made a note of this. You had good stomping technique.
“Well then what are you?!” you demanded.
He shrugged, like this wasn’t a magical emergency and more of a casual day.
“A Moray Eel, technically.”
You stared at him. Then at the summoning circle. Then at the empty microwave eel tray still on the floor. Then back at him.
“Oh my gods,” you whispered in horror. “The unagi redirected the target circle. I was summoning a power dragon and the ritual downgraded to ‘long sea worm.’”
He chuckled. “How dare you.”
“I wanted to cheat the system,” you whispered, falling to your knees like a tragic protagonist. “And the gods sent me seafood.”
“I’m standing right here, you know.”
You threw yourself to the ground and started sobbing into the floor.
Jade’s smile grew wider. He might stay. This was already more entertaining than anything back home.
And honestly, watching you spiral was kind of charming.
Jade made tea.
You weren’t entirely sure how or when. One moment, you were crumpled on the floor, dramatically mourning your dreams of becoming a cool elemental mage with a dragon familiar. The next, he was handing you a dainty teacup on a saucer you definitely didn’t own.
There was a slice of lemon in it. The mug was warm. You were terrified.
“…Did you summon this tea set too?” you asked, eyeing the porcelain like it was going to explode.
“No,” he said pleasantly. “It was in your cupboard.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
He smiled wider. “Was it not?”
You stared at him. He stared back, sipping his tea with the calm of someone who knew exactly where every spoon in your home was and wouldn’t hesitate to replace them with slightly longer spoons just to gaslight you.
You took a sip of the tea to assert dominance. It was delicious. You hated that it was delicious.
He watched you, unblinking. “So. Why the desperate summoning?”
You groaned, slouching like the tea had robbed you of whatever spine you had left. “I got sorted into the botany stream.”
There was a silence. You sipped your tea again to drown in the shame.
Then his eyes sparkled.
You felt it. Like a shift in the atmosphere. Like the moment before a lightning strike. Like the second someone said, “Trust me,” and you woke up four hours later in a tree, covered in glitter and mild regret.
“Oh,” he said, delighted. “Botany.”
“No,” you said immediately. “Don’t do that. Don’t say it like that.”
“Fascinating field, truly.”
“Nope. You’re not going to help me switch out, are you?”
He leaned forward, chin in his hand, elbow balanced too gracefully for someone who had appeared out of eel magic and poor life choices. “Why would I do that? I think you’ll thrive.”
“You don’t understand,” you said, pleading now. “I killed a cactus.”
“Oh, I completely understand,” he said. “And I'm going to help you fulfill your potential.”
You froze. “…You mean, like, help me survive until I transfer?”
“No,” he said.
You dropped your cup. He caught it without looking. You wanted to scream.
The only thing worse than being a botany student… was being a botany student with a chaos eel who found fungi romantically intriguing as your familiar.
You were so doomed.
Unfortunately for everyone involved—and by everyone, specifically you—magic law was a clingy little thing. Once the summoning circle did its sparkly flashbang thing and delivered you one (1) butler-themed eel man, the universe basically clapped its hands, said “it is what it is,” and slapped a contract in your face.
Minimum term of servitude: one year.
“But I didn’t mean to summon him,” you argued to literally no one who cared. “There was fish involved! It was a mishap, not a magical invocation!”
Jade, very unhelpfully sipping tea that you definitely hadn’t bought, slid the scroll across the table toward you like a cheerful IRS agent. “Intent is only one part of the ritual,” he said with the infinite patience of someone who enjoyed watching trainwrecks in slow motion. “The contract is already half-formed. You really should sign it before your house explodes.”
You stared at the scroll.
Then at him.
Then at the scroll again.
“Do I at least get a trial period?” you tried.
“No,” he said, smiling.
“A free return policy?”
“No.”
“Is there, like, an eel clause I can exploit?”
He chuckled. You were going to die in this major.
With the kind of reluctant grace that only someone who’d just accidentally legally bound themselves to a smug sea-creature man could muster, you signed.
The moment the pen left the paper, the air shifted with a cozy little pop, as if magic itself was tucking you both in and whispering “congratulations on your joint custody of chaos.” A faint glow danced around Jade’s shoulders. Your window exploded.
(You’d ask questions about that later.)
“There we are,” Jade said, clasping his hands. “Familiar and mage, officially contracted. Shall I begin compiling a weekly schedule for our fieldwork?”
“Field—oh no.”
“Oh yes,” he beamed. “We’ll be revisiting the entire kingdom flora catalogue, starting with mosses.”
You suddenly understood the reason why some mages went mad.
And unfortunately, you’d just handed yours the clipboard.
The next morning, you dragged yourself to class like a condemned soul to the gallows, weighed down by a sense of impending doom and also by the deeply unsettling realization that your familiar had organized your bookshelf by spore reproduction categories sometime during the night.
Everyone else looked so normal. There was someone with a fire spirit coiled lazily around their shoulders, someone else with a giant spectral wolf that radiated unbothered energy, and even one smug jerk with a miniature dragon who was definitely using it to cheat on practical tests.
And then there was you.
With him.
Jade stood a respectful half-step behind you, dressed like a mildly menacing butler who might also commit tax fraud if given the opportunity. He carried your books. He bowed to your professor. He smiled at your classmates.
You didn’t trust that smile. That was the smile of a man who had definitely poisoned a royal court and got away with it by turning the queen into a toadstool.
Someone asked what type of spirit you’d summoned.
You opened your mouth to lie.
Jade answered for you. “They were aiming for a dragon,” he said, serene as ever. “But an eel will have to do.”
The entire class stared at you. You stared into the void.
“It was the unagi,” you muttered, already defeated.
No one knew what that meant, but it sounded stupid, so they all laughed.
Jade patted your back like a supportive guardian. You were ninety percent sure it was to check your spine for eventual harvesting.
Gods help you. It was only the first period.
The Academy was in shambles.
Centuries of magical history. Thousands of successfully summoned fire spirits, storm wolves, mildly angry raccoons. And you—a botany major with a dead cactus on your record—had gone and summoned a person.
Not a ghost.
Not an illusion.
Not even a creepy guy pretending to be summonable.
No. A fully functional person.
“Technically,” the Dean said, staring at the magical contract hovering over your heads, “you… own him now.”
You almost threw up on the ornate rug.
Jade Leech, the man in question, just smiled—sharp, calm, entirely too pleased.
“This is so cursed,” you whispered.
“Oh no,” he replied sweetly. “This is fate.”
And that was only the beginning of your descent into contractual hell.
Because Jade? Oh, he thrived under magical servitude. Took to it like a duck to water. Like an eel to crime.
He started calling you Master.
In public. Loudly. With emphasis.
“Good morning, Master,” he purred on the way to breakfast, gliding past stunned first-years who immediately assumed you were either very powerful or very into some stuff they weren’t ready to Google.
“Jade. Stop.”
“As you command, Master.”
You tried reasoning with him. You begged. You threatened to cry in front of the Headmistress.
Didn’t matter.
In fact, the more embarrassed you got, the worse it became.
“Master, shall I carry your books?”
“No.”
“Your lunch?”
“No.”
“Your emotional baggage?”
“Jade—”
“Ah, but you summoned me, Master. Now we’re bonded.”
You looked around, desperate for help, but every professor just kind of shrugged. Magical contracts were sacred. Breakable only through death, divine intervention, or, apparently, a system of interpretive dances before the moon goddess during a blood eclipse. None of which were happening before finals.
So now this was your life.
You were the “owner” of a smug eel man in a waistcoat who made you do your homework, made better tea than your own grandmother, and insisted on calling you Master while looking like a very polite threat.
You used to be a normal student with no future in botany.
You should've just failed your exams like a normal student.
Jade settled into your dorm room like he’d been planning it for years. Which was frankly insane, considering you’d only accidentally summoned him a day ago.
You woke up the morning after signing the magically binding familiar contract to find your room… different. Not horrifyingly so, just enough to make your eye twitch. Your desk had moved three inches to the left. Your bookshelf now had labels. Your cactus—previously deceased—was somehow thriving in a suspiciously fancy ceramic pot.
And then there were the jars. Oh gods, the jars. They lined the shelves now in neat, alphabetized rows. Some were normal—“Chamomile,” “Sea Salt,” “Lavender Sprigs.” Others were less so. “Tooth Collection (Domestic)” sat right next to “Rainwater (For Legal Use Only).” You wanted to ask, but Jade had a look in his eye that said whatever answer you get, you won’t like it.
He also brewed tea every morning. Not the relaxing kind. The existential crisis in a cup kind. You drank one (1) polite sip and suddenly understood what “the color eleven” looked like. Your body remained seated but your soul went on a brief vacation.
You had no idea how, but you were scoring higher in Botany. You still couldn’t identify a single plant, but Jade kept slipping you notes mid-lab with things like “This one bites. Do not sniff.” or “Lick at your own risk.”
So yes, your GPA was rising. Unfortunately, so was your blood pressure. And your heart rate. And your sense that you were, somehow, very much in danger.
Jade simply smiled every time you panicked. “You’re thriving, Master,” he’d say, and sip his tea like he wasn’t actively reorganizing your entire life.
You were not thriving. You were surviving. Barely.
The assignment was simple on paper: identify twenty local plants, label their genus, and list their magical and medicinal properties.
Which was all fine and dandy if you weren’t a person who had accidentally killed a cactus by underwatering it because you “didn’t want to overwhelm it.”
You’d gotten through most of your academic career via a potent combination of vibes, frantic late-night study sessions, and an almost supernatural level of spite. But this—this was science. With labels. And botanical terminology. And leaves that all looked the same.
So, you did what any sane, desperate mage-in-training with poor decision-making skills and a total lack of botanical knowledge would do.
You brewed a bathtub-sized cauldron of universal poison antidote and decided you’d taste-test each plant to figure out which one was lethal and, by process of elimination, identify the rest.
Jade found you leaning over the cauldron, mumbling something about statistical mortality rates and chewing on a leaf like a feral squirrel trying to beat natural selection.
“I thought you were joking,” he said, in that same unsettlingly pleasant tone he always used when you were actively concerning him.
“I wasn’t!” you declared. “This is science, Jade. And survival. I’ve made enough antidote to survive an assassination attempt—”
“You made it in your bathtub.”
“—and I’m going to lick nature into submission.”
Jade sat you down at the table, folded his hands neatly, and asked you—politely but with the weight of an ancient curse behind it—to repeat your plan.
You did.
He stared at you.
You shifted in your seat.
He continued to stare, like a disappointed headmaster.
“...Okay fine,” you finally muttered. “It is a bad plan.”
“Thank you,” he said calmly. “Would you like to identify your plants using logic, reference books, and assistance from your familiar, or would you prefer a slow and humiliating descent into gastrointestinal regret?”
“I mean, when you say it like that—”
“Wonderful. I’ll prepare the tea.”
You hated how soothing (mostly) his tea was.
You found out purely by accident.
Your friend sat down at lunch with a heavy sigh and a tear-streaked face, muttering something about how their fox familiar had gone limp and glassy-eyed after being ignored for two days straight in favor of midterms. Apparently, he needed “emotional engagement” and “frequent pets.”
You had not known this. You had not known any of this.
You returned to your dorm in a panic.
Jade, as always, was seated like an eerie portrait come to life, sipping tea and reading a book that looked suspiciously bound in scales. He raised one eyebrow as you burst through the door carrying three different types of fruits and a hand-sewn blanket you’d made in Home Ec two years ago.
“I heard that familiars need enrichment,” you blurted. “Do you—are you enriched? Are you feeling under-enriched? What’s your favorite snack enrichment type? Is it eels? Oh no wait, is that cannibalism? I don’t know your rules!”
Jade blinked slowly. “You believe I am in poor health?”
“I don’t know!” you wailed, thrusting the blanket at him. “I don’t know the maintenance routine for familiars! You could be dying from sadness and I wouldn’t know!”
He looked down at the blanket. It had uneven edges and a sewn-on mushroom that looked like it had witnessed terrible things. Slowly, he took it. Draped it over his lap. Sipped his tea again.
“You are a very considerate Master,” he said with a pleased little smile that absolutely shouldn’t have made you feel like you’d just earned an A+ in Familiar Wellness. “I feel much better already.”
You weren’t sure if he was messing with you or not. But then he let you tuck the blanket around his shoulders like a shawl, and even let you hand-feed him a strawberry.
You decided you didn’t care if he was messing with you. His ears were flushed. That was a win.
You needed Nightshade. Not the safe kind either—the real, reactive stuff that tended to hiss if the humidity wasn’t just right and once exploded in someone's bag for being stared at wrong.
Unfortunately, your professors had firmly, repeatedly, and increasingly frantically refused to let you anywhere near it. Something about “prior incidents,” “a trail of fire ants through the dorm hallway,” and “we are begging you to stop licking mystery leaves.”
But you had an experiment to finish, and a lack of official approval had never stopped a single mage in history. Which was how you found yourself sneaking into the restricted greenhouse under cover of darkness, with your overly smug eel-familiar following like he was on a stroll and not a felonious B&E.
“This is clearly illegal,” Jade said cheerfully, as he helped you pick the lock.
“You’re a summoned being. Laws don’t apply to you,” you muttered, shoving the door open.
“That’s speciesist,” he said mildly, and you ignored him on purpose.
The two of you tiptoed through rows of glowing plants, whisper-bickering the whole way.
“Don’t touch that. It screams.”
“You scream.”
“Yes, and I have a great voice.”
He huffed a laugh. You tried not to grin. You failed.
Honestly, it would’ve been a perfectly stupid and smooth heist—until the Shrike Vine noticed you. Apparently it was pollination season and it was feeling bitey. You froze as a thick green tendril snapped toward you like a whip.
Except it never hit.
Jade moved faster than you thought was possible. One hand caught the vine mid-strike, the other calmly flicked a tiny blade across it like he was trimming hedges instead of saving your life.
And then, because he was a menace, he leaned in close—just enough for you to catch the sharp gleam in his mismatched eyes—and murmured:
“I’m very good at protecting what’s mine.”
You were not about to combust in a greenhouse. You were not. Absolutely not.
Still. Your face was hot. You blamed the bioluminescent plants.
“Wh—That’s not—you can’t just say things like that,” you hissed.
He tilted his head, looking unbothered and devastatingly pleased. “Why not?”
You opened your mouth. Closed it. Pointed at the vine. “Is that one safe to lick?”
“Absolutely not.”
“…Cool, cool, just checking.”
The incident itself wasn’t even your fault this time, which was frankly insulting, considering you usually caused at least 70% of the department's arcane emergencies.
No, this time it was Jeremy from Spell Calculus who accidentally overcharged a fire enhancement glyph and sent a wayward jet of magic careening through the lab like a feral gremlin. It ping-ponged off three protective wards, vaporized a desk plant, and promptly singed your familiar.
Specifically: Jade’s sleeve caught a little fire. For exactly three seconds.
The sleeve was barely charred. His skin wasn’t even red. He smirked.
You, however, reacted like you’d just watched him be stabbed in the heart by a divine lance.
“OH MY GOD YOU’RE BURNING—ARE YOU OKAY?! Is it fatal? It’s fatal, isn’t it?! What’s the protocol for familiar injury?! Do you need a resurrection spell?? Should I call the nurse or the exorcist—?!”
Jade, blinked once. Then calmly patted the faintest whiff of smoke from his robe and said, “I believe I’ll live.”
But the glint in his eyes said he smelled weakness. And he would absolutely exploit it.
The next morning, you showed up with a full care basket: enchanted cooling balm, a wonky scarf you’d panic-crocheted in the night, a potion for nerve regeneration (completely unnecessary), and a whole assortment of healing snacks from the infirmary vending machine.
You even hand-fed him a soothing honey drop.
That was your next mistake.
Because the very next day, Jade reclined across your bed like a drama major rehearsing for a role in “The Dying Swan: A Magical Tragedy.” He had a lukewarm towel across his forehead, your blanket wrapped dramatically around his shoulders like a cape, and a very deliberate look of fragile suffering.
“Alas,” he whispered, placing the back of his hand to his (completely fine) forehead, “I fear the lingering effects of the trauma are… worsening. There’s a tightness in my chest. I may never wield a kettle again. My tea senses are dulled.”
You squinted at him, deadpan. “You brewed two pots this morning.”
“For you, dearest Master,” he said, with an exaggerated wince. “But at what cost?”
You refused to indulge him. For about ten minutes.
Then he started coughing. Badly. Into a silk handkerchief. That you were pretty sure he’d dabbed with food coloring beforehand to resemble blood.
“Do you think you can bring… strawberry lollipops?” he asked, voice trembling. “Before I pass on to the next world.”
You shoved five into his mouth. “You’re not dying. But you are insufferable.”
He sucked dramatically on the sweets, sighing. “I find this treatment emotionally compromising.”
You fed him another one.
And started plotting your revenge with a very bitter herbal “recovery” tea. It smelled like wet moss and tasted like betrayal.
He drank it all. Smiled. Said it “added intrigue to the healing experience.”
You were no longer sure who was winning this war. But you were definitely losing your mind.
It started subtly. Jade would casually set a teacup in front of you in the mornings, unprompted. You’d ignore it. He’d raise an eyebrow. You’d argue that caffeine was a food group and you didn’t need anything else, thank you very much.
He’d say something cryptic like “I’d rather not have to explain malnutrition-related hallucinations to the administration,” and then slide you a plate of suspiciously elegant finger sandwiches.
Somehow, you’d end up eating them.
A week later, you found yourself sitting down for actual breakfast—tea, toast, even fruit—without remembering how it happened. He’d simply adjusted your routine. Quietly. Steadily. Like a moss infestation with an agenda.
He began packing you lunch. Bento-style. With little hand-drawn labels.
You didn’t even know when he started doing it. You just opened your bag one day, reached for your emergency gummy stash, and pulled out a thermos of miso soup and a side of rice balls shaped like sea creatures.
He started accompanying you to the dining hall under the excuse of "needing seaweed access." He monitored your meals. Commented on vitamin intake. Replaced your sugar gummies with dried fruit. Told you that if he caught you drinking energy drinks for dinner again, he’d report you to botanical safety for trying to poison a living plant (Vermin had still not recovered from the one time you tried to share a Monster with it).
Eventually, your friend—sweet, concerned, possibly one skipped breakfast away from passing out—cornered you between lectures.
"Hey," she said, tugging your sleeve with wide eyes. “I need to ask you something and I don’t want you to freak out.”
You, holding a bento box labeled ‘Don’t Forget to Finish Your Spinach, Master’ with a small smiling mushroom drawn on it, tilted your head. “Okay?”
She glanced around, lowered her voice, and whispered, “Who’s the familiar here?”
You stared at her.
She stared back.
In the distance, Jade waved at you politely while handing a professor a jar of suspicious glowing jam.
You opened your mouth. Closed it. Thought about how he’d reorganized your pantry by nutritional pyramid. Thought about how your life had improved and yet somehow spiraled out of your control in the exact same breath.
“I… don’t know anymore,” you whispered back.
And that was the beginning of your existential crisis about power dynamics, dietary fiber, and eel-based emotional manipulation.
The more you thought about it, the more the terrible, horrifying truth settled in: Jade had been slowly taming you.
Not in a leash-and-collar kind of way (though you weren’t entirely convinced he wouldn’t enjoy that visual), but in the slow, methodical way one might tame a particularly wild housecat. One that hissed at vegetables and believed microwaved instant noodles were the pinnacle of culinary achievement.
When you’d first summoned him—on accident, via unagi-induced chaos and a summoning circle that was technically illegal in five countries—you’d been expecting a fae general. A terrifying beast of war. A dragon, maybe.
What you got was a polite, well-dressed man with a smile that could curdle milk and the calm demeanor of someone who’d enjoy watching your academic career spontaneously combust.
You were sure he would spend his time reclining in your dorm like some cryptid, sipping tea while you panicked over assignments and singlehandedly ruined your chances at survival in botany.
That had been your first impression.
But it wasn’t what happened.
Instead, Jade made it his mission to ruin you in the most terrifying way imaginable: through care.
He made sure you ate. He brewed tea tailored to your stress levels. He reorganized your notebooks by topic and color-coded them while claiming he was “bored.” He calmly extracted you from five different poison ivy incidents. He taught you how to pronounce “photosynthesis” correctly after you spent an entire presentation calling it “plant vibes.”
And you hated to admit it—but it worked.
You stopped waking up in a panic. You stopped considering glitter glue a legitimate potion ingredient. You even passed a midterm without attempting to bribe a forest fairy.
It was subtle. Devious. Soft.
And worst of all, it was making you feel warm. Cared for. Grounded.
You used to dream of summoning a dragon—a grand, legendary familiar that would impress the entire academy and maybe light your homework on fire for dramatic effect. But now?
Now you watched Jade hum to himself in your kitchen, cooking something that smelled like lemon and dreams, and you didn’t care about dragons. Or status. Or changing streams.
You just wanted to figure out if there was a spell that could describe the exact way your heart skipped when he smiled at you and called you “Master” with that infuriating glint in his eye.
And if not… well. Maybe you’d make one.
From Jade’s point of view, your summoning had all the signs of an impending disaster—and thus, a highly enjoyable evening.
The circle was sloppy, the candles were the wrong color, and the ambient magical pressure was off by several kilopascals. The unagi that had plummeted into the center as a last-minute offering had been particularly concerning. Jade had arrived in a flash of light and fish-scented smoke, bracing for either mortal peril or at least a good laugh.
And then he saw you.
Wide-eyed. Covered in ink. Mumbling about “hoping for a dragon or something.” The perfect storm of magical desperation and zero planning skills. He had thought you’d be amusing. A novelty. A fun little side project to pass the time while bound by contract for a year.
And at first, that was exactly what you were. You were so spectacularly bad at botany that Jade was convinced you were a social experiment.
You called mushrooms “leaf meat.” You once referred to an entire genus of plants as “the crunchy ones.” And your plan to identify herbs by tasting them like a medieval poison tester had nearly given him a stroke. (Emotionally. He’s far too composed for physical symptoms.)
But somewhere between force-feeding you actual meals and dragging you out of exploding greenhouses, Jade started feeling… something. Not just amusement. Not just secondhand horror.
Affection.
It was awful.
So naturally, he did what any emotionally stunted eel-man would do—he ramped up the teasing. Called you “Master” in public. Smiled just a little too sharply. Hovered with a quiet attentiveness he pretended wasn’t genuine.
But when he thought back to that summoning—your hopeful eyes, the half-charred fish, the complete magical disaster—Jade realized something horrifying.
He owed his current happiness to a piece of grilled eel.
The next time he saw unagi on a menu, he gave it a respectful nod. After all, not every familiar bond is forged through fate, fire, and ancient prophecy.
Some are forged through sheer dumb luck and seafood.
You had always believed, deep in your feral little heart, that if you ever fell in love, it would be with the intensity of a meteor crashing into the earth. There would be pyrotechnics. An orchestra. Maybe a cursed bouquet of sentient mushrooms arranged in the shape of your initials. Something properly dramatic.
You were prepared for a sweeping romance. A declaration shouted from a balcony. A confession under a blood moon. At the very least, a sword fight followed by heavy breathing and an emotionally repressed kiss.
What you were not prepared for was... a random morning.
More specifically: today morning at 6:42 a.m., in your tragically unventilated dorm kitchen, where you shuffled in half-awake, wearing a blanket like a disgruntled ghost. Your hair looked like it had seen war. Your socks didn’t match. You were only conscious due to residual academic panic and caffeine withdrawal.
And there Jade was. Crisp and awake and annoyingly gorgeous, as usual, humming some eerie little tune while cooking god-knows-what on your stove. The sunlight framed him like he was in a toothpaste commercial. There were suspicious jars open on the counter labeled things like “Fenugreek??? (Maybe)” and “Do Not Inhale.”
He glanced at you over his shoulder, amused. “Good morning, Master.”
You grunted. It was too early for sarcasm or formal titles.
So, with the sleep-deprived logic of a creature who had survived exclusively on coffee and academic desperation, you trudged over to him, latched onto his waist like a needy koala, and rested your cheek against his back.
You did not plan this. Your body moved on its own, possessed by the Spirit of Affection.
To his credit, he didn’t question it. Jade simply chuckled, adjusted his stance, and offered you a spoonful of something suspiciously green and steaming.
You tasted it. Your neurons barely fired. It was delicious and probably illegal.
And then, without thought, without warning, still pressed against him and one brain cell away from sleep, you mumbled, “I love you.”
There was a beat of silence.
You blinked.
Wait.
Wait—
What the hell did you just say—
YOU SAID THAT OUT LOUD—
Jade paused with the spoon still in his hand, his entire body going still like a predator that just heard something interesting. Then—slowly, like he was savoring it—he turned.
He looked at you. He really looked at you. And then, in true chaos spirit fashion, he grinned.
Not his usual polite smile. No. This was different. This one had teeth.
“Oh?” he said, softly. “Oh?”
And that was the moment you realized: you had said those three words to a man who considered emotional vulnerability an invitation to hunt.
You tried to backtrack. Tried to say you meant “I love you—r soup.”
Or “I love you as a friend. A colleague. A sentient eel.”
But before you could decide on your lie of choice, he leaned down and kissed you.
It started sweet. Gentle. Thoughtful, like maybe he was giving you time to flee.
You didn’t. That was your mistake.
Because then his hand slid around your waist, and the kiss deepened, and suddenly your kitchen felt too small, and too warm, and definitely not rated for public indecency. Your legs threatened to give out. Your brain flatlined.
When he pulled away, you were breathless and dazed. You looked at him, heart hammering, pupils blown wide.
He tilted his head, still grinning, and said, “You taste like honesty. How rare.”
You briefly considered combusting on the spot.
And as he turned back to the stove like nothing had happened, humming again, you realized something terrifying:
You were in love.
And you were the prey.
And you were kind of okay with that.
When familiar contract renewal season arrived—accompanied by the usual administrative chaos, enchanted paperwork that bit fingers, and panicked first-years realizing their mushroom toadlings had exploded again—you were… calm.
Weirdly, suspiciously calm.
You should have been stressed. You were, after all, still a mage in training with a botany grade being held together by duct tape, blind luck, and the sheer force of your familiar’s passive-aggressive hovering.
But no. You weren’t worried. Because somehow, over the past year of accidental poisonings, illegal greenhouse heists, and near-romantic tea-induced hallucinations, you and Jade had fallen into something far more dangerous than summoning magic: mutual affection. Possibly even love. Terrifying.
And yet, when the day came, you expected a conversation. A little back and forth. Maybe some dramatic flourish on his part—Jade had a flair for drama and mild emotional terrorism, after all. At the very least, you thought he’d present a contract with a smirk and some cryptic line about “servitude never being quite so delightful.”
But he didn’t.
You woke up one morning to find him already seated at your desk, as if he’d been waiting all night. The early sun filtered through your window, highlighting the soft teal of his hair and the amused glint in his eyes. You were still blinking the sleep out of yours, shuffling over in your raccoon-print pajamas with all the grace of a zombie when he slid the document toward you.
A thick, arcane-heavy contract. One that glowed softly at the edges. Titled:
“PERMANENT FAMILIAR CONTRACT — LIFELONG BOND”
Your eyes snagged on the signature line.
His name was already there.
Signed in an elegant, curling script with a wax seal that looked like an eel tail. No jokes. No teasing. No loopholes.
You stared at the paper. Then at him.
“…You want to be stuck with me forever?” you asked, because your brain short-circuited and apparently decided that was the most romantic response it could muster.
Jade raised a brow. “You make life—interesting,” he said, voice inflected with all the warmth and amusement of someone who once watched you attempt to eat a venomous berry “for science.”
You blinked again. “That’s not a no.”
“It’s a yes,” he said easily, his smile softening. “I’d like to be yours. If you’ll have me.”
You didn’t even hesitate.
You picked up the pen and signed your name beneath his. The moment the ink dried, the paper vanished in a swirl of moss-green smoke, the pact sealed with a pleasant little magical ding.
“So,” you said, heart thudding in your chest as you looked up at him, “we’re really doing this.”
“We are,” he said.
“Forever is a long time.”
“Not nearly long enough.”
And you had to kiss him after that, because what else do you do when your familiar—not-quite-boyfriend-but-very-possibly-soulmate says something like that?
He kissed you back like he’d been waiting years. And you let him, sinking into his arms like it was the only place you’d ever belonged.
You, a chaotic disaster of a botany student. Him, a merman familiar who brewed tea that could bend time.
A perfect, absurd, slightly terrifying match.
Later that evening, when you sat together on the windowsill, legs tangled and laughter echoing, you realized something else: you'd meant to find a way out of the botany stream. A bigger future. A stronger school of magic.
But with Jade by your side, maybe botany wasn’t a prison—it was just where you bloomed.
It started, as most disasters in your life did, with you tripping over your own feet. Specifically, you’d tripped face-first into a rare carnivorous plant while trying to impress your professor with your “innovative approach to hands-on learning.” (Your professor had screamed. The plant had screamed louder. You still didn’t know plants could do that.)
And while you were nursing your slightly-bitten pride and applying salve to your dignity, some golden-haired, obnoxiously perfect fourth-year had wandered over, all pristine robes and condescending smiles.
“You know,” he said to Jade, completely ignoring you like you were a decorative shrub, “it’s a shame. A familiar with your magical potential? Tied to someone who’s clearly... not invested in their future.”
You scoffed. Loudly. “Excuse you. I am very invested in my future. I just think the universe should meet me halfway and stop putting venomous moss in my study patch.”
The student didn’t even blink. “You deserve a master who challenges you. Who brings out your best.”
Jade tilted his head, politely smiling the way a shark might if it had impeccable manners and was about to swallow a surfer whole.
“I see,” he said, sipping his tea. “And that would be… you?”
“Why not?” the student said, and you hated how confident he sounded. “They're wasting you.”
You froze.
You knew it wasn’t true. Jade had chosen you. Signed a lifelong contract. Literally brewed you soup after you set your eyebrows on fire.
But the words stung in a way you hadn’t expected.
You tried to play it cool. Shrugged. “If he wants to leave, he can. No one’s stopping him.”
Jade’s eyes flicked toward you, a tiny crease between his brows. “Is that what you think?”
You shrugged again. Forced a smile. “Why wouldn’t it be? Go ahead. Take your tea. Find a master who challenges you.”
And with that, you walked away, head high, hands clenched so tight your knuckles cracked.
You spent the rest of the night trying not to cry into your pillow.
The next morning, your pillow was suspiciously warm. And breathing.
You cracked open one eye to find Jade wrapped around you like a clingy snake with boundary issues and an attitude problem.
“What—Jade—get off—!”
“I’m sleeping,” he said.
“You are not! You’re emotionally ambushing me!”
He didn’t move. Just curled tighter.
You squirmed, shoved, flailed. Nothing worked. The man had the tensile strength of a vine and the stubbornness of ten toddlers.
Eventually, you gave up and pouted at him. “You were mean yesterday.”
“I wasn’t trying to be,” he admitted cheerfully, his tone dangerously close to smug. “But in my defense, I expected my master to realize I have taste.”
You sulked harder. “You owe me.”
“Oh?”
“And I’m cashing it in later.”
“Of course, Master.”
“…Stop calling me that in the dorm.”
“No.”
You didn’t bring it up again. But the next day, as you passed that fourth-year in the hallway, he looked pale, shaken, and was clutching a charm pouch so tightly it might’ve become a fossil.
You glanced at Jade. He looked serene. Suspiciously serene.
“…What did you do?” you whispered.
“Me?” he smiled. “Nothing serious.”
You stared at him. He sipped his tea.
You decided you definitely weren’t asking.
But later, when he draped himself across your bed again and offered you a cup of calming lavender-citrus tea with a wink, you realized one thing:
You may be a borderline disaster of a mage, but Jade Leech was yours. And gods help anyone who forgot it.
You'd been holding back.
It wasn't that you were scared. Okay, no—you were absolutely terrified. Because the “what are we” question carried the weight of galaxies, of shifting dynamics and possible heartbreak, and you weren’t emotionally prepared to deal with that when you were already behind on your fungal studies and had just accidentally set your robe on fire trying to dry herbs.
Still, it was getting harder and harder to ignore the fact that Jade Leech, your familiar, your chaos partner, your maybe-something-more, had kissed you good morning again that day. Just a soft brush of lips while you were half-asleep, before you could even form coherent thought. And you’d just blinked at him, dazed and blushing and maybe a little dead inside.
And then that horrible, arrogant, no-chin-having senior from the advanced familiar studies track said—loudly—that if someone like Jade were his familiar, he’d “treat him properly” and “not waste potential on a person who still mistakes fertilizer for potion ingredients.”
You saw red. Possibly green. Maybe fuchsia, depending on how much of Jade’s tea was still in your system. But whatever the color, something snapped in your soul.
Because no one was taking Jade from you.
Not when he brewed you anti-headache tea with honey because he knew you hated bitter things. Not when he cleaned your desk with the gentleness of a man legally married to your organization system. Not when he smiled at you like you were a curious algae bloom he couldn't stop poking at. Not when he kissed your forehead, your temple, your nose, your cheek—like loving you was as natural as breathing.
So.
You marched.
You stormed into your dorm room where he was casually rearranging his jar collection (you didn’t ask, you'd learned not to the hard way.) and pointed an aggressively trembling finger at him.
“Be mine!” you shouted.
Jade blinked once. Then tilted his head, that infuriatingly pretty smile already forming. “I thought I already was, Master.”
Your brain combusted. You flailed. “Huh?!”
“I assumed the constant kissing and emotional intimacy might have been a clue.” His eyes sparkled. “Should I have drawn a diagram? I could make a chart—”
You launched yourself at him in mortified fury. “No charts!”
He caught you with practiced ease, laughed that horrible, lovely laugh of his, and kissed you again—this time slower, deeper, like he’d been waiting for this exact moment.
You melted. Fully collapsed like overwatered moss in his arms.
When you finally came up for air, dizzy and giddy and mildly offended at how good he was at this, he tucked a strand of your hair behind your ear and murmured, “Now that we’ve established that… shall we discuss what we’re calling the wedding mushrooms?”
You screamed into his shoulder.
He laughed again.
And that night, you dreamed of rings made of sea glass and mushrooms that glowed softly in the dark.